terfered with the test
results. The rain finally stopped and at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War
Time, the device exploded successfully and the Atomic Age was born. The
nuclear blast created a flash of light brighter than a dozen suns.
The light was seen over the entire state of New Mexico and in parts of
Arizona, Texas, and Mexico. The resultant mushroom cloud rose to over
38,000 feet within minutes, and the heat of the explosion was 10,000
times hotter than the surface of the sun! At ten miles away, this heat
was described as like standing directly in front of a roaring fireplace.
Every living thing within a mile of the tower was obliterated. The
power of the bomb was estimated to be equal to 20,000 tons of TNT, or
equivalent to the bomb load of 2,000 B-29, Superfortresses!

After witnessing the awesome blast, Oppenheimer quoted a line from a
sacred Hindu text, the Bhagavad-Gita: He said: "I am become death, the
shatterer of worlds."[6] In Los Alamos 230 miles to the north, a group
of scientists' wives who had stayed up all night for the not so secret
test, saw the light and heard the distant sound. One wife, Jane Wilson,
described it this way, "Then it came. The blinding light [no] one had
ever seen. The trees, illuminated, leaping out. The mountains flashing
into life. Later, the long slow rumble. Something had happened, all
right, for good or ill."[7]

General Groves' deputy commander, Brigadier General T. F. Farrell,
described the explosion in great detail: "The effects could well
be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and
terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever
occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole
country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times
that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray, and blue.
It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range
with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to
be imagined..."[8]

Immediately after the test a Sherman M-4 tank, equipped with its own air
supply, and lined with two inches of lead went out to explore the site.
The lead lining added 12 tons to the tank's weight, but was necessary
to protect its occupants from the radiation levels at ground zero. The
tank's passengers found that the 100-foot steel tower had virtually
disappeared, with only the metal and concrete stumps of its four legs
remaining. Surrounding gr