Drain the Oceans

The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed,

the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

3, 2, 1. Fire!

In 1945, America unleashes the horrifying

power of the atomic bomb.

Devastating the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The world will never be the same again.

A year later the U.S. military begins

a series of nuclear tests in one of the

most remote places on the planet.

Nearly 5, 000 miles from the west coast of America,

in the middle of the Pacific ocean...

Bikini atoll...

Part of the Marshall archipelago,

Bikini is a circle of 26 tiny islands around

a lagoon 23 miles across.

Fringed with coral reefs that cling to the rim of

an ancient volcanic crater.

Today, Bikini atoll is one of the most beautiful places in the world,

it's peaceful, it's tropical, it's quiet,

but here is also the location of some of the

most violent actions that ever took place.

Between 1946 and 1954,

80 million tons of explosive nuclear power rock Bikini...

In a series of deadly experiments.

Left behind are the remains of over a dozen wrecks.

Battleships, submarines and even an aircraft carrier.

'Ghost ships' that bear the scars, and hide the secrets,

of the world's most terrifying weapons.

This is the only place on the planet where

you can witness a nuclear battlefield...

Today, a group of scientists has come to Bikini

on an unprecedented mission: To carry out the world's

first 3D survey of the nuclear wrecks...

The team from the university of Delaware,

led by Dr Art Trembanis,

is on board the research boat indies surveyor.

They've brought with them the very latest hi-tech scanning equipment.

So we've taken this very modest tin boat and

turned it into the most advanced sonar mapping system

that's ever been brought to Bikini...

And we're starting to pick it up I think.

Nice. That looks really good.

The survey team is targeting the area

where the first Bikini tests took place.

The wrecks hidden here are the last physical traces

of this earth-shattering experiment.

Draining them will reveal astonishing stories.

And some shocking images.

The tests have a code name...

Operation crossroads was designed to try to figure

out the nature of war in the atomic age.

They brought together 42, 000 men,

a fleet of over 240 ships,

95 of which were going to be used as targets.

They viewed the entire fleet out there as simply

being fish in an atomic barrel.

The first test of operation crossroads,

on July 1st, 1946, is code-named able.

The able test was a test of an air detonation of an atomic bomb

and these were fission bombs like the ones,

identical to the ones used and dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Those were done in secret and, and part of the wartime effort,

this was being done in the open as part of a planned

and carefully coordinated scientific study.

The able bomb, named Gilda, has a power of 23 kilotons.

No one knows how it will affect Bikini.

Will it destroy the entire atoll?

Will it sink every ship?

Will it make navies of the future completely redundant?

Engineers fit the ships with special instruments,

to record blast pressures, radioactivity levels,

and especially the extreme temperatures.

Engineers make a trial run with the instruments

to record the terrific heat spawned by the blast.

The bomb's target, a bullseye right at the center

of the Guinea pig fleet, is the US battleship Nevada

painted an unmissable bright orange.

She's built of solid steel, with a melting point of

2,642 degrees Fahrenheit.

But the able explosion should be almost five times hotter than that.

Hotter than the surface of the sun.

But things don't go to plan.

Gilda misses the Nevada by half a mile.

And it's where the bomb actually detonates...

That the survey team is now searching.

For a ship that accidentally finds itself

right in the firing line.

The USS Gilliam.

She's an attack-transport ship.

A survivor of a torpedo strike and the Okinawa landings.

For the able test, she's meant to be merely a bystander.

But she ends up being the first ship in history to take

a direct hit from a nuke.

Find her, and they'll learn exactly what happens to a ship

when struck by an atomic bomb.

As the team searches for the Gilliam,

they crisscross the lagoon in their hi-tech tender.

Scanning every inch of the seabed, 60 yards below.

Half a mile away from the center of the able test,

they pick up a signal.

Look. Sweet!

Yeah I think this might be one of 'em.

No, there's something right there.

Yeah. Oh hoho!

Oh that's nice.

Over 100, about 110, 115.

Do you think that's Gilliam?

Less structure than I expected to see on that...

The mapping team hurries back to the surveyor

to take a closer look at the data.

The orientation of the,

the map that was drawn previously suggests that it

was facing to the north, north-west. What we've seen so

far, and the sonar data seem to support that.

Location, orientation and size,

so those are 3 good clues all pointing towards the

suggestion that this would be the Gilliam.

Alright. Sounds good.

- Alright. - Let's go find it.

Using the sonar data,

the skipper positions the indies surveyor directly

above the wreck site.

Relay to Brian, I'm right on top of it.

Roger that.

Radioactivity levels at Bikini are still high in some places.

But the water is now safe to dive.

The team is about to take its very first look at a nuclear

ghost ship.

The pool's open, the pool's open!

Roger, the pool is open.

Okay, the pool is open.

Roger, diver in the water!

The wreck lies 150 feet down,

with visibility limited.

She's, she's just in pieces.

That's extraordinary.

I've never seen anything like this before.

Wow, it, it's like she's melted.

The divers struggle to even work out which way

round the ship is lying.

Is that the bow?

The team needs to see the wreck as a whole,

to understand the impact of the nuclear blast.

Using precise 3D data from the survey,

we can now drain the waters of Bikini atoll...

To reveal the grotesque and shocking remains of the USS Gilliam.

A whole ship has been flattened.

Where once she measured 70 feet from the top of her masts,

she's now been squashed to a third of that height.

One mast is missing and the other lies smashed on the seabed.

The steel gunwales droop over the ship's sides.

And the hull has melted in folds, like loose sailcloth.

All the scientific instruments on board the Gilliam were

smashed or melted in the blast.

But data from other ships further out survives.

Yeah, there's pressure there.

So pressure and then to tidal corrections.

Using this data, and information from historical

records we can reveal exactly what happens to the Gilliam.

Before the able test, Bikini atoll is home to 167 people,

most living on the main island.

But their lives are about to change forever.

“The United States government wants to attempt to

turn this into something good for mankind...”

In the weeks before detonation, the islanders are evacuated.

And their island is turned into a test bed.

But this isn't just a military experiment.

This is theatre!

Operation crossroads was designed to test the bomb

publicly, to invite observers from all over the world,

to film it, to broadcast it, live,

via radio and show the world just what the bomb could do.

It was meant to be a media spectacular.

The explosions will be filmed by hundreds of

cameras, using half the film stock in the entire world.

The time has come to send the atom bomb by air to Bikini.

The most explosive experiment in history is about to begin.

At 5:55am,

the b-29 bomber 'Dave's dream' takes off from

Kwajalein airbase, 200 miles away.

Her only cargo is the able bomb.

It exploded about 500 feet above Gilliam and

basically flash-melted it.

In less than a second,

the fireball strikes and the Gilliam grows hotter than the

surface of the sun.

The steel sides of the ship start to melt.

Blast pressure from above crushes the ship down

causing it to lose buoyancy and start sinking.

The white hot steel is then quenched by the water as it

solidifies into its final misshapen form.

This, the first ship ever sunk by an atomic bomb,

it's surrealistic, it's stunning and it really does

give you a powerful sense of what the power of that weapon was.

The watching world expects destruction on a biblical scale.

But the same size bomb that flattened Nagasaki,

has only sunk five vessels at Bikini.

Most of the ships are still afloat.

When the bomb went off and only five ships sank