October 30, 1961 – significant date in history Cold War. On this day Soviet Union conducted tests of the most powerful thermostat in history nuclear bomb, which later received the unofficial name “Tsar Bomba”.
The AN602 bomb (or “product 602”), detonated over the test site on Novaya Zemlya, was intended by the Soviet leadership to clearly show the West that the days of its superiority in nuclear weapons were in the past. The power of the thermonuclear device was monstrous - it was 57 megatons (according to other sources 58) in TNT equivalent.
In addition to propaganda purposes, the tests also had a completely practical significance: Soviet scientists needed to experimentally test their theoretical calculations related to the design of thermonuclear ammunition and the calculation of the power of their explosion. As a result of this “experiment,” it was proven that the power of thermonuclear weapons is unlimited.
Initially, they wanted to increase the power of the ammunition to 100 megatons, but then physicists had concerns about excessive radioactive contamination that such a charge could lead to. Therefore, it was decided to reduce the power of the bomb by half. Khrushchev himself later joked that they planned to explode 100 megatons, but were afraid for the windows in Moscow.
Almost immediately after the tests, AN602 received another unofficial name - “Kuzka’s Mother”, in honor of catchphrase Secretary General Khrushchev, which he threw from the UN rostrum. Then Nikita Sergeevich promised to “bury imperialism” and show the United States “Kuzka’s mother.” Soon it was clearly demonstrated to the Americans on Novaya Zemlya.
Above creation Soviet Tsar Bomba The best domestic minds worked: Trutnev, Sakharov, Babaev, Adamsky, Smirnov. The project was led by the famous Kurchatov, its implementation began in 1954.
History of creation
The atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki opened new era in the history of mankind and at the same time they gave rise to a period of intense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, which entered the history books under the name of the Cold War. From that moment to this day, the power and status of any state is determined not only by the size of its armed forces and the level of economic development, but also by the presence of nuclear weapons.
The United States did not have a monopoly on the nuclear bomb for long. Thanks to the brilliant work of intelligence, the Soviet Union managed to create its first nuclear charge and test it successfully.
In 1953 Soviet army received the first aviation nuclear bomb RDS-3, which theoretically could be used to strike US territory.
However, in the early 60s the main problem The USSR was not in the number of nuclear warheads, but in the means of delivering nuclear weapons. Those that were available could not be guaranteed to provide a sufficiently powerful retaliatory strike against the adversary. At that time, rocket technology was just taking its first steps, and the main means of delivering nuclear weapons was strategic aviation. The Americans were significantly ahead of the USSR in this area. In addition to a significant fleet of strategic bombers, the United States also had a large number of military bases near the Soviet borders, where it could station its aircraft. The USSR did not have anything like this, so the bet was placed on the superiority of Soviet nuclear weapons over their American counterparts. Roughly speaking, the military took the route of increasing the power of the bombs, hoping that if anything reached enemy territory, it would fly in earnest. Even one Soviet bomber breaking through the air defense cordons could destroy a large American city or industrial area.
Around the mid-50s, work began on the creation of thermonuclear weapons in the USA and USSR. At the end of 1952, the Americans successfully tested the first hydrogen bomb, and eight months later the Soviet Union acquired similar weapons. It should be noted that the Soviet bomb had a more advanced design and could be used in practice.
Thermonuclear weapons fit perfectly into the Soviet concept of “asymmetric retaliatory strike,” because their power was theoretically unlimited. At the end of the 50s, work began in the Soviet Union on several projects of thermonuclear ammunition of monstrous power, as well as means of their delivery. For example, in 1960, a resolution of the Council of Ministers was issued on the start of the development of the N-1 intercontinental missile with a take-off weight of 2.2 thousand tons and a thermonuclear warhead of 75 tons. It is difficult to accurately indicate its power; we can only say that the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba weighed 26.5 tons. Around the same time, Chelomei was developing the UR-500 missile with a 150-megaton warhead. However, all these projects were so expensive and technically complex that they remained on paper.
There is a legend that when a project missile complex Khrushchev saw the UR-500 and estimated its approximate cost; he asked the designer: “What are we going to build? Communism or silos for your missiles? After this, the program was discontinued.
We can also mention the project of a giant torpedo with a multi-megaton warhead, which was planned to be blown up off the coast of America, thereby causing a devastating tsunami. The author of this project was the future laureate Nobel Prize Academician Sakharov. However, this idea was also not realized.
The creation of such monstrous thermonuclear monsters required mandatory practical testing. Moreover, for testing a sample of similar power was needed. Scientists needed to test their theoretical calculations, and the military needed to try to use such ammunition in practice to understand how to cause probable enemy greatest damage.
Work on a super-powerful thermonuclear device began in the mid-50s. This project was carried out by specialists from NII-1011 (Chelyabinsk-70), today it is RFNC-VNIITF. At the same time, OKB-156 was working on creating a carrier aircraft for such an unusual ammunition. Initially, the bomb weighed 40 tons, which was categorically rejected by aircraft manufacturers. In the end, nuclear scientists promised to reduce the weight of the product by half.
In 1958, for political reasons, the superpower bomb project was canceled.
There is a legend that the Soviet “Kuzkina Mother” was developed in record time short time(112 days). This is not entirely true.
In 1960, the international situation deteriorated again and the Soviet leadership decided to resume the superbomb program. This project was transferred to KB-11 and the final part of the creation of the Tsar Bomba actually took 112 days. However, the AN602 product was based on developments made in the period from 1954 to 1958 at NII-1011. Although, it should be noted that many significant changes were made to the ammunition at the completion stage.
