Operation Crosstie

Operation Crosstie was a series of 48 nuclear tests mostly conducted in Nevada during 1967 and 1968. These tests followed the Latchkey series and preceded Bowline.

The blast designated Gasbuggy involved an underground detonation, intended to stimulate production of natural gas by cracking the rock in the underground formation of its deposit. The test was a double-failure, as not only the production did not increase as much as expected, but the customers also refused to buy gas contaminated with traces of radioisotopes. However, the detonation happened mostly as desired.

Buggy was a Plowshare test designed to excavate a channel. It was a simultaneous detonation of 5 devices, placed 150 ft apart and 150 ft below the surface that resulted in a channel 300 ft wide, 900 feet long, and 80 ft deep .

The Faultless test was a "calibration test" conducted in a mine cavity 3,200 feet beneath the Hot Creek Valley near Tonopah, Nevada, with a yield of around 1 megatons. This test was conducted to see if the land was fit for testing a 5 megaton thermonuclear warhead for the Spartan Missile, however the "calibration test" failed and was sardonically named Faultless, because of the large degree of faulting that could be seen in the roads and highways throughout the region following the test. As a result of this failed test, it was decided that the land was unfit for multimegaton nuclear tests, so a calibration test was conducted at Amchitka Island, Alaska, in the fall of 1969 during Operation Mandrel.

The individual tests of this series were: