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The Castle Bravo device was housed in a cylinder that weighed 23,500 pounds (10,700 kg) and measured 179.5 inches (456 cm) in length and 53.9 inches (137 cm) in diameter. [3] The primary device was a COBRA deuterium-tritium gas-boosted atomic bomb made by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, a very compact MK 7 device.
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 March 26, 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]
The Mark 21 nuclear bomb was a United States thermonuclear gravity bomb first produced in 1955. It was based on the TX 21 "Shrimp" prototype that had been detonated during the Castle Bravo test in March 1954.
Non-nuclear detonation of an atomic bomb Main article: 1950 Rivière-du-Loup B-50 nuclear weapon loss incident Returning one of several U.S. Mark 4 nuclear bombs (minus a fissile core ) secretly deployed in Canada, a USAF B-50 had engine trouble and jettisoned the weapon at 10,500 feet (3,200 m).
The Tsar Bomba far surpassed the largest explosion the United States has ever conducted - a 15-megaton "Castle Bravo" hydrogen bomb detonated on Bikini Atoll in 1954. (Reporting by Maria Vasilyeva ...
A Mark 17 on display at the Castle Air Museum. On May 27, 1957 a Mark 17 was unintentionally jettisoned from a Convair B-36 Peacemaker just south of Albuquerque, New Mexico's Kirtland AFB. 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).
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