This Cold War era U.S. Navy film shows the handling of ships after they’ve been contaminated after a nuclear blast or fallout event. The film shows the procedures that personnel would undertake to deal with the radiological event and optimistically predicts that decontamination would be practical and actually easy. The proscribed procedures outlined in the film were pioneered in the wake of the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests, with many ships in the target fleet being subjected to a washing and even a paint removal regimen in hopes of making them radiation free.
The Navy brass may or may not have believed decontamination of ships was possible or practical, but in the immediate post-WWII, nuclear bomb era may critics questioned the viability of the Navy. Since an entire fleet could be decimated by one atomic bomb, what was the point of maintaining so many ships. It was therefore very important to the Navy that information such as this film be put out in the world, confirming that at atomic attack and nuclear radiation would not necessarily disable warships.
The aircraft carrier seen throughout this film appears to be the historic vessel USS Langley, and not one of the ships from the Crossroads tests. There is a chance at least it might be USS Independence, which was used for testing during Operation Crossroads. After being transported back to Pearl Harbor and San Francisco for study, she was later sunk near the Farallon Islands and was only recently rediscovered.
The cleanup of ships at Operation Crossroads was hampered by two significant factors: the unexpected base surge and the lack of a viable cleanup plan. It was understood that if the water column fell back into the lagoon, which it did, any ships that were drenched by falling water might be contaminated beyond redemption. Nobody expected that to happen to almost the entire target fleet, but it did. No decontamination procedures had been tested in advance to see if they would work and to measure the potential risk to personnel. In the absence of a decontamination protocol, the ships were cleaned using traditional deck-scrubbing methods: hoses, mops, and brushes, with water, soap, and lye. The sailors involved had no protective clothing.
Eight of the major ships and two submarines involved in Crossroads were towed back to the United States and Hawaii for radiological inspection. Twelve target ships were so lightly contaminated that they were remanned and sailed back to the United States by their crews. Ultimately, only nine target ships were able to be scrapped rather than scuttled. The remaining target ships were scuttled off Bikini or Kwajalein Atolls, or near the Hawaiian Islands or the California coast during 1946–1948.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
