55 years ago, October 30, 1961 Soviet Union tested the most powerful munition in history, the 50-megaton thermonuclear bomb RN-202. The test turned out to be spectacular and gave the opportunity to the then head of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev to declare to US Vice President Richard Nixon: “We have at our disposal means that will have dire consequences for you. We will show you Kuzka’s mother!”
Tsar Rocket and Tsar Torpedo
In 1960, relations between the USSR and the USA sharply deteriorated. An American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Sverdlovsk; its pilot, Francis Powers, admitted that he had made a reconnaissance flight over Baikonur, nuclear plants and military facilities. Khrushchev canceled his meeting with Eisenhower in Paris and the US President's visit to Moscow. America was rapidly increasing its nuclear arsenal, openly threatening the Soviet Union with atomic bombing.
The answer turned out to be asymmetrical. Development concept strategic forces The USSR at that time assumed the qualitative superiority of nuclear weapons, sufficient to inflict unacceptable damage on the enemy. In other words, if the United States planned to drop thousands of atomic bombs on the Soviet Union, then the USSR intended to use dozens of devices as a response, each of them capable of wiping out a large city.
The concept and the delivery person were satisfied, Long-range aviation. The idea is to cause maximum damage to the enemy minimum quantity The pilots liked the carriers. Other methods have also been developed nuclear strike across the USA. In 1960, the USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree on the development of the N-1 orbital combat rocket with a 75-megaton warhead, combat unit The global UR-500 missile was supposed to have a power of 150 megatons. There was a plan to release from a nuclear submarine giant torpedo T-15 with a 100-megaton warhead. The tsunami caused by the explosion was supposed to wash away a significant part of the US coastline. But bombs remained the main weapon.
Kuzka's mother
After the creation of the two-stage thermonuclear ammunition RDS-37, unlimited possibilities opened up for gunsmiths to increase the power of hydrogen weapons. The primary nuclear charge served as a detonator, and the strength of the main explosion was regulated by the amount of plutonium placed in the bomb. Let's say, the calculated power of AN602 was 100 megatons, but scientists warned about the risk of damage to the earth's crust at the test site and the charge was halved.
The Tsar Bomba turned out to be impressive in all respects - the size of a small whale. The eight-meter ammunition did not fit into the weapons compartment of the Tu-95, so the bomb bay flaps of the carrier aircraft were removed and a special holder was attached. The bomb was in a semi-submerged state, protruding from the fuselage. The bomber was painted with reflective paint and all contacts were replaced.
At 9.30 the plane took off from the Olenegorsk airfield and two hours later was over the Sukhoi Nos Peninsula. A 27-ton bomb was dropped by parachute and at 11.33 at an altitude of 4000 meters above the target (site D-II of the Northern test site New Earth) a thermonuclear explosion of unprecedented power occurred. The Tu-95 had by that time moved 45 kilometers away. The electromagnetic pulse stopped all four engines of the bomber, and the crew launched them in a dive. I launched three and sat on them. The fourth engine, as it turned out on the ground, was out of order, and the outer skin of the plane was also burnt. The bomber commander Andrei Durnovtsev flew away as a major and returned as a lieutenant colonel; six months later he became a Hero of the Soviet Union.
Shock wave
At the site of the explosion, a fireball with a diameter of 4.6 kilometers formed, its brilliance was visible a thousand kilometers away. The nuclear mushroom rose into the stratosphere, the shock wave went around three times Earth. At the same time, the Tsar Bomba turned out to be much cleaner than its American counterparts: the testers appeared at the D-II site two hours after the explosion, radioactive contamination did not pose a danger.
The diameter of the complete destruction zone was 70 kilometers - even in the “halved” version, the Tsar Bomb could wipe out any of the world’s capitals along with its suburbs from the face of the Earth. Of course, AN602 was not intended for mass production - it was a technology demonstrator. A serial thermonuclear bomb with a yield of 20 megatons, placed in a bomber, was tested a year later.
The Tsar Bomba test played a key role in achieving nuclear parity from the USA. After the explosion on Novaya Zemlya, the Americans stopped building up reserves atomic weapons, and in 1963, Moscow and Washington entered into an agreement banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in space and under water.
On October 30, 1961, at 11:32 a.m., the most powerful H-bomb throughout history. “Tsar Bomba” became the main argument of the USSR in the confrontation with the USA on the world stage.
So Nikita promised to show Sergeevich “Kuzka’s mother” and knocked on the UN chair with his shoe. Well, he promised - we must do it, and on October 30, 1961, the most powerful hydrogen bomb in the history of mankind was exploded at the Novaya Zemlya test site. Moreover, for the first time the date and expected capacity were announced in advance. The thermonuclear charge was delivered to the target on a Tu-95 carrier aircraft, piloted by a crew consisting of commander Andrei Durnovtsev and navigator Ivan Kleshch. They were warned that their safety was not guaranteed: they could protect themselves from the blinding flash, but the shock wave could bring down the plane.
