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slgwv

slgwv club

Posted: 15 Aug 2011

Taken: 05 Jul 1957

5 favorites     3 comments    410 visits

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Keywords

test •
explosion •
nuclear •
1957 •
USA •
Hood •
Nevada •
Test Site •
Plumbbob •

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Hood

Hood
Hood, 5 July 1957, 74 kilotons yield. Part of Operation Plumbbob, a series of nuclear tests in mid-1957. This was the largest device (as they were called) set off aboveground at the Nevada Test Site. It was a thermonuclear device (i.e., a hydrogen bomb), despite the fact that the AEC denied for many years that thermonuclear devices had been set off aboveground in the US. I saw this one as a small child, watching from off Lee Canyon in the Spring Mountains about 30 miles away.

Scanned from an official AEC (Atomic Energy Commission--now absorbed into the US Dept. of Energy) photo that had been cleared for public release, and so is in the public domain. A little judicious Photoshopping has repaired some cracks in the original emulsion.

B C, , and 2 other people have particularly liked this photo

Comments
 slgwv
slgwv club
Thanks! To show how different things were Back in the Day, the AEC used to give out 8x10 glossies of some of the tests just for the asking. The A-bomb had a cachet back then that is very difficult to recapture now. Anyway, my dad picked me up a couple of the pix in the late 60s, about when attitudes were changing. They stopped giving them away not long after that.
11 years ago.
 Cold War Warrior
Cold War Warrior
In the army, with typical squaddie humour, we used to refer to nuclear munitions as "buckets of sunshine".
8 years ago.
slgwv club has replied to Cold War Warrior
LOL! It was definitely a solecism at the AEC/DOE to refer to a nuclear explosive as a "bomb." It was always a "device." And when one went off, it made an "event."
8 years ago.

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