The development of a carrier aircraft for the AN602 was also a very difficult task. The designers of the Tupolev Design Bureau had to make serious changes to the power circuit of the Tu-95 aircraft, remodel its cargo compartment, and also change the suspension and ammunition release devices. The bomber designed for this mission was named Tu-95B. After the project was suspended, it was transported to a military airfield in Uzin, where it was used as a training tool.
The Tsar Bomba was intended to have a three-stage design. A nuclear charge with a yield of 1.5 megatons was used as the first stage. Its main function was to launch the second stage thermonuclear reaction, the power of which was 50 megatons. She, in turn, initiated the detonation of the third 50-megaton stage. Thus, a munition with a yield of 101.5 megatons was initially conceived.
Already during the implementation of the project, it was decided to abandon the third stage. The danger of radioactive contamination of territories outside the test site was too great, and they also did not want to cause too much damage to Novaya Zemlya, the future site of the Tsar Bomba explosion. So the bomb's power was reduced to 55 megatons, and lead plates were placed instead of the third stage.
To protect the aircraft crew from the damaging effects of the explosion, the AN602 was equipped with three parachutes at once. The area of the main parachute was more than 1.6 thousand square meters. meters. He should have allowed the bomber, after completing its mission, to move to a safe distance from the explosion site. A special reflective coating was applied to the fuselage of the aircraft.
The Tsar Bomba itself had a characteristic streamlined teardrop shape with four stabilizers in the tail section. Its weight was 26.5 tons, its length was 8 meters, and its largest diameter was 2.1 meters.
On October 17, 1961, Nikita Khrushchev, during the opening of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, told the audience that the USSR has thermonuclear bomb with a capacity of 100 megatons and is about to detonate a 50-megaton charge. After such a statement, nothing could stop the tests. The UN officially appealed to the Soviet leadership to abandon the explosion, but it was ignored.
AN602 tests and their results
The Tsar Bomba test was scheduled for October 30, 1961. On the morning of this day, a Tu-95V with an AN602 on board took off from the Olenya airfield, which Murmansk region, and headed for Novaya Zemlya. The crew consisted of nine people, the bomber was accompanied by a Tu-16A laboratory aircraft.
About two hours later, the Tu-95 reached its intended point above the Dry Nose training ground. AN602 was dropped from a height of 10 thousand meters. The explosion occurred after 188 seconds, during which time the bomber managed to retreat 39 km. The shock wave caught up with it at a distance of 115 km, causing strong vibration, although it did not cause much harm to the car.
The force of the Tsar Bomba explosion exceeded the expected one (51.5 Mt) and amounted to 58.5 Mt.
The duration of the flash was 65-70 seconds, the height of the “mushroom” exceeded 67 km, and the diameter of its cap was 95 km. The light radiation from the explosion could cause serious burns (third degree) at a distance of 100 kilometers.
The explosion caused a seismic wave that circled the planet three times. Thousands of witnesses stated that they felt a tangible blow, even being a thousand from its epicenter.
The sound wave reached Dikson Island (800 km). Some sources report that windows in buildings on the island were broken by the blast wave.
The severe ionization of the atmosphere generated by the explosion caused interference with radio communications within a radius of hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter. They lasted about an hour.
Radioactive contamination of the site was insignificant. Within a few hours, a group of testers landed on it and took the necessary measurements.
After the success of the test, the commander and navigator of the Tu-95V received the titles of Heroes, eight people from the bomb development team became Heroes of Socialist Labor, several dozen scientists and designers received Lenin Prizes.
By the way, immediately after the test, scientists proposed several projects for creating even more powerful thermonuclear ammunition (300, 500 Mt). However, the military spoke out categorically against such ideas. An exploded 50-megaton bomb had already burned out an area the size of Paris, so why make even more powerful devices? And a lot of similar ammunition made them practical use almost impossible.
If we talk about the results of the tests on Novaya Zemlya, the main one, of course, was propaganda. The USSR clearly showed all ill-wishers that it was better not to joke with it. Fifty megatons is a lot good way cool down too hot heads. Tests of AN602 very quickly brought results: literally a few months later in Moscow, an agreement was signed between the USA, USSR and Great Britain banning any tests of nuclear weapons on land, on water and in space. This international document is still being implemented today.
The explosion also had important practical significance. In essence, AN602 was a large test bench with the help of which Soviet scientists and designers tested their theoretical calculations. And there was no other way to do it. In addition, the Soviet military received invaluable information regarding the use of ammunition of such power. In fact, due to its significant dimensions, the Tsar Bomba was not very suitable for practical use.
It should also be understood that the Soviet Union was not developing super-powerful ammunition out of a good life. To be honest, the main element of the Soviet “asymmetric response” strategy, of course, was intimidation. The Tu-95 simply could not deliver AN602 to the United States: due to the significant mass of ammunition, it simply would not have reached the target. After improving domestic intercontinental missiles the need for super-powerful nuclear charges disappeared; it was much more profitable to deliver a dozen warheads with relatively small charges to enemy territory than one multi-megaton monster.
55 years ago, on October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union tested the most powerful weapon 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. The concept of the development of the USSR's strategic forces 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 of a nuclear strike against the United States were also being developed. 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; the warhead of the UR-500 global rocket 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 estimated force of AN602 was 100 megatons, but scientists warned about the risk of damage earth's crust at the test site 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) thermo occurred nuclear explosion unprecedented power. 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 their stockpiles of atomic weapons, and in 1963, Moscow and Washington entered into an agreement to ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in space and under water.
