Operation Ivy - Nuclear Fusion Test Film (1952)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 มิ.ย. 2010
- Courtesy: U.S. Department of Energy
0800012 - Operation Ivy, Parts 1 and 2 - 1952 - 1:02:30 - Pacific, Color, Sanitized - "The island of Elugelab is missing!" President Eisenhower heard this short report on the Mike shot in Operation Ivy from Gordon Dean, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Mike was the first full-fledged hydrogen bomb to be tested.
The island where the device was detonated was vaporized. The hole Mike left was big enough to accommodate several pentagon-size buildings and deep enough to hold the Empire State Building. Mike's yield was an incredible 10.4 megatons, signaling the expansion of the nuclear arsenal from fission to fusion, the same process that occurs in the Sun.
The detonation of the Mike device was the climax of an intense debate over what would be the nation's correct response to the startling news in 1949 that the Soviet Union had detonated a nuclear weapon. Many wanted the U.S. to develop the means to produce and field a large number of fission bombs of varying yields which could be used for tactical purposes. Others believed that the country should institute a crash program like the Manhattan Project to develop a Super weapon based on the idea of forcing together or fusing light atoms with a fissile device to produce enormous amounts of energy.
After a bitter fight among scientific, government and military officials, the President opted for a crash program to demonstrate the Super bomb, now called a hydrogen or thermonuclear weapon. Many designs were evaluated and rejected until the Mike proposal came along. This concept involved the cooling of hydrogen fuel to a liquid form, near absolute zero, and fusing the hydrogen nuclei into helium using the atomic bomb as a trigger.
The Mike device was a 22-foot-long, 5-foot-diameter cylinder housing canisters of liquid hydrogen fuel. These canisters were surrounded by the atomic trigger. The Mike shot occurred on October 31, 1952, and as scientists watched from 40 miles away as the mushroom cloud rose into the stratosphere, the second generation of nuclear weapons was born.
Mike was followed on November 15, 1952, by the King shot, the largest fission device ever tested. It was an implosion bomb, but with an advanced warhead that enabled it to produce 500 kilotons of power.
I can't believe how often I still find channels that are this incredible.
My grandfather was there, and experienced many nuclear test. His name is Ron Yoxsimer, and is still alive and well today.
I bet he have some interesting stories... Maybe get him to make a few videos talking about it...
What's his super power,? Glowing in the dark?
Alive and well with six arms and three heads😂
us nukes are radiation safe? my grandfather was a nuclear warhead assembler in ussr. he was radioactive and died from lukemia and respiratory system cancers.
@@annaoaulinovna That was back then when we barely had little knowledge of radiation until after WW2 and the years after
I love the casual nature of this... "I'll smoke on my pipe a bit, then grab a cup of coffee and a cigarette... we're just detonating what is (at the time) the largest weapon ever detonated."
Well it looks casual, but as the film goes on the sweat begins to flow! The hosts top is wet with sweat, must have been pretty stressful in all that heat.
@Noel Normandin I wish you said what you said about this.
@@paulelephant9521 They would have been sweating their asses off if they were just sitting around eating ice cream and dreaming up new ways of making ice cream taste better. There's a reason the natives of those islands went around nearly naked all the time.
@tybol - Since those elements did not have to survive on the free market and actually work for their money, but paid themselves generously out of the tax-payer's coffers, ...their casualty should be no surprise.
They destroy and pollute just as casually now! Cure cancer instead of making this stupid bomb!
Most of these guys probably didn't have to worry about long term radiation accumulation. The amount of lung rockets, pipes, and cigars they smoked was tremendous.
How true, my dad the marine only lived to 85 smoking like a train…😊
My grandfather was apart of this operation. He was on land in Enuetak during this operation and was on the beach and was greatly affected and was told he would be taken care of for the rest of his life. Had back problems and had skin cancer. The VA said there was no record of him.
42:50 Not mentioned is the death of Capt J Robinson who couldn't find the tanker to refuel and crashed on return to Enewetak from collecting samples. He was 28.
"Man jet fighters are being used exclusively on this operation. Experience is proven, that maned aircraft is just as efficient and much less costly to put in the air than our drones for sample collecting."
Boy they(the government) really didn't gived a single f about safety and human lives involved in arm race back then. "much less costly" still echoes through my mind, like "let's not use these drones that costed tons on bucks to construct just for this purpose, but find some dummies and force them through the radioactive cloud of new generation nuclear weapon", if one of them crashes, it's "human error" and all hushed up and never spoken about it again.
