The strangest thing discovered in all of my research was the fact that the largest bomb ever tested by the U.S., thousands of times more powerful than those of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, was exploded on March 1, 1954 on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

Here’s the account:

Early in the morning on March 1, 1954, the hydrogen bomb, code named Bravo, was detonated on the surface of the reef in the northwestern corner of Bikini Atoll. The area was illuminated by a huge and expanding flash of blinding light. A raging fireball of intense heat that measured into the millions of degrees shot skyward at a rate of 300 miles an hour. Within minutes the monstrous cloud, filled with nuclear debris, shot up more than 20 miles and generated winds hundreds of miles per hour.

Joint Task Force ships, which were stationed about 40 miles east and south of Bikini in positions enabling them to monitor the test, detected the eastward movement of the radioactive cloud from the 15 megaton blast. They recorded a steady increase in radiation levels that became so high that all men were ordered below decks and all hatches and watertight doors were sealed.

Millions of tons of sand, coral, plant and sea life from Bikini's reef, from three islands [Bokonijien, Aerokojlol, Nam] and the surrounding lagoon waters were sent high into the air by the blast. One-and-a-half hours after the explosion, 23 fishermen aboard the Japanese fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon, watched in awe as a "gritty white ash" began to fall on them. The men aboard the ship were oblivious to the fact that the ash was the fallout from a hydrogen bomb test.

Biographical Profile on D.D. Maloney

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