Panic covered not only the “decaying West”, but also Soviet scientists, who were horrified at what they had done. "Tsar Bomba", she is also "Kuzkin's mother", she is also "Ivan", she is also "Product 602", is still the most powerful explosive device of all that mankind has ever experienced.
It took a long seven years of research, design and development to wipe the nose of the capitalists terrible weapon. The creation of a hitherto unprecedented 100-megaton superbomb (for comparison: the power of the largest American bomb at that time hydrogen bomb reached “only” 15 megatons, which was already thousands of times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) was carried out by a group of scientists led by Igor Kurchatov.
In fact, they could test a superbomb already in the late 1950s, but they were in no hurry to intimidate obvious and imaginary opponents due to a short-term thaw that gripped the cold hearts of the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev and american president Dwight Eisenhower. In the early 1960s, a snowstorm cold war spun with new force: a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down near Sverdlovsk, it was restless in divided Berlin, the revolution in Cuba led to a sharp confrontation with the United States.
The last, active phase of work on the superweapon was entered in the summer of 1961, after the Soviet leader learned about the possibility of creating a 100-megaton thermal nuclear bomb. The leader could not pass by the unprecedented prospects and gave the go-ahead - give, they say, a bomb by the XXII Congress of the CPSU, that is, by October.
Today, physicists, participants in those events, claim that they wanted to stop nuclear war. It is not known what motives they were really guided by then, but Sakharov wrote a note to Khrushchev in which he spoke out against testing a super-powerful bomb during the current moratorium on testing nuclear weapons. The first secretary called all the fears and doubts “slobbering”, and at the end of the summer he could not stand it and threatened the capitalist enemies with a 100-megaton bomb. They didn't make a secret out of it.
The Western world shuddered at the mere statement of Nikita Khrushchev. A wave of anti-Soviet movements swept through, in the United States a series of commercials were launched on television about protective measures during a nuclear attack, newspapers were full of headlines with accusations of World War III rehearsals.
Meanwhile, the creation of "Kuzkin's mother" went on as usual. Developed weapons in a closed city, in different times known as the Kremlin, Arzamas-16 and Sarov. The secret settlement, in which nuclear physicists lived entirely, was closed from outside world and reminded of the very communism that was so threatened to be built all over the planet. Here, even in the summer, hot water was not turned off, shops were bursting with raw smoked sausages, and each family was supposed to have spacious free housing almost in paradise. True, the Soviet paradise was strictly guarded by soldiers and barbed wire - it was impossible to come here or leave without permission.
While practical physicists puzzled over how to make the most destructive weapon in the history of mankind, theorists came up with scenarios for its use. And "Ivan" was intended, of course, primarily to destroy the "evil empire" represented by the United States.
The question was how to deliver the “Tsar Bomb” to the territory of the hated enemy. Considered as an option Submarine. The bomb was supposed to explode off the coast of the United States at a depth of 1 km. The explosion power of 100 million tons of TNT was supposed to give rise to a tsunami half a kilometer high and 10 kilometers wide. After calculations, however, it turned out that America would be saved by a continental shelf - the danger would only threaten structures at a distance of no more than 5 km from the coast.
Even today it sounds fantastic, but physicists seriously calculated the possibility of launching a bomb into Earth's orbit. It would be possible to send it to the USA directly from space. They say that theoretically the project was quite feasible, although it would have been incredibly expensive.
However, all these were questions of the distant and gloomy future. In the meantime, it was necessary to collect the bomb itself. "Product 602" had a three-stage design. The nuclear charge of the first stage had a capacity of one and a half megatons and was designed to start a thermal nuclear reaction in the second, the capacity of which reached 50 megatons. The same amount was provided by the third stage in the fission of uranium-238 nuclei.
Having calculated the consequences of the explosion of such a charge and the area of subsequent radioactive contamination, it was decided to replace the uranium elements in the third stage with lead. Thus, the estimated yield of the bomb was reduced to 51.5 megatons.
Khrushchev explained this with his characteristic humor: "If we detonate a 100 million-ton bomb where it is needed, it can break our windows too."
The results of the work of scientists are impressive! The length of the weapon exceeded 8 meters, the diameter was 2, and the weight was 26 tons. There was no suitable crane to transport Ivan, so a separate railway line had to be built directly to the workshop where the bomb was assembled. From there, the product went on its penultimate journey - to the harsh polar Olenegorsk.
Not far from the city, at the Olenya air base, the Tu-95, specially modified for it, was waiting for the "tsar-bomb". The weapon did not fit on the plane, so part of the fuselage had to be cut out. To bring the "Kuzkina-mother" under the bomb bay, they dug a foundation pit under it. The bomb still could not completely hide in the bowels of the ship and looked out for two-thirds.
The crew was in great danger. The probability that, as a result of the tests, he would remain completely unharmed was only 1%. To increase the chances of the pilots to survive, the aircraft was painted with white reflective paint, which was supposed to prevent the Tu-95B from igniting (this is the name, the first and only one, that was given to the aircraft adapted to transport Ivan). A parachute the size of half a football field was placed in the tail section of the bomb. His mission was to slow down the fall of the projectile in order to give the crew as much time as possible to get out of the affected area.
On the morning of October 30, 1961, on the penultimate day of the XXII Congress of the CPSU, a plane with a terrible load took off from the Olenya airfield in the direction test site"Dry Nose" on Novaya Zemlya. At 11:32 a bomb was dropped from a height of 10.5 km. The explosion occurred at an altitude of 4 km. In a matter of minutes that the crew had, the plane managed to fly a distance of 45 km.
This, of course, was not enough to not feel the wrath of the "Tsar Bomba" at all. A second after the explosion, a man-made sun bloomed above the earth - a flash could be seen with simple binoculars even from Mars, and on Earth it was observed at a distance of 1000 km. A few seconds later, the diameter of the dust column of the nuclear fungus grew to 10 km, and its tip entered the mesosphere, rushing up to 67 km.
explosion flash
According to the pilots, at first it became unbearably hot in the cockpit. Then the plane was overtaken by the first shock wave, which propagated at a speed of more than 1000 km / h. The ship, as if hit by a huge club, threw up half a kilometer. Radio communication was lost in the entire Arctic for almost an hour. Fortunately, no one was injured from the explosion - the pilots survived.
Observing the first consequences of the explosion, some Soviet physicists were afraid that an irreversible nuclear reaction had begun in the atmosphere - a fiery glow had been blazing for a very long time. The exact results of the tests, perhaps, could not be predicted by anyone. Serious scientists have expressed the most ridiculous fears, even to the point that the "Product 602" will split the planet or melt the ice in the Arctic Ocean.
None of this happened. But the power of the explosion would have been enough to wipe out Washington DC and a dozen other surrounding cities, while New York, Richmond and Baltimore would have suffered. Any metropolis could disappear, the center of which would completely evaporate, and the outskirts would turn into small rubble blazing in fire. It’s scary to imagine what the consequences could be if the explosion power was the originally planned 100 megatons ...
Zone of total destruction by explosion, superimposed on Paris
The rehearsal for the end of the world was a success. The Tsar Bomba was never put into service: in order to use it in combat conditions, they didn’t come up with a suitable invulnerable carrier - you can’t install such a hulk on a rocket, and the plane will be shot down long before approaching the target.
After the completion of the test, all those involved received what they deserved. Someone - the title of Hero of the USSR, the military - promotion, scientists - recognition and generous bonuses. Exactly one year later, the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted, almost pushing the fragile world into the crater of another world war. A year later, Lee Harvey Oswald would shoot the American president, and in the fall of 1964, Nikita Khrushchev would be removed.
But what about the people? The people, who found out about some kind of "Tsar Bomb" later than the Americans, still went to work, saved money and stood in line for Moskvich, got used to biscuit casseroles, bread cards and other delights of the food crisis. Soviet Union threatened the world with a nuclear club and asked America to sell tens of millions of tons of grain for food.
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October 30, 1961 at the test site Novaya Zemlya successfully tested the Soviet thermonuclear bomb AN606 with a capacity of 57 megatons. This power was 10 times higher than the total power of all ammunition that was used during the Second World War. AN606 is the most destructive weapon throughout the history of mankind.
Place
Nuclear testing in the Soviet Union began in 1949 at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan. Its area was 18500 sq. km. It was removed from the places of permanent residence of people. But not so much that it would be possible to experience the most powerful weapon. Therefore, in the Kazakh steppe, nuclear charges of low and medium power were blown up. They were necessary for debugging nuclear technology, studying the influence damaging factors for equipment and facilities. That is, they were, first of all, scientific and technical tests.
But in the conditions of military competition, such tests were also necessary, in which the emphasis was placed on their political component, on demonstrating the crushing power Soviet bomb.
There was also a Totsky training ground in the Orenburg region. But it was smaller than Semipalatinsk. And besides, it was located in even more dangerous proximity to cities and villages.
In 1954, they found a place where it was possible to test super-high-yield nuclear weapons.
This place was the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. He fully met the requirements for the test site where the super-bomb was to be tested. Was as far away from large settlements and communications, and after its closure was supposed to have a minimal impact on the subsequent economic activity of the region. It was also required to conduct a study of the effect of a nuclear explosion on ships and submarines.
Islands of Novaya Zemlya the best way meet these and other requirements. Their area was more than four times larger than the Semipalatinsk test site and equaled 85 thousand square meters. km., which is approximately equal to the area of the Netherlands.
The problem of the population that could suffer from explosions was solved radically: 298 native Nenets were evicted from the archipelago, providing them with housing in Arkhangelsk, as well as in the village of Amderma and on Kolguev Island. At the same time, the migrants were employed, and the elderly were assigned a pension, despite the fact that no seniority they didn't have.
They were replaced by builders.
The nuclear test site on Novaya Zemlya is by no means an open field onto which bombers drop their deadly cargo, but whole complex complex engineering structures and administrative services. These include the experimental scientific and engineering service, energy and water supply services, a fighter aviation regiment, a transport aviation detachment, a division of ships and vessels special purpose, emergency rescue team, communications center, logistics units, living quarters.
Three test sites were created at the site: Chernaya Guba, Matochkin Shar and Dry Nose.
In the summer of 1954, 10 construction battalions were delivered to the archipelago, which began to build the first site - Black Guba. The builders spent the Arctic winter in canvas tents, preparing Guba for the underwater explosion scheduled for September 1955 - the first in the USSR.
Product
The development of the Tsar Bomba, which received the index AN602, began simultaneously with the construction of the test site on Novaya Zemlya - in 1955. And it ended with the creation of a bomb ready for testing in September 1961, that is, a month before the explosion.
Development began at NII-1011 Minsredmash (now the All-Russian Research Institute of Technical Physics, VNIITF), which was located in Snezhinsk Chelyabinsk region. Actually, the institute was founded on May 5, 1955, primarily for the implementation of a grandiose thermonuclear project. And only then his activities extended to the creation of 70 percent of all Soviet nuclear bombs, missiles and torpedoes.
NII-1011 headed scientific director Institute Kirill Ivanovich Shchelkin, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Shchelkin, together with a group of nuclear luminaries, took part in the creation and testing of the first atomic bomb RDS-1. It was he who, in 1949, was the last to leave the tower with the charge installed in it, sealed the entrance and pressed the "Start" button.
Work on the creation of the AN602 bomb, to which the leading physicists of the country, including Kurchatov and Sakharov, were connected, proceeded without any special complications. But the unique power of the bomb required huge amounts of calculations and design studies. As well as conducting experiments with smaller charges at the test site - first at Semipalatinsk, and then at Novaya Zemlya.
The initial project involved the creation of a bomb that would certainly break glass, if not in Moscow, but certainly in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and even in northern Finland. Because a capacity in excess of 100 megatons was planned.
Initially, the scheme of action of the bomb was three-link. At first, a plutonium charge with a capacity of 1.5 Mt worked. He ignited the reaction thermonuclear fusion, whose power was 50 Mt. Fast neutrons released as a result of a thermonuclear reaction triggered a nuclear fission reaction in blocks of uranium-238. The contribution of this reaction to the "common cause" was 50 Mt.
This arrangement led to extremely high level radioactive contamination over a vast area. And there was no need to talk about the “minimal impact of the landfill on the subsequent economic activity of the region after its closure”. Therefore, it was decided to abandon the final phase - the fission of uranium. But at the same time, the real power of the resulting bomb turned out to be a little more than it was based on the calculations. Instead of 51.5 Mt, on October 30, 1961, 57 Mt exploded on Novaya Zemlya.
The creation of the AN602 bomb was completed not in Snezhinsk, but in the famous KB-11, located in Arzamas-16. The final revision took 112 days.
The result was a monster weighing 26500 kg, 800 cm long and with a maximum diameter of 210 cm.
The dimensions and weight of the bomb were already determined in 1955. In order to lift it into the air, it was necessary to significantly modernize the largest Tu-95 bomber at that time. And this was also not an easy job, since the standard Tu-95 could not lift the Tsar Bomba into the air, with an aircraft weight of 84 tons, it could only take 11 tons of combat load. 90 tons were assigned to the share of fuel. In addition, the bomb did not fit in the bomb bay. Therefore, the fuselage fuel tanks had to be removed. And also replace the beam holders of the bomb with more powerful ones.
Work on the modernization of the bomber, called the Tu-95 V and made in a single copy, took place from 1956 to 1958. Flight tests continued for another year, during which the technique of dropping a mock-up bomb of the same weight and the same dimensions was worked out. In 1959, the aircraft was recognized as fully meeting the requirements for it.
Result
The main result, as it was intended - political - exceeded all expectations. The thundering explosion of a previously unknown force made a very strong impression on the leaders Western countries. He forced to take a more serious look at the capabilities of the Soviet military-industrial complex and somewhat reduce their militaristic ambitions.
The events of October 30, 1961 developed as follows. Early in the morning, two bombers took off from a remote airfield - Tu-95V with the AN602 product on board and Tu-16 with research equipment and film and photographic equipment.
At 11:32, from a height of 10,500 meters, the commander of the Tu-95 V, Major Andrey Egorovich Durnovtsev, dropped a bomb. The major returned to the airfield as a lieutenant colonel and Hero of the Soviet Union.
The bomb, having parachuted down to a level of 3700 meters, exploded. By this time, the planes managed to get away from the epicenter by 39 kilometers.
The test leaders are the Minister of Medium Machine Building E.P. Slavsky and the Commander-in-Chief missile forces Marshal K.S. Moskalenko - at the time of the explosion they were on board the Il-14 at a distance of more than 500 kilometers. In spite of cloudy weather they saw a bright flash. Wherein shock wave the plane shook distinctly. The minister and marshal immediately sent a telegram to Khrushchev.
One of the groups of researchers from a distance of 270 kilometers from the point of explosion saw not only a bright flash through protective tinted glasses, but even felt the impact of a light pulse. In an abandoned village - 400 kilometers from the epicenter - wooden houses were destroyed, and stone houses lost their roofs, windows and doors.
The mushroom from the explosion reached a height of 68 kilometers. At the same time, the shock wave, reflected from the ground, prevented the plasma ball from descending to the ground, which would incinerate everything in a vast space.
The various effects were monstrous. The seismic wave circled three times Earth. The light radiation was capable of causing third-degree burns at a distance of 100 km. The roar from the explosion was heard within a radius of 800 km. Because of ionizing effect radio interference was observed in Europe for more than an hour. For the same reason, communication with the two bombers was lost for 30 minutes.
The test turned out to be surprisingly clean. radioactive radiation within a radius of three kilometers from the epicenter two hours after the explosion was only 1 milliroentgen per hour.
The Tu-95 V, despite the fact that it was 39 kilometers from the epicenter, was dropped by a shock wave at a peak. And the pilot was able to regain control of the aircraft, only losing 800 meters of altitude. The entire bomber, including propellers, was painted with white reflective paint. But upon inspection, it was found that fragmentary paint burned out. And some structural elements even melted and deformed.
In conclusion, it should be noted that a 100-megaton filling could also fit in the AN602 case.
55 years ago, on October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union tested the most powerful munition in history, the 50-megaton RN-202 thermonuclear bomb. The test turned out to be spectacular and made it possible for the then head of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev to declare to US Vice President Richard Nixon: "We have means at our disposal that will have dire consequences for you. We will show you Kuz'kin's mother!"
Tsar Rocket and Tsar Torpedo
In 1960, relations between the USSR and the USA deteriorated sharply. An American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Sverdlovsk, its pilot Francis Powers confessed that he had made a reconnaissance flight over Baikonur, nuclear plants and military installations. Khrushchev canceled a meeting with Eisenhower in Paris and the US President's visit to Moscow. America rapidly increased 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 b atomic bombs, then the USSR intended to use dozens of devices as a response, each of them was capable of wiping out a large city.
Satisfied with the concept and the delivery man, long-range aviation. The idea is to cause maximum damage to the enemy the minimum amount The pilots liked the carriers. Other methods have also been developed nuclear strike across the USA. In 1960, the Council of Ministers of the USSR issued a resolution on the development of the N-1 orbital combat missile with a 75-megaton warhead, warhead the global rocket UR-500 was supposed to have a capacity of 150 megatons. There was a plan to release from a nuclear submarine giant torpedo T-15 with 100 megaton warhead. The tsunami caused by the explosion was supposed to wash away a significant part of the US coast. But bombs remained the main weapon.
Kuzka's mother
After the creation of the two-stage thermonuclear munition RDS-37, gunsmiths opened up unlimited opportunities 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. Say, the estimated force 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 bomb turned out to be impressive in every respect - the size of a small whale. The eight-meter ammunition did not fit in the Tu-95 weapon compartment, so the bomb bay doors were removed from the carrier aircraft 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 Dry Nose peninsula. A 27-ton bomb was dropped by parachute and at 11.33 at an altitude of 4000 meters above the target (D-II site of the Novaya Zemlya Northern Test Site) a thermonuclear explosion of unprecedented power occurred. Tu-95 by that time retired to 45 kilometers. All four bomber engines stopped from an electromagnetic pulse, the crew launched them in a dive. 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 aircraft was also burned. 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
A fireball with a diameter of 4.6 kilometers formed at the site of the explosion, its brilliance was visible for a thousand kilometers. The nuclear mushroom rose into the stratosphere, the shock wave circled the globe three times. At the same time, the Tsar Bomba turned out to be much cleaner than their American counterparts: the testers appeared on the D-II site two hours after the explosion, radioactive contamination was not dangerous.
The diameter of the zone of continuous destruction was 70 kilometers - even in the "halved" version, the Tsar Bomba could wipe out any of the world's capitals, including suburbs, from the face of the Earth. Of course, the AN602 was not intended for mass production - it was a technology demonstrator. A serial thermonuclear bomb with a capacity of 20 megatons, placed in a bomber, was tested a year later.
The Tsar Bomba test played a key role in achieving nuclear parity with the USA. After the explosion on Novaya Zemlya, the Americans stopped building up stocks atomic weapons, and in 1963 Moscow and Washington signed an agreement to ban nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in space and underwater.
More than 55 years ago, on October 30, 1961, one of the most significant events Cold War. At the test site located on Novaya Zemlya, the Soviet Union tested the most powerful thermonuclear device in the history of mankind - a hydrogen bomb with a capacity of 58 megatons of TNT. Officially, this ammunition was called AN602 (“product 602”), but it entered the historical annals under its unofficial name - “Tsar Bomba”.
This bomb has another name - "Kuzkin's mother." It was born after the famous speech of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Khrushchev, during which he promised to show the United States "Kuzkin's mother" and pounded his shoe on the podium.
The best Soviet physicists worked on the creation of "product 602": Sakharov, Trutnev, Adamsky, Babaev, Smirnov. This project was led by academician Kurchatov, work on the creation of the bomb began in 1954.