If Castle Bravo didn't became a international incident, government would used entire Marshall islanders as guinea pigs and might as well got away with it.
this is so wierd!!!!!!! before i came here i was listening to a interview done by a guy i randomly picked on the library of congress website. it just happend to be about the hydrogen bomb and this guy voluntered to test the samples from the i think f80 jet. the air samples. his job was oxygen/nitrogen seperation. PERSONAL NARRATIVE
Charles G. DeSerre Collection Interview / Recording. Thats freaking crazy sauce f-84 i think. guy said it was after the f-86 sabre/super sabre
The inimitable, iconic, 1950s voice of Reed Hadley. Famed for narrating nuclear bomb tests, crime drama, and films noir.
This!!!... is the first full scale test of a hydrogen device
@Alistair Muir "It's Hedley!" - Hedley Lamarr
He is probabily the reason for all the overly dramatic music. Some of it felt like it was comming from a horror film.
He was also in some incredibly cheesy movies. Women of the Prehistoric Planet and Brain of Blood were two the Mystery Science Theatre guys had fun with.
@@kevhead1525Reed's a name-dropping idiot,, "we in the military",, YEAH RIGHT the closest Reed got to a foxhole was his last golf game when he tripped picking up his ball from hole 16...
I love that 'BANG' sound at detonation - Because sound travelled much faster in 1952 that it does now!!!!!!
This video is from an earlier era in United States history when documentaries actually contained information.
While true, this isn't a documentary for public consumption. However, just watch Bell Labs educational films from the era, and you'll see much more detailed educational information than you'll see in any declassified atomic testing film.
@Joseph Astier -
Nonsense.
0:06 "This video has been sanitized."
That means all actual information has been removed.
"actually contained information" ... Pfffffft..... some people....
@@thekaiser4333 This isn't a documentary. It was not intended for anyone to watch that wasn't in the military with high security clearance, with specific additional clearances for the nuclear program. Nonetheless, it actually is rather informative, despite some censorship.
@@ChildovGhad "It was not intended for anyone to watch that wasn't in the military with high security clearance"
Why not? What is it, that you are trying to cover up?
@@thekaiser4333 Dude, are you serious? That was all top secret stuff at the time, and anything sanitized still is. Would you really want any average Joe to know the specifics of how to design an efficient atomic bomb?
When the fuse for your nuclear weapon is ANOTHER nuclear weapon...
No real limit to stacking, like how radiation pressure and neutrons from a primary could detonate a fusion secondary with fission-producing tamper, which would then detonate a larger tertiary.
@@fallinginthed33p The three stage layout was the design of Redwing-Zuni, Redwing-Tewa, and Tsar Bomba.
Narrator with the pipe was Reed Hadley, radio, TV and movie actor.
Thanks, pal. 👍
@e No.
@e No, he died from overuse of tobacco.
They gave a civilian that level of security clearance?
That was my ship.USS. ESTES AGC 12 ... later designated as LCC 12. . Spent many hours on the helm. Nice to see the bridge again.. Never knew about this until now . Thanks for posting
How the actual fuck could you not know the ship you were helming was highly irradiated?
As in: actively contaminating crew members many years later.
@@burntorangeak You need to learn a little nuclear physics instead of just showing your immense ignorance.
burntorangeak fairly stupid huh? Sorry man
@@dougg1075 LMAO
burntorangeak No wonder Hillary Clinton got so many votes. Congrats.
Nice! The technology breakthroughs of this era are mind blowing
"About 12 megatons, Al." "Nice going!" This was one of those times when the civilian population was way ahead of the military. Nobody in everyday life said "Nice going" about the H-bomb.
My grandfather was aboard the b56 which flew over this as a simulation. Operation Ivy I still have his paperwork and the photographs and even the folder saying TOP SECRET USA and everything. Pretty cool to hold something like that from history.
You have sekrit documints at home? Well whadda'ya know - just like Biden.
@TheOrdomalleus666 if senator pedo Joe can take stiff home, why not. I won't tell if you don't.
He flew over the site in a B-56, a version of the B-47 that wasnt' built?
Hmm Top Secret, that sounds like very PRIVILEGED information. The funny thing about that story and your username is that this is the kind of comment only a white man, or at least the son or grandson of one, could make. It’s just a really clean, concise metaphor-by-example of how privilege is intergenerational. God I love having white privilege. I would honestly be dead without mine. HIGH FIVE 🙌 NO, not at that angle bro and you’re supposed to bend your wrist that makes it look like… eh never mind.
I love how his username is NotAPrivilegedWhiteMan, and he’s holding top secret privileged documents that his grandfather never would have had if the man weren’t white. And now he has it. But he’s not privileged. But he’s holding privileged documents. I commented how this was a very simple example of how privilege, and therefore privilege’s opposite- in this case racism, is multigenerational. So when you see black folk acting up still even though we stopped using them as livestock in 1865, maybe you can remember the not-privileged white man and his privileged documents. I love my white privilege. Really helped me avoid consequences for my actions when I was young and foolish. How about you?
