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.
First Into Nagasaki
Several of the eyewitnesses Weller interviewed described seeing a parachute, or parachutes, falling on the day of the bombing. In an account published more than twenty years after his visit to Nagasaki, Weller asserts that the bomb which destroyed Nagasaki was a "lazy-falling missile floating under a parachute.""...riding under a silk handkerchief." ["First into Nagasaki" page 3] Since the bomb did not descend by parachute (a fact well known twenty years later) this description is incorrect.