The head of the test site on Novaya Zemlya during the testing of the superbomb G.G. Kudryavtsev mentioned that in our country “60-megaton and even 100-megaton (fortunately, never tested) superbombs were born,” and explained their “appearance” in a rather unique way: “I think the “secret” here is simple. The fact is that in those years our launch vehicles did not have the necessary accuracy of hitting the target. There was only one way to compensate for these flaws - by increasing the charge power."
The bomb was created to destroy either large area objects or well-protected ones - such as underground bases submarines, cave airfields, underground factory complexes, bunkers. The idea is that, thanks to its high power, the bomb will be able to hit such objects even with a very large miss.
However, the main purpose of detonating the bomb was to demonstrate the USSR’s possession of weapons of unlimited power mass destruction. At that time the most powerful thermo nuclear bomb, tested in the USA, was almost twice as weak.
The original version of the Tsar Bomba had a three-stage design the following type: a first-stage nuclear charge with an estimated contribution to the explosion power of 1.5 megatons launched a thermo nuclear reaction in the second stage (contribution to the explosion power - 50 megatons), and it, in turn, initiated a nuclear reaction in the third stage, adding another 50 megatons of power.
However, this option was rejected due to the extreme high level radioactive contamination and the banal fear of accidentally starting a chain reaction of “deuterium in the world’s oceans.” The tested Tsar Bomba had a modified third stage, where the uranium components were replaced with a lead equivalent. This reduced the estimated total yield of the explosion to 51.5 megatons.
The American B41 had a TNT equivalent of 25 megatons, and had been in production since 1960.
But at the same time, the B41 was a serial bomb, produced in more than 500 copies, and weighed only 4850 kg. It could be hung without fundamental alteration under ANY strategic bomber USA, adapted to carry atomic weapons. Its efficiency was an absolute world record - 5.2 megatons per ton versus 3.7 for the Tsar Bomba.
In fact, the 50-megaton bomb tested on October 30, 1961 was never a weapon. This was a single product, the design of which, when fully “loaded” with nuclear fuel (and while maintaining the same dimensions!), made it possible to achieve a power of even 100 megatons. Therefore, the test of the 50-megaton bomb was a simultaneous test of the performance of the 100-megaton product design. An explosion of such terrifying power, if carried out, would instantly give rise to a gigantic fire tornado, which would cover an area similar in area to, for example, the entire Vladimir region.
The Tu-95 strategic bomber, which was supposed to deliver the bomb to the target, underwent an unusual modification at the manufacturing plant. A completely non-standard bomb, about 8 m long and about 2 m in diameter, did not fit into the bomb bay of the aircraft. Therefore, part of the fuselage (non-power) was cut out and a special lifting mechanism and device for attaching the bomb were installed. And yet it was so large that during the flight more than half of it stuck out. The entire body of the aircraft, even the blades of its propellers, were covered with a special white paint that protected against the flash of light during an explosion. The body of the accompanying laboratory aircraft was covered with the same paint.
The record explosion became one of the culminations of the era cold war and one of its symbols. He took a place in the Guinness Book of Records. It is unlikely that humanity will need to block it sometime in the future with an even more powerful explosion. Unlike the world-famous, but never fired Russian Tsar Cannon, cast in 1586 by Andrei Chokhov and installed in the Moscow Kremlin, an unprecedented thermonuclear bomb shocked the world. It can rightfully be called the Tsar Bomba. Its explosion reflected Khrushchev's political temperament and was a bold response to the United Nations' call for the Soviet Union to refrain from conducting such an experiment. The Moscow Treaty banning nuclear tests in three environments, which soon followed, made super-explosions impossible. Interest in them has also fallen due to the increasing accuracy of the means of delivering charges to the target.
On October 30, 1961, the most powerful bomb in the world was tested - the thermonuclear “Tsar Bomba”, later called “Kuzka’s Mother,” was dropped at the “Dry Nose” test site. Today we remember this and other explosions of enormous destructive power.
Humanity spends enormous amounts of money and enormous efforts to create weapons that are as effective as possible in destroying their own kind. And, as science and history show, it succeeds in this. About what will happen to our planet if suddenly a fire erupts on Earth nuclear war, many films have been made and dozens of books have been written. But the most terrible thing is still the dry description of the tests of weapons of mass destruction, reports formulated in terse clerical military language.
The incredibly powerful projectile was developed under the leadership of Kurchatov himself. As a result of seven years of work, the most powerful explosive device in the history of mankind was created. According to various sources, the bomb had from 57 to 58.6 megatons of TNT equivalent. For comparison, the explosion of the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki was equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT. Many people know how much trouble she has caused.