Also, on a personal note, I read the Mueller report in print. There was part of an interview with an FBI guy, I forget his name, saying how he or one of the people he was working with had injured their back and become an FBI casualty from lifting the sheer physical weight of the hundreds and hundreds of heavy boxes of classified documents they found at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate during one of the FBI raids. I just think it’s a really funny story and your comment reminded me of it.
It really is none of my business who you vote for this November, but it’s the agreed upon understanding within US military intelligence that if Trump is elected president again, Russia annexes and solidifies its power in Ukraine and therefore the entire Black Sea region including its oil and gas fields. It would be the biggest military and geopolitical victory for Russia possibly as far back as WW2. And we’re watching a documentary about a weapon of unimaginable power being tested to assure that our ideological enemy, Russia, would realize that any war with US and NATO would be met with their immediate destruction. Just a few things to think about. All true and easy to fact-check. God bless 🙏
31:35. The Krause-Ogle box extending away from the shot cab had to be constructed to account for the curvature of the Earth over its two-mile span. Ivy-King was a high yield fission device intended as a face-saving measure in case Ivy-Mike fizzled.
This is common knowledge amongst those who have an interest in the historical development of nuclear technologies, and, conversely, pretty much meaningless to anyone else (apart from the flat Earth cult, who'll lynch you for suggesting there's any curvature at all).
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 I'm glad you agree the earth is round.
@patrickspringer6534 the Earth is round? Damn, I was told it was shaped like an eggplant. Hank Johnson lied to me again. What are you going to tell me next, Guam can't tip over? Hank said it could.
Ivy-King was probably also a test of an actually deliverable bomb since Mike weighing in at 80 tons was really just a big lab experiment not a usable weapon
Can you just imagine how bright those fighter pilots were glowing after flying directly through the freshly made radioactive
cloud from that explosion !!! I imagine their life span was shortened a might bit - of course no one will ever hear about that...!!!
Only Neutrons activate material s.
Surface contamination and initial micro second exposure to gamma was temporary.
Thank you for your time and effort. Declassification of classified material is not an easy task. Was military and political leadership briefed in this manner using a 'reel' as an executive summary? On the other, your archive of material is a treasure for military historians, documentarians, and science fiction writers. Please keep up your great work!
There were various versions of the film. One of the versions was for general release with classified information removed.
When I was a kid we'd watch these on TV. Pre Programing for the masses, it gave a sense of normalcy of it all. Like one comment said "The casual nature of it all", Like a message "We've got it all under control, nothing to see or worry about going on here"
The blaring horns of an orchestra that seem to occur with every nuclear detonation is simply terrifying!
its annoying
Would be better with early Ozzy 🎶
He referred to the first H-Bomb test as "This whole ball of wax"...I love it! Can you imagine being inside of the facility, casually leaning against the triggering device with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, yucking it up with your buddy. Oh yeah, working in the cryogenic chamber in shorts only. However ecologically unsound the tests were, they did at least provide immeasurable data. What a wonderfully different and dangerous world it was.
Well, wax is a very interesting choice of word here, Eh?
@@KD2HJP wax does have some hydrogen in it
I love it. Like a hot Lava Lamp :)
@@KD2HJP Hush!
Great documentary. Seen parts, but the whole smash is awesome. Keep 'em coming!
It’s great to see history in the making back them. So glad this has been saved for my generation.
Physics was in its Golden Era. Acting, not so much.😂
I love the way we spoke with all of its old references back in the day. For example, "That's the broad brush of it, yes". Even when we watch the old 1950s B Sci-fi movies we hear the old same slang lingo. I love the way we spoke back in the day. It had such an artistic flow to it.
Yeah, apart from the fact that this is _scripted, contrived!_ Language as an art form _is_ dying a slow death, though, you're quite correct. Just wait until we all communicate digitally through implantable phone-like devices wired directly to our brains - what fun (not).
You dont like today's slang?? 🤔
I don't either. 😕
I notice the phrase about dropping the bomb "...right down the pickle barrel." Aww, now you have radioactive pickles all over the island.
39:35 "In less than a minute you will see the most powerful explosion ever witnessed by human eyes."
CASTLE BRAVO - Hold my beer!
Tsar Bomb: Hold my vodka!😂😂
@@giuseppegatani704 Da, Komrad 🤣
you win
Castle Bravo was an oops. If I remember right they used tritium and didn't expect the yield the tritium helped in giving. Although it was an oops moment, it did show them that they could use tritium to make even larger bombs if needed.
@@samueladams1775 They used natural lithium, which comes in two isotopes, one of which breeds tritium when the lithium is hit by a neutron. The tritium then fused with the deuterium, which produces more net energy than deuterium-deuterium fusion, and occurs at a lower Q (technical term for conditions required for fusion).
