Navy

How to Nuke a Submarine

It seems pretty obvious that a nuclear explosion deep in the ocean should sink a submarine, but you need to be sure if you’re gearing up for World War III. During the heyday of nuclear testing in the 1950s, the U.S. Navy made sure of its underwater atomic might with an elaborate and very loud test.

Sailors and scientists needed to know the range and lethality of underwater nuclear explosions. Would they harm the crews, ships and planes delivering the weapons? Would the ocean become too contaminated near the blast for forces to remain and fight?

The oddly-named Operation Wigwam tried to answer those questions. It required more than a year of preparation.

Navy scientists and oceanographers from the Scripps Institue of Oceanography chose a target site in the deep Pacific Ocean some 500 miles southwest of San Diego. There the ocean is more than three miles deep, far from shipping lanes and notably lacking in marine life. Reports called it a “biological desert.”