Hansen's research indicates that the W34Python primary was used in the US B28 nuclear bomb, W28, W40, and W49, and as a boosted fission warhead without a thermonuclear second stage in several other weapons. These were the Mark 45 ASTOR wire-guided 19-inch (48cm), submarine-launched heavyweight torpedo; the Mk 101 Lulunuclear depth bomb; the Mk 105 Hotpoint laydown bomb.
Additionally, an anglicised W34 Python known to the British as 'Peter' was manufactured in Britain as the primary for Red Snow, itself an anglicised W28 warhead. Peter was also proposed as a replacement for the Red Beard warhead housed in a Red Beard carcass, and as the Violet Mistnuclear land mine for the British Army in Germany.
The W34 used the melt-cast high explosiveOctol, a variant of HMX and TNT as the material for its implosion lenses, and this relatively unsophisticated explosive that pre-dated PBX was perhaps a reason why the British adopted this warhead, since they were attempting to deploy a thermonuclear warhead for their strategic bombers quickly, and the British were well-versed in the manufacture, storage and use of these melt-cast explosives.
Declassified British military documents also refer to a 'Low-Yield-Python' and the AIR-2 Genieair-to-air rocket being considered by the UK for their interceptors, suggesting that there was a design linkage with the W25 low-yield warhead of the Genie. There is no hard evidence as yet, but the 11kt yield of the W34 Python would degrade to a figure comparable with the W25 without the gas-boosting.
Historical evidence indicates that these weapons shared a reliability problem, which Hansen attributes to miscalculation of the reaction cross section of tritium in fusion reactions. The weapons were not tested as extensively as some prior models due to a mid-1960s nuclear test moratorium, and the reliability problem was discovered and fixed after the moratorium ended. The flaw was apparently common with the W44 Tsetse primary design.
A warhead is the section of a device that contains the explosive agent or toxic material that is delivered by a missile, rocket, torpedo, or bomb.
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:
The WE.177, originally styled as WE 177, and sometimes simply as WE177, was a series of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons with which the Royal Navy (RN) and the Royal Air Force (RAF) were equipped. It was the primary air-dropped nuclear weapon in the United Kingdom from the late 1960s into the 1990s.
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.
Red Snow was a British thermonuclear weapon, based on the US W28 design used in the B28 thermonuclear bomb and AGM-28 Hound Dog missile. The US W28 had yields of 70, 350, 1,100 and 1,450 kilotonnes of TNT and while Red Snow yields are still classified, declassified British documents indicate the existence of "kiloton Red Snow" and "megaton Red Snow" variants of the weapon, suggesting similar yield options, while other sources have suggested a yield of approximately 1 megatonne of TNT (4.2 PJ).
Variable yield, or dial-a-yield, is an option available on most modern nuclear weapons. It allows the operator to specify a weapon's yield, or explosive power, allowing a single design to be used in different situations. For example, the Mod-10 B61 bomb had selectable explosive yields of 0.3, 5, 10 or 80 kilotons, depending on how the ground crew set a dial inside the casing when it was loaded onto an aircraft.
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%.
Cyclotol is an explosive consisting of castable mixtures of RDX and TNT. It is related to the more common Composition B, which is roughly 60% RDX and 40% TNT; various compositions of Cyclotol contain from 65% to 80% RDX. Typical ranges are from 60/40 to 80/20 RDX/TNT, with the most common being 70/30, while the military mostly uses 77/23 optimized in warheads.
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, and the concept has since been employed by most of the world's nuclear powers in the design of their weapons.
The Tsetse was a small American nuclear bomb developed in the 1950s that was used as the primary in several US thermonuclear bombs and as a small stand-alone weapon of its own.
The W40 nuclear warhead was an American fusion-boosted fission nuclear warhead developed in the late 1950s and which saw service from 1959 to 1972.
The W59 was an American thermonuclear warhead used on some Minuteman I ICBM missiles from 1962 to 1969, and planned to be used on the cancelled GAM-87 Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile.
The W34 was an American nuclear bomb developed and deployed during the mid-1960s.
The Mark 101 Lulu was an airdropped nuclear depth charge developed by the United States Navy and the Atomic Energy Commission during the 1950s. It carried a W34 nuclear warhead, with an explosive yield of about 11 kilotons. It was deployed by the U.S. Navy for the purposes of antisubmarine warfare, in at least five different models, from 1958 through 1971. These nuclear weapons were also stockpiled overseas at the bases of NATO allies, under American military guard and control, for the potential use by maritime patrol planes of NATO. This capability was most notably used at the air base of RAF St. Mawgan in Cornwall by British Avro Shackleton patrol planes and the Royal Netherlands Navy's P-2 Neptune and P-3 Orion patrol planes. Neither the Lulu nor any other kind of nuclear antisubmarine or antiship weapon was ever used in combat by any country.
A nuclear depth bomb is the nuclear equivalent of a conventional depth charge, and can be used in anti-submarine warfare for attacking submerged submarines. The Royal Navy, Soviet Navy, and United States Navy had nuclear depth bombs in their arsenals at one point.
Violet Club was a nuclear weapon deployed by the United Kingdom during the Cold War; the name was chosen in adherence to the Rainbow code system. It was Britain's first operational "high-yield" weapon and was intended to provide an emergency capability until a thermonuclear weapon could be developed from the 1956–1958 Operation Grapple tests. Violet Club was ultimately replaced in service by the Red Snow warhead, derived from the US W28 warhead.
The uranium hydride bomb was a variant design of the atomic bomb first suggested by Robert Oppenheimer in 1939 and advocated and tested by Edward Teller. It used deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, as a neutron moderator in a uranium-deuterium ceramic compact. Unlike all other fission-bomb types, the concept relies on a chain reaction of slow nuclear fission. Bomb efficiency was harmed by the slowing of neutrons since the latter delays the reaction, as delineated by Rob Serber in his 1992 extension of the original Los Alamos Primer.
The Robin nuclear primary was the common design nuclear fission bomb core for several Cold War designs for American nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, according to researcher Chuck Hansen. Primary is the technical term for the fission bomb component of a thermonuclear or fusion bomb, which is used to start the reactions going and implode and detonate the second, fusion stage. The Robin design was used as the W45 nuclear warhead, and as the primary (stage) in the W38 and W47 thermonuclear weapons.
ET.317 was a thermonuclear weapon of the British Royal Navy, developed for the UK version of the UGM-27 Polaris missile.
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