Made for the home market by World in Color Productions, this silent color newsreel shows the first full scale hydrogen bomb test at Enewetak, known as Ivy Mike. Various views of the test are seen, including aerial footage of the blasts.
Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first test of a full-scale thermonuclear device, in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion. It was detonated on November 1, 1952 by the United States on Enewetak, an atoll in the Pacific Ocean, as part of Operation Ivy. The device was the first full test of the Teller-Ulam design, a staged fusion bomb, and was the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb.
Due to its physical size and fusion fuel type (cryogenic liquid deuterium), the Mike device was not suitable for use as a weapon; it was intended as an extremely conservative proof of concept experiment to validate the concepts used for multi-megaton detonations. A simplified and lightened bomb version (the EC-16) was prepared, and scheduled to be tested in operation Castle Yankee, as a backup in case the non-cryogenic “Shrimp” fusion device (tested in Castle Bravo) failed to work; that test was cancelled when the Bravo device was tested successfully, making the cryogenic designs obsolete.
The test was carried out at 07:15 A.M local time on November 1, 1952 (19:15 October 31 GMT). It produced a yield estimated in the range of 10.4–12 megatons of TNT. However, 77% of the final yield came from fast fission of the uranium tamper, which produced large amounts of radioactive fallout.
The fireball created by the explosion had a maximum radius of 2.9 to 3.28 km (1.80 to 2.04 mi).[3][4][5] This maximum is reached a number of seconds after the detonation and during this time the hot fireball invariably rises due to buoyancy. While still relatively close to the ground, the fireball had yet to reach its maximum dimensions and was thus approximately 3.25 miles (5.2 km) wide. The mushroom cloud rose to an altitude of 57,000 feet (17.0 km) in less than 90 seconds. One minute later it had reached 108,000 feet (33.0 km), before stabilizing at 136,000 feet (25 miles or 37.0 km) with the top eventually spreading out to a diameter of 100 miles (161 km) with a stem 20 miles (32 km) wide.
The blast created a crater 6,240 feet (1.9 km) in diameter and 164 feet (50 m) deep where Elugelab had once been;[6] the blast and water waves from the explosion (some waves up to twenty feet high) stripped the test islands clean of vegetation, as observed by a helicopter survey within 60 minutes after the test, by which time the mushroom cloud and steam were blown away. Radioactive coral debris fell upon ships positioned 35 miles (48 km) from the blast, and the immediate area around the atoll was heavily contaminated for some time. Two new elements, einsteinium and fermium, were produced by intensely concentrated neutron flux about the detonation site.
Close to the fireball, lightning discharges were rapidly triggered.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
