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Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first full-scale test of a thermonuclear device, in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion. [1] [2] [3] Ivy Mike was detonated on November 1, 1952, by the United States on the island of Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll, in the now independent island nation of the Marshall Islands, as part of Operation Ivy.
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.
The first Ivy shot, codenamed Mike, was the first successful full-scale test of a multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon ("hydrogen bomb") using the Teller-Ulam design.Unlike later thermonuclear weapons, Mike used deuterium as its fusion fuel, maintained as a liquid by an expensive and cumbersome cryogenic system.
Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. and USSR threatened with all-out nuclear attack in case of war, regardless of whether it was a conventional or a nuclear clash. [28] U.S. nuclear doctrine called for mutually assured destruction (MAD), which entailed a massive nuclear attack against strategic targets and major populations centers of the Soviet ...
The B-52G began its mission from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, carrying four B28FI Mod 2 Y1 thermonuclear bombs on a Cold War airborne alert mission named Operation Chrome Dome. The flight plan took the aircraft east across the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea towards the European borders of the Soviet Union before ...
The bomb was hailed as a hydrogen bomb, and the truth that it was actually a large fission bomb was kept secret by the British government until the end of the Cold War. [135] [136] An Operational Requirement (OR1142) had been issued in 1955 for a thermonuclear warhead for a medium-range ballistic missile, which became Blue Streak. This was ...
The Ivy Mike test was the world's first "hydrogen bomb", ... and storage of a cryogenic device, the Cold War arms race drove the demand for a viable fusion weapon ...
The device fell through the closed bomb bay doors of the bomber, which was approaching Kirtland at an altitude of 520 metres (1,700 ft). The device's conventional explosives destroyed it on impact, leaving a crater 7.6 metres (25 ft) in diameter and 3.7 metres (12 ft) deep. [ 5 ]