Edit: the two isotopes are lithium-6 and lithium-7, Li-7 being the one that makes tritium.
“....and that’s the U.S.S. AUSTIN over there. She’s carrying 150 tons of cigarettes and pipe tobacco....”
Lol
Something a little less destructive.
150 megatons of cigarettes and pipe tobacco
LMAO!
As a pipe smoker, this is relevant to my interests.
45:48 "What this tremendous blast did to the Atoll, nobody knows.."
And nobody ever will, because the Atoll was no longer there after the shot. 😕
The atoll is still there but the shot island disappeared.
There's a deep, wide crater......it's filled with water.....the water is blue.....😅
The smoking-lamp is LIT....😆
F-84G Thunderjet...Thank you for posting this it helped fill in puzzle pieces to my fathers life.
The soldiers were scared, but the islands didn't care atoll.
Well that joke bombed.
@@PetersPianoShoppe I was just wingin' it anyway.
One of the witnesses, who had seen earlier nuke tests, described this test as "brutal".....
I suspect the interior scenes of the B-36 were filmed after the test was completed. The stability of the aircraft during the interior scenes along with the close ups of the bombardiers actions (would they allow a camera to be that close up during the actual operation?) causes me to suspect they were filmed afterwards.
6:50 - This was the control board for Ivy Mike, the "Sausage" device test. This was a wet device, using cryogenic liquid deuterium fuel for the fusion secondary, but the rest of the design was calculated on the Teller-Ulam plan, using a cylindrical Uranium tamper, radiation channel, and a spark plug of fissile material to compress the fusion fuel against the radiation imploded tamper. The exact same design was tested with solid lithium for the fusion fuel in Castle Bravo, the "Shrimp" device, and when that test was successful all the wet device designs became obsolete. But everything they learned in these two tests went into weapon designs that were flown in the late 50's and early 60's.
Dr. Graves, at 12:50, was injured at Los Alamos labs in 1946 during an experiment with the unused 3rd core. The "Demon Core"
Anyways, he survived and denied health issues from the exposure but family members said he suffered multiple health issues on and off until he died of a heart attack at 55 years of age.
Anyways, this is 6 years after the accident. I find it interesting that he continued his work with testing and was willing to be relatively close to blasts that would increase his exposure.
"Well I'm already fucked, may as well keep at it the pay is good."
Cigarettes= heart attacks...not gamma from critical mass accident.
The Demon Core was used; it was detonated in Crossroads Baker.
Back when men were men, not whining crybabies. 🤷🏻
@mitzvosgolem2090 quite reasonable to surmise that the radiation did a lot of damage to his heart and other organs. No person gets a pass when mistakes are made with radioactive materials.
Its crazy that there are apparently still classified parts after all those decades.
Yep, a lot of how that bomb actually worked is still classified.
@@richardvernon317Did it work? The first UK nuke is widely considered a fake.
@naughtiusmaximus830 First British A Bomb was not fake. The first two 2 British H Bombs were fizzles. One of the first three British H Bombs was actually a very big A Bomb.
@@richardvernon317 I have seen it questioned but I’m sure the UK would never lie🙄
@naughtiusmaximus830 Oh, the British Conservitive Government lied like Buggery during the 1950 and early 1960's about the capabilities of Brithsh weapon systems and how much of it was actually British. It took at least 30 years after the events for the truth to come out.
All that work just to try to blow up Godzilla and all they did was make him stronger
I highly recommend the close caption on this video. It is hilarious.
It is still true today. Some of our best work is done wearing only underwear.
And all that smoking. I kinda doubt the Navy would allow people to smoke here and there.
@@jondeare You're kinda right, John Deer ;-) I can understand a ban in tight, small rooms, or ehere any ventillation is not possible...
You have to remember Apollo control centre - and many people were smoking there... And from my experience - this simple ritual helps quite often - to focus, to have a moment of "thinking out of a box", to deattach, to unloop... = to find a better solution to any problem one could be actually working on... How many North American Indians died from cancer? Cancer epidemy started only after all those nuke tests, after 1960... OK, I'm a smoker myself... I do not smoke in any places I mentioned before, and I'm not gonna blame anyona for my health trouble... How about Cubans? 70 yrs old, smoking his whole life, and still have next kids done, and healthy... ??? Uh?
Notice how they sent in the Marines to collect samples after the detonation .
TOO TRUE....and our finest minds are created in simmilar fashion, or less.
Some of my best work is done sitting on the thunderbucket.
The amount of 1952 dollars spent for this one test simply boggles the mind.
The 2 billion dollars spent in the mid 40s for two Plutonium cores, enough for two bombs, is even more mind boggling
The trillions of dollars and Euros for a mostly fraudulent and overhyped nonsense disaster as covid19, created and denied that creation by the world's enemy, China 🇨🇳, totally boggles my mind. This is the reason the Western World must squander untold sums of treasure and blood is because of World dominating seekers China and Russia. And of course, the World Health Organization is complicit in covering up these facts as well.
I own 1952 silver certificates and 52 5 dollar red notes
40:30 from right to left: Stan Burris, chief engineering and firing commander, Colonel Richard Lunger, military firing and security commander and Robert Gibney, ultracold refrigeration engineering commander for thermonuclear liquid fuel state monitoring.
Stan Burris later got involved with the development of the Polaris SLBM on the Missile side of the weapon system. There is an interview with him about the development of the missile with Ed Morrow in a production called "The Year of Polaris" which is on TH-cam.
@@richardvernon317 thanks for information
The Teller-Ulam configuration was not known to the USSR at that time. However, it is a testament to Sakharov's talent and brilliance that the Sloika design was not far off the mark. Another physicist, Hans Bethe actually guessed, correctly, that the tested bomb (Sloika) contained deuterium. The key was when it was realized that the neutron flux was not ideal for compressing the fusion secondary, but rather contained and reflected radiation.
I guess when you're playing with nuclear bombs you don't have to worry too much about smoking
"Well I went into more detail in the cryogenics end of this project than I intended", we don't want to bore the generals with a bunch of egghead stuff.
Please explain Eggbert Jr.
I love these videos. I always think of the cost. It must have been so expensive, the entire enterprise.
Also... there must be similar videos in Russian, Chinese, British (hehehe), Hebrew and even Korean. I'd like to see them. D.A. NYC
Wonderful B-36 footage "six turning and four burning"
Stan Burriss (at 6:35) was later a vice president of the Lockheed Corp.
Stan ended up knowing things that were far more classified than this hydrogen bomb test.
@Bernard de Fontaines yep!
It's beautiful
The filming went well, it's just that the plot bombed.
Excellent
Esses cavalheiros Americanos são incríveis.
Não é à toa que até Alienígenas fizeram contato e intercâmbio com eles.
It’s scary to now that a little ball of metal can make all that energy.
And a wisp of deuterium or tritium.
Now the way how that reporter talk is on point
My father was USN Korean era. I believe sailors
Gave more than we will ever know in the testing
Of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons
My dad was a Marine weather man during the Korean war, years before he got married.
What strikes me about these films is how casually the officers and enlisted men are pictured with pipes and cigarettes as they are going about such dangerous work.
Definitely a capsule from another time..
The style of this Navy propaganda film is so direct and conversational, it makes me think I would like to know more.
Would you like to know more? - Starship troopers - th-cam.com/video/kdrjzE1SE58/w-d-xo.html
You shall know NO more....
It's like a Disney film, good old fashioned story telling for a weekend afternoon.
Comment section summed up: Cigs, coffee and science = bad. Fast food, weed and feelings = good.
Cigs, beer, and science is perfectly wonderful. Joints are fine, too. Don't get yourself confused.
Madness, ... Madness. ...
I dunno, if I had to be close to a nuke going off -- close meaning I can see it -- I'd be feeling the need, the need, for weed.
Dude's gonna get in trouble for sitting in the Admiral's Chair! 15:19
I love the Mike Shot. It was such a technological challenge to create a fusion explosion with liquid hydrogen isotopes! Keeping all that deuterium cold was a HUGE achievement. And the amazing yield (TEN MEGATONS!!!) was 1000 times the Hiroshima bomb. Actually, about 80% of the actual yield was from fast fissioning of a uranium tamper. This made Mike a REALLY dirty explosion. Still, it led the way to dry fuel weapons you could actually drop on Moscow. Too bad all those really big bombs are things of the past. The weapons back then had the power to turn an entire city to glass. Today's sub-megaton weapons just don't have that "Armageddon feel" to them.
Some people just want to watch the world burn huh...wow.
I think 1/2 to 1 megaton is quite enough, thank you.
@@bikerfirefarter7280 Enough to knock down the downtown, but not enough to turn it to a glass trivia.
@@Indrid__Cold You don't have to turn a city into a giant, glass lined, self lighting parking lot, to kill everyone.
@@booklover6753 No, you do not. Still, if your intention is the practical end of human civilization, you can’t do much better than high yield thermonuclear explosives.
In the 1950s - everybody talked like a character out of a Bugs Bunny Cartoon.
@@bobair2 FUCK TARD HAHA HA HA
Yeah see???
Now look here see, it's curtains for you see, yeah see
...but now everybody talks like a whining crybaby moron.
Eeeeeeeh......what's up Doc?!
Go for it, frigate bird. I'll watch 'em all.
