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ivy King vs. W-59 Minuteman I - Comparison of sizes
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ivy King
W-59 Minuteman I

Drop a bomb over your town - Bomb simulator

ivy King
W-59 Minuteman I
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ivy King

ivy King
ivy King
Blast Radius Blast Radius1.730km
Fireball Radius Fireball Radius 0.950km
Kilotons Kilotons0.500kt
Radiation Radius Radiation Radius2.290km

Ivy King was the largest pure-fission nuclear bomb ever tested by the United States. The bomb was tested during the Truman administration as part of Operation Ivy. This series of tests involved the development of very powerful nuclear weapons in response to the nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union. The production of Ivy King was hurried to be ready in case its sister project, Ivy Mike, failed in its attempt to achieve a thermonuclear reaction. The Ivy King test actually took place two weeks after the Mike test. Unlike the Mike bomb, the Ivy King device could theoretically have been added to United States' nuclear arsenal, because it was designed to be air-deliverable. On November 16, 1952 at 11:30 local time (23:30 GMT) a B-36H bomber dropped the bomb over a point 2,000 feet (610 m) north of Runit Island in the Enewetak atoll, resulting in a 540 kiloton explosion at 1,480 feet (450 m). The tropopause height at the time of the detonation was about 58,000 feet (18 km). The top of the King cloud reached about 74,000 feet (23 km) with the mushroom base at about 40,000 feet (12 km).The Ivy King bomb, designated as a Mk-18 bomb and named the "Super Oralloy Bomb", was a modified version of the Mk-6D bomb.



Instead of using an implosion system similar to the Mk-6D, it used a 92-point implosion system initially developed for the Mk-13. Its uranium-plutonium core was replaced by 60 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fashioned into a thin-walled sphere equivalent to approximately four critical masses. The thin-walled sphere was a commonly used design, which ensured that the fissile material remained sub-critical until imploded. The HEU sphere was then enclosed in a natural-uranium neutron reflector. To physically prevent the HEU sphere collapsing into a critical condition if the surrounding explosives were detonated accidentally, or if the sphere was crushed following an aircraft accident, the hollow center was filled with a chain made from aluminum and boron, which was pulled out to arm the bomb. The boron-coated chain also absorbed the neutrons needed to drive the nuclear reaction.The primary designer of the Super Oralloy Bomb, physicist Ted Taylor, later became a vocal proponent of nuclear disarmament.

Source: Wikipedia
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W-59 Minuteman I

W-59 Minuteman I
W-59 Minuteman I
Blast Radius Blast Radius7.03km
Fireball Radius Fireball Radius 0.970km
Height Height16.3m
Kilotons Kilotons1000kt
Radiation Radius Radiation Radiuskm
Weight Weight250kg

The W59 was an American thermonuclear warhead used on some Minuteman I ICBM missiles from 1962 to 1969, and planned to be used on the cancelled GAM-87 Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile. Modified to use a less-sensitive high explosive in the primary, the design formed the basis for the British WE.177, used by both the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. The W59 was 16.3 inches in diameter and 47.8 inches long, and it weighed 550 pounds (250 kg). It had a design yield of 1 megaton, with a yield-to-weight ratio of 4 kiloton per kilogram. A total of 150 W59 warheads were produced during its lifetime. The W59 was one of five nuclear weapon designs identified by researcher Chuck Hansen as using the common design Tsetse primary or first fission bomb stage.



Hansen's research indicates that the Tsetse primary was used in the US B43 nuclear bomb, W44 nuclear warhead, W50 nuclear warhead, B57 nuclear bomb, and W59. Historical evidence indicates that these weapons shared a reliability problem, which Hansen attributes to miscalculation of the reaction cross section of tritium in fusion reactions. The weapons were not tested as extensively as some prior models due to a mid-1960s nuclear test moratorium, and the reliability problem was discovered and fixed after the moratorium ended. This problem was apparently shared by the Python primary designs.

Source: Wikipedia

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