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N0KFQ > TODAY 31.01.16 16:12l 50 Lines 2143 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 83372_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Jan 31
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<IW0QNL<JH4XSY<JE7YGF<N9PMO<NS2B<N0KFQ
Sent: 160131/1504Z 83372@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.65
1950
Truman announces development of H-bomb
U.S. President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to
support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized
to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs
dropped on Japan during World War II.
Five months earlier, the United States had lost its nuclear
supremacy when the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic
bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. Then, several weeks after
that, British and U.S. intelligence came to the staggering
conclusion that German-born Klaus Fuchs, a top-ranking scientist
in the U.S. nuclear program, was a spy for the Soviet Union.
These two events, and the fact that the Soviets now knew
everything that the Americans did about how to build a hydrogen
bomb, led Truman to approve massive funding for the superpower
race to complete the world's first "superbomb," as he described
it in his public announcement on January 31.
On November 1, 1952, the United States successfully detonated
"Mike," the world's first hydrogen bomb, on the Elugelab Atoll in
the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton thermonuclear
device, built upon the Teller-Ulam principles of staged radiation
implosion, instantly vaporized an entire island and left behind a
crater more than a mile wide. The incredible explosive force of
Mike was also apparent from the sheer magnitude of its mushroom
cloud-within 90 seconds the mushroom cloud climbed to 57,000 feet
and entered the stratosphere. One minute later, it reached
108,000 feet, eventually stabilizing at a ceiling of 120,000
feet. Half an hour after the test, the mushroom stretched 60
miles across, with the base of the head joining the stem at
45,000 feet.
Three years later, on November 22, 1955, the Soviet Union
detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the same principle of
radiation implosion. Both superpowers were now in possession of
the "hell bomb," as it was known by many Americans, and the world
lived under the threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in
history.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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