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7/8/2025 10:34:03 AM

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Section 25: Chit Chat
Subject: Nuclear Rockets Msg# 1230041

From:

Ed Moran

Joined 12/31/2005

To:

Tom Hemmick (Read)

Joined 7/21/2005

I'm afraid the weapons I carried back in the bomb bay of my B52 were pikers. Merely 1.1 megatons. Of course we carried 4 to 6 at a time to magnify the result should, god forbid, we ever had to drop them. As I was in the bay checking the settings before our airborne alert missions, I'd pat them on the nose and say, "You be nice and quiet, you hear." Each was about a foot in diameter and about 13 feet long aluminum tubes. Very impressive looking.

You can see pictures of them in Googling "Palomares Lost Bombs" as they fished out the last of the four from the Med after the bomber/tanker mid air in the '60's. Our unit was scheduled to take over that Airborne Alert Route the following month but that mission was cancelled permanently. The Northern mission over Greenland remained which was a bear. Navigation was extremely exacting since compass and radar were basically useless.

We lost another 52 on that route in the '70's from a fire on board. It was from my old unit and I knew everyone. I lost a friend in that one, the copilot. Word is that they never recovered the fourth bomb that sank in a area that defrosted from burning fuel of the aircraft and then refroze.

For reference, the above message is a reply to a message where:
Folks need to recall that Hydrogen bombs are based on nuclear fusion, compared to their less destructive brothers, Atomic bombs based on nuclear fission. A hydrogen bomb also relies on the energy released from an onboard A-bomb fission reactor to heat and compress the hydrogen which then triggers the fusion H-Bomb.

Recall the extreme heat at 7 times the core of the sun, at the prototype fusion installation in South Korea. Hmm a very significant combination, fitting the reference posted under the caption Potential for explosions

Headline: Comparing the Hydrogen Bomb and the Atomic Bomb Click Here

What Is an Atomic Bomb?
An atomic bomb, or A-bomb, is a nuclear weapon that explodes due to the extreme energy released by nuclear fission. For this reason, this type of bomb is also known as a fission bomb. . . . . A material capable of fission (fissile material) is given supercritical mass, which is the point at which fission occurs. This can be achieved by either compressing sub-critical material using explosives or by shooting one part of a sub-critical mass into another one. The fissile material is enriched uranium or plutonium. . . . .

The energy output of the reaction can range from the equivalent of about a ton of the explosive trinitrotoluene, or TNT, to as much as 500 kilotons of TNT. (kiloton equals 1,000 tons of TNT)

What Is a Hydrogen Bomb?
A hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb, is a type of nuclear weapon that explodes from the intense energy released by nuclear fusion. Hydrogen bombs may also be called thermonuclear weapons . . . . . .

Hydrogen bombs can have much higher yields than atomic bombs, equivalent to megatons of TNT. (megaton equals one million tons of TNT) The Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, was a hydrogen bomb with a 50-megaton yield.

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