U.S. explodes first experimental atomic bomb in New Mexico 70 years ago this hour (July 16 1945)


Video: 'Explosion and smoke cloud of the first Atomic Bomb detonation rising at Alamogord...HD Stock Footage'

(Sunday, July 16, 1945, 5:29:45 a.m. MWT; during World War II) — The Atomic Age began this morning when the United States successfully detonated a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon at the Trinity bomb site near Alamogordo, New Mexico, unleashing an explosion equivalent to that of 19 kilotons of TNT (click here for a clip of this event from “American Experience: Truman” at 1:56:01).


Video: 'First Atom Bomb Trinity Test Manhattan Project 15-16 July 1945' (detonation at 8:19)


Video: 'Peter Jennings - Hiroshima: Why the Bomb was Dropped (1995)' (July 15-16, 1945, at 47:29)


Video: 'The World At War 1973(World War II Documentary)Episode 24-The Bomb(February–September 1945)' (July 16, 1945, at 25:28)

Just hours later, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis left Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California on a secret mission to deliver atomic bomb components to Tinian Island in the Marianas.