United States Department of Energy, History Division, DOE/MA-0518, 2000. – 95 p.Shortly after midnight on January 27, 1951, personnel from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory delivered a nuclear capsule to a heavily guarded Air Force B–50D sitting on a taxi strip at Kirtland Air Force Base outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. Already on the bomber was an assembled nuclear device, lacking only the nuclear capsule to make it an operative test weapon. Forty–five minutes later, the B–50D, with a crew of eleven, lifted off from the runway and headed west through the darkness at an altitude of 14,000 feet toward Frenchman Flat, a remote desert valley located on the newly established Nevada Test Site approximately sixty–five miles northwest of Las Vegas.Contents.
Dropping the Bomb: The Able Shot.
The Nevada Test Site: Description and Early History.
The Birth of the Nuclear Age, 1919–1947.
The Search for a Continental Test Site, 1947–1950.
Preparing to Test, December 1950–January 1951.
The Ranger Series, January—February 1951.
Legacy of the Nevada Test Site.
Endnotes.
