Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser IJN SakawaA rehearsal was conducted on 24 June 1946 (coded Queen day). At 0900 1 July (coded How hour), the weapon was dropped from the B-29 Superfortress Dave\'s Dream (formerly Big Stink of the 509th Composite Group) and burst over the target fleet.

Able operations went smoothly except that the test weapon was dropped between 1,500 and 2,000 feet (450 and 600 m) off target. The miss resulted in a government investigation of the flight crew of the B-29 bomber. Eventually, it was generally agreed that the bomb had a flaw in the tail stabilizer, causing the miss, and the flight crew was cleared of any suspicion. The plutonium core of the Able shot had been previously nicknamed the Demon core by scientists at Los Alamos after it twice went critical in experiments in 1945 and 1946; in each incident, it had killed a scientist.

All target vessels within 500 yards of the water surface below the point of detonation were sunk or seriously damaged. Ships beyond 750 yards had little induced radioactivity or damage. The radioactivity created by the burst had only a transient effect, and within a day nearly all the surviving target ships had been safely reboarded. The ship inspections, instrument recoveries, and remooring necessary for the Baker test proceeded on schedule. Five ships were sunk as a result of the Able test.

Fifty-seven guinea pigs, 109 mice, 146 pigs, 176 goats, and 3030 white rats had been placed in shipboard stations normally occupied by people. Ten percent of these animals were killed by the air blast, fifteen percent were killed by radioactivity, and ten percent were killed during later study. Only 35% of the animals died as a direct result of blast or radiation exposure.

Operation Crossroads was a series of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States in the summer of 1946. The series consisted of two detonations, each with a yield of 23 kilotons.

Able detonated at an altitude of 520 feet (158 m) on 1 July 1946; Baker detonated 90 feet (27 m) underwater on 25 July 1946. A third planned burst, Charlie, was canceled. The Crossroads tests were the fourth and fifth nuclear explosions done by the USA (following the Trinity test and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

They were the first nuclear tests held in the Marshall Islands, and the first to be publicly announced beforehand.