Listen to Baker Blast on NBC Radio Live from Bikini, 25 Jul 1946 (Fact 8/10)

NBC radio reports live from Test Baker, 25 July 1946. Run time 14:30. (Courtesy of Hoover Archives)

10 Facts You May Not Know About Operation Crossroads

Fact 8

Aboard the USS Fall River (CA-131), Bikini Lagoon, 25 Jul 1946, Test Baker – At 0835 on 25 July by the Bikini calendar (24 July in New York), the 23 kiloton Baker atomic bomb was detonated underwater in the Bikini Lagoon. Though both the Able and Baker bombs were 23 kilotons, the Baker blast was far more dramatic and turned out to be much more hazardous than the Able blast.

The enormous cloud of water from the Baker blast dispersed a spray which covered all the target ships in the Lagoon as well as the support ships positioned ten or more miles away, including the USS Fall River. Hanson W. Baldwin, military affairs editor for The New York Times, observed Test Baker aboard the press ship USS Appalachian. In his 26 July column he wrote, “The spectacularly beautiful dome of water, steam, spray and gas reached up and outward with awful suddenness….”

The Voice of Don Mozley

L to R: Don Mozley, Sandra McGee, Bill McGee. Command Productions, Sausalito, CA, December 2009 (Author Collection)

Don Mozley was one of the on-air voices on NBC Radio’s live broadcast from Bikini (1:05-1:26).

Six decades later, in 2009, Don Mozley and Bill McGee’s paths crossed at a Broadcast Legends luncheon in the San Francisco Bay Area. Don was by then a renowned broadcast journalist having spent 62 years with CBS Radio and KCBS/74 in San Francisco. Bill had worked for NBC Radio in 1960 in the Spot Sales Division in New York City. The two had a lot to talk about.

Bill was getting ready to produce an audio format of his Learning To Cope With Sight Loss: Six Weeks at a V.A. Blind Rehabilitation Center. He asked Don Mozley to be the narrator and Mr Mozley said yes. Others on the recording were television producer Ed Dudkowski (Bill’s voice) and ABC’s Emmy-winning news anchor Cheryl Jennings (the women’s voices).