Nuclear test operations "The beginning"

[Abolith]

Well I figured it was about time to post another round of nuclear testing and the operations that they were attached to. I belive I will start at the beginning this time and work my way through to the 90's. If anyone has questions please post them or PM me. Enjoy




Operation Crossroads
946 - Bikini Atoll lagoon, Marshall Islands, Pacific

The Crossroads Series tests were the first nuclear explosions since World War II, and the first nuclear weapon tests since Trinity. These were the first "weapons effects" tests ever conducted - tests designed specifically to study how nuclear explosions affect other things - rather than tests of the behavior of a weapon design (as was Trinity). The purpose of the tests was to examine the effects of nuclear explosions on naval vessels, planes, and animals.

A fleet of 71 surplus and captured ships anchored in the Bikini Atoll lagoon in the Marshall Islands were used as targets. This fleet included a number of famous Allied and Axis vessels such as the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, the battleships USS Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and New York; the German cruiser Prince Eugen and Japanese battleship Nagato.




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Baker Shot, 23 kilotons, Bikini Atoll, 24 July 1946 (aerial Camera)

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Baker Shot, 23 kilotons, Bikini Atoll, 24 July 1946

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Baker Shot, 23 kilotons, Bikini Atoll, 24 July 1946
(3rd Camera)

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Baker Shot, 23 kilotons, Bikini Atoll, 24 July 1946
(2nd Camera)

http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090538200_baker.jpg

Baker Shot, 23 kilotons, Bikini Atoll, 24 July 1946



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Able shot, 23 kilotons, Bikini Atoll, 30 June 1946 (Aerial Cam)

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Able shot, 23 kilotons, Bikini Atoll, 30 June 1946
(second camera)


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Able shot, 23 kilotons, Bikini Atoll, 30 June 1946
(third camera)


http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090538121_ableshot2.jpg

Able shot, 23 kilotons, Bikini Atoll, 30 June 1946 (Aerial Cam 2)


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Able shot, 23 kilotons, Bikini Atoll, 30 June 1946 (Aerial Cam 3)




Operation Ranger
1951 - Nevada Test Site

Operation Ranger carried out the first tests in the United States proper since the Trinity test in 1945. It was proposed during technical discussions at Los Alamos on 6 and 11 December 1950. Approval was requested by LASL Director Norris Bradbury on 22 December, Preidential approval was received on 11 January 1951. The first Ranger test shot was 16 days later. All five were fired in just eight days.

They were done in the following order:


Able, January 27, 1 kiloton
Baker, January 28, 8 kilotons
Easy, February 1, 1 kiloton
Baker-2, February 2, 8 kilotons
Fox, February 6, 22 kilotons


Sadly I have but one pic from operation Ranger.
Additional contributions are welcome for this operation.

http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090539823_bakershot-ranger.jpg

Able shot, 1 kiloton, Nevada Test Site, 27.Jan.1951



Operation Greenhouse
1951 - Enewetok Atoll

The Greenhouse Test Series was conducted at Enewetok Atoll in April and May of 1951. It consisted of four relatively high yield tests (by the standards of the time) - Dog, Easy , George, and Item. Dog and Easy were proof tests of two new strategic bombs the Mk 6 and Mk 5. George and Item were the first true tests of thermonuclear fusion - the release of fusion energy from thermally excited nuclei. George was a research experiment that studied deuterium-fusion burning when heated by thermal radiation. Item was the first test of the principle of fusion boosting of fission devices.



http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090540294_dog.jpg

Dog was a proof test of Mk 6 strategic bomb.
This was the highest yield test up to that time and evaluated the Double Prime composite uranium-plutonium core. April 1951, 81 kt.


http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090540385_george.jpg

George shot, 225 kilotons, Enewetok Atoll, 8.May 1951

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George shot, 225 kilotons, Enewetok Atoll, 8.May 1951 (camera 2)

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Item Shot, 45.5 kt, May 24, 1951



Operation Buster-Jangle
1951 - Nevada Test Site


Buster-Jangle was held at the Nevada Proving Ground (later NTS) and had a number of objectives. The Buster series was primarily a weapon development effort. A number of pit configurations were fired in a Mk-4 high explosive assembly to collect data for weapons design. The DOD also particpated in one of the Buster tests conducting the Desert Rock I exercise during the Dog shot. The Jangle series evaluated the usefulness of atomic weapons in cratering using ground-level and sub-surface bursts. The Desert Rock II and III troop exercises were held in conjunction with these tests. The purpose of the Desert Rock exercises was to gain experience in operations conducted in a nuclear combat environment.




