Alamogordo Bombing Range

In the spring of 1945, preparations began in the Pacific for the use of the atomic bomb. On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered, and the project was then focused solely on Japan. On July 16, 1945, a test device code-named Gadget was detonated at the Alamogordo Bombing Range in New Mexico as part of Project Trinity, the first explosion of a nuclear weapon. The success of the first test of a nuclear weapon was a testament to the ability of the leadership of the Manhattan Project to carry out an unprecedented industrial project, with the world s most talented scientists... 

Meanwhile, the test of the plutonium weapon, named Trinity by Oppenheimer (a name inspired by the poems of John Donne), was rescheduled for July 16 at a barren site on the Alamogordo Bombing Range known as the Jornada del Muerto, or Journey of Death, 210 miles south of Los Alamos. 

A Figure 21.17 The Trinity test for the atom bomb deveioped during Worid War ii. The first human-made nuclear explosion took place on July 16, 1945, on the Alamogordo test range in New Mexico. 

ALAMOGORDO BOMBING AND GUNNERY RANGE, NEW MEXICO. See TRINITY TEST SITE. 

TRINITY TEST SITE. U.S. physicist Robert Oppenheimer selected Trinity as the label for the first test of the plutonium nuclear device known as Gadget. The name was inspired by the poems of John Donne. The 51,500-acre site where this test occurred on 16 July 1945 became known as the Trinity Test Site. The site itself is in an isolated and barren region of southern New Mexico known as the Jornada del Muerto ( Journey of Death ), approximately 210 miles south of Los Alamos. It was selected because it was already part of the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, established in 1942, and was relatively close to Los Alamos, home of Site Y. 

Tessmer, Carl F., and Daniel Brown. Carcinoma of the Skin in Bovine Exposed to Radioactive Fallout. Journal of the American Medical Association 170 (1962) 210-14. [A report of an animal exposed to radioactive fallout on the range near Alamogordo in July 1945 following the detonation of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity test site.]... 

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