50 years ago, on October 30, 1961, an epoch-making event took place at the test site on Novaya Zemlya in the USSR - a bomb with 58 megatons of TNT equivalent was detonated. This is more than has been used in the entire history of mankind, including previous atomic and hydrogen bombs. And, most likely, that explosion will remain a world record for all subsequent times. Not because there are technical and physical limitations on the power of the explosion, but because such power is completely meaningless.
The anniversary bomb was named AN602, but in official correspondence of that time it was simply called “product B”.
These markings were forgotten. What remained were “Ivan” (Soviet name), “ Big Ivan", "Tsar Bomba", "Kuzka's Mother" - assigned to the bomb in the West.
The development group included many dozens or even hundreds of people, but the main ones were Andrei Sakharov, Viktor Adamsky, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Trutnev, Yuri Smirnov.
Work on the bomb began a long time ago, back in 1954. In 1959, before Khrushchev's trip to America, work was suspended - détente was planned. But on May 1, 1960, the U-2 spy plane of the American pilot Powers was shot down near Sverdlovsk. The Americans were unpleasantly impressed by Khrushchev’s words “we will bury you.” Trust but verify, President Eisenhower decided. Nikita Sergeevich was seriously angry, canceled Eisenhower’s return visit and promised to show America “Kuzka’s mother.” The highest order was received: to speed up the development of the bomb.
At a meeting with the developers and creators of Soviet nuclear weapons, Nikita Sergeevich said: “Let this product hang over the capitalists like the sword of Damocles...”.
In September 1961, the bomb was almost ready. Nikita burned with righteous anger against imperialism. So much so that, despite all the traditional Soviet secrecy, he himself told an American politician about it, who came to see him with his adult daughter. The story of this meeting appeared on September 8, 1961 on the pages of the American newspaper The New York Times, which reproduced the words of Khrushchev: “Let those who dream of new aggression know that we will have a bomb equal in power to 100 million tons of trinitrotoluene, that We already have such a bomb, and all we have to do is test an explosive device for it.” The newspaper reported that the politician’s daughter, having heard about Khrushchev’s such intention, burst into tears right in his office.
The Soviet people learned about such an epoch-making event a little later - on October 17, on the first day of the XXII Congress of the CPSU, when Khrushchev, in the report, stopped reading the text, switched to falsetto, nailed his fist and almost shouted: “... I want to say that We are also testing new nuclear weapons very successfully. We will complete these tests soon. Apparently at the end of October. Finally, we will probably detonate a hydrogen bomb with a yield of 50 million tons of TNT. (Applause.) We said that we have a bomb containing 100 million tons of TNT. And that's true. But we will not detonate such a bomb, because if we detonate it even in the most remote places, then even then we can break out our windows. (Stormy applause.) Therefore, we will refrain for now and will not detonate this bomb. But, having detonated the 50-millionth bomb, we will thereby test the device for detonating the 100-millionth bomb. However, as they said before, God grant that we never have to explode these bombs over any territory. (Stormy applause.)"
The stormy applause of the congress delegates showed that the people were awaiting the promised explosion with jubilation as the apotheosis of the struggle for peace.
50 megaton TNT bomb
Why didn’t they detonate 100 megatons, although such a charge was ready? A little about the design of the bomb. “Kuzkina Mother” (“Tsar Bomba”) had a three-stage design: the first stage nuclear charge (calculated contribution to the explosion power was 1.5 megatons) launched a thermo nuclear reaction in the second stage (contribution to the explosion power - 50 megatons), and it, in turn, initiated the nuclear “Jekyll-Hyde reaction” (fission of nuclei in uranium-238 blocks under the influence of fast neutrons generated as a result of the thermonuclear fusion reaction) in the third stages (another 50 megatons of power), so the total estimated yield of the bomb was 101.5 megatons.
Khrushchev named the main reason for refusing such power: there is no place on the territory of the USSR for such a test.
When they began to estimate the scale of damage from a 100 megaton Kuzka mother in an explosion on Novaya Zemlya, equal to a radius of 1000 kilometers, they scratched their heads. Within these limits were the cities of Vorkuta, Dudinka, and the important industrial center of Norilsk. And, let’s say, the port of Dikson was located 500 kilometers from the test site. Some village of Drovyanoy was not a pity, but the Norilsk copper-nickel plant was very taken care of.
In general, no matter how they twisted it and tried it, it turned out that there was nowhere to blow up the monstrous mother. Except in Antarctica. But, firstly, there was no equipment and instruments there, and importing them would have been too expensive - it would have been cheaper to burn down Dikson, evaporate the village of Drovyanoy and destroy Norilsk. And secondly, Antarctica was an international territory, and, as they say, the international community would not allow an explosion there.
It’s a pity, but they decided to halve the bomb charge so as not to evacuate the population and equipment of the named cities. The bomb body remained the same, but the charge was halved.
There was another reason. A third stage explosion involving fission of uranium-238 would result in extremely high levels of radioactive contamination, which would make it necessary to evict the entire North, and not only the North. Therefore, about 2 tons of uranium-238 in the third stage were replaced with approximately the same amount of lead. This reduced the estimated total yield of the explosion from more than 100 megatons to 51.5 megatons. Looking ahead, we note that the actual power turned out to be even higher than the calculated one and reached 58 megatons.