I would like to note that the Desert rock tests had troops running through the radioactive dust clouds to determine the effects of radioactive fallout on combat effectiveness and to learn how to manuver in the event of a nuclear strike on the battlefield. They were all give “Rad badges” and told that 2 rem would be the point they should fallback, knowing that the danger level was lower than that. Dispite DOD claims, some later developed Cancer, and some formed action/support groups to help others who went through similar tests in the late 50’s and 60’s.


http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090541552_dsrock1.jpg

Dog shot With Desert Rock I troops, 21 kilotons, Nevada Test Site, 1.Nov.1951

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Dog shot With Desert Rock I troops, 21 kilotons, Nevada Test Site, 1.Nov.1951 (Camera 2)






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Charlie shot, 14 kilotons, Nevada test Site (NTS), 30.Oct.1951 (Camera 1)

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Charlie shot, 14 kilotons, Nevada test Site (NTS), 30.Oct.1951 (Camera 2)

http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090541320_charlie3.jpg

Charlie shot, 14 kilotons, Nevada test Site (NTS), 30.Oct.1951 (Camera 3)

http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090541675_dog3.jpg

Dog Shot, 21 kilotons, Nevada Test Site, 1.Nov.1951

http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090541665_dog2.jpg

Dog Shot, 21 kilotons, Nevada Test Site, 1.Nov.1951




Operation Tumbler-Snapper
1952 - Nevada Test Site

Operation Tumbler consisted of three air bursts conducted to gather detailed information about blast effects, the fourth test was also an airburst and technically part of both Tumbler and Snapper. The remaining four shots during Operation Snapper were tower shots and were weapons development tests of various kinds.

The Desert Rock IV field exercise was conducted during Tumbler-Snapper, with 7350 out of 8700 DOD participants conducting maneuvers in conjunction with test shots Charlie, Dog, and George, and observing during Fox. Although the radiation exposure dose limit was set at 3.0 rem a number of exposures in excess of that occurred - 48 with 3-5 rem, 9 with 5-10 rem, and 1 in excess of 10 rem.


(Sorry no troop pics, any would be welcome though)



http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090542692_able1.jpg

Able Shot, 1 kt, April 1 1952

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Charlie Shot, 31 kilotons, Nevada Test Site, 22.Apr.1952

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Foz Shot, 11 kilotons, Nevada Test Site, 25.May.1952

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How Shot, 14 kilotons, Nevada Test Site, 5.Jun.1952

[Deuterium]

The first Super was the Mike test.



"Mike" Test


On November 1, 1952 the United States detonated a hydrogen device in the Pacific that vaporized an entire island, leaving behind a crater more than a mile wide. The test, code-named "Mike" was the first successful implementation of the concept for a superbomb that physicist Edward Teller and mathematician Stanislaw Ulam had outlined in a report a year and a half earlier. A team of scientists assigned the task of turning the Ulam-Teller concept into an experimental device, met for the first time in October 1951. They achieved the designated goal, one that required a tremendous engineering effort, in little more than a year.

The design process was complicated by the sort of hydrogen fuel the team decided to use. One option would have been lithium deuteride, which has the advantage of being a solid at room temperature. But the scientists had limited information on how well it would work. They chose instead to use liquid deuterium, which needed to be kept below it's boiling point of -417.37 fahrenheit. That meant the device would require a very complex insulation and cooling system.

"Mike" was also incredibly large. In 1952, the smallest atomic bomb with enough explosive force to set off a fusion reaction, was almost four feet in diameter. The actual casing for the "Mike" gadget would end up being 20 feet long. According to one of the scientists who worked on the project, a full-scale drawing of the device became essential for everyone on the team to communicate effectively with each other. The drawing was so big, that a balcony had to be built from which to view it.

