[2][3] General Pierre Marie Gallois was instrumental in the endeavour, and earned the nickname of père de la bombe A ("father of the A-bomb").

[5] Initial plans were proposed to detonate a nuclear bomb on French territory in the Argentella mine on the island of Corsica.

In order to study the immediate effects, military equipment was placed at varying distances from the epicenter, while jets flew overhead to take samples of radioactive particles.

No journalists were allowed on site; instead, an eyewitness account was given to the French press, saying "the desert was lit up by a vast flash, followed 45 seconds later by an appreciable shock-wave"; an "enormous ball of bluish fire with an orange-red centre" gave way to the typical mushroom cloud.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Warner D. Farr in a report to the USAF Counterproliferation Center "Progress in nuclear science and technology in France and Israel remained closely linked throughout the early fifties."

The Ministry of the Armed Forces had maintained that the radioactive effects on humans present at the site would be "weak", and "well below annual doses.

In addition, ex-military officers have come forward with stories of being used as test subjects to study the effects of nuclear radiation on humans.

[15] After Gerboise Bleue in February 1960, France conducted until April 1961 three additional atmospheric tests in Reggane facility's Saharan Military Experiments Centre.

Following the USSR, the United States reactivated its own atmospheric test program with a series of 40 explosions from April 1962 to November 1962.

In 1968, France detonated its first thermonuclear weapon, Canopus (2.6 Mt), at the new facility at Fangataufa, a desert atoll in French Polynesia.

"[9] Morocco, which lays claim to the portion of the Sahara where the bomb was detonated, withdrew its ambassador from Paris just two days after the event.

Other African nations expressed their disappointment with France's decision to test nuclear weapons in the Sahara, citing fears of radioactive fallout and the safety of their citizens.

[15] The test had been patched up hastily and fired prematurely because of the Algiers putsch, as it was feared that the nuclear bomb could fall in the hands of seditious elements.

[23] According to the French NGO ACRO, Saharan dust blown northwards by strong seasonal winds to France in early 2021 carried measurable levels of radioactive caesium-137 attributable to the Gerboise tests.