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.
[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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