Declassified U.S. Nuclear Test Film #01

0800001 Trinity - 1945 - 12:00 - Color, Sanitized, Silent - Trinity Shot was part of the secret Manhattan Project - the atomic bomb project charged with designing, developing, testing, and firing a weaponization of the newly discovered phenomenon, fission, the splitting of nuclei of heavy particles to release energy. Nicknamed "Gadget," the device was exploded at the Trinity Site in southeastern New Mexico, near Alamogordo as the first proof test of the concept of implosion. This involved taking a critical mass of plutonium and using detonators to set off high explosives to cause the mass of radioactive material to squeeze in upon itself until it reached a super critical mass. This implosion, then, resulted in the splitting of the nuclei in the plutonium atoms, which produced heat, blast, and radiation.

This silent film shows the preliminary processes of raising the Gadget to the top of the tower and final preparation for detonation, and then the blast and after effects.

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