The bomb weighed 27 tons, was 26 ft long, had a diameter of 7 ft and a blasting force of 50 megatons (compared to the 15 kiloton detonation above Hiroshima). The bomb, known to the Soviet's as Tu-95, was released at 34,000 feet above Mityushikha bay, a Soviet weapons testing site. Two Tu-16 bombers were assigned to the task one in order to drop the payload itself and a second smaller bomber was tasked with photographing the ensuing blast. The parachute given to the payload weighed one ton and was expected to slow down the bomb enough to give the bombers a 50 percent chance of surviving the blast from 30 miles away. The payload detonated at 11:32 Moscow time and its effects were catastrophic. The bomb created a 5-mile wide fireball incinerating and instantly killing anything within this range. The mushroom cloud extended 40 miles high and nearly 63 miles across. The flash from the bomb was visible from more than 630 miles away. Soviet Villages more than 100 miles away experienced the shockwave as windows shattered and roofs collapsed. An eyewitness from the blast stated, "The clouds beneath the aircraft and in the distance were lit up by the powerful flash. The sea of light spread under the hatch and even clouds began to glow and became transparent. At that moment, our aircraft emerged from between two cloud layers and down below in the gap a huge bright orange ball was emerging. The ball was powerful and arrogant like Jupiter. Slowly and silently it crept upwards... Having broken through the thick layer of clouds it kept growing. It seemed to suck the whole Earth into it. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural."
All in all the bomb demonstrated that the next great war might be the last. And posted a new question, should humanity be allowed to have such destructive capability?
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170816-the-monster-atomic-bomb-that-was-too-big-to-use
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/castandea1/
location of blast
photograph from bomber
Very interesting read. This bomb is truly terrifying and its shear magnitude makes me want to learn all about it. Imagine being the bomber that had to drop this. It would be terrifying.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your description of the extent of the destruction - to think that villages 100 miles away would still experience those destructive effects! Another description I found that gives the sense of scale is
ReplyDelete"If such a weapon exploded in a large American city such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Washington, D.C., their metropolitan areas plus large portions of their surrounding suburbs would be completely destroyed and nearly devoid of all life" (Atomic Heritage).
Considering the description of villages suffering from the shockwave, I wonder what the public reaction would have been. Perhaps, for example, the fear the Russian people themselves were put in was too great for them to protest, or maybe this fear told them that such drastic testing was necessary. Both sides' civilian population must have become victims in this respective testing.
source quoted: https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/tsar-bomba (forgot to use this in original comment)
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the immorality of military inventions with such destructive power. The fact that Soviet villages had to suffer from the impact of the bomb not only demonstrated the ruthlessness of the administration to not have ensured the complete safety of this test detonation, but also their unquenchable desire to develop the world's largest bomb. I am sure technology today is capable of amplifying this damage; an example being kinetic bombardment. I think it would be an interesting blog topic to explore current military technology that may be even more destructive or in any aspect more unethical than the hydrogen bomb.
ReplyDeleteThis was really interesting to read and shocking to know that this bomb exists and could be used at any time.
ReplyDeleteThis post was very interesting as it showed just how powerful the Soviet Union had become with their nuclear arsenal. After reading about all the destruction, it's interesting to note how some of the creators reacted to this initial test. Andrei Sakharov, one of the creators of the Tsar Bomba, realized how dangerous these nuclear tests could become and advocated for the 1963 Partial Test Ban. He saw that if nuclear tests continued like this one, they could cause a global fallout and endanger the entire world. The Tsar Bomba truly was a terrifying weapon, which scared even the creators.
ReplyDeleteSource: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170816-the-monster-atomic-bomb-that-was-too-big-to-use