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Bikini Atoll - Short Snorter
| Issuer | Joint Task Force One / Task Group One.Five |
|---|---|
| Year | 1946-1947 |
| Type | Vouchers |
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| Obverse description | Military souvenir note printed in grey-black on white paper, with a central oval vignette of a nuclear explosion mushroom cloud over Bikini Atoll. Left field bears ARMY and NAVY designations with a winged star emblem; right field carries the circular 58th Wing / 509th Composite Group unit patch. Corner numerals read 58 and 509. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Souvenir note printed in green on cream paper, centred on large ornate letterpress text reading BIKINI and KWAJALEIN within an elaborate scrollwork border. Left circular vignette shows a B-29 bomber in silhouette; right vignette shows an island map outline. Small unit mascot medallions appear at lower corners; 58th Wing insignia at upper corners. |
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| Comments |
Short snorters from Operation Crossroads are among the more historically loaded pieces of ephemera to pass through numismatic hands. Joint Task Force One assembled roughly 42,000 personnel — scientists, military observers, journalists, and naval crews — at Bikini Atoll in 1946 to witness the first postwar atomic tests. The short snorter tradition, already well-established among wartime aircrews, carried naturally into this peacetime operation: notes signed by fellow participants, sometimes taped into long chains, functioned as informal proof of presence at a defining moment in weapons history.
Task Group One.Five was specifically the radiological safety unit, which places any note bearing that designation in the hands of personnel monitoring fallout from ABLE and BAKER shots. The signatures are the entire point.