Author: Hondo

Sixty-two years and two weeks ago, the world saw the demonstration of something completely new. It was a thing both awe-inspiring and terrifying.

 

On 1 November 1952 – at 0714:59.4 (+/- 0.2 sec) Marshall Islands Time Zone, or 1414:59.4 (+/- 0.2 sec) the previous day on the US East Coast – the world’s first staged (Ulam-Teller design) thermonuclear device was detonated.  The nuclear test series during which that test occurred was called Operation Ivy; it occurred at Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands.  The test itself was called Ivy Mike; it occurred on Elugelab Island.

The test was successful.  And it ushered in the height of the Cold War nuclear competition between the US and USSR that – one that nearly culminated in disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The event is today largely forgotten.  It shouldn’t be.  The destructive power of the Ivy Mike device – which at approximately 10.4 megatons was the third- fourth-most-powerful US nuclear device ever detonated, and still ranks today as one of the largest man-made explosions in history – is something we should remember.

A few facts about the test:

• The Ivy Mike test had an explosive yield equivalent to approximately 10.4 megatons – that is, 10,400,000 tons of TNT.  For comparison, the nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima had an estimated yield of between 13 and 18 kilotons – or between 575 and 800 times smaller.
• The Ivy Mike fireball was estimated to be approximately three and 1/4 miles in diameter. (Some sources estimate the fireball’s maximum extent at slightly more than 4 miles in diameter.)  In comparison, the fireball created the Hiroshima weapon was somewhat less than 1/4 mile in diameter.
• The nearby island of Engebi – three miles away from ground zero for Ivy Mike, and well outside the fireball – was denuded of plant and animal life by the blast.  Only the stumps of vegetation remained.
• Ground zero for the Ivy Mike test was a building on the island of Elugelab in Eniwetak Atoll. After the test, the island of Elugelab . . . no longer existed.  The entire island (roughly oval, about 1/2 by 1/3 mile) had been vaporized and/or pulverized, then sucked into the explosion’s fireball.  Remaining in its place was a crater over a mile in diameter and over 160 feet deep. Here are before and after aerial photographs:

Before:

After ( large arrow indicates crater):

• On the island of Rigili, 14 miles to the south-southeast, vegetation directly in the line-of-sight of the detonation was scorched and wilted on the side facing the explosion.
• A B-36 orbiting the test site 15 miles away at 40,000 feet altitude heated 93 degrees F virtually instantaneously when the device was detonated.
• The mushroom cloud created by the Mike device crested at 27 miles altitude. Its stem was 20 miles across at its maximum; the cloud’s cap at maximum extent was 100 miles in diameter.

While the device tested at Ivy Mike was not a deliverable warhead (it used liquid deuterium vice materials stable at room temperature), two years later a device of roughly the same power that was stable at room temperature had been developed.  By early 1955, the US had weaponized devices in the same yield range.  The USSR followed not long afterwards, exploding their first staged thermonuclear device on November 22, 1955.

Militarily, at the time there was at least a modest argument in favor of weapons of this immensely destructive scale.  Delivery systems of the early/mid 1950s were by today’s standards quite crude in terms of accuracy; getting a weapon within even a kilometer or two of a strategic target was not guaranteed.  So weapons that would destroy a strategic target even if they “missed” by a mile or more at least arguably made some amount of military sense.

Unfortunately, those strategic targets were often in or near cities – or were often the cities themselves.  We should thus thank God weapons of this type were never used.  Had they ever been employed, the death toll could literally have been in the tens or hundreds of millions had a significant number been employed.  Even a single such weapon used on a large city could have killed literally millions.

Still, as terrible as they could have been . . . they were also truly awe-inspiring things.  And we would do well to remember them – if for no other reason to remind ourselves just how bad total war could be.

 

Sources:  primarily Dark Sun, by Richard Rhodes, plus various secondary Internet sources.  If you’re interested in the history of both the US and Soviet thermonuclear programs, Rhodes’ book is a must.  Fascinating – and highly recommended.