Trinity was the code name for the world’s first successful test explosion of a nuclear device. Part of the famous Manhattan Project, the nuclear device codenamed “Gadget” was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945.

The Manhattan Project was sanctioned in the early 1940s as a top-secret program to counter what was believed to be German advances in nuclear devices. Its main goal was to provide the United States with a real atomic bomb.

The culmination of three years of intensive research and experimentation, the Trinity test ushered in the nuclear age. The world, as they say, would never be the same again.

The test took place in the Jornada del Muerto Desert in New Mexico, near Alamogordo. At the time, the site was a United States Air Force (USAAF) artillery and bombing range. On that fateful day, the test bomb was detonated in the north-central portion of the test site, just north of the White Sands National Monument that now stands to commemorate the event.

Today, that area of ​​New Mexico is part of the White Sands Missile Range.

The test also involved a device called the Jumbo. It was a huge, cylindrical, steel container that cost about $12 million to develop as a literal “safety net” for the test. Designed as a containment vessel in case the test bomb failed to detonate, it was intended to be used to extract valuable plutonium for future experiments.

As it turned out, the Jumbo was deemed unnecessary, as the team was confident the experiment would be a success. However, the Jumbo was not wasted, and was suspended from a steel tower about a half-mile from the test site.

The tower was completely leveled, but Jumbo survived intact. After the war, the US Army tried in vain to destroy it, and today its remains can still be seen at the Trinity site.

The Trinity weapon was developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the first Manhattan Project bombs were built and tested. The explosion was spectacular. The bomb released as much energy as 20 kilotons of TNT.

In 1965, the test site was designated a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

On July 16, 1945, at exactly 5:30 a.m., scientists at the Los Alamos Research Center demonstrated the destructive power of the atom for the first time in human history. The test launch was actually scheduled for an hour and a half earlier, but bad weather delayed the experiment until more favorable conditions arose.

The atmosphere among the assembled scientists was tense. The witnesses included scientist Enrico Fermi (who had led the first nuclear chain reaction in December 1942), US Army Brigadier General Leslie Groves, J.R. Oppenheimer and many others.

The test bomb was placed on top of a specially built steel tower and upon detonation, an intense flash of light and a wave of intense heat, followed by a deafening sonic boom, filled the valley. The fireball, which produced the characteristic mushroom cloud, stretched approximately 12.2 km in diameter.

With an estimated explosive yield of 20 tons of TNT, the bomb turned much of the surrounding desert and the concrete foundations of the towers into green glass. This strange material would later be named “trinitite”.

A crater 2.4 km in diameter and 2.4 m deep was left where the tower had been erected.