Operation Ivy was the eighth series of American nuclear tests, coming after Tumbler-Snapper and before Upshot-Knothole. Its purpose was to help upgrade the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons in response to the Soviet nuclear weapons program. The two explosions were staged in late 1952 at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Proving Ground in the Marshall Islands.
The first Ivy shot, Mike, was the first successful full-scale test of a multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon ("hydrogen bomb") using the Teller-Ulam design. Unlike later thermonuclear weapons, Mike used deuterium as its fusion fuel, maintained as a liquid by an expensive and cumbersome cryogenic system. It was detonated on Elugelab Island yielding 10.4 megatons, almost 500 times the yield of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Eight megatons of the yield was from fast fission of the uranium tamper, creating massive amounts of radioactive fallout. The detonation left an underwater crater 6,240 ft (1.9 km) wide and 164 ft (50 m) deep where Elugelab Island had been. Following this successful test, the Mike design was weaponized as either the EC-16 or TX-16, but it was quickly abandoned for solid-fueled designs after the success of the Castle Bravo shot.
The second test, King, fired the largest nuclear weapon to date using only nuclear fission (no fusion nor fusion boosting). This "Super Oralloy Bomb" was intended as a backup if the fusion weapon failed. King yielded 500 kilotons, 25–40 times more than the nuclear weapons dropped during World War II.
Jimmy P. Robinson, a USAF captain, was lost while piloting his F-84G through the mushroom cloud to collect air samples; he ran out of fuel and attempted to land on water but was never found.
| Test name | Date | Location | Yield | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mike | 1 November 1952 | Elugelab Island, Eniwetok | 10.4–12 megatons | First hydrogen bomb |
| King | 16 November 1952 | Airburst 2,000 feet North of Runit Island, Eniwetok | 500 kilotons | Largest pure-fission bomb up to that time |
Famous quotes containing the words operation and/or ivy:
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“A young man, be his merit what it will, can never raise himself; but must, like the ivy round the oak, twine himself round some man of great power and interest.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)