Word: lagoons
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...BIKINI ATOLL--The floor of Bikini Lagoon was a junkyard of naval might today, testifying to the terrific power of the underwater atomic bomb whose explosion sent 11 vessels to the bottom and heavily damaged at least four others...
...blast pressure, transmitted through 150 feet of almost incompressible water, crushed the coral on the lagoon floor, turning the color of the water from slate-blue to turquoise...
...scientists and military observers crawled up & down the blackened sides of seared ships in Bikini's lagoon and stumbled over armored steel decks which had been dimpled by the unearthly blast, they needed little imagination to translate this laboratory test-by multiplying it fivefold or tenfold-into a scene of real war. What they saw was plenty...
...north, 240 air miles away, was Bikini, once one of the least-known and most peaceful of Pacific island groups. In Bikini's 200-sq.-mi. lagoon was an anchorage about five miles in diameter. In a space where the Navy would normally have only 14 ships (or five in a cruising formation at sea), 73 vessels had been jampacked for the test...
Then to the rendezvous came the queen bee. Dave's Dream's weaponeers, two 26-year-old ensigns, David L. Anderson and Leon D. Smith, had armed the bomb within 20 minutes after takeoff. Soaring at 30,000 feet above the polka-dotted lagoon, Dave's Dream made a dry run into the northeast wind. Bombardier Major Harold H. Wood-known to his crewmates as "Lemon Bar" because of his success at officers'-club slot machines-twirled the knobs on his bombsight, tried to line up the target ship Nevada with the cross hairs...