What kind of power is this? If such a bomb were detonated over Moscow, then Moscow would simply disappear. Its center would evaporate (namely, it would not collapse, but evaporate), and the rest would turn into small rubble among a gigantic fire. Just as the center of New York would evaporate along with all its skyscrapers. That is, from huge cities there would be a melted smooth surface with a diameter of twenty kilometers, surrounded by small debris and ash.
Test of "Kuzka's Mother"
To deliver the bomb, a Tu-95B turboprop bomber was adapted, in which the bomb bay doors were removed: with its mass of 26.5 tons, including a parachute system weighing 0.8 tons, the dimensions of the bomb turned out to be O Larger than the size of the bomb bay - 8 meters in length and 2.5 meters in diameter. A second Tu-16 laboratory aircraft was also prepared for testing, which contained instruments and cameramen. The planes were coated with special reflective white paint.The bomb was transported from Arzamas-16, where it was assembled, by special train. The train changed direction several times along the way, making wild discounts so that in principle it would be impossible to determine from which station it departed.
At Olenya station everything was ready. The bomb was placed on a heavy-duty vehicle trailer and, under heavy security, with cover vehicles in front and behind, was delivered to a military airfield in a special building.
Marshal, Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR, Commander-in-Chief arrived for the tests missile forces Kirill Moskalenko and Minister of Medium Engineering Efim Slavsky. They specially flew in from Moscow, where they participated in the XXII Congress of the CPSU.
With great precautions, the bomb was suspended from the belly of the Tu-95 using a powerful lift.
All is ready.
Bomb development team member Yuri Smirnov says:
“A mighty roar was heard, and the Tu-95, running heavily along the seemingly endless concrete strip, followed by the Tu-16, rose into the gray, low, overcast sky. We were told that escort fighters soon joined the planes heading for Novaya Zemlya. Once again we found ourselves in the grip of anticipation...
Several people gathered in the room where the State Commission had met the day before. We exchanged humorous remarks. But it seems that everyone was overcome by a poorly concealed tension. From time to time there was news that communication with the pilots was normal and everything was going according to schedule. The critical moment was approaching... There was a message that in given point the bomb separated from the plane, the parachute opened, and the crews left the area of the impending explosion...
Finally they told us that at 11:33 am. Moscow time, communication with the crews and observation points for the experiment was completely interrupted. This meant: the explosion took place.”
The head of the bomb development group, Andrei Sakharov, writes in his Memoirs:
“On the day of the “powerful” test, I was sitting in my office near the telephone, waiting for news from the test site. Early in the morning Pavlov called (a high-ranking KGB official supervising the tests, in fact the head of the tests) and reported that the carrier aircraft was already flying over Barents Sea towards the landfill. Nobody was able to work. Theorists were milling around the corridor, coming in and out of my office. At 12 o'clock Pavlov called. In a triumphant voice he shouted:
There is no communication with the test site or with the plane for more than an hour! Congratulations on the victory!
The meaning of the phrase about communication was that a powerful explosion creates radio interference, throwing up great amount ionized particles. The duration of the communication disruption qualitatively characterizes the power of the explosion. After another half hour, Pavlov reported that the height of the cloud was 60 kilometers (or 100 kilometers? Now, 26 years later, I can’t remember the exact number).”
The correct number is about 67 kilometers.
Test details
The TU-95 aircraft was flown by pilots: ship commander A.E. Durnovtsev, navigator I.N. Klesch, flight engineer V.Ya. Brui. The bomber took off from Olenya airfield and headed for Novaya Zemlya.
The main problem was that the bomber had time to leave the affected area before the bomb exploded. The bomb was detonated at an altitude of 4.2 kilometers, and dropped from a height limit for the TU-95 - 10.5 kilometers. The parachutes opened almost immediately, but the bomb flew down quickly at first (due to the low air density), then its speed began to slow down. In total, the crew had 188 seconds left. The plane, descending and with its engines afterburning at the maximum available speed of about 800 km per hour (these were subsonic bombers), began to move away from the bomb drop site and managed to escape to a distance of 39 kilometers before the bomb exploded. The flash of the explosion, which lasted about a minute, filled the cabin with a blinding white light - the crew put on dark glasses in advance. The temperature on the plane rose. The plane quickly continued to leave, but the shock wave overtook it even faster. And it caught up when the plane flew 115 kilometers. This happened 8 minutes 20 seconds after the nuclear charge was dropped. At the moment of the explosion, a bright flash appeared that lasted about a minute. A white and red fireball grew from behind. That was the real dawn of communism. The shock wave threw the plane down, up, down again. But everything worked out, although the crew received a still classified dose of radiation. It was a monstrous atomic mushroom, never before seen by any earthling...
The commander of the second Tu-16 laboratory aircraft, who managed to escape 205 km when the shock wave arrived, was ordered to return to the mushroom and carry out detailed surveys and measurements. But the closer the plane flew, the greater the horror that gripped the crew. Orange whirlwinds rushed ahead, huge lightning flashed, the mushroom quickly went into the stratosphere and expanded. A giant fiery tornado awaited them, most similar to the entrance to the “fiery Gehenna.” The commander did not dare to approach even closer and turned back, not following the order of the party to come close to the cloud. The Tu-95 commander Andrei Durnovtsev would have done it.
