Elugelab, or Elugelap (, ), was an

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

, part of the

Enewetak Atoll Enewetak Atoll (; also spelled Eniwetok Atoll or sometimes Eniewetok; , , or , ; known to the Japanese as Brown Atoll or Brown Island; ) is a large coral atoll of 40 islands in the Pacific Ocean and with its 296 people (as of 2021) forms a leg ...

in the

Marshall Islands The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is an island country west of the International Date Line and north of the equator in the Micronesia region of the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. The territory consists of 29 c ...

. It was destroyed in the world's first full-scale thermonuclear explosion, the '' Mike'' shot of Operation Ivy, on November 1, 1952. Prior to being destroyed, the island was described as "just another small naked island of the atoll".

Environment

The land had palm trees and the surrounding marine had '' Heliopora'' coral growth which was home to '' Eurythoe complanata'' and '' Haplosyllis spongicola'', most of which are now dead or dying.

Explosion

The fireball created by

Ivy Mike Ivy Mike was the code name, codename given to the first full-scale test of a Thermonuclear weapon, thermonuclear device, in which a significant fraction of the explosive nuclear weapon yield, yield comes from nuclear fusion. Ivy Mike was detona ...

had a maximum

diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the centre of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest Chord (geometry), chord of the circle. Both definitions a ...

of . This maximum is reached a number of seconds after the detonation and during this time the hot fireball invariably rises due to

buoyancy Buoyancy (), or upthrust, is the force exerted by a fluid opposing the weight of a partially or fully immersed object (which may be also be a parcel of fluid). In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of t ...

. While still relatively close to the ground, the fireball had yet to reach its maximum dimensions and was thus approximately wide. The detonation produced a crater in diameter and deep where Elugelab had once been; the blast and water waves from the explosion (some waves up to high) stripped the test islands clean of vegetation, as observed by a helicopter survey within 60 minutes after the test, by which time the mushroom cloud had blown away. The island "became dust and ash, pulled upward to form a

mushroom cloud A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped flammagenitus cloud of debris, smoke, and usually condensed water vapour resulting from a large explosion. The effect is most commonly associated with a nuclear explosion, but any sufficiently e ...

that rose about into the sky." The outcome of the test was reported to incoming president

Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionar ...

by Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, Gordon Dean, as follows: “The island of Elugelab is missing!”. According to Eric Schlosser, all that remained of Elugelab was a circular crater filled with seawater, more than in diameter and "fifteen stories deep". The blast yielded 10.4 megatons of explosive energy, 700 times the energy that leveled central

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has b ...

. Aerial footage of Elugelab and adjacent islands well before ''Mike'' shot at a time prior to the connecting

causeway A causeway is a track, road or railway on the upper point of an embankment across "a low, or wet place, or piece of water". It can be constructed of earth, masonry, wood, or concrete. One of the earliest known wooden causeways is the Sweet T ...

being created is available, as is footage after the causeway was finished that supported the diagnostic Krause-Ogle box light pipe system, with numerous trees removed in preparation of the shot also plainly evident, along with footage of the aforementioned helicopter survey of the Mike crater soon after the detonation, and finally, high-altitude footage of the crater accompanied with details of its depth" deep"equivalent to the height of a "17-story building" and with an area large enough to accommodate about "14 Pentagon buildings". The detonation also collapsed some natural crevices in the

reef A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral, or similar relatively stable material lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic component, abiotic (non-living) processes such as deposition (geol ...

, some distance away from the rim of the crater. Full radioecology recovery surveys were documented before and after each test series.

Impact on the nuclear arms race

This test marked a pivotal moment in escalating the nuclear weapons development arms race. The

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

conducted its own thermonuclear test three years later. It was believed that Soviet scientists were able to sustain the development of the hydrogen bomb partly because they received U.S. research details from atomic spy

Klaus Fuchs Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly a ...

. However, the ''

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists The ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'' is a nonprofit organization concerning science and global security issues resulting from accelerating technological advances that have negative consequences for humanity. The ''Bulletin'' publishes conte ...

'' indicated in the 1990s that most of the information Fuchs provided may have been useless.

Gallery

File:Ivy Mike test.ogg,

test of 1952, this video contains a misleading

post-production Post-production, also known simply as post, is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording indivi ...

explosion sound

overdubbed Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more a ...

on what was a completely silent detonation from the vantage point of the camera, with the sound of the blast wave only arriving a number of seconds later, akin to

thunder Thunder is the sound caused by lightning. Depending upon the distance from and nature of the lightning, it can range from a long, low rumble to a sudden, loud crack. The sudden increase in temperature and hence pressure caused by the lightning pr ...

, with the exact time depending on its distance. File:Operation Castle - Nectar - Detonation.ogv, The 1954 test shot ''Nectar'' of

Operation Castle Operation Castle was a United States series of high-yield (high-energy) nuclear tests by Joint Task Force 7 (JTF-7) at Bikini Atoll beginning in March 1954. It followed ''Operation Upshot–Knothole'' and preceded '' Operation Teapot''. Con ...

produced a yield of 1.69 megatons and was detonated just North East of Ivy Mike's Elugelab crater, off the coast of Teiter (Gene) Island. The Island of Bogon/Bokon (Irene), is the spearhead-shaped object at the bottom right of the screen. The maximum average nuclear fireball radius is approximately . File:Redwing Seminole Detonation 320x240.ogv, Test shot Seminole of

Operation Redwing Operation Redwing was a United States series of 17 nuclear test detonations from May to July 1956. They were conducted at Bikini and Enewetak atolls by Joint Task Force 7 (JTF7).Blumenson, Martin and Hugh D. Hexamer (1956). ''A History of ...

, yield 13.7 kilotons, conducted on the coast of the island of Bogon/Bokon (Irene) on June 6, 1956. File:Redwing Seminole 005.jpg, Redwing Seminole crater on Bogon/Bokon (Irene) island File:Redwing Apache.jpg, Test shot Apache of Operation Redwing, yield 1.85 megatons, detonated in a barge on July 8, 1956, at "Elugelab (Flora)" or off the coast of what remained of Teiter Island after the detonation of test shot Nectar of Operation Castle. File:Enewetak Atoll - 2002-02-07 - Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC - b3218 - 15m.png, A 2002 true-color photograph of

. The relatively large Ivy Mike crater can be seen at the top of the atoll in this image with the smaller, adjoining Castle Nectar crater, in close proximity. The much smaller Redwing Seminole crater can faintly be seen on Bogon Island. File:Atombombentest Redwing-Seminole 01.jpg, A single high-quality frame from test shot Seminole of

References

External links

"Mike" Test
from

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

{{Marshall Islands

Footnotes

Former islands Nuclear weapons Enewetak Atoll Explosion craters Articles containing video clips Islands of the Marshall Islands 1952 disestablishments