Scope and Content Note
The papers of William Henry Purnell Blandy (1890-1954) span the years 1913-1977 and consist of correspondence, clippings, speeches, reports, scrapbooks, and miscellaneous biographical material. The focus is on the World War II years when Blandy headed the Naval Bureau of Ordnance and on his direction in 1946 of Operation Crossroads, the atomic tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.