4. Test Baker during Operation Crossroads
When the weapon for test Baker was detonated, the landing craft from which it had been suspended was obliterated. USS Arkansas, a battleship and veteran of both World Wars was sunk, as was USS Saratoga, the Japanese battleship Nagato, a seven other ships. The stoutly built German cruiser Prinz Eugen again survived, though it suffered sufficient hull damage to capsize and sink five months after the test, too heavily irradiated for repair crews to board. It was towed to Kwajalein where it sank in the lagoon, and where it remains today. Baker was the first detonation of an atomic bomb in water, and the hydraulic shock produced by the blast and the relative shallowness of the water in the lagoon produced unexpected phenomena for study. The blast deepened the lagoon by digging a thirty-foot crater in its bottom.
USS Arkansas was longer than the lagoon was deep, and for a brief time stood on its bow on the bottom before falling over backward. Saratoga remained afloat for several hours and orders were issued to tow it to one of the nearby islands for beaching and later study, but the waters around the aircraft carrier were too radioactive for the vessel to be approached. USS Independence, another aircraft carrier, survived Able and Baker and was finally towed to San Francisco for radiation studies. The entire lagoon, the ships floating in it, and the islands surrounding it were heavily contaminated by radiation. Decontaminating the surviving ships could only be accomplished by sand blasting the vessels to their bare metal. Baker used only pigs and rats for animal testing and nearly all of them died from radiation contamination. After Baker, test Charlie was canceled and cleanup operations undertaken, which were largely a failure.