Elugelab, or Elugelap ( mh, Āllokļap, ), was an

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An isla ...

, part of the

Enewetak Atoll Enewetak Atoll (; also spelled Eniwetok Atoll or sometimes Eniewetok; mh, Ānewetak, , or , ; known to the Japanese as Brown Atoll or Brown Island; ja, ブラウン環礁) is a large coral atoll of 40 islands in the Pacific Ocean and with it ...

in the

Marshall Islands The Marshall Islands ( mh, Ṃajeḷ), officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands ( mh, Aolepān Aorōkin Ṃajeḷ),'' () is an independent island country and microstate near the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the Inte ...

. It was destroyed by the world's first true hydrogen bomb test on 1 November 1952, a test which was codenamed shot "

Mike Mike may refer to: Animals * Mike (cat), cat and guardian of the British Museum * Mike the Headless Chicken, chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off * Mike (chimpanzee), a chimpanzee featured in several books and document ...

" of

Operation Ivy Operation Ivy was the eighth series of American nuclear tests, coming after '' Tumbler-Snapper'' and before '' Upshot–Knothole''. The two explosions were staged in late 1952 at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Proving Ground in the Marshall I ...

. Prior to being destroyed, the island was described as "just another small naked island of the atoll". The fireball created by

Ivy Mike Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first full-scale test of a thermonuclear device, in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion. Ivy Mike was detonated on November 1, 1952, by the United States on the island of Elugelab ...

had a maximum

diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid f ...

of . This maximum is reached a number of seconds after the detonation and during this time the hot fireball invariably rises due to

buoyancy Buoyancy (), or upthrust, is an upward force exerted by a fluid that opposes the weight of a partially or fully immersed object. In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of the overlying fluid. Thus the ...

. While still relatively close to the ground, the fireball had yet to reach its maximum dimensions and was thus approximately wide. The detonation produced a crater in diameter and deep where Elugelab had once been; the blast and water waves from the explosion (some waves up to high) stripped the test islands clean of vegetation, as observed by a helicopter survey within 60 minutes after the test, by which time the mushroom cloud had blown away. The island "became dust and ash, pulled upward to form a

mushroom cloud A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped flammagenitus cloud of debris, smoke and usually condensed water vapor resulting from a large explosion. The effect is most commonly associated with a nuclear explosion, but any sufficiently ener ...

that rose about twenty-seven miles into the sky." The outcome of the test was reported to incoming president

Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

by Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, Gordon Dean, as follows: “The island of Elugelab is missing!”. According to

Eric Schlosser Eric Matthew Schlosser (born August 17, 1959) is an American journalist and author known for his investigative journalism, such as in his books ''Fast Food Nation'' (2001), '' Reefer Madness'' (2003), and '' Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, ...

, all that remained of Elugelab was a circular crater filled with seawater, more than a mile in diameter and "fifteen stories deep". The blast yielded 10.4 megatons of explosive energy, 700 times the energy that leveled central

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui ...

. Aerial footage of Elugelab and adjacent islands well before ''Mike'' shot at a time prior to the connecting

causeway A causeway is a track, road or railway on the upper point of an embankment across "a low, or wet place, or piece of water". It can be constructed of earth, masonry, wood, or concrete. One of the earliest known wooden causeways is the Sweet Tr ...

being created is available, as is footage after the causeway was finished that supported the diagnostic Krause-Ogle box light pipe system, with numerous trees removed in preparation of the shot also plainly evident, along with footage of the aforementioned helicopter survey of the Mike crater soon after the detonation, and finally, high-altitude footage of the crater accompanied with details of its depth"175 feet deep"equivalent to the height of a "17-storey building" and with an area large enough to accommodate about "14 Pentagon buildings". The detonation also collapsed some natural crevices in the

reef A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes—deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock ...

, some distance away from the rim of the crater. Full radioecology recovery surveys were documented before and after each test series.

Gallery

File:Ivy Mike test.ogg,

test of 1952, this video contains a misleading

post-production Post-production is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording individual program segments. Th ...

explosion sound

overdubbed Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more av ...

on what was a completely silent detonation from the vantage point of the camera, with the sound of the blast wave only arriving a number of seconds later, akin to

thunder Thunder is the sound caused by lightning. Depending upon the distance from and nature of the lightning, it can range from a long, low rumble to a sudden, loud crack. The sudden increase in temperature and hence pressure caused by the lightning pr ...

, with the exact time depending on its distance. File:Operation Castle - Nectar - Detonation.ogv, The 1954 test shot ''Nectar'' of

Operation Castle Operation Castle was a United States series of high-yield (high-energy) nuclear tests by Joint Task Force 7 (JTF-7) at Bikini Atoll beginning in March 1954. It followed ''Operation Upshot–Knothole'' and preceded ''Operation Teapot''. Condu ...

produced a yield of 1.69

megatons TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a ...

and was detonated just North East of Ivy Mike's Elugelab crater, off the coast of Teiter (Gene) Island. The Island of Bogon/Bokon (Irene), is the spearhead-shaped object at the bottom right of the screen. The maximum average

nuclear fireball The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy released when that particular nuclear weapon is detonated, usually expressed as a TNT equivalent (the standardized equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene which, if detonated, would pr ...

radius is approximately . File:Redwing Seminole Detonation 320x240.ogv, Test shot Seminole of

Operation Redwing Operation Redwing was a United States series of 17 nuclear test detonations from May to July 1956. They were conducted at Bikini and Enewetak atolls by Joint Task Force 7 (JTF7).Blumenson, Martin and Hugh D. Hexamer (1956). ''A History of ...

, yield 13.7 kilotons, conducted on the coast of the island of Bogon/Bokon (Irene) on June 6, 1956. File:Redwing Seminole 005.jpg, Redwing Seminole crater on Bogon/Bokon (Irene) island File:Redwing Apache.jpg, Test shot Apache of Operation Redwing, yield 1.85 megatons, detonated in a barge on July 8, 1956, at "Elugelab (Flora)" or off the coast of what remained of Teiter Island after the detonation of test shot Nectar of Operation Castle. File:Enewetak Atoll - 2002-02-07 - Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC - b3218 - 15m.png, A 2002 true-color photograph of

. The relatively large Ivy Mike crater can be seen at the top of the atoll in this image with the smaller, adjoining Castle Nectar crater, in close proximity. The much smaller Redwing Seminole crater can faintly be seen on Bogon Island. File:Atombombentest Redwing-Seminole 01.jpg, A single high-quality frame from test shot Seminole of

References

External links

"Mike" Test
from PBS {{Marshall Islands Former islands Nuclear weapons Enewetak Atoll Explosion craters Articles containing video clips Islands of the Marshall Islands

Gallery

See also

References

External links