![]() and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. Thankfully the bomb was never put into production.Ĭaleb Larson is a Defense Writer with The National Interest. ![]() Still, the Tsar Bomba did achieve one strategic objective for Moscow: shocking and surprising the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-and helped spur the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a moratorium on nuclear tests underwater, in space, and in the atmosphere. City-sized targets in the United States were just too far away for Soviet bombers to reach without extensive refueling support and modifications to airframes to carry and drop such massive payloads. Ultimately, it didn’t matter-the Tsar Bomba was much too large to ever be practical. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural.”ĭiplomatic fallout following the explosion was significant, especially from the United States and Scandinavian countries near the blast. It seemed to suck the whole earth into it. Having broken through the thick layer of clouds it kept growing. The ball was powerful and arrogant like Jupiter. 5800302, with the bomb took off from the Olenya airfield, and was flown to State. 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 Tsar Bomba was tested on October 30, 1961. The sea of light spread under the hatch and even clouds began to glow and became transparent. “The clouds beneath the aircraft and in the distance were lit up by the powerful flash. One of the camera operators in the observation plane gave the following hair-raising impression of the awesome explosion: Soldiers as far away as Norway could see the flash of the explosion, and radioactive fallout from the blast was widespread. The video states that the Tsar Bomba project broke the voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests. Richter scales around the world registered a 5.0 earthquake coming from the epicenter. Shortly after the explosion, a column of smoke and ash rose nearly forty miles into the sky. Though far enough away from the epicenter of the blast, their bomber lost about 1,000 meters in altitude after getting caught in the shockwave. Despite these precautionary measures, the fate of the pilots was far from certain-they were given just a 50-50 chance of surviving the explosion.īut the pilots did survive. But a more popular name born out of Russian pride and a sheer awe sums it all up the Tsar Bomba, or the King of Bombs. off the coast of Severny Island near the Arctic Ocean and was called the Tsar Bomba, or Tsar Bomb. The delivery plane and an observation plane were painted anti-flash white to try and minimize damage to the airframe due to the intense light that the explosion would generate. The Central Intelligence Agency blandly dubbed the test Joe 111. In a nod to pilot safety, the bomb was equipped with a giant parachute that would slow its descent in an effort to give the crew to fly to safety. In late October 1961, a Soviet plane dropped Tsar Bomba, the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated.
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