[Operation Crossroads: 21 Kiloton "Baker" Bomb Detonated Ninety Feet Underwater, Bikini Atoll Lagoon, South Pacific, July 25, 1946]

Inscription: Inscribed in pencil in unknown hand, verso CR: "434-6"; inscribed in pencil in unknown dealer's hand, verso TRC: "T1692.1"

[David Winter, New York]

Per Michael Light's book on Atomic explosions, (100 Suns), this photograph is catalogued as #59 as follows:

"Baker, Operation CROSSROADS, July 25, 1946, Bikini Atoll lagoon, underwater detonation at 90', yield 21 kilotons. Photographed from a tower on Bikini Island, the Baker detonation water column and the funnel-shaped "cauliflower head" above are caught at their apex, in what has become one of the world's most iconic images of nuclear destruction. At this point the Wilson condensation cloud has dissipated closer to the surface of the water, revealing the 2000'-wide water column and the decommissioned armada surrounding it, but still obscuring most of the expanding mushroom head. In an instant more than two million gallons of water will begin to fall downwards and create a "base surge" whose first wave will measure 94' high near surface zero. Four miles away, waves were 6 feet high. Baker used a bomb of the same design and yield as that used to destroy the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945; the device was mass-produced as the Mark 3 bomb and stockpiled from 1947 to 1950, with a yield of 21 kilotons. Image by U.S. Photographic Signal Corps."