Radio News Report
Operation Crossroads "Able" Test Preparation
July 1, 1946

This is Elmer Peterson at NBC in San Francisco. At this time NBC interrupts its regular program schedule to bring you a history-making broadcast--a broadcast as complete as radio can make it of the atom bomb test--the actual dropping of the bomb at Bikini. In a matter of minutes now an army Superfortress will drop that bomb on target ships in Bikini lagoon. Months of preparation, months of controversy and discussion have led to the dramatic moment now at hand as the atomic age once more reveals its power. Once again, with the world as an audience, modern science is about to demonstrate and test a new form of energy. Already, as you heard earlier today from W.W. Chaplin, NBC's reporter at Kwajalein Island, the Superfortress carrying the bomb has left that island. It now is making its test runs over its most actual target, the battleship Nevada, now painted a bright orange color. The observation planes are in the air. A task force of over 40,000 men is on the alert. Scientists and technical men are ready to record in a variety of ways, with a variety of equipment, the results of the test. If anyone doubts that we are living in an atomic age, the proof is to be found far out in the Pacific, as a bombardier now prepares to unleash once more the destructive power that leveled parts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the destructive power which must be regulated by international cooperation, the destructive power which had brought new concepts of both peace and war. Today, in just a few moments from now, many questions about this new power will be answered, in part or in their entirety--the radius of destructive activity, the effect on differing types of vessels, the future role of naval surface vessels. There are many questions of immediate significance--will the atom bomb, exploding over water, form radioactive cloud formations? How will it react on the waters of the Pacific? Will it create atmospheric disturbances that will originate a typhoon? In such matters the very safety of the men making the test is involved. There will be answers also to involved scientific questions. There will be the effect on the relations between nations. Will this new test of what the atom bomb can do make the world more conscience now of the urgent need of atomic energy controls? Yes, this is the atomic age with new fields of thought, a new approach to world problems.

There are those who predict it may be the last such test if nations now can agree to outlaw the bomb. The United Nations Atomic Energy Commission now is analyzing that problem, and the world waits to see whether there can be a compromise between our own plan for controlling atomic energy and that of Soviet Russia.