 | 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.
| | 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.
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" is the codename for the type of nuclear bomb that was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki by the United States 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 it was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.
"Little Boy" was the codename for the type of atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II. It was 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 of the United States Army Air Forces 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 man-made nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test.
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. 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.
The Mk/B53 was a high-yield bunker buster thermonuclear weapon developed by the United States during the Cold War. Deployed on Strategic Air Command bombers, the B53, with a yield of 9 megatons, was the most powerful weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal after the last B41 nuclear bombs were retired in 1976.
The B28, originally Mark 28, was a thermonuclear bomb carried by U.S. tactical fighter bombers, attack aircraft and bomber aircraft. From 1962 to 1972 under the NATO nuclear weapons sharing program, American B28s also equipped six Europe-based Canadian CF-104 squadrons known as the RCAF Nuclear Strike Force. It was also supplied for delivery by UK-based Royal Air Force Valiant and Canberra aircraft assigned to NATO under the command of SACEUR. In addition, certain U.S. Navy carrier based attack aircraft such as the A3D Skywarrior, A4D Skyhawk, and A3J Vigilante were equipped to carry the B28.
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 size 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 had a yield of 10 to 1,000 tons of TNT.
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.
The W-71 nuclear warhead was a US thermonuclear warhead developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and deployed on the LIM-49A Spartan missile, a component of the Safeguard Program, an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense system briefly deployed by the US in the 1970s.
The W81 was a planned US warhead to be mounted on the SM-2 surface-to-air missile used by the US Navy. The W81 was believed to be derived from the B61 nuclear bomb which forms the backbone of the current US nuclear gravity bomb arsenal and from which the W80 cruise missile warhead is derived. The weapon was being designed at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The Mark-12 nuclear bomb was a lightweight nuclear bomb designed and manufactured by the United States which was built starting in 1954 and which saw service from then until 1962.
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 Mark 6 nuclear bomb was an American nuclear bomb based on the earlier Mark 4 nuclear bomb and its predecessor, the Mark 3 Fat Man nuclear bomb design.
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 B61 Family is a series of nuclear weapons based on the B61 nuclear bomb.
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 13 nuclear bomb and its variant, the W-13 nuclear warhead, were experimental nuclear weapons developed by the United States from 1951 to 1954. The Mark 13 design was based on the earlier Mark 6 nuclear bomb design, which was in turn based on the Mark 4 nuclear bomb and the Mark 3 nuclear bomb used at the end of World War II.
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 1958-1965.