Youtube documentary about the first British atom bomb

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Winston

Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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Equniox: A Very British Bomb (first UK atomic bomb)

[video=youtube;Qk_zpjK3cTo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk_zpjK3cTo[/video]

Fascinating formerly top secret footage (declassified for this documentary) of bomb assembly can be found starting at 40m 51s. It's a very clear and revealing film compared to the much worse and far less revealing footage of the assembly of the US "Gadget" at the Trinity test shot. Detonator installations are also shown.

The implosion device fundamentals (and perhaps plenty of details, too) were given to the British by Klaus Fuchs who had worked on implosion within the Manhattan Project but who was also a spy for the Soviets.

The earlier portion of the documentary is about their abortive efforts to produce plutonium and safely create the required nuclear pits from it. After the war, the US refused to provide any other nation with any nuclear bomb or related component secrets, not even the UK, so they were basically forced to go it on their own subsisting on nuclear theory and any information retained by those British scientists who had participated in the Manhattan project

Their design was more advanced than our first atomic bomb at least in the one area mentioned in the Wikipedia entry below - its hollow fissile nuclear pit (core).

Its detonation didn't cause the usual mushroom cloud, supposedly due to the shallow water shot causing a great deal of mud to be contained within the cloud:

https://ia700701.us.archive.org/25/...ston/HurricaneNuclearTestCivilDefenceData.pdf

Operation Hurricane

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hurricane

Excerpt:

Operation Hurricane was the test of the first UK atomic device on 3 October 1952. A plutonium implosion device was detonated in the lagoon between the Montebello Islands, Western Australia.

Several key British scientists had worked on the Manhattan Project and after returning to the UK worked on the British atom bomb project, so unsurprisingly the weapon had a close similarity to Fat Man (Nagasaki) weapon, although the McMahon Atomic Energy Act of 1946 prevented any British access to the US design data. The design used a hollow core, unlike the gadget tested at Trinity. This increased the expected yield of the bomb to 30 kilotons, although the actual yield was closer to 25 kilotons. The bomb core used 7 kg of plutonium produced mainly at Windscale (now Sellafield) in Cumbria with a low Pu-240 content of only 2%.

To test the effects of a ship-smuggled bomb (a threat of great concern to the British at the time), Hurricane was exploded inside the hull of HMS Plym (a 1,370-ton River class frigate) which was anchored in 12 metres (39 ft) of water, 350 metres (1,150 ft) off Trimouille Island. The explosion occurred 2.7 metres (8 ft 10 in) below the water line, and left a saucer-shaped crater on the seabed 6 metres (20 ft) deep and 300 metres (980 ft) across.
 
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Interesting...

I didn't realize Klaus Fuchs also gave the secrets to the Brits...if you ever have a chance, (if you haven't already) you should read "Surely You are Joking, Mr. Feynman." It is a very enjoyable read...anyway, Klaus Fuchs loaned Feynman his car so he could rush to be by his dying wife's side. History is very dry when you read a textbook, it is more enjoyable (to me) to read about the people and personalities behind the events
 
HMS Plym (before):

HMS_Plym.jpg


HMS Plym (after):

15851852430_ce2926d7b6_b.jpg


15416849724_3642eec6f4_b.jpg


The very dark shade of the cloud is not due to debris from the ocean floor 40 ft below the detonation, it is due to the nearly total vaporization and oxidization of the HMS Plym into the ferrimagnetic black iron oxide Fe3O4! Molten bits of the Plym started fires on the island at great distances from ground zero.

15851852480_3835c1c81e_b.jpg
 
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Interesting...

I didn't realize Klaus Fuchs also gave the secrets to the Brits...if you ever have a chance, (if you haven't already) you should read "Surely You are Joking, Mr. Feynman." It is a very enjoyable read...anyway, Klaus Fuchs loaned Feynman his car so he could rush to be by his dying wife's side. History is very dry when you read a textbook, it is more enjoyable (to me) to read about the people and personalities behind the events
Yes, the fact that he gave secrets to the Brits didn't occur to me since the US/UK Manhattan effort was supposed to be cooperative and I'd always thought it had been and didn't know that we went back on our agreement with them after WWII.

I've read the Feynman book. Great book.
 
There was an interesting documentary made about the HMS Plym entitled "This Little Ship". It is an "extra" on the "Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero" DVD... Really interesting.

Later! OL JR :)
 
Winston,

Very interesting video. Thanks for sharing it with us. Damn depressing, though. How can anyone be an optimist regarding the destiny of man?

cecil
 
There was an interesting documentary made about the HMS Plym entitled "This Little Ship". It is an "extra" on the "Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero" DVD... Really interesting.

Later! OL JR :)
Hey, I've had that DVD for years (along with all of the other ones in that series) and forgot all about that! I'll be watching it again. Thanks. Forgot about the ship, but I do recall the bouncing cattle in a slo-mo film taken at ground level of one of the CONUS Operation Plowshare "fracking with nukes" shots.
 
