Operation Crossroads
There were only seven nuclear bombs in existence in July 1946. The two bombs used in the test were Fat Man plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapons of the kind dropped on Nagasaki. The "Able" bomb was stenciled with the name "Gilda" and decorated with an "Esquire" magazine photograph of Rita Hayworth, star of the 1946 movie, "Gilda". The "Baker" bomb was "Helen of Bikini." This femme-fatale theme for nuclear weapons, combining seduction and destruction, is epitomized by the use in all languages, starting in 1946, of "bikini" as the name for a woman's two-piece bathing suit.
American military technology during World War II
On August 6 and 9, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki instantly killing 120,000 people. Roughly 100,000 more people died of radiation poisoning in the following years. Six days after the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered. The Manhattan Project was the leading collaborative scientific effort and the most secretive of the time. At first, several different labs had scientists working on smaller parts of the atom bomb, but they had no idea as to the magnitude of the project. Later, the project was moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, led by renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.