The Soviet "Tsar Bomba" was dropped from strategic bomber Tu-95, which was specially converted for this mission. The explosion occurred at an altitude of 3.7 thousand meters. Seismographs around the world recorded the strongest fluctuations, and the blast wave circled the globe three times. The explosion of the Tsar Bomba seriously frightened the West, and showed that it is better not to mess with the Soviet Union. A powerful propaganda effect was achieved, and the capabilities of Soviet nuclear weapons were clearly demonstrated to a potential adversary.
But the most important was something else: the tests of the Tsar Bomba made it possible to test the theoretical calculations of scientists, and it was proved that the power of thermonuclear munitions is practically unlimited.
And, by the way, it was true. After the successful tests, Khrushchev joked that they wanted to blow up 100 megatons, but were afraid to break the windows in Moscow. Indeed, initially they planned to undermine a hundred-megaton charge, but then they did not want to inflict too big damage landfill.
The history of the creation of the Tsar bomb
Since the mid-1950s, work began in the USA and the USSR on the creation of a second-generation nuclear weapon - a thermonuclear bomb. In November 1952, the United States blew up the first such device, and eight months later the Soviet Union conducted similar tests. At the same time, the Soviet thermonuclear bomb was much more advanced than its American counterpart, it could well be placed in the bomb bay of an aircraft and used in practice. Thermonuclear weapons were ideally suited for the implementation of the Soviet concept of single, but deadly strikes against the enemy, because theoretically the power of thermonuclear charges is unlimited.
In the early 60s, the USSR began to develop huge (if not monstrous) nuclear charges in terms of power. In particular, it was planned to create missiles with a thermonuclear warhead weighing 40 and 75 tons. The explosion power of a forty-ton warhead was to be 150 megatons. In parallel, work was underway on the creation of heavy-duty aviation munitions. However, the development of such "monsters" required practical tests, during which the bombing technique would be worked out, the damage from explosions would be assessed, and, most importantly, the theoretical calculations of physicists would be tested.
In general, it should be noted that before the advent of reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles, the problem of delivering nuclear charges was very acute in the USSR. There was a project of a huge self-propelled torpedo with a powerful thermonuclear charge (about a hundred megatons), which they planned to undermine off the coast of the United States. A special submarine was designed to launch this torpedo. According to the developers, the explosion was supposed to cause strongest tsunami and flood the most important US metropolitan areas located on the coast. Academician Sakharov led the project, but technical reasons it was never implemented.
Initially, the NII-1011 (Chelyabinsk-70, now RFNC-VNIITF) was engaged in the development of a super-powerful nuclear bomb. At this stage, the ammunition was called RN-202, but in 1958 the project was closed by the decision of the country's top leadership. There is a legend that "Kuzkina's mother" was developed by Soviet scientists in record time. short time– only 112 days. It doesn't quite match really. Although, indeed, the final stage of creating ammunition, which took place in KB-11, took only 112 days. But it would not be entirely correct to say that the Tsar Bomba is just a renamed and completed RN-202, in fact, significant improvements were made to the design of the ammunition.
Initially, the capacity of AN602 was supposed to be more than 100 megatons, and its design should have three stages. But due to the significant radioactive contamination of the explosion site, they decided to abandon the third stage, which reduced the power of the ammunition by almost half (to 50 megatons).
Another serious problem that the developers of the Tsar Bomba project had to solve was the preparation of a carrier aircraft for this unique and non-standard nuclear charge, since the serial Tu-95 was not suitable for this mission. This issue was raised back in 1954 in a conversation that took place between two academicians - Kurchatov and Tupolev.
After the drawings of the thermonuclear bomb were made, it turned out that the placement of the ammunition required a serious alteration of the aircraft's bomb bay. The fuselage tanks were removed from the car, and for the AN602 suspension, a new beam holder was installed on the aircraft with a much higher carrying capacity and three bomber locks instead of one. New bomber received the index "B".
To ensure the safety of the aircraft crew, the Tsar Bomba was equipped with three parachutes at once: exhaust, brake and main. They slowed down the fall of the bomb, allowing the aircraft to fly back to a safe distance after being dropped.
