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Nuclear Test Film - Operation Castle
15 Mt · Mar 1, 1954 · Bikini Atoll · 1,000 Hiroshimas
Operation Castle (1954, Bikini) fielded the first deliverable thermonuclear weapons using solid, 'dry' lithium-deuteride fuel. Its opening shot, Bravo, on 1 March 1954, yielded 15 megatons — two and a half times the predicted yield and the largest device the United States ever detonated, about 1,000 Hiroshimas.
Bravo became the worst radiological disaster in American history. A miscalculated yield and an unexpected wind shift dumped heavy fallout across the inhabited atolls of Rongelap and Utirik, whose people suffered acute radiation sickness, lasting illness and exile. The Japanese tuna boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5), 80 miles away, was coated in radioactive ash; its entire crew fell ill and radio operator Aikichi Kuboyama died, triggering an international crisis and the global anti-nuclear movement.