AIR-2 Genie Air-To-Air Nuke!

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Looks like a nice day at the beach, kicking' back in the lounge chair with Mai Tais and Piña Coladas, watching' the nukes go off. Don't forget sunscreen!

I'm glad they don't test nukes anymore, but it would have been an awesome thing to see.
I wish I was old enough to have been involved with nuclear warhead design or, at least, testing during the above-ground testing era.

In this book:

The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374515980/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Weapons designer Theodore Taylor describes lighting a cigarette from one of his designs using a small parabolic mirror he found in storage that had a hole in its center for a folded optics system. He used some wire to make a cigarette holder at its focal point. He took a drag after his successful test lit the cigarette. Found this written by someone else via a Google search:

------

The name of the weapons designer in the story is Ted Taylor. This was the guy responsible for miniaturising nuclear weapons so that instead of weighing several thousand pounds and requiring large aircrafts to carry them to their targets, they can fit snugly into say, the cone of a Tomahawk cruise missile (e.g. the W80 nuclear device, itself a derivative of the B61 designed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory where Taylor worked).

According to McPhee, Taylor had come up with an idea for a nuclear device that could be made lighter by using unconventional materials in its construction. The device was called Scorpion and like any new idea it had to be tested to prove the concept.

So Scorpion was fabricated and hung on a tower somewhere in the Nevada dessert. Ted Taylor and the other observers watched from a safe distance away. The flatness of the dessert meant that this distance could be really, really large. The test was delayed for some technical reason or the other and during the wait Ted Taylor got bored. In an impulsive act he got hold of a parabolic mirror which happened to be lying around, aimed it at the test site where Scorpion was located and placed one end of a Pall Mall cigarette at the mirror’s focus. When the nuclear device was finally detonated, the light emanating from the explosion bounced off the mirror and fell on the cigarette, its intensity such that it instantly burned the exposed end of the cigarette. Taylor reached for his smouldering Pall Mall and drew in a puff.

------

Here's that test:

Series: Operation Tumbler-Snapper
Test: How
Time: 11:55 5 June 1952 (GMT)
Location: Nevada Test Site (NTS), Area 2
Test Height and Type: 300 Foot Tower
Yield: 14 kt

This device (code named Scorpion) was designed in part by Ted Taylor. Snapper How was the first test to use a beryllium neutron reflector/tamper, which would become standard in later weapons. The test device used the same 22 inch implosion system as Snapper Easy, but the lightweight tamper cut 80 pounds off the implosion system weight. Predicted yield was 11 kt.


Tshow1.jpg


I've read that during some of the very large operational test series at the National Test Site, TV/radio weather reports even as far away as Ohio had warnings about rain contamination levels. Don't drink the rainwater sort of things. That's not good...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I wish I was old enough to have been involved with nuclear warhead design or, at least, testing during the above-ground testing era.

In this book:

The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374515980/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Weapons designer Theodore Taylor describes lighting a cigarette from one of his designs using a small parabolic mirror he found in storage that had a hole in its center for a folded optics system. He used some wire to make a cigarette holder at its focal point. He took a drag after his successful test lit the cigarette. Found this written by someone else via a Google search:

------

The name of the weapons designer in the story is Ted Taylor. This was the guy responsible for miniaturising nuclear weapons so that instead of weighing several thousand pounds and requiring large aircrafts to carry them to their targets, they can fit snugly into say, the cone of a Tomahawk cruise missile (e.g. the W80 nuclear device, itself a derivative of the B61 designed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory where Taylor worked).

According to McPhee, Taylor had come up with an idea for a nuclear device that could be made lighter by using unconventional materials in its construction. The device was called Scorpion and like any new idea it had to be tested to prove the concept.

