Compiled By Ewa Historian John Bond
1961 Tsar Bomba - “the King of Bombs” the most powerful human-made explosive ever detonated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=YtCTzbh4mNQ
The blast broke windows more than 500 miles away. Witnesses saw the flash through heavy cloud cover more than 600 miles from the blast site
The Soviet RDS-220 hydrogen bomb (code name Ivan or Vanya,) also known as Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested. Tested on 30 October 1961 as an experimental verification of calculation principles and multi-stage thermonuclear weapon designs, it also remains the most powerful human-made explosive ever detonated.
The bomb was detonated 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) above the Sukhoy Nos ("Dry Nose") cape of Severny Island, Novaya Zemlya, 15 km (9.3 mi) from Mityushikha Bay, north of Matochkin Strait. The detonation was secret but was detected by United States intelligence agencies. The US apparently had an instrumented KC-135R aircraft (Operation SpeedLight) in the area of the test – close enough to have been scorched by the blast.
The mushroom cloud of Tsar Bomba seen from a distance of 161 km (100 mi). The crown of the cloud is 65 km (40 mi) (213,000 feet) high at the time of the picture.
The Tsar Bomba's fireball, about 8 km (5.0 mi) wide at its maximum, was prevented from touching the ground by the shock wave, but nearly reached 10.5 km (6.5 mi) altitude in the sky – the altitude of the deploying Tu-95 bomber.
Russia's 50 Megaton Monster: Meet the Tsar Bomba, the Biggest Nuclear Weapon Ever
"The five-mile wide fireball reached as high in the sky as the Bear bomber. The shock wave caused the Bear to drop more than half a mile in altitude before Durnovtsev regained control of his aircraft."
“Americans like to point to it as an example of how crazy the Cold War was, and how crazy the Russians are and were,” Wellerstein added. “Russians seem to take pride in it.”
Up to 50 miles away, anyone exposed to the flash of the weapon would receive third-degree burns. In short, a Tsar Bomba warhead would completely devastate the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area.
The bomb also had a parachute to slow its drop, giving both planes time to fly about 30 miles from ground zero before the nuke detonated. This gave Durnovtsev and his comrades a chance to escape.
When the planes reached their destination at the predetermined altitude of 34,000 feet, he ordered the bomb dropped. The chute opened, and the bomb started its three-minute descent to its detonation altitude two-and-a-half miles above the earth.
Russia releases long-secret footage of largest-ever hydrogen-bomb test, the mammoth ‘Tsar Bomba’
A 1961 Associated Press illustration shows how much damage the "Tsar Bomba" would cause if detonated in Washington, D.C. (The Oregonian)
