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The initial explosion catapulted the 740-ton silo door away from the silo and ejected the second stage and warhead. Once clear of the silo, the second stage exploded. The W53 thermonuclear warhead landed about 100 feet (30 m) from the launch complex's entry gate. Its safety features prevented any loss of radioactive material or nuclear detonation.
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs , a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits.
Sand will fuse into glass if it is close enough to the nuclear fireball to be drawn into it, and is thus heated to the necessary temperatures to do so; this is known as trinitite. [39] At the explosion of nuclear bombs lightning discharges sometimes occur. [40] Smoke trails are often seen in photographs of nuclear explosions.
The Mark 39 design was a thermonuclear bomb and had a yield of 3.8 megatons. [1] It weighed 6,500–6,750 pounds (2,950–3,060 kilograms), [2] and was about 11 feet, 8 inches long (3.556 meters) [2] with a diameter of 35 inches (89 cm). [2] The design is an improved Mark 15 nuclear bomb design (the TX-15-X3 design and Mark 39 Mod 0 were the ...
The first thing you'd see if a nuclear bomb exploded nearby is a flood of light so bright, you may think the sun blew up -- but don't try to drive away. If a nuclear bomb explodes nearby, here's ...
A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction.The driving reaction may be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or a multi-stage cascading combination of the two, though to date all fusion-based weapons have used a fission device to initiate fusion, and a pure fusion weapon remains a hypothetical device.
Internal nuclear components of the B61 bomb. The bomb was assembled at the Burlington AEC Plant and Pantex. A Sandia document on the dates of the development phases of the US nuclear stockpile describes the B61-3 as an "improved Mod 2 w/IHE" and the B61-4 as "same as Mod 3 ex. Hi-Y". [22] The B61 Mod 3 and 4 bombs do not contain beryllium. [30]
A Mark 6 nuclear bomb, similar to the one dropped in the incident, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.. On March 11, 1958, a U.S. Air Force Boeing B-47E-LM Stratojet from Hunter Air Force Base operated by the 375th Bombardment Squadron of the 308th Bombardment Wing near Savannah, Georgia, took off at approximately 4:34 PM and was scheduled to fly to the United Kingdom and ...