Winston,

Very interesting video. Thanks for sharing it with us. Damn depressing, though. How can anyone be an optimist regarding the destiny of man?

cecil
Even a full-scale nuclear war wouldn't wipe us out to extinction. It will take an asteroid or comet to do that and unlike a full-scale nuclear war, that sort of impact is an absolute eventual certainty unless we do something to prevent it. Comets are harder to see in sufficient time to divert them from impact, thus Elon Musk and others wanting us to colonize Mars ASAP.
 
Even a full-scale nuclear war wouldn't wipe us out to extinction. It will take an asteroid or comet to do that and unlike a full-scale nuclear war, that sort of impact is an absolute eventual certainty unless we do something to prevent it. Comets are harder to see in sufficient time to divert them from impact, thus Elon Musk and others wanting us to colonize Mars ASAP.

I don't limit nuclear technology to its present owners. It will one day be world wide and, given man's nature, the comet may not be needed. But if by some miracle we don't go nuclear, not even under the pressure of climate changes, you and Elon are right: if man wishes to continue as a species, he must colonize other planets or moons.
 
Excellent new BBC documentary with never before seen footage:

[video=youtube;fAAswzpJyKI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAAswzpJyKI[/video]

But the documentary unfortunately skips many very interesting details:

Operation Grapple (UK H-Bomb program)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Grapple
 
I wonder if travel to Mars is going to work any time soon considering that "human beans" seem to need gravity to thrive. Long-term (> 6 months) 0-g experiments on ISS are not showing good results. Guess the rich guy(s) could build a big ship in orbit that could rotate the living quarters and simulate gravity? I liked the Avalon in "Passengers". Or we get fortunate and discover/understand quantum gravity (or whatever force makes it) and then learn how to manipulate it. Wouldn't that be cool to levitate an aircraft carrier...
 
More on British nuclear weapon development:

CHAPTER 1
OPERATION HURRICANE

In 1952 Britain detonated its first nuclear bomb. The experiment was hailed a success but for the men who witnessed it, life would never be the same again

https://damned.mirror.co.uk/chapter1.html
CHAPTER 2
THE ‘MINOR’ TRIALS

Britain needed an isolated testing ground for hundreds of highly toxic experiments. It was offered 100,000 sq km of the Australian Outback

https://damned.mirror.co.uk/chapter2.html
CHAPTER 3
OPERATION GRAPPLE

The bomb tests moved to a desert island in the South Pacific, where Britain exploded the most powerful weapon it has ever built

https://damned.mirror.co.uk/chapter3.html
Operation Grapple

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Grapple
In July 1954, the Cabinet decided to develop the hydrogen bomb. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston produced three designs: Orange Herald, a large boosted fission weapon; Green Bamboo, an interim thermonuclear design; and Green Granite, a true thermonuclear weapon. The first test series consisted of three tests in May and June 1957. In the first, Grapple 1, a version of Green Granite known as Short Granite was dropped from a Vickers Valiant bomber flown by Wing Commander Kenneth Hubbard. The bomb's yield was estimated at 300 kilotonnes of TNT (1,300 TJ), far below its designed capability. Despite its failure, the test was hailed as a successful thermonuclear explosion, and the government did not confirm or deny reports that the UK had become a third thermonuclear power. The second test was Grapple 2, of Orange Herald. Its 720-to-800-kilotonne-of-TNT (3,000 to 3,300 TJ) yield made it technically a megaton weapon. It was the largest ever achieved by a single stage device. Grapple 3 tested Purple Granite, a Short Granite with some fixes. Its yield was a very disappointing 300 kilotonnes of TNT (1,300 TJ).

A second test series was required. This consisted of a single test, known as Grapple X, in November 1957. This time the yield of 1.8 megatonnes of TNT (7.5 PJ) exceeded expectations. This was a true hydrogen bomb, but most of the yield came from nuclear fission rather than nuclear fusion. In a third series with a single test, known as Grapple Y, in April 1958, another design was tested. With an explosive yield of about 3 megatonnes of TNT (13 PJ), it remains the largest British nuclear weapon ever tested. The design of Grapple Y was notably successful because much of its yield came from its thermonuclear reaction instead of fission of a heavy uranium-238 tamper, making it a true hydrogen bomb, and because its yield had been closely predicted—indicating that its designers understood what they were doing. A final series of four tests in August and September 1958, known as Grapple Z, tested techniques for boosting and making bombs immune to predetonation caused by nearby nuclear explosions. Two of these tests were detonations from balloons; another was a blind radar test drop. A moratorium on testing came into effect in October 1958, and Britain never resumed atmospheric testing.


Britain's H-Bomb (1957)



 
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