So Scorpion was fabricated and hung on a tower somewhere in the Nevada dessert. Ted Taylor and the other observers watched from a safe distance away. The flatness of the dessert meant that this distance could be really, really large. The test was delayed for some technical reason or the other and during the wait Ted Taylor got bored. In an impulsive act he got hold of a parabolic mirror which happened to be lying around, aimed it at the test site where Scorpion was located and placed one end of a Pall Mall cigarette at the mirror’s focus. When the nuclear device was finally detonated, the light emanating from the explosion bounced off the mirror and fell on the cigarette, its intensity such that it instantly burned the exposed end of the cigarette. Taylor reached for his smouldering Pall Mall and drew in a puff.

------

Here's that test:

Series: Operation Tumbler-Snapper
Test: How
Time: 11:55 5 June 1952 (GMT)
Location: Nevada Test Site (NTS), Area 2
Test Height and Type: 300 Foot Tower
Yield: 14 kt

This device (code named Scorpion) was designed in part by Ted Taylor. Snapper How was the first test to use a beryllium neutron reflector/tamper, which would become standard in later weapons. The test device used the same 22 inch implosion system as Snapper Easy, but the lightweight tamper cut 80 pounds off the implosion system weight. Predicted yield was 11 kt.


Tshow1.jpg


I've read that during some of the very large operational test series at the National Test Site, TV/radio weather reports even as far away as Ohio had warnings about rain contamination levels. Don't drink the rainwater sort of things. That's not good...


A 14kt cigarette lighter! That's pretty cool.

I have a friend whose mother grew up in Nevada, and the family used to watch the flash from the tests. I don't know if they lived downwind or not, but it would explain a lot...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
One of the most iconic symbols of my growing up during the '70's here on the Miramichi River, was the constant fly-overs of CF-101 Voodoo's. Canadian Forces Base Chatham was home to the 416 Lynx Squadron and they had quite a busy operational schedule....they were in the air daily and quite often to a kid it seemed hourly. To us back then the Soviets were the bad guys and our brave pilots would scramble at a moments notice to head off those Bear bombers that kept poking their noses into our airspace. Our government of the day vehemently denied the existence of nuclear weapons at CFB Chatham but everyone seemed to believe otherwise. It wasn't until the '90's that our government finally admitted that our Voodoo's had been armed with American nuclear missiles....namely the Genie. Currently there is a static display of a Voodoo on the old base property with the missile bay open and a Genie attached to the rotary rack in all it's glory. I'll try to get some good pics sometime in the next few days and post them on this thread.
 
Last edited:
As part of “Plowshare” in 1967 there was a test project code named “Gasbuggy” wherein a 29 kiloton nuclear warhead was lowered 4,000 feet down a borehole and detonated.

It was literally Nuclear Fracking.

There were additional tests of this nature including one in Colorado that used a 43 kiloton device.

Atomic Annie may have been a joke but at least it performed as designed. The Soviet Union built some monstrous breach loading mortar 240mm if I remember correctly, that was supposed to be their answer to Atomic Annie.

They were never able to design and build a nuclear warhead small and lightweight enough to be fired from it.
 
As part of “Plowshare” in 1967 there was a test project code named “Gasbuggy” wherein a 29 kiloton nuclear warhead was lowered 4,000 feet down a borehole and detonated.

It was literally Nuclear Fracking.

There were additional tests of this nature including one in Colorado that used a 43 kiloton device.

Atomic Annie may have been a joke but at least it performed as designed. The Soviet Union built some monstrous breach loading mortar 240mm if I remember correctly, that was supposed to be their answer to Atomic Annie.

They were never able to design and build a nuclear warhead small and lightweight enough to be fired from it.

If it weren't for radiation, some of the Plowshare ideas might have worked. I remember in the 80's my physics teacher would sometimes put on a very old educational film about these kinds of things, and we'd all have a laugh. They seemed so campy and we were watching them with an ironic sense of humor, but they had been serious ideas at one time. I remember the one about gas extraction. There was one about blasting giant canals --- think Panama Canal dug with nukes. And there was one really hokey one about blasting tropical storms before they could form hurricanes --- that one had actors in shiny Sci-fi costumes.
 