The re-equipment of the aircraft for dropping the superbomb began as early as 1956. In the same year, the aircraft was accepted by the customer and tested. From the Tu-95V they even dropped the exact model of the future bomb.
On October 17, 1961, Nikita Khrushchev at the opening of the XX Congress of the CPSU announced that the USSR was successfully testing a new super-powerful nuclear weapon, and a 50-megaton munition would soon be ready. Khrushchev also said that the Soviet Union also has a 100 megaton bomb, but is not going to blow it up yet. A few days later, the UN General Assembly turned to Soviet government with a request not to test a new mega-bomb, but this call was not heard.
Description of the design of AN602
The AN602 aerial bomb is a cylindrical body of a characteristic streamlined shape with tail stabilizers. Its length is 8 meters, the maximum diameter is 2.1 meters, and it weighs 26.5 tons. The dimensions of this bomb completely repeat the dimensions of the RN-202 ammunition.
The initial design power of the bomb was 100 megatons, but then it was reduced by almost half. The Tsar Bomba was conceived as a three-stage one: the first stage was a nuclear charge (power of the order of 1.5 megatons), it launched a second-stage thermonuclear reaction (50 megatons), which, in turn, initiated a third-stage Jekyll-Hyde nuclear reaction (also 50 megatons). However, the detonation of ammunition of this design is almost guaranteed to lead to a significant radioactive contamination test site, so they decided to abandon the third stage. The uranium in it was replaced by lead.
Carrying out tests of the Tsar bomb and their results
Despite the modernization carried out earlier, immediately before the tests themselves, the aircraft still had to be redone. Together with the parachute system, the real ammunition turned out to be larger and heavier than planned. Therefore, the bomb bay doors had to be removed from the aircraft. In addition, it was pre-painted with white reflective paint.
On October 30, 1961, a Tu-95V with a bomb on board took off from the Olenya airfield and headed towards the test site on Novaya Zemlya. The crew of the bomber consisted of nine people. The Tu-95A laboratory aircraft also took part in the tests.
The bomb was dropped two hours after takeoff at an altitude of 10.5 thousand meters above a mock target located on the territory of the Dry Nose training ground. Undermining was carried out barothermally at an altitude of 4.2 thousand meters (according to other sources, at an altitude of 3.9 thousand meters or 4.5 thousand meters). The parachute system slowed down the fall of the ammunition, so it took 188 seconds to reach the estimated height of the A602. During this time, the carrier aircraft managed to move away from the epicenter by 39 km. The shock wave caught up with the plane at a distance of 115 km, but he managed to continue his flight and safely returned to base. According to some sources, the Tsar Bomba explosion came out much more powerful than planned (58.6 or even 75 megatons).
The test results exceeded all expectations. After the explosion, a fireball with a diameter of more than nine kilometers was formed, the nuclear mushroom reached a height of 67 km, and the diameter of its "cap" was 97 km. Light radiation could cause burns at a distance of 100 km, and the sound wave reached Dikson Island, located 800 km east of Novaya Zemlya. The seismic wave generated by the explosion circled the globe three times. However, the tests did not lead to significant contamination. environment. Scientists landed at the epicenter point two hours after the explosion.
After the tests, the commander and navigator of the Tu-95V aircraft were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, eight employees of KB-11 received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, and several dozen scientists from the design bureau received Lenin Prizes.
During the tests, all pre-planned goals were achieved. The theoretical calculations of scientists were tested, the military gained experience in the practical use of previously unseen weapons, and the country's leadership received a powerful foreign policy and propaganda trump card. It was clearly shown that the Soviet Union could achieve parity with the United States in the lethality of nuclear weapons.
The A602 bomb was not originally intended for practical military use. In fact, it was a demonstrator of the capabilities of the Soviet military industry. The Tu-95V simply could not fly with such a combat load to the territory of the United States - it simply would not have enough fuel. But, nevertheless, the tests of the Tsar Bomba produced the desired result in the West - two years later, in August 1963, in Moscow, an agreement was signed between the USSR, Great Britain and the USA banning nuclear tests in space, on the ground or under water. Since then, only underground nuclear explosions. In 1990, the USSR announced a unilateral moratorium on all nuclear tests. Until now, Russia has followed it.
