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English: A simple graphic showing comparative nuclear fireball radii for a number of different tests and warheads. From largest to smallest, the diameter are: Tsar Bomba — 50 Mt — 4.6 km (2.9 mi) Castle Bravo — 15 Mt — 2.84 km (1.76 mi) W59 warhead (Minuteman missile) — 1 Mt — .96 km (0.60 mi)
Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of Operation Castle. Detonated on 1 March 1954, the device remains the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States and the first lithium deuteride -fueled ...
Comparative fireball radii for a selection of nuclear weapons. [citation needed] Contrary to the image, which may depict the initial fireball radius, the maximum average fireball radius of Castle Bravo, a 15-megatonne yield surface burst, is 3.3 to 3.7 km (2.1 to 2.3 mi), [6] [7] and not the 1.42 km displayed in the image.
Operation Castle was an unqualified success for the implementation of dry fuel devices. The Bravo design was quickly weaponized and is suspected to be the progenitor of the Mk-21 gravity bomb. The Mk-21 design project began on 26 March 1954 (just three weeks after Bravo), with production of 275 weapons beginning in late 1955.
The second series of tests in 1954 was codenamed Operation Castle. The first detonation was Castle Bravo, which tested a new design utilizing a dry-fuel thermonuclear bomb. It was detonated at dawn on March 1, 1954. Scientists miscalculated: the 15 Mt of TNT nuclear explosion far exceeded the expected yield of 4–8 Mt of TNT (6 predicted). [6]
English: Diameter and temperature vs. time of the fireball of a 20 kiloton nuclear air burst (near sea-level). Self-generated fit of curves in Glasstone & Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1977).
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The Castle Bravo shot of 1 March 1954, at Bikini Atoll, was the first test of a deployable (solid fuel) thermonuclear weapon, and also (accidentally) [citation needed] the largest weapon ever tested by the United States (15 megatons). It was also the single largest U.S. radiological accident in connection with nuclear testing.