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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.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2022) |
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 Mark 8 was a gun-type nuclear bomb, which rapidly assembles several critical masses of fissile nuclear material by firing a fissile projectile or "bullet" over and around a fissile "target", using a system which closely resembles a medium-sized cannon barrel and propellant.
The Mark 8 was an early earth-penetrating bomb (see nuclear bunker buster), intended to dig into the earth some distance prior to detonating. According to one government source, the Mark 8 could penetrate 22 feet (6.7 m) of reinforced concrete, 90 feet (27 m) of hard sand, 120 feet (37 m) of clay, or 5 inches (13 cm) of hardened armor-plate steel. [1]
The Mark 8 was 14.5 inches (37 cm) in diameter across its body and 116 to 132 inches (290 to 340 cm) long depending on submodel. It weighed 3,230 to 3,280 pounds (1,470 to 1,490 kg), and had a yield of 25-30 kilotons.
A total of 40 Mark 8 bombs were produced.
The Mark 8 was succeeded by an improved variant, the Mark 11 nuclear bomb. Both the Mark 8 and the Mark 11 could use the same fissile material "gun cores." [2]
The Mark 8 was considered as a cratering warhead for the SSM-N-8 Regulus cruise missile. This W8 variant was cancelled in 1955.
A lighter Mark 8 variant, the Mark 10 nuclear bomb, was developed as a lightweight airburst (surface target) bomb. The Mark 10 project was cancelled prior to introduction into service, replaced by the much more fissile-material-efficient Mark 12 nuclear bomb implosion design.
"Fat Man" was the type of nuclear weapon the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second and largest 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. The first one was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium manufactured at the Hanford Site and was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.
Little Boy was a type of atomic bomb created by the United States as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. The name is also often used to describe the specific bomb (L-11) used in the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay on 6 August 1945, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, and the second nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test. It exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ) and had an explosion radius of approximately 1.3 kilometres (0.81 mi) which caused widespread death across the city. It was a gun-type fission weapon which used uranium that had been enriched in the isotope uranium-235 to power its explosive reaction.
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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.
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