I once had a neighbor in Minsk (or rather, his parents were neighbors) named Volodya, who served at the Novaya Zemlya training ground. Once a year he came to his parents on vacation and told me over a bottle his impressions of testing nuclear bombs. Heavy pack ice up to 2 meters thick evaporated in an area fifteen to twenty kilometers in diameter (and it should be taken into account that the explosions were carried out not over the ocean, but over land). Packs of white foam floated on the surface of the water. The testers themselves sat a couple of hundred kilometers away in underground bunkers, and then they were thrown up there, and a low-frequency powerful roar was heard, which chilled the heart, and thoughts about the end of the world naturally came to mind. “At these moments,” Volodya said, “many uttered some words like “Lord, carry me through and save.” But everyone there was atheists, Komsomol members and party members.” There is nothing left of the tanks, buildings and other equipment abandoned for the sake of the experiment closer than 30 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion...
The Nenets, who were resettled 500 kilometers away during the testing of the Tsar Bomb, saw a bright flash in the sky, then they heard a powerful roar and rumble that they had never heard before. Nenets old people (and old people are considered to be those who manage to live to be 50 years old) said that this roar was made by the local evil spirit Omol, trying to free himself from an underground jug. Local party bodies were instructed not to dissuade them of this error and not to fight the remnants of shamanism in the Nenets tundra.
And then for many days something like the Northern Lights blazed in the sky. The deer that were closer than 500 kilometers from the epicenter lost their fur and died. Rumor has it that less than half of the 15 million herd remains. Again everything was blamed on the wrath of the Nenets unconscious god.
This is how the operators who were on both planes describe this flight.
“It’s scary to fly, one might say, on horseback.” hydrogen bomb! Will it work? Although it is on fuses, but still... And there will be no molecule left! Unbridled power in her, and what! Zero! Below the plane and somewhere in the distance, the clouds are illuminated by a powerful flash. This is illumination! Behind the hatch, a sea of light just spread out, an ocean of light, and even layers of clouds were highlighted, revealed... At that moment our plane came out between two layers of clouds, and there, in this gap, from below, a huge ball-bubble of light orange color appeared ! He, like Jupiter - powerful, confident, self-satisfied - slowly, silently creeps up... Breaking through the seemingly hopeless clouds, he grew, grew larger and larger. Behind him, as if into a funnel, the whole Earth seemed to be drawn in. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal... at least unearthly.”
Another cameraman saw a powerful white flash above the horizon, and after a long interval he felt a dull, heavy blow: “A-ahhh! It’s like they killed the Earth!” - he wrote.
Then, some time after the explosion, they filmed the area of the center of the explosion, the place where the fireball of the explosion (“fireball”) reached a diameter of about 10 km: “The surface of the island was so melted, swept away and licked that not the surface became a skating rink ! There are no traces of any irregularities... We film directly from the air, while circling and hovering... This is the epicenter. The thermonuclear rage raged over this point. Everything has been swept away, licked, cleaned, everything has been melted and blown!”
The Tsar Bomb effect
On the last day of the party congress, Nikita Sergeevich shone like a polished copper basin. Communists do not waste words. The delegates were delighted. Here it is, a visible sign of communism, the program for the construction of which by 1980 was adopted at the 22nd Congress. Communism cannot be combined with outdated capitalism. They said we’ll bury it, so that’s what will happen. Well, with an amendment, we won’t bury it, but burn it in a crematorium. It's more modern.
On the stage, two “satirical” coupletists Shurov and Rykunin sang cheerfully: “One hundred million tons of TNT, that was enough for us, so that Kondrashka would grab them!” The audience was delighted...
It’s interesting that even now 90 percent of all comments from “ordinary users” about the anniversary of the bomb are filled with pride for the accomplishment, oh, how they were afraid of us then, but now it’s all about... well.
A 20-minute film about the creation of a 50-megaton bomb, its preparation and testing was later shown to the country's top leadership. The film concluded with the narration: “Based on even the most preliminary data, it became obvious that the explosion produced was a record-breaking force.”
The jubilant voice of the announcer lists the deadly effects of the explosion: “The flash was seen at a distance of up to 1000 km, and the shock wave circled the Earth three times! The sound wave generated by the explosion reached Dikson Island and was heard as a strong rumble at a distance of about 800 kilometers. For the first time in the world such enormous power!..” The announcer's voice trembled with happiness.
After the test, the newspaper Pravda said its word of peace: “50 megatons is yesterday’s day for atomic weapons. Now even more powerful charges have been created.”
They were not created, but the project actually contained a 150 megaton bomb.
In fact, and theorists understood this well, neither the 100 megaton nor the 50 megaton bombs were and could not be weapons. It was a single product for political pressure and intimidation.
Yes, they had an undeniable political impact. It was under the terrifying effect of the explosion that Khrushchev gave the order to bring missiles to Cuba, which led to the most serious crisis in all the millennia of civilization. The world was on the verge of the Third World Thermonuclear War.
“Kuzka’s Mother” clearly advanced negotiations on a ban on testing atomic weapons in the atmosphere and under water - the damage to the environment, as well as to the living conditions of people and their equipment from such experiments became obvious even to outstanding peace activists. This agreement was signed in 1963.
In general, Khrushchev no longer risked exploding the Tsar Bomba. Instead, they began to show Academician Mstislav Keldysh, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who scientifically repeated that Soviet science works exclusively for the good of the world.
Andrey Sakharov
Report on successful test Andrei Sakharov was the first to sign the “products”. At the end of the report there was the phrase: “The successful test result of this product opens up the possibility of designing a product of practically unlimited power.”