"Tsar Bomba" served as a demonstration of the strength of the USSR to the Western community
The explosion resulted in a fireball with a radius of about 4.6 kilometers. The light radiation was so powerful that it could cause third-degree burns at a distance of about 100 kilometers from the explosion site. The seismic wave resulting from the tests circled the globe three times. The nuclear mushroom rose to a height of 67 kilometers, and the diameter of its “cap” was 95 kilometers.
This is not the sun. This is a flash from the explosion of the Tsar Bomba
Tests of the "Mother of All Bombs"
Until 2007, American high-explosive aerial bomb, affectionately known as the Mother Of All Bombs by the US military, was considered the largest non-nuclear bomb in the world. The length of the projectile is more than 9 meters, its weight is 9.5 tons. Moreover most of This weight falls precisely on the explosive. The force of the explosion was 11 tons of TNT. That is, two “Moms” are enough to smash an average metropolis into dust. However, it is encouraging that bombs of this type have not yet been used in military operations. But one of the “Moms” was sent to Iraq just in case. Apparently, in the belief that the peacekeepers cannot do without weighty arguments.
The "Mother of All Bombs" was the most powerful non-nuclear weapon until the "Daddy of All Bombs" appeared.
According to the official description of the munition, “the force of the MOAB explosion is sufficient to destroy tanks and people on the surface within a few hundred meters and demoralize troops in the surrounding area who survived the explosion.”
Explosion during testing of the “Daddy of All Bombs”
This is our answer to the Americans - the development of an aviation vacuum bomb increased power, unofficially dubbed “The Daddy of All Bombs.” The ammunition was created in 2007 and now this particular bomb is considered the most powerful non-nuclear projectile in the world.
Bomb test reports say that the Papa's kill area is so large that it can reduce the cost of producing the munition by reducing precision requirements. Indeed, what's the point of a targeted hit if it blows everything around within a radius of 200 meters? And even at a distance of more than two kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion, a person will be knocked off his feet shock wave. After all, the power of “Dad” is four times greater than that of “Mom” - the force of the explosion vacuum bomb is 44 tons of TNT equivalent. As a separate achievement, the testers argue that the projectile is environmentally friendly. “Test results of the created aviation ammunition have shown that its effectiveness and capabilities are comparable to nuclear weapons, at the same time, I want to especially emphasize this, the effect of this ammunition does not pollute at all environment compared to nuclear weapons,” the acting report said. Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Alexander Rukshin.
"Daddy of all bombs" is about four times more powerful than "Mom"
"Baby" and "Fat Man": Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The names of these two Japanese cities have long become synonymous with a large-scale disaster. The US military actually tested atomic bombs on humans, dropping shells on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Most of the victims of the explosions were not military personnel at all, but civilians. Children, women, old people - their bodies instantly turned into coal. Only silhouettes remained on the walls - this is how light radiation acted. Birds flying nearby burned in the air.
“Mushrooms” of nuclear explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The number of victims has not yet been accurately determined: many did not die immediately, but later, as a result of developing radiation sickness. "Little" with an estimated yield of 13 to 18 kilotons of TNT, dropped on Hiroshima, killed between 90 and 166 thousand people. In Nagasaki, “Fat Man” with a capacity of 21 kilotons of TNT ended the lives of 60 to 90 thousand people.
“Fat Man” and “Little Boy” are exhibited in the museum - as a reminder of destructive power nuclear weapons
This was the first and so far only time that nuclear weapons were used in military action.
The fall of the Tunguska meteorite: the most powerful miraculous explosion
The Podkamennaya Tunguska River was of no interest to anyone until June 17, 1908. On this day, at about seven o'clock in the morning, a huge fireball flashed over the territory of the Yenisei basin and exploded over the taiga near Tunguska. Now everyone knows about this river, and versions of what exploded over the taiga have since been published to suit every taste: from an alien invasion to a manifestation of the power of angry gods. However, the main and generally accepted cause of the explosion is still the fall of a meteorite.
The explosion was so strong that trees were knocked down over an area of more than two thousand square kilometers. Windows were broken in houses located hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. A few more days after the explosion in the area from the Atlantic to central Siberia people saw the sky and clouds glow.
Scientists have calculated the approximate power of the explosion - from 40 to 50 megatons of TNT. That is, comparable to the power of the Tsar Bomba, the most destructive man-made bomb. All that remains is to be glad that Tunguska meteorite fell in the remote taiga, far from villages and villages.
At first it was planned to create a bomb weighing 40 tons. But the designers of the Tu-95 (which was supposed to deliver the bomb to the crash site) rejected this idea immediately. An airplane with such a load simply would not be able to fly to the test site. The target mass of the "superbomb" was reduced.
