The Paul McIlvaine Collection - Non-Currency Short Snorters
The Short Snorter Project
OPERATION CROSSROADS ATOMIC SHORT SNORTER
Some operations or units actually printed their own short snorters.  This was usually done to commemorate an event,
document a milestone achievement, or commemorate a similar occurrence. Immediately following World War II, the
Operation Crossroads team printed this unique short snorter to commemorate two atomic tests.  This item originally
belonged to Ben L. Meade.
This short snorter has six signatures of participants in the atomic tests as follows:
    William Kifford,      Bill Benugy II (sp?),      R. E. McGuire,      Erich A. Zocker, Jr.,       K. Larry Avery,      C. L. Baison  (sp?)
Operation Crossroads conducted the world’s fourth and fifth nuclear detonations in the summer of 1946.
The series consisted of two 23 kiloton detonations:
ABLE was an atmospheric detonation on 1 July 1946                        BAKER was an underwater detonation  25 July 1946
ABLE operations resulted in the sinking of five ships with transient radioactivity.
BAKER, the second and final shot of Operation Crossroads, sank eight ships. The detonation caused most of the
surviving target fleet to be bathed in radioactive water spray and debris from the lagoon bottom. Many vessels remained
too radiologically contaminated for several weeks for more than brief on-board activities. Support ships (more than 150)
were decontaminated as necessary and received a radiological clearance before returning to the fleet. Vessel
decontamination and clearance was a learning process for US shipyards and required much experimentation.

A formal resurvey of Bikini Atoll was conducted in the summer of 1947.  It studied the long-term effects of the
OPERATION CROSSROADS tests.