A 14kt cigarette lighter! That's pretty cool.

I have a friend whose mother grew up in Nevada, and the family used to watch the flash from the tests. I don't know if they lived downwind or not, but it would explain a lot...
energy1113-lasvegascloud-06241957-600w_d5f4387be4.jpg
 
The real diehard UFO conspiracy buffs believe that the “Genie” was developed specifically to shoot down “Flying Saucers” as part of the “Wind Chime” operations; the follow on to “Nightingale”.

I remember building a model of the “Davy Crockett”, the thing was fired from a 105mm recoilless rifle mounted on the back of a standard Army Jeep.

Talk about cracking eggs with a sledgehammer.

Been doing some reading about the battle of Corregidor and the Bataan Death March today. Remember that this was still fresh in the memory of everyone when these weapons were developed. 80,000 troops surrounded by the enemy with no resupply, running out of ammunition and food but hoping against hope that they would be relieved. The "plan" had been to hold out for six months and wait for the Navy to fight their way to help them but the devastation at Pearl Harbor ended that hope. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if a part of the thinking behind tactical battlefield nukes was a "just in case" last ditch tool in the arsenal if such a situation were ever to arise again. Bad for you but still worse for the other guy.
 
As part of “Plowshare” in 1967 there was a test project code named “Gasbuggy” wherein a 29 kiloton nuclear warhead was lowered 4,000 feet down a borehole and detonated.

It was literally Nuclear Fracking.

There were additional tests of this nature including one in Colorado that used a 43 kiloton device.

Atomic Annie may have been a joke but at least it performed as designed. The Soviet Union built some monstrous breach loading mortar 240mm if I remember correctly, that was supposed to be their answer to Atomic Annie.

They were never able to design and build a nuclear warhead small and lightweight enough to be fired from it.

Yes, they did... maybe not for that mortar, but they developed an atomic shell quite a bit smaller than that... basically about the size of a thermos bottle, for a common field artillery piece. I saw it at the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque about ten years ago.

Amazing to think of just how much destructive power is bottled up in that little bitty package...

Later! OL JR :)
 
Been doing some reading about the battle of Corregidor and the Bataan Death March today. Remember that this was still fresh in the memory of everyone when these weapons were developed. 80,000 troops surrounded by the enemy with no resupply, running out of ammunition and food but hoping against hope that they would be relieved. The "plan" had been to hold out for six months and wait for the Navy to fight their way to help them but the devastation at Pearl Harbor ended that hope. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if a part of the thinking behind tactical battlefield nukes was a "just in case" last ditch tool in the arsenal if such a situation were ever to arise again. Bad for you but still worse for the other guy.

That kind of thinking was probably very much on these planners’ minds.
There are people today that ask how we could have used the atomic bomb on Japan, that it was “inhumane” or “a war crime” or even that it showed how “racist” we are, after all, we didn’t use the “Bomb” on the Germans. *

People are stupid.

Back then the thinking was that the atomic bomb was just “An air raid in an airplane” a way to get the job done with just one plane and one bomb vs 100s of planes and thousands of bombs. Tokyo would be a good example of the latter.

There had been one or two tests of the A-Bomb prior to its wartime use and mainly just to see if the damned thing would actually go bang!! Nobody back then really had a clue what an Atomic Bomb would do to a real live city or what the aftermath would be like.




*Yes I am aware that the first A-Bomb test was conducted AFTER Germany surrendered but that doesn’t seem to be taken into consideration by the professional bed-wetting crowd.
 
That kind of thinking was probably very much on these planners’ minds.
There are people today that ask how we could have used the atomic bomb on Japan, that it was “inhumane” or “a war crime” or even that it showed how “racist” we are, after all, we didn’t use the “Bomb” on the Germans. *

People are stupid.

Back then the thinking was that the atomic bomb was just “An air raid in an airplane” a way to get the job done with just one plane and one bomb vs 100s of planes and thousands of bombs. Tokyo would be a good example of the latter.