As the date for the test approached, a number of prominent scientists not involved with the project pushed to have it postponed. The reasons they gave were political. "Mike" was scheduled to be detonated just three days before a general election. Many scientists felt that it was wrong to burden a new president with the responsibility for a nuclear test that he had not authorized. They also argued that by testing "Mike" the U.S. would effectively eliminate any opportunity it had for reaching an agreement with the Soviet Union for a moratorium on thermonuclear weapons. But after listening to the arguments, President Truman decided to proceed as planned.

The test was to take place on Eniwetok Atoll, which is in the Marshall Islands about 3,000 miles west of Hawaii. It was an enormous operation. Staging began in March and by October more than 11,000 civilians and military personnel were in the vicinity of Eniwetok working on the project. A six-story cab was built on the island of Elugelab to house "Mike." And a two-mile long tunnel that extended from the device to another island was filled with helium balloons that would provide data on the progress of the fusion reaction.

"Mike" was detonated remotely from the control ship Estes, which was stationed 30 miles away from ground zero. Even those who had witnessed atomic tests were stunned by the blast. Within 90 seconds the fire ball had reached 57,000 feet. The cloud, when it had reached its furthest extent, was about 100 miles wide. The explosion wiped Elugelab off the face of the planet, and destroyed life on the surrounding islands. In their report, the survey team that went to Engebi three miles from ground zero wrote, "The body of a bird was seen, but no living animals and only the stumps of vegetation. Among the specimens collected were fish which seemed to have been burned. On each of these fish, the skin was missing from one side, as if, the field notes said at the time, the animal 'had been dropped in[to] a hot pan.' "

Physicist Herbert York summed up the implications of the first test of a thermonuclear device: "the world suddenly shifted from the path it had been on to a more dangerous one. Fission bombs, destructive as they might have been, were thought of [as] being limited in power. Now, it seemed we had learned how to brush even these limits aside and to build bombs whose power was boundless."


I believe the yield was wildly miscalculated for this as well.

[Keyboard]

Able Shot, 1 kt, April 1 1952

What are those lines coming down from the sides of the mushroom cloud?

Also, the troops in some of the pics, they look pretty close to the explosion, wouldn't they all have suffered radiation poisoning?

[Abolith]

Able Shot, 1 kt, April 1 1952

What are those lines coming down from the sides of the mushroom cloud?


A quote from a guy who was there in the first days of nuclear testing.


In the first milliseconds after a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, the rapidly growing fireball and shock wave of the explosion are one and the same. The surface of the expanding fireball is in fact the front of the shock wave.

Once the fireball cools to 300,000 degrees C (which is 15 milliseconds after detonation for a 20 kt explosion), the shock front and the fireball separate - a phenomenon called "breakaway". After that moment the shock front quickly becomes invisible as it loses strength and can no longer make air incandescent through compression heating.

This makes it difficult to record the progress of the shock front. Shock pressure gauges can be used, but they are difficult to deploy anywhere but near the ground where interactions between the shock wave and the surface complicate their interpretation.

A solution to this problem was suggested by a serendipitous observation in the very first nuclear test, the Trinity shot on 16 July 1945. Berlyn Brixner photographed the cable of barrage balloon behind the fireball which was visible due to the smoke from the vaporizing cable.

As the shock front passed in front of the cable, which was in the background, an apparent break appeared in the cable - an optical illusion caused by refraction of light by the compressed air behind the shock front. The arrow in the second and third pictures shows the movement of this break, which coincides with the location of the shock front.

Several years later this phenomenon was put to use with the aid of smoke rockets launched from the ground seconds before the detonation. This created an vertical array of reference lines against which the progress of the shock front could be photographed.

Not that it is not the actual direct interaction of the blast wave colliding with the smoke that is involved here.

The earliest picture I have in which the smoke rocket trails are visible is Tumbler-Snapper Able on 1 April 1952. hopw that answers your question :)



Able Shot, 1 kt, April 1 1952
Also, the troops in some of the pics, they look pretty close to the explosion, wouldn't they all have suffered radiation poisoning?

Yes some did. but the yield was small (under 10 kt non-enriched and non-enhanced) so radition wasn't as bad as later nukes.

[2Sheds_Jackson]

Great pics. Let's face it - they just really dug blowing sh*t up. Are there any sources for "after" pictures of the ships used for the crossroads tests?

[Abolith]

have yet to find any. though I would like to see some.