And then, inspired by success, Sakharov had a conversation with the head of the 6th Directorate Navy engineer-vice admiral Fomin Pyotr Fomich. He was a major boss and a significant figure: he was in charge of all naval nuclear weapons, and the nuclear test site on Novaya Zemlya was subordinate to him. Sakharov shared his secrets with Admiral Fomin. Academician, three times hero of socialist labor Sakharov, came up with a way to effectively deliver a super-powerful charge, albeit 1000 megatons, to a target. He proposed launching a charge on a large torpedo, brought to the enemy’s shores by submarine. And there, off the coast, to explode. Such a charge raises giant wave, which covers the coastal city. Sakharov wrote: “He (Fomin) was shocked by the “cannibalistic nature” of the project and noticed in a conversation with me that military sailors were accustomed to fighting an armed enemy in open battle and that the very thought of such a thing is disgusting to him mass murder. I was ashamed and never discussed this project with anyone again.”
Judging by the chronology, it was this reaction of Fomin that became the starting point, the impetus for the academician’s increasing repentance. The creation of deadly weapons, the apotheosis of which was the “Tsar Bomba” and the idea of an underwater explosion of a very monstrous charge, became the impetus for his further human rights activities.
It seems, however, that the admiral, with such a gesture of peacefulness, simply turned the academician away from a fruitful idea. An underwater nuclear explosion is exactly his department! So, he should offer it to him. This is exactly what happened later. Fortunately, calculations and experiments showed that nothing would have come of this idea.
At the beginning of the “atomic age,” the United States and the Soviet Union entered into a race not only in the number of atomic bombs, but also in their power.
USSR, which acquired atomic weapons later than a competitor, sought to level the situation by creating more advanced and more powerful devices.
The development of a thermonuclear device codenamed “Ivan” was started in the mid-1950s by a group of physicists led by Academician Kurchatov. The team involved in this project included Andrey Sakharov,Victor Adamsky, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Trunov And Yuri Smirnov.
During research work scientists also tried to find the limits of the maximum power of a thermonuclear explosive device.
Design research lasted for several years, and the final stage of development of “product 602” occurred in 1961 and took 112 days.
The AN602 bomb had a three-stage design: the first stage nuclear charge (calculated contribution to the explosion power was 1.5 megatons) launched thermonuclear reaction in the second stage (contribution to the explosion power - 50 megatons), and it, in turn, initiated the so-called nuclear “Jekyll-Hyde reaction” (nuclear fission in uranium-238 blocks under the influence of fast neutrons generated as a result of the thermonuclear fusion reaction) in the third stage (another 50 megatons of power), so that the total calculated power of AN602 was 101.5 megatons.
However, the initial option was rejected, since in this form the bomb explosion would have caused extremely powerful radiation contamination (which, however, according to calculations, would still have been seriously inferior to that caused by much less powerful American devices).
"Product 602"
As a result, it was decided not to use the “Jekyll-Hyde reaction” in the third stage of the bomb and to replace the uranium components with their lead equivalent. This reduced the estimated total power of the explosion by almost half (to 51.5 megatons).
Another limitation for the developers was the capabilities of aircraft. The first version of a bomb weighing 40 tons was rejected by aircraft designers from the Tupolev Design Bureau - the carrier aircraft would not be able to deliver such a cargo to the target.
As a result, the parties reached a compromise - nuclear scientists reduced the weight of the bomb by half, and aviation designers were preparing a special modification of the Tu-95 bomber for it - the Tu-95V.
It turned out that it would not be possible to place a charge in the bomb bay under any circumstances, so the Tu-95V had to carry the AN602 to the target on a special external sling.
In fact, the carrier aircraft was ready in 1959, but nuclear physicists were instructed not to speed up work on the bomb - just at that moment there were signs of a decrease in tension in international relations in the world.
At the beginning of 1961, however, the situation worsened again, and the project was revived.
Time for “Mother Kuzma”
The final weight of the bomb including the parachute system was 26.5 tons. The product had several names at once - “Big Ivan”, “Tsar Bomba” and “Kuzka’s Mother”. The latter stuck to the bomb after the speech of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in front of the Americans, in which he promised to show them “Kuzka’s mother.”
What the Soviet Union is planning in soon to test a super-powerful thermonuclear charge, Khrushchev spoke quite openly to foreign diplomats in 1961. On October 17, 1961, the Soviet leader announced the upcoming tests in a report at the XXII Party Congress.
The test site was determined to be the Sukhoi Nos test site on Novaya Zemlya. Preparations for the explosion were completed in late October 1961.
The Tu-95B carrier aircraft was based at the airfield in Vaenga. Here, in a special room, final preparations for testing were carried out.
On the morning of October 30, 1961, the crew pilot Andrei Durnovtsev received an order to fly to the test site area and drop a bomb.
Taking off from the airfield in Vaenga, the Tu-95B reached its design point two hours later. The bomb was dropped from a parachute system from a height of 10,500 meters, after which the pilots immediately began to move the car away from the dangerous area.
At 11:33 Moscow time, an explosion was carried out at an altitude of 4 km above the target.
There was Paris - and there is no Paris
The power of the explosion significantly exceeded the calculated one (51.5 megatons) and ranged from 57 to 58.6 megatons in TNT equivalent.
Witnesses of the test say that they have never seen anything like this in their lives. The nuclear mushroom of the explosion rose to a height of 67 kilometers, the light radiation could potentially cause third-degree burns at a distance of up to 100 kilometers.
Observers reported that at the epicenter of the explosion, the rocks took a surprisingly flat shape, and the ground turned into some kind of military parade ground. Complete destruction was achieved over an area equal to the territory of Paris.
