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Nuclear Test Film - Operation Redwing
5 Mt · May 4, 1956 · Enewetak Atoll · 333 Hiroshimas
Operation Redwing (1956, Bikini and Enewetak) ran seventeen shots to develop a second generation of thermonuclear weapons. Its Cherokee shot was the first U.S. airdrop of a hydrogen bomb, a 3.8-megaton burst over Bikini — proof that the megaton-range weapon was now a deployable bomb rather than a laboratory experiment.
Aftermath
Redwing returned to atolls already heavily contaminated by Castle Bravo two years earlier, adding to a fallout burden the Marshallese still live with. The series confirmed the U.S. could deliver multi-megaton weapons by aircraft anywhere on Earth.