[Pandy]

Yea, I've heard those guys had problems later their lives. They did those test without knowing the dangers of radiation poisoning.

[Fee Fi Fo Fum]

wow great pics man, thanks for posting

[Abolith]

http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1089842668_nukes.jpg
:D

[Abolith]

. Rapatronic camera
this is what they used to take highspeed pics of nuclear tests :)
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090623707_rapcam2.jpg
http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090623697_rapcam1.jpg
Rapatronic shutter mechanism. The 'business end' of a Rapatronic camera. Early bomb light passed through this cell, which precisely gated the inbound light stream for exposure on photographic film. Photos courtesy of Mr. Calvin Smith.

[futurepilot2004]

[quote]Able Shot, 1 kt, April 1 1952
What are those lines coming down from the sides of the mushroom cloud?
quote]
Smoke flares used as makers to judge speed of shock wave from the explosion.
Great Photos

[Sora]

What happend on those ships i wonder ...

[BusterHyman]

Well, I am sure quite a few sunk. And some didn't. woot

[Tranceaddict]

Atomic Cafe is a great documentary. It has a lot of these but in video and has footage of soldiers running towards nuclear explosions, crazy 50s

[Raistlin]

The first Super was the Mike test.
Coolest thing ever. Are there any photos of it?

[Abolith]

The first Super was the Mike test.
Coolest thing ever. Are there any photos of it?

ask and you shall recieve.

http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090866395_xx11.jpg hi-res



also of note was the larest nuke ever teated Called the Tsar Bomba (Russian for "King of the Bombs"; during its development the bomb was actually nicknamed Ivan) was the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. It was a fusion bomb with a yield of ~50 megatons, though the design was capable of approximately 100 megatons. It was not intended for actual use in warfare, however; it was developed and tested as part of the sabre-rattling between the Soviet Union and United States in the course of the Cold War. The 50-Mt test was hot enough to have induced third degree burns at 100 km, and atmospheric irregularities caused blast damage up to 1000 km away; the "dirty" 100-Mt version would have laid lethal radioactivity over an enormous area.

Bombs of this magnitude have tremendous "blow back" potential to its user, while at the same time being inefficient in radiating much of its energy out into space. Modern nuclear-weapon tactics call for multiple relatively smaller bombs to produce more damage on the ground (for example, MIRVs). It was not practical for use as a weapon in wartime, requiring a specially modified bomber for the test that could not be used to deliver the massive weapon bomb to a distant target.

Tsar Bomba was designed and constructed in only 14 weeks after Soviet premier Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev initiated the project on July 10, 1961. The bomb itself weighed 27 metric tons and was 8 metres long by 2 metres wide; a special parachute had to be designed to allow it to be dropped from an airplane. The fabrication of this parachute required so much material that the Soviet hosiery industry was noticeably disrupted. Tsar Bomba was detonated on October 30, 1961, at a height of 4000 metres over Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Sea; it was dropped from a Tu-95 bomber at 10,500 metres altitude by pilot A. E. Durnovtsev. The fireball touched the ground and reached nearly as high as the release plane and light from the detonation was visible 1000 km away; the mushroom cloud rose as high as 64 km.

The Tsar Bomba had its yield scaled down by replacing the uranium fusion tamper (which amplifies the reaction greatly) with one made of lead to eliminate fast fission by the fusion neutrons. If detonated at full yield (~100 Mt), the force of this bomb would have been approximately 6,500 times the 15-16 kiloton bomb detonated at Hiroshima and would have increased the world's total fission fallout since the invention of the atomic bomb by 25%.

http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/477_1090866948_350px-tsarbomb.jpg

[AFACadet]

The VCE movies are the best series for nuclear weapons, I would recommend them to anyone interested.

I've heard a lot about the Tsar Bomba, have seen some of the footage availabe in the VCE movies, and have seen a couple of pictures, but I have NEVER seen a single picture or clip of the full detonation, mushroom cloud, or the damage it created. Does that seem odd to anyone?

You can't tell me the soviets didn't take any pictures after the bomb dropped...

[Abolith]

If i remeber right they have never released any movies or photos of the tsar bomba. still a state secret (course I could be wrong) but I have also never seen any movie or pictures of it going off, and I have looked all over.