By the way, after successful test"Tsar bombs" Soviet scientists put forward several proposals for the creation of even more powerful thermonuclear munitions, from 200 to 500 megatons, but they were never implemented. The main opponents of such plans were the military. The reason was simple: such a weapon did not have the slightest practical meaning. The explosion of A602 created a zone of complete destruction, equal in area to the territory of Paris, why create even more powerful ammunition. Besides, for them there was simply no necessary funds delivery or strategic aviation, nor ballistic missiles At that time, they simply could not lift such a weight.
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Initially, 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) immediately rejected this idea. An aircraft with such a load simply could not fly to the landfill. The specified mass of the "superbomb" has been reduced.
However, large dimensions and the huge power of the bomb (originally planned to be eight meters long, two meters in diameter with a mass of 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, which received the designation 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 suspension of an aerial bomb turned out to be very difficult, since, due to its dimensions, it did not fit in the bomb bay of the aircraft. For its suspension, a special device was designed to ensure the rise of the "product" to the fuselage and fix it on three synchronously controlled locks.
All electrical connectors were replaced on the plane, the wings and fuselage were covered with reflective paint.
To ensure the safety of the carrier aircraft, Moscow designers of airborne equipment developed a special system of six parachutes (the area of the largest was 1.6 thousand square meters). They were ejected from the tail of the bomb body one by one and slowed down the bomb's descent, so that the aircraft had time to move to a safe distance by the time of the explosion.
By 1959, the superbomb carrier had been created, but due to some warming of relations between the USSR and the USA, things did not come to practical tests. Tu-95-202 was first used as a training aircraft at the airfield in the city of Engels, and then was decommissioned 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 decree of the Government of the USSR on the resumption of tests of a nuclear charge in July 1961, emergency work began at KB-11 (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics, RFNC-VNIIEF), which in 1960 was entrusted with the further development of a superbomb , where she was given the designation "product 602". In the design of the superbomb itself and its charge, big number major innovations. Initially, the charge power was 100 megatons of TNT. At the initiative of Andrei Sakharov, the charge power was halved.
The carrier aircraft from the decommissioned ones was returned to service. All connectors in the reset electric system were urgently replaced on it, the doors of the cargo compartment were removed, because. real bomb in terms of dimensions and weight, it turned out to be slightly larger than the mock-up (the length of the bomb is 8.5 meters, its weight is 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 the bomb was dropped. Experts feared that after the explosion, an uncontrolled thermonuclear reaction could occur 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 State Commission supervised the tests.
October 30, 1961 Tu-95V with a bomb on board, taking off from the Olenya airfield in Murmansk region, headed for the test site, located on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Northern Arctic Ocean. The Tu-16 laboratory aircraft took off next to record the phenomena of the explosion 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, at the command of a 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; a powerful reflected shock wave prevented it from reaching the surface of the earth, which threw the fireball from 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, went around the Earth three times. The flash was visible at a distance of more than 1000 kilometers. In an abandoned village, located at a distance of 400 kilometers from the epicenter, trees were uprooted, windows were shattered and the roofs of houses were demolished.
The carrier aircraft, which by that time was at a distance of 45 kilometers from the drop point, was thrown by a shock wave to a height of 8000 meters, and for some time after the explosion the Tu-95V 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. What happened to the planes and crews, all this time no one knew. After some time, both aircraft returned to base, tan 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 over which the thermonuclear explosion occurred, already two hours later; the level of radiation in that place great danger did not imagine. This was affected design features Soviet bomb, as well as the fact that the explosion occurred at a fairly large distance from the surface.
According to 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 expected value according to the calculations.
The October 30, 1961 test showed that developments in the field of nuclear weapons could quickly cross the critical limit. The main goal that was set and achieved by this test was to demonstrate the possibility of creating the USSR with unlimited power 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 on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources
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