Ionization of the atmosphere caused radio interference even hundreds of kilometers from the test site for about 40 minutes. The lack of radio communication convinced the scientists that the tests went as well as possible. The shock wave resulting from the explosion of the Tsar Bomba circled the globe three times. The sound wave generated by the explosion reached Dikson Island at a distance of about 800 kilometers.
Despite the heavy clouds, witnesses saw the explosion even at a distance of thousands of kilometers and could describe it.
Radioactive contamination from the explosion turned out to be minimal, as the developers had planned - more than 97% of the explosion power was provided by the thermonuclear fusion reaction, which practically did not create radioactive contamination.
This allowed scientists to begin studying the test results on the experimental field within two hours after the explosion.
Sakharov’s “cannibalistic” project
The explosion of the Tsar Bomba really made an impression on the whole world. She turned out to be more powerful than the most powerful American bomb four times.
There was a theoretical possibility of creating even more powerful charges, but it was decided to abandon the implementation of such projects.
Oddly enough, the main skeptics turned out to be the military. From their point of view, such weapons had no practical meaning. How do you order him to be delivered to the “den of the enemy”? The USSR already had missiles, but they were unable to fly to America with such a load.
Strategic bombers were also unable to fly to the United States with such “luggage.” In addition, they became easy targets for air defense systems.
Atomic scientists turned out to be much more enthusiastic. Plans were put forward to place several super-bombs with a capacity of 200-500 megatons off the coast of the United States, the explosion of which was supposed to cause a giant tsunami that would wash away America in the literal sense of the word.
Academician Andrei Sakharov, future human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, put forward a different plan. “The carrier could be a large torpedo launched from a submarine. I fantasized that it was possible to develop a direct-flow water-steam nuclear power plant for such a torpedo. jet engine. The target of an attack from a distance of several hundred kilometers should be enemy ports. A war at sea is lost if the ports are destroyed, the sailors assure us of this. The body of such a torpedo can be very durable; it will not be afraid of mines and barrage nets. Of course, the destruction of ports - both by a surface explosion of a torpedo with a 100-megaton charge that “jumped out” of the water, and by an underwater explosion - is inevitably associated with very large casualties,” the scientist wrote in his memoirs.
Sakharov spoke about his idea Vice Admiral Pyotr Fomin. An experienced sailor, who headed the “atomic department” under the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, was horrified by the scientist’s plan, calling the project “cannibalistic.” According to Sakharov, he was ashamed and never returned to this idea.
Scientists and military personnel received generous awards for the successful testing of the Tsar Bomba, but the very idea of super-powerful thermonuclear charges began to become a thing of the past.
Nuclear weapons designers focused on things less spectacular, but much more effective.
And the explosion of the “Tsar Bomba” to this day remains the most powerful of those ever produced by humanity.
From Hiroshima to Kazakhstan
In 1943, the United States began implementing the Manhattan Project to create the first weapon of mass destruction in history - the atomic bomb. On July 16, 1945, the Americans conducted their first test at the Alamogordo test site in New Mexico, and on August 6 and 9 they dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around this time, the USSR began developing its own nuclear weapons.
The first tests of a Soviet nuclear bomb took place in August 1949 in the Semipalatinsk region of the Kazakh SSR. The explosion power of the RDS-1 bomb was 22 kilotons of TNT. In the 1950s, both superpowers began developing a thermonuclear device several times more powerful than an atomic bomb. From 1952 to 1954, first the USA and then the USSR tested such devices. The energy release during the explosion of the American Castle Bravo was 15 thousand kilotons of TNT equivalent. The first Soviet hydrogen bomb RDS-6s was several thousand times inferior in performance to its competitor from the United States.
Spy Powers
By the end of the 1950s, the superpowers were trying to agree on mutual disarmament. However, neither the negotiations between the leaders of the USSR and the USA, nor the discussion of this issue at the XIV and XV sessions General Assembly The UN (1959-1960) did not bring results.
The aggravation of the confrontation between the USA and the USSR was predetermined by a number of events. Firstly, both powers were haunted by the issue related to the status of West Berlin. The USSR was not happy that European countries and the United States stationed its troops in this sector. Nikita Khrushchev demanded the demilitarization of West Berlin. The countries planned to discuss this issue at the Paris Conference in May 1960, but the events of May 1 prevented this. On that day, an American reconnaissance aircraft, piloted by Francis Powers, Once again violated USSR airspace. The pilot’s task was to photograph military enterprises, including those related to the nuclear industry. Powers' plane was shot down over Sverdlovsk by a surface-to-air missile.
Subsequent events of the summer of 1961 - the construction of the Berlin Wall and the American military intervention in Cuba to overthrow the socialist regime of Fidel Castro - led to the fact that on August 31, 1961 soviet government decided to resume nuclear weapons testing.
"We will have a bomb"
The development of thermonuclear weapons in the USSR has been carried out since 1954 under the leadership of Igor Kurchatov and a group of physicists: Andrei Sakharov, Viktor Adamsky, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Smirnov, Yuri Trutnev and others. By 1959, preparations for the test were completed, but Nikita Khrushchev ordered the launch to be postponed - he hoped to improve relations with the United States. As the events of 1959-1961 showed, Western countries and the American leadership did not want to meet each other halfway. The USSR decided to resume preparations for weapons testing. The power of the created AN602 bomb reached 100 megatons. In the West, due to its enormous size and power, it was nicknamed the Tsar Bomba. She was also known as Kuzka’s mother - this name was associated with the famous expression of Nikita Khrushchev, who, at a meeting with US Vice President Richard Nixon, promised to show Kuzka’s mother to the West. The bomb did not have an official name. The creators of the thermonuclear device themselves designated it with the code word “Ivan” or simply “product B.”