There had been one or two tests of the A-Bomb prior to its wartime use and mainly just to see if the damned thing would actually go bang!! Nobody back then really had a clue what an Atomic Bomb would do to a real live city or what the aftermath would be like.




*Yes I am aware that the first A-Bomb test was conducted AFTER Germany surrendered but that doesn’t seem to be taken into consideration by the professional bed-wetting crowd.

Remember also that during the cold war all of Eastern Europe including East Germany was under communist control. The NATO forces were far outnumbered by the Soviet forces throughout Eastern Europe. Almost all western military strategists felt that the global nuclear deterrent kept the Soviets at bay in Europe. This was not just paranoia. Remember the Berlin airlift in the early 1950's when East Germany closed off West Berlin from all allied land traffic. It stands to reason that someone in the US would want an atomic cannon available as a tactical option to stop a Soviet tank or army advance in Europe. The US even tried to keep the number of Redstone missiles hidden so that the Soviets would not how many were available, hence, the weird numbering system on our first satellite launch.
 
I love the look of this! I might have to build a semi-scale model of it.

Where is the 4th photo shot? It looks like a great open air museum.
 
I agree.

I remember a college professor telling me that "where you stand upon an issue is determined by where you sit...." its easy for generations now to second guess the use of the atomic bombs safely secured 70 years from the killing. Let there be no mistake about it, WWII was a bloodbath....a horrific death storm that was consuming all of the nations involved. How many men did the US lose in that war? 400,000? Our English allies lost even more....the English had over 60,000 civilian deaths in that war....... The Russians lost over 8 million men....and that is just military deaths.....nobody knows how many Russian civilians that were killed...but the estimates are close to 10,000,000....that is close to 20,000,000 people from that country alone.....to put that in perspective, 100,000,000 Americans live in the East coast corridor between Boston and Washington DC (including me)...kill 1 out of every 5 people living in this section of the country. Its almost beyond comprehension.

The use of the bombs was meant to end the war....stop the killing....its that simple.



That kind of thinking was probably very much on these planners’ minds.
There are people today that ask how we could have used the atomic bomb on Japan, that it was “inhumane” or “a war crime” or even that it showed how “racist” we are, after all, we didn’t use the “Bomb” on the Germans. *

People are stupid.

Back then the thinking was that the atomic bomb was just “An air raid in an airplane” a way to get the job done with just one plane and one bomb vs 100s of planes and thousands of bombs. Tokyo would be a good example of the latter.

There had been one or two tests of the A-Bomb prior to its wartime use and mainly just to see if the damned thing would actually go bang!! Nobody back then really had a clue what an Atomic Bomb would do to a real live city or what the aftermath would be like.




*Yes I am aware that the first A-Bomb test was conducted AFTER Germany surrendered but that doesn’t seem to be taken into consideration by the professional bed-wetting crowd.
 
Last edited:
There are people today that ask how we could have used the atomic bomb on Japan, that it was “inhumane” or “a war crime”
1. They were weapons effects tests using real people (instead of sheep and pigs) and buildings/infrastructure.
2. They were a message to the Soviets.
3. Had Truman not used them the instant they were ready, he and his party would have been figuratively hanged post-war by the families of all of the soldiers/sailors/airmen killed or severely wounded after it was available for use, but not used.
 
Let there be no mistake about it, WWII was a bloodbath....a horrific death storm that was consuming all of the nations involved.
Since we weren't directly involved other than with providing supplies, most in the US don't realize this, but when it comes to both civilian and military casualties, WWII effectively WAS the Eastern Front. All other theaters COMBINED absolutely PALE by comparison. I'm not denigrating the contributions by allied forces in other theaters, but it is absolutely amazing in the differences in casualty numbers and numbers involved which is why I have such an interest in it:

Eastern Front (casualties)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)#Casualties

Great book (should be required reading in high school):

The Forgotten Soldier

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1574882864/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Fantastic documentary:

Battlefield Russia: The Eastern Front

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047XAEIY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top