Ghost Fleet: The Sunken Ships of Bikini Atoll
In 1946, the United States began a series of nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll to determine the impact of atomic bombs on armored naval ships. Amid much fanfare, the military assembled a fleet of surplus ships from World War II, carefully mooring them in the lagoon, and exploded nuclear bombs both in the air and under the water. Delgado, a noted marine archaeologist with the National Park Service, visited Bikini in the late 1980s to explore and document the condition of the sunken ships. His work is more than an archaeological study; it is the history of the nuclear age. Meticulously researched, it chronicles the development of the bomb, its deployment in Japan, the preparations for the tests, the attempted clean-up afterward, and the beginning of the Cold War. Many of the photographs and diagrams were first published by the National Park Service in a study entitled The Archaeology of the Atomic Bomb (1991). A good purchase for public and academic libraries.?John Kenny, San Francisco P.L.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.