Nevertheless, large dimensions and the enormous power of the bomb (originally planned to be eight meters long, two meters in diameter and weighing 26 tons) required significant modifications to the Tu-95. The result was, in fact, a new, and not just a modified version of the old aircraft, designated Tu-95-202 (Tu-95V). The Tu-95-202 aircraft was equipped with two additional control panels: one to control the automation of the “product”, the other to control its heating system. The problem of suspending the aerial bomb turned out to be very difficult, since due to its dimensions it did not fit into the bomb bay of the aircraft. For its suspension, a special device was designed that ensured the lifting of the “product” to the fuselage and securing it to three synchronously controlled locks.
All electrical connectors on the plane were replaced, and the wings and fuselage were covered with reflective paint.
To ensure the safety of the carrier aircraft, Moscow parachute equipment designers developed a special system of six parachutes (the area of the largest was 1.6 thousand square meters). They were thrown out of the rear part of the bomb body one after another and slowed down the descent of the bomb, so that the plane had time to move to a safe distance by the time of the explosion.
By 1959, the carrier of the superbomb was created, but due to some warming of relations between the USSR and the USA, it did not come to practical tests. The Tu-95-202 was first used as a training aircraft at an airfield in the city of Engels, and then was written off as unnecessary.
However, in 1961, with the beginning of a new round of the Cold War, testing of the “superbomb” again became relevant. After the adoption of the resolution of the USSR Government on the resumption of testing nuclear charge in July 1961, emergency work began at KB-11 (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, RFNC-VNIIEF), which in 1960 was entrusted with the further development of the superbomb, where it was given the designation “product 602” . In the design of the superbomb itself and its charge, big number serious innovations. Initially, the charge power was 100 megatons of TNT equivalent. On the initiative of Andrei Sakharov, the charge power was halved.
The carrier aircraft was returned to service after being written off. All connectors in the automatic reset system were urgently replaced, and the cargo compartment doors were removed because real bomb in size and weight it turned out to be slightly larger than the mock-up (the length of the bomb was 8.5 meters, its weight was 24 tons, parachute system- 800 kilograms).
Particular attention was paid to the special training of the carrier aircraft crew. No one could give the pilots a guarantee of a safe return after dropping the bomb. Experts feared that after the explosion an uncontrolled thermonuclear reaction in the atmosphere.
Nikita Khrushchev announced the upcoming bomb tests in his report on October 17, 1961 at the XXII Congress of the CPSU. The tests were supervised by the State Commission.
On October 30, 1961, a Tu-95B with a bomb on board took off from the Olenya airfield in Murmansk region, headed for the training ground located on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in Severny Arctic Ocean. Next, a Tu-16 laboratory aircraft took off to record the explosion phenomena and flew as a wingman behind the carrier aircraft. The entire course of the flight and the explosion itself were filmed from the Tu-95V, from the accompanying Tu-16 and from various points on the ground.
At 11:33 a.m., at the command of the barometric sensor, a bomb dropped from 10,500 meters exploded at an altitude of 4,000 meters. The fireball during the explosion exceeded a radius of four kilometers; it was prevented from reaching the surface of the earth by a powerful reflected shock wave, which threw the fireball off the ground.
The huge cloud formed as a result of the explosion reached a height of 67 kilometers, and the diameter of the dome of hot products was 20 kilometers.
The explosion was so strong that the seismic wave in earth's crust, generated by the shock wave, circled the Earth three times. The flash was visible at a distance of more than 1000 kilometers. In an abandoned village located 400 kilometers from the epicenter, trees were torn out, windows were broken and roofs of houses were demolished.
The shock wave threw the carrier aircraft, which by that time was 45 kilometers from the release point, to an altitude of 8000 meters, and for some time after the explosion the Tu-95B was uncontrollable. The crew received some dose of radiation. Due to ionization, communication with the Tu-95V and Tu-16 was lost for 40 minutes. All this time no one knew what happened to the planes and crews. After some time, both planes returned to base; marks were visible on the fuselage of the Tu-95V.
Unlike the American test of the Castro Bravo hydrogen bomb, the explosion of the Tsar Bomba on Novaya Zemlya turned out to be relatively “clean”. The test participants arrived at the point where the thermonuclear explosion occurred within two hours; radiation level in this place great danger I had no idea. This affected design features Soviet bomb, and also that the explosion occurred at a fairly large distance from the surface.
Based on the results of aircraft and ground measurements, the energy release of the explosion was estimated at 50 megatons of TNT equivalent, which coincided with the calculated value.
The test on October 30, 1961 showed that developments in nuclear weapons could quickly cross a critical limit. The main goal that was set and achieved by this test was to demonstrate the possibility of the USSR creating unlimited thermonuclear charges. This event played a key role in establishing nuclear parity in the world and preventing the use of atomic weapons.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
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