The Mark 10 nuclear bomb was a proposed American nuclear bomb based on the earlier Mark 8 nuclear bomb design. The Mark 10, like the Mark 8, is a Gun-type nuclear weapon, which rapidly assembles several critical masses of fissile nuclear material by firing a fissile projectile or "bullet" over a fissile "target", using a system which closely resembles a medium-sized cannon barrel and propellant.
The Mark 10 was intended to be a general purpose airburst nuclear weapon, unlike the Mark 8 which was intended to penetrate into the ground as a Nuclear bunker buster. It was nicknamed the "Airburst Elsie"; the Mark 8 had been nicknamed the LC or Light Casing bomb, which was then expanded to "Elsie." The bomb was 12 inches (30cm) in diameter and weighed 1,500 or 1,750 pounds (680 or 790kg).[1] It had a design yield of 12 to 15 kilotons.
The Mark 10 design was cancelled in 1952, replaced by the implosion-type Mark 12 which was lighter and used considerably less fissile material.
"Fat Man" was the codename for the type of nuclear weapon the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. It was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from the Hanford Site, and was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.
Little Boy was the name of the type of atomic bomb used in the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. The bomb was dropped by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group, and Captain Robert A. Lewis. It exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ) and caused widespread death and destruction throughout the city. The Hiroshima bombing was the second nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test.
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion reactions, producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.
Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package of a nuclear weapon to detonate. There are three existing basic design types:
Yellow Sun was the first British operational high-yield strategic nuclear weapon warhead. The name refers only to the outer casing; the warhead was known as "Green Grass" in Yellow Sun Mk.1 and "Red Snow" in Yellow Sun Mk.2.
A boosted fission weapon usually refers to a type of nuclear bomb that uses a small amount of fusion fuel to increase the rate, and thus yield, of a fission reaction. The neutrons released by the fusion reactions add to the neutrons released due to fission, allowing for more neutron-induced fission reactions to take place. The rate of fission is thereby greatly increased such that much more of the fissile material is able to undergo fission before the core explosively disassembles. The fusion process itself adds only a small amount of energy to the process, perhaps 1%.
The W54 was a tactical nuclear warhead developed by the United States in the late 1950s. The weapon is notable for being the smallest nuclear weapon in both weight and yield to have entered US service. It was a compact implosion device containing plutonium-239 as its fissile material, and in its various versions and mods it had a yield of 10 to 1,000 tons of TNT.
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits. Characteristics of nuclear fusion reactions make possible the use of non-fissile depleted uranium as the weapon's main fuel, thus allowing more efficient use of scarce fissile material such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239. The first full-scale thermonuclear test was carried out by the United States in 1952; the concept has since been employed by most of the world's nuclear powers in the design of their weapons.
Gun-type fission weapons are fission-based nuclear weapons whose design assembles their fissile material into a supercritical mass by the use of the "gun" method: shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another. Although this is sometimes pictured as two sub-critical hemispheres driven together to make a supercritical sphere, typically a hollow projectile is shot onto a spike, which fills the hole in its center. Its name is a reference to the fact that it is shooting the material through an artillery barrel as if it were a projectile.
"Thin Man" was the code name for a proposed plutonium gun-type nuclear bomb that the United States was developing during the Manhattan Project. Its development was abandoned when it was discovered that the spontaneous fission rate of nuclear reactor-bred plutonium was too high for use in a gun-type design due to the high concentration of the isotope plutonium-240 in the plutonium produced at the Clinton Engineer Works.
The Mark 5 nuclear bomb and W5 nuclear warhead were a common core American nuclear weapon design, designed in the early 1950s and which saw service from 1952 to 1963.
The Mark 4 nuclear bomb was an American implosion-type nuclear bomb based on the earlier Mark 3 Fat Man design, used in the Trinity test and the bombing of Nagasaki. With the Mark 3 needing each individual component to be hand-assembled by only highly trained technicians under closely controlled conditions, the purpose of the Mark 4 was to produce an atomic weapon as a practical piece of ordnance. The Mark 4 Mod 0 entered the stockpile starting March 19, 1949 and was in use until 1953. With over 500 units procured, the Mark 4 was the first mass-produced nuclear weapon.
The Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) was a proposed new American nuclear warhead design and bomb family that was intended to be simple, reliable and to provide a long-lasting, low-maintenance future nuclear force for the United States. Initiated by the United States Congress in 2004, it became a centerpiece of the plans of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to remake the nuclear weapons complex.
The Mark 18 nuclear bomb, also known as the SOB or Super Oralloy Bomb, was an American nuclear bomb design which was the highest yield fission bomb produced by the US. The Mark 18 had a design yield of 500 kilotons. Nuclear weapon designer Ted Taylor was the lead designer for the Mark 18.
The Mark 8 nuclear bomb was an American nuclear bomb, designed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, which was in service from 1952 to 1957.
The W33 was an American nuclear artillery shell designed for use in the 8-inch (203 mm) M110 howitzer and M115 howitzer.
The Mark 11 nuclear bomb was an American nuclear bomb developed from the earlier Mark 8 nuclear bomb in the mid-1950s. Like the Mark 8, the Mark 11 was an earth-penetrating weapon, also known as a nuclear bunker buster bomb.
The Mark 105 Hotpoint was an airdropped nuclear bomb developed for the United States Navy using the 11 kiloton W34 warhead. It was developed in the 1950s as the first nuclear bomb purposely designed for laydown delivery but could also be used for airburst or as a depth charge. The laydown mechanism utilized both a retarding parachute to slow its descent, a nose cone that is ejected by a small explosive charge prior to impact, and a reinforced steel "cookie cutter" nose that absorbs the shock of impact with the ground. Detonation occurred via a time delay system which could be adjusted depending on intended use. The bomb was 8 to 12 feet long depending on how it was carried, 19 inches (48 cm) in diameter, and weighed 1,700 pounds (770 kg). The bomb was deployed from 1958 to 1965.
John Coster-Mullen was an American industrial photographer, truck driver and nuclear archaeologist who played an important role in creating a public record of the design of the first atomic bombs. He is known for his critically-acclaimed self-published book Atom Bombs: The Top Secret, Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man.
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