45:45 "What's the verdict?" "About 12 megatons, Al." "Nice going!" Yeah, they casually skipped over the part about expecting a 5 megaton yield. The deuterium added much more fusion energy than they thought due to a miscalculation. This thing destroyed structures and equipment far outside of what they thought the safe zone was.
that was castle bravo, not ivy mike
@@askmeforadispenceronemoret3759 Damn you and your facts...
@@askmeforadispenceronemoret3759 which was 15 MT
And in the Castle Bravo shot it was the unanticipated fission of Lithium-7 to produce tritium (not deuterium) that drove the much higher fusion yield of the device.
Castle- bravo not Ivy
Can you imagine NO air conditioning on a ship in the the tropics ? Look at all the wet shirts and sweaty faces
No Wimpy Soy Boys serving in uniform in those days.
D Shedwick Very true, especially as they were confined to quarters for a week afterwards due to radiation exposure on deck. It must have been really foul lying there in your rack.
Oh, you'll wonder where the yellow went, when you drop a bomb on the orient... Loved that commercial! Learned that in NBC School. The good ole days of duck and cover! LMAO
Wow, I haven’t thought of that warped commercial jingle since about third grade. Even then, we knew “Duck and Cover” was a joke, sort like the farcical lock-down drills I have to endure along with my first graders. An idiot could find the door windows covered, doors locked, and still know where to fire!
Warped motherfuckers. They never bothered to understand Russia. They were too busy fearing it. The fifties in the US stank.
@@beachcomber2008 Leaders understood the USSR and Stalin perfectly well. Fellow travelers in American media and government could not cover up that many facts.
@@stephenarling1667 Violence begets violence. We're all fellow travelers. Russia lost many millions of people to a fascist state initially funded by a fascist US. It wasn't about to back down any more. Present day US looks pretty fascistic to anyone who doesn't live in the West. Look what the US has done to S. America.
@@beachcomber2008 😆 Look at Russia today..
Always wondered with all this open air testing we inadvertently sent out signals to other planets or space travelers ( made ourselves known). Or at least showed that we found out how create very high energy bursts. It's always for warfare at first, but we'll eventually tame / harness it for space travel.
Aliens do not exist
@@davelowets I know that. I was seeing how people would react. Hey, it would be a good sci-fi story!
Well we did send out the signals. Whether any out of this world beings, should they exist, have noticed is another question though it is possible.
@Alistair Muir Imagine if they think it's real-life footage.
@Alistair Muir Somewhere out there is a Gilligan's Island fan club.
The narrator misstated the yield. He said kilotons rather than megatons, though he was correct in the yield compared to TNT. If I remember correctly this test “ran away” and actually yielded closer to 15 megatons.
My mistake : The “Castle Bravo” test “ran away”. This test fell within the predicted range.
You weren't that much wrong. The Ivy Mike also ran away, they predicted it would be 6 megatons, and yield in the end it was 10 megatons.
One of the many tragedies regarding nuclear tests and cold war was that many people suffered long lasting health issues, that is a clear fact. And in this particular test, one of the pilots entered into cloud to gather the sample and crashed into ocean. His body has never been found.
@kogvos
These things were generally made in 2 or 3 different versions, one cut for the unwashed with low or no clearances, these would contain only the bare facts already published in the papers along with the whiz-bang test footage (ever notice the IVY MIKE test footage in the beginning of the first Godzilla movie?). Other versions would range up to having detailed information regarding design and performance as well as footage of device assembly most of which is still tughtly held.
Ivy was a proof of concept, the ivy devise weighed 50 tons, totally unusable for a bomb.
And the Soviets were already ahead, getting ready for their first H bomb test, which they dropped from a plane.
@@ChildovGhad That's arguable.
From Wikipedia, "Because the Soviet Sloika test used dry lithium-6 deuteride eight months before the first U.S. test to use it (Castle Bravo, March 1, 1954), it was sometimes claimed that the USSR won the H-bomb race, even though the United States tested and developed the first hydrogen bomb: the Ivy Mike H-bomb test. The 1952 U.S. Ivy Mike test used cryogenically cooled liquid deuterium as the fusion fuel in the secondary, and employed the D-D fusion reaction. However, the first Soviet test to use a radiation-imploded secondary, the essential feature of a true H-bomb, was on November 23, 1955, three years after Ivy Mike. In fact, real work on the implosion scheme in the Soviet Union only commenced in the very early part of 1953, several months after the successful testing of Sloika."
If you're arguing yield, the Ivy King fission-only Super-Oralloy device took place two weeks after Ivy Mike and yielded 500 kT.
@@michaelrichmann2825 I'm talking about an actual combat usable thermonuclear weapon you could deliver to a target. The Soviets were first. That's not arguable. It simply is.
