Castle Romeo
Castle Romeo | |
---|---|
Information | |
Country | United States |
Test series | Operation Castle |
Test site | Bikini Atoll |
Date | March 26, 1954 |
Test type | Atmospheric |
Yield | 11 Mt |
Test chronology | |
Castle Romeo was the code name given to one of the tests in the
It was detonated on March 26, 1954, at Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands, on a barge moored in the middle of the crater from the Castle Bravo test. It was the first such barge-based test, a necessity that had come about because the powerful thermonuclear devices obliterated the small islands following detonation.
Deployment
The tested design became the first air-droppable thermonuclear device, initially the "emergency capability" EC-17, of which only five were made. The first deployable staged radiation implosion
Design
The Runt TX-15 device was a weaponized dry
fusion device.Similar to the Shrimp TX-21 device tested before in the
Yield
Like the Bravo test, it produced far more than its predicted yield, and for the same reason — an unexpected participation of the common lithium-7 isotope in fusion reactions. Although it had been predicted to produce a yield of 4 megatons with a range of 1.5 to 7 megatons (before the results of the Bravo test caused an upgrade in the estimates, it had originally been estimated to produce 3–5 megatons), it actually produced a yield of 11 megatons, the third-largest test ever conducted by the U.S.
Like the Ivy Mike and Castle Bravo tests, a large percentage of the yield was produced by fast
Fireball in popular culture
One particular image of the Castle Romeo mushroom cloud has been one of the most highly reprinted images of a nuclear explosion. It often serves as a stand-in for nuclear weapons in general for news stories, book covers, magazine articles, etc., likely because of its threatening appearance and extreme red, orange, and yellow hues. The fact that the explosion is of a U.S. megaton-range weapon has not prevented it from being used to represent the arsenals of other states or weapons of far lower yields in many cases, which would have a very different appearance.
One prominent usage is as the backdrop for heavy metal band Megadeth's greatest hits compilation Greatest Hits: Back to the Start. The image of Castle Romeo was also used on the cover of the New York hardcore music pioneers Cro-Mags debut album The Age of Quarrel. It is also featured on the title screen of Team17's turn-based artillery game Worms Armageddon.
The Castle Romeo photos are sometimes confused with that of Castle Bravo. The two nuclear blasts looked very similar, and they were both conducted in the same location, but much of Bravo's photographic record was destroyed because of its unexpectedly high yield.
References
- Chuck Hansen, U. S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History (Arlington: AeroFax, 1988)
External links
- List of all tested U.S. weapons at The Nuclear Weapon Archive
- The short film Operation Castle Commanders Report (1954) is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.
- The short film Military Effects Studies Operation Castle (1954) is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.
- The short film Nuclear Test Film - Operation Castle (1954) is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.
- Operation Castle