France had decided in 1957 to build nuclear test facilities in the Sahara, taking over 108,000 square kilometres of desert for the purpose. On 13 February 1960, with the Algerian War still raging, the device code-named Gerboise Bleue, or 'Blue Jerboa', exploded on a 100-metre tower near the oasis of Reggane. Its yield of about 70 kilotons made France the fourth nuclear power after the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain, and gave Charles de Gaulle the independent deterrent he wanted.
The name came from the jerboa, a small desert rodent, and from the blue of the French flag; later shots in the series were called white, red and green. Gerboise Bleue was no tentative first step. At about 70 kilotons it was by far the largest debut test any nation had yet carried out, more than three times the roughly 20 kilotons of America's Trinity test in 1945.
In Paris, Charles de Gaulle greeted the news with the cry 'Hourra pour la France!' For de Gaulle, the bomb was proof that France would not depend on Washington for its security, and it underpinned the independent force de frappe that shaped French defence policy for decades.
The test site became part of a contested legacy. Three more atmospheric tests followed at Reggane before France moved its testing underground and, after Algerian independence, to French Polynesia. French authorities insisted the Saharan tests took place in uninhabited areas, yet people lived in the region, and doctors in Reggane later reported what they saw as a rise in thyroid and skin cancers. The question of compensation for victims of France's nuclear tests was still being debated half a century after the blast.
Key people: Charles de Gaulle