@@ChildovGhad that first Soviet hydrogen weapon was only 400 kilotons so that is why it was smaller in size. The American initial version was 10 megatons hence why it was the size of a house. If America limited the yield of our first hydrogen bomb to the kiloton range, it would have been small enough to drop from an airplane too. But America was after a megaton range bomb now and worrying about airdropping one later.
@F P You obviously cared enough to reply. ;)
Peter King needs to scan the original film of the Ivy King test and restore it like he did with the WWI footage.
Peter Kuran did and put some footage in his movie Trinity and Beyond.
All the shots, excepting the "desk" intros and "conference" shots and such, were shot on the locations named at the events.
Is this dude really a high ranking officer or a actor he seems like a actor to me
Actor Reed Hadley.
All accomplished with slide-rules and calculexes, calculating machines large enough to fill a factory warehouse but with less processing power than your smartphone, and analog dials and counters, and the coordinated action of several thousand men working to a single object.
Sounds like a blast
I would give anything to have seen a B-36 in flight.
Didn't they have a galley and bunk beds?
That was my dad's favorite aircraft in his era as a flight engineer/navigator in the AAForce then USAF (1939-1961). I'd see them on the flight line during air shows we went to back in the day.
I was just a year old and had the pleasure of experiencing the loads of this weapon
I'm sure that's not the only "load" you've experienced...
Reed Hadley narrates. He also starred in TV's "Racket Squad" (1950-1953), and "The Public Defender" (1954-1955).
He also played the arrogant pilot/instructor in the how to fly the B-47 film kicking around TH-cam.
My dad was an atomic veteran, he had some stories for sure.
Oh I bet..only a certain few got ho even see Atomics go off
@@thetreblerebel He started at Nevada, ended up in the Pacific Proving Grounds for the big boomers (megaton variety). He was at the Castle Bravo test, the largest shot in US history (a bit of a run-away, planned for ~5 MTon, ended up closer to ~15 MTon). Pretty bad. Destroyed much of shot island (you can see the crater on google earth), and dosed the shit out of some neighboring islands, including a nearby Japanese fishing ship. The Castle Bravo report indicates the shot covered 5,000 square miles (mostly ocean) with lethal levels of radiation (imagine a circle with an 80 mile diameter - everyone dead). Bad stuff, hope we never use these things. When Oppe' said: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," he wasn't kidding around.
@@wagsman9999 No... Everyone inside of an 80 mile wide circle wouldn't have died of radiation poisoning.
They needed a ship with air-conditioning.
It was AC or extra cigarettes. Guess what they picked.
@@scottjustscott3730 You got that right! I did however sail aboard the last all gun, heavy cruiser in the USN the USS Newport News (CA-148) it was fully airconditioned and the ships store had cigarettes' for .10 cents a pack in a war zone (Vietnam) and .25 cents out side of a combat patrol. Imagine cigarettes' $1.00 a carton.
@Coy Leigh Absolutely they did, when we were in the war zone in 1968, in the zone $1 a carton, outside the warzone $2.50 a carton. I would buy extras ( we were only allowed so many) from my buddies that didn't smoke and would sell them or trade them to bar girls, some places you could get laid for a bar of soap. Different times.
@@AdamosDad Sure, you COULD get laid for a bar of soap, but the Gonorrhea you would inevitably get made it not worth it.
@@davelowets It depends what your values are, as far as I know no one in my division got the clap except one guy that paid for upscale Susie in Hong Kong and another guy got it when he got home, from his wife.
The ending was interesting.
Music and cinematography did inspire more than a few James Bond movies :)
An airconditioned ship would have been cool. The whole time I was in the Navy I never heard a radio operator say "WILCO", the 60's and 70's.
@Dmitri Kozlowsky Thanks Dmitri, I was an ETN that worked in "radio one" cryptographic center, on my first ship, after that I was mostly in charge of HF transmitters and antennas, I had heard the term in movies and on the Andy Griffith show but never aboard a ship thanks for letting me know its source.
@Dmitri Kozlowsky Thanks for your service sir. We were shot at while in Vietnam but we were not heroic either, just doing a job. We did have one accident with short powder casings, while firing into North Vietnam, we got a TTY message from the spotter that we had hit 6 NUN's on bicycles, of course everyone went nuts and what political disaster besides human tragedy. As it turned out the spotter had hit the U key on his machine instead of the V key, we all had a riotous laugh in Radio One. You can find several videos on you tube. I was aboard the Heavy cruiser USS Newport News CA-148 for 2 1/2 years then moved on to other commands. An ETN is a electronic technician in communications. You can find several videos of our actions on you tube. Here is one from a now deceased Brother Dexter Goad. th-cam.com/video/YIIZAoRYaPA/w-d-xo.html
@Daniel Rodriguez roger, lol, I use roger now a lot as a radio amature.
