Posted on 03/02/2015 6:55:46 AM PST by C19fan
Sixty-one years ago on an island in the South Pacific, scientists and military officers, fishermen and Marshall Islands natives observed first-hand what Armageddon would be like.
And it almost killed them all. The Atomic Energy Commission code-named the nuclear test Castle Bravo.
The March 1, 1954 experiment was the first thermonuclear explosion based on practical technology that would lead to a deliverable H-bomb for the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command—part of the Operation Castle series of tests needed to manufacture the high-yield weapons.
Bravo was the worst radiological disaster in American atomic testing history—but the test provided information that led to a lightweight, high-yield megaton bomb that would fit inside a SAC bomber.
(Excerpt) Read more at realcleardefense.com ...
Teller was a genius, but he wasn’t always right. :’)
Had it not been for Teller’s “wrong” H-bomb design, the US wouldn’t have called for the B-52 (one plane, one bravo bomb) or the million plus thrust rocket engine, we know it as the F-1, five were used on each of the Apollo missions to the Moon.
Suck it, Soviets!
Can anyone explain why these blasts have squiggly lines of smoke near them that look like jellyfish tentacles? The donation pic in this thread has them.
I’ve seen them in many pics of nuclear blasts, and don’t know what they are.
Those are trails from missiles launched to help determine yield.
Yep, and that’s why American ICBM’s ended up with much smaller missiles than the Soviet equivalents—the Minuteman II and III are very small compared to their Soviet counterparts of the late 1960’s to early 1970’s. It wasn’t until the late 1970’s the Russians started to reduce the size of their missiles, first with the SS-20 IRBM and subsequently with their mobile ICBM’s from the late 1980’s.
Whoops, didn’t see that coming.
Think of them as vertical lines that are used to measure the diameter of the mushroom cloud which can then be used to determine yield.
A case of unknown unknowns.
Smoke rockets are fired to study blast wave propogation and other things.
http://www.atomcentral.com/atomic-smoke-trails.aspx
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/SmokeTrails.html
In most cases the were behind the blast and the compressed air at the shockwave refracted the light making it look like the smoke trails bent at that point. Before today I thought they were in line with the blast to watch them being disrupted by the shockwave, but those articles said that didn't work well.
I vaguely recall the USS Pennsylvania was used in an atomic test. Various types of livestock were also placed on the ship as well.
I’ve forgotten the exact year, but I witnessed one of the long-ago Nevada atomic explosions. It was on a Saturday morning. I was with my brother, in the California Sierras on a two day weekend fishing expedition above Bishop. It was around 5:30 AM and we were near the top of Piute Pass (14409 ft), above the timber line, sitting on rocks and looking down our trail into the very-dark Southeast direction ... The sky suddenly flashed -— followed minutes later with sounds of the explosion booming around inside that high-mountain area.
Didn't think you would.
Awesome recollection - thanks for posting it!
Yes. They launch a series of smoke rockets right before the blast.
The blast wave moves the air (which can't be seen), the air moves the smoke (which CAN be seen). measuring how fast and how far the smoke moves gives an accurate picture of the blast wave and allows an accurate check of the yield and potential damage (a fast shattering slam does more damage than a slower shove, even at the same net energy).
ping
Israel has somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 to 600 of these puppies and the means to deliver them. Think of the photo at the top of the thread as Tehran’s fate when they decide to pop off a Hiroshima style firecracker.
No, that was the Baker test at Bikini Atoll in 1946.
A Fatman type bomb was exploded underwater. On pictures of the test, on one side of the mushroom cloud there’s a dark smear caused by the Battleship USS Arkansas being lifted about 300’ out of the water.
One more note about the Baker test: the bomb expended used the “Demon Core” plutonium core that was involved in two separate fatal laboratory accidents.
Seems the takeaway is that sometimes we learned things through testing that were completely misunderstood or unknown before the test. Well, isn’t that what the doing of science is for? Would it be better that we still didn’t know these things?
Very impressive blast when you realize that the thing on the side of the mushroom is a battleship pointed straight up.
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