At 0835 on 25 July 1946 by the Bikini calendar (24 July in New York), the 23 kiloton Baker atomic bomb was detonated from underwater in the Bikini Lagoon. Though both the Able and Baker bombs were 23 kilotons, the Baker blast was far more dramatic and much more hazardous than the Able blast.

The enormous cloud of water from the Baker blast dispersed a spray of radioactive water over most of the men and ships in the Lagoon. Hanson W. Baldwin, the military affairs editor for The New York Times, observed Test Baker aboard the press ship USS Appalachian. In his July 26 column he wrote: “The spectacularly beautiful dome of water, steam, spray and gas reached up and outward with awful suddenness….”

NBC broadcasted live radio coverage from Test Baker. Several radio personalities reported from the USS Mt. McKinely, including Ralph Howard Peterson, Don Mozley, Clete Roberts, and Don Bell. They described the area immediately before the bomb blast, the underwater explosion (5:11 on the recording), and the area immediately after the explosion, including Admiral Blandy’s remarks. (Recording from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives)

Fast Forward 63 Years Later 

L to R: Don Mozley, Sandra McGee, and Bill McGee recording an audio book at Command Productions, Sausalito, CA, December 2009. (William L. McGee and Sandra V. McGee Collection)

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 CBS 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 men had a lot to talk about and discovered they were both at Operation Crossroads in July 1946.

Bill and his co-author/wife Sandra were producing the audio format of Bill’s sight loss memoir, Learning To Cope With Sight Loss: Six Weeks at a V.A. Blind Rehabilitation Center. Bill  invited Don Mozley to be the narrator. He also invited other Broadcast Legends to be on the audio recording:TV producer Ed Dudkowski (Bill’s voice) and ABC’s Emmy-winning news anchor Cheryl Jennings (the women’s voices). 

Watch: 3 Films from Operation Crossroads