They decided to conduct the tests at the test site of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, and the bomb itself was assembled at the secret security enterprise Arzamas-16. On July 10, 1961, one of the developers of the bomb, Andrei Sakharov, sent a note to Khrushchev in which he noted that the resumption of nuclear tests threatened to escalate the conflict and would bury the idea of a treaty on mutual renunciation of nuclear tests. Khrushchev did not agree with the academician and insisted on continuing preparations for the tests.
On September 8, 1961, the first reports of an impending explosion appeared in the American newspaper The New York Times. Nikita Khrushchev stated:
“Let those who dream of new aggression know that we will have a bomb equal in power to 100 million tons of trinitrotoluene, that we already have such a bomb and all we have to do is test an explosive device for it.”
- A copy of the “Tsar Bomba”, presented at the exhibition “70 years of the nuclear industry. Chain reaction of success"
- RIA News
“We will not detonate such a bomb”
During September and the first half of October, final preparations for testing the bomb were made in Arzamas-16. At the XXII Congress of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev announced a reduction in the power of the bomb by half - to 50 megatons:
“...I would like to say that our tests of new nuclear weapons are also progressing very successfully. We will complete these tests soon. Apparently at the end of October. Finally, we will probably detonate a hydrogen bomb with a capacity of 50 million tons of TNT. We said that we have a bomb of 100 million tons of TNT. And that's true. But we will not detonate such a bomb, because if we detonate it even in the most remote places, then even then we can break out our windows.”
At the same time, preparations were underway for the carrier aircraft. Due to its size - about 8 meters in length and 2 meters in diameter - the bomb did not fit into the Tu-95. In order to still place it on the plane, the designers cut out part of the Tu-95 body and installed a special mount in it. Even so, the bomb was half sticking out of the plane. In the 20th of October, a thermonuclear device was delivered under conditions of strict secrecy from Arzamas-16 to the Olenya airbase on Kola Peninsula, where she was loaded onto a Tu-95.
“The bomb was unusually large”
On the morning of October 30, two planes took off from the airbase towards Novaya Zemlya: a Tu-95, the carrier of the Tsar Bomb, and a Tu-16 laboratory plane, which carried documentary filmmakers. The bomb weighed more than 26 tons (its own weight with a parachute), which caused certain difficulties during its transportation. Victor Adamsky recalled:
“Inside the bomb, a worker was sitting up to his chest and soldering something, I had an involuntary comparison with a pilot in a fighter plane - the bomb was so unusually large. Its dimensions amazed the imagination of the designers.”
Two hours after takeoff, the bomb was dropped at an altitude of approximately 10 thousand meters within nuclear test site Dry Nose. At 11:33 Moscow time, when parachute system dropped to a height of 4.2 thousand meters, the bomb was detonated. A blinding flash followed, and the stem of a nuclear mushroom rose up. The seismic wave from the explosion circled the globe three times. In 40 seconds, the mushroom grew to 30 km, and then grew to 67 km. The carrier aircraft was at that moment approximately 45 km from the drop site. The impact of the light pulse was felt 270 km from the explosion point. Residential buildings in nearby villages were destroyed. Radio communication was lost hundreds of kilometers from the test site. One of the bomb developers, Yuri Trutnev, recalled this:
"They were leaving last seconds before the explosion... And suddenly communication with the aircraft crew and ground testing services completely stopped. This was a sign that the bomb had gone off. But no one knew exactly what really happened. We had to go through a long 40 minutes of anxiety and anticipation.”
“The spectacle was fantastic”
Only after the planes returned safely to base was the information confirmed that the thermonuclear device had worked. One of the cameramen on board the Tu-16 recalled:
“It’s scary to fly, one might say, on top of a hydrogen bomb! Will it work? Although it is on fuses, but still... And there will be no molecule left! Unbridled power in her, and what! The flight time to the target is not very long, but it drags on... The bomb went and sank in a gray-white mess. Immediately the doors slammed shut. Pilots in afterburner move away from the drop site... Zero! Below the plane and somewhere in the distance, the clouds are illuminated by a powerful flash. This is illumination! Behind the hatch, a sea of light simply spilled out, an ocean of light, and even layers of clouds were highlighted and revealed. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal... at least unearthly.”
The scientists involved in the development of the Tsar Bomb were well aware that it would not be used for military purposes. Testing a device of such power was nothing more than a political action. Yuliy Khariton, chief designer and scientific director of Arzamas-16, noted:
“Still, it was felt that this was more of a demonstration than the beginning of the use of such powerful nuclear devices. Undoubtedly, Khrushchev wanted to show: the Soviet Union is well versed in the design of nuclear weapons and is the owner of the most powerful charge in the world. It was more a political than a technical action."
The Tsar Bomba had a stunning effect on the leadership of many countries. It remains the most powerful explosive device in history. Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda sent a telegram to Nikita Khrushchev, where he told him of the indescribable horror and shock this event plunged him into. In the United States, the day after the explosion, an issue of The New York Times newspaper was published, which said that with such actions the Soviet Union wanted to plunge American society into horror and panic.
On August 5, 1963, the USSR, USA and Great Britain signed a treaty in Moscow banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, outer space and under water.
Eduard Epstein
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