WILCO (understand your last order and will comply) was a valid pro word when I was in (mid 80s - early 90s, break in service, late 90s - early 2000s). As far as I know, it's still valid. I still use it. I was Army; different organizations have different procedures.
I was born the year this test was shot, shortly after. Living in the Northeastern U.S. what did I know at 3 months old? Especially after they found Strontium 90 in cows milk and in baby's teeth in upper N.Y. State. BTW, in college at FIT we had intramural football teams known as "Upper US" and "Flying Urchens of Cape Kennedy". (FU++).
1953 Upshot Knothole/Simon test (Nevada) the radioactive cloud didn't disperse, but stayed compact all the way to upstate NY, where it was drawn into a large thunderstorm. Dropped all its radiation over a couple counties, but was hushed up for decades. In a nuclear chemistry class at RPI (Troy) the next morning, everyone switched on their Geiger counters and they went nuts. Figuring someone had spilled something radioactive in the lab, everyone rushed outside, where the radiation levels were dangerously high. The professor called it in to the AEC, who told him he would spend the rest of his life in prison if word ever got out. It took over 30 years for the story to become public.
So THAT is what the voice looks like!
I keep expecting the band to jump out and start playing.
My grandfather was involved in this operation.
Why was he involved ?
So was my father. Amazing that he’s still alive and kicking at 90. Most of the men he worked with are long deceased.
Entertainment Executive Can’t say. A lot is still classified.
As was my grandfather, we still can't find out what he did
I wonder what happened to the pilots who were ordered to fly close to the cloud to collect samples. Radiation levels must have been extremely high.
+TheSpiritof1969 In a pressurized cockpit you can fly through the cloud with no harm.
+Zach Fehr Not so. High levels of gamma radiation would have still been coming out of the cloud for some time. Not the same as fallout, which the plane would have been covered in when it landed.
+TheSpiritof1969
AND WHY was it necessary to have 4:23 "some 8000 men will view the event"???...
+TheSpiritof1969 I was actually contacted by the family of an F-86 pilot that flew through the cloud. Two pilots flew through wearing lead protective over garments. Both pilots reported ingesting coral dust and had flame outs. Both commented on the radio about their cockpit "glowing" a bit.... They attempted a restart and failed, and even so they were too far from Kwajalein, their home base. The F-86 glides like a rock, and apparently had no (upward) ejection system on these early craft. They tried to make it to Enewetak Island airstrip, one did and blew its tires upon a hard landing. The second failed and force landed in the channel near a know marker buoy, and the pilot was seen with the canopy open trying to probably toss parts of his 55 pound lead suit. His aircraft, and the pilot, were never found. I was contacted by the family a number of years ago t attempt a search, and my research interestingly found the first use of SCUBA equipment by Scripps Institute divers to locate the pilot and his craft. From the report, they looked in the wrong place. The pilot and his AC are still sitting there waiting for history to find them. Matt Holly, Marshall Islands 2016.
+Dan NZ The idea was to expose them to the audio/visual/tactile elements of nuclear war so that they would not be so stunned as to be combat ineffective if a nuclear blast happened nearby. My great uncle was exposed as a soldier at the Nevada Test Site (not sure if it was Yucca Flats or Frenchman's Flats). It was in order to "battle harden" him. By having enough men who were exposed in any particular battalion, they could rally the inexperienced once the blast went off.
It's telling how the King shot just kind of gets overshadowed at the end. "Yeah we dropped this thing... but look at MIKE!"
*BEST MOVIE EVER!!!!!1111ONE*
I wish I knew the name of the narrator. I'm positive he was a fairly well-known actor in later TV shows--including at least one appearance on Red Skelton's show.
Reed Hadley
Buz Aldrin You're right; thank you!
The narrator was Ed Skelton.
Buz Aldrin I didn't know Mr Aldrin uses TH-cam? Who are you really?
Did that loud and suspenseful music really happen every time a thermonuclear device was tested or was it just dubbed into the film?
The 509th Strategic Brass Band was onsite for the Ivy tests; they provided the soundtrack in real time. Later in development (1965 or so), Lawrence Livermore National Labs figured out a way to add the soundtrack to the pit assembly. This significantly cut down on casualties among Air Force band members, as they no longer needed to be present around Ground Zero for the moment of detonation.
@@nottherealpaulsmith thank you.
@@nottherealpaulsmith bahahah brilliant
27:44 welll a ya know were a setting off a thermonuclear bomb so that’s kinda unusual
This reminds me of a film they would show in shop class....
Proof of our theoretical physics, but we will never do it that way ever again.
Yeah, now we've moved on to doing proof of our climatology and atmospheric science ...
That's part of the story. The Right Guard Story. The massively sweaty story. The "I make Steve Ballmer looking like a amateur sweater" story.
LOL - “10…NINER…8…7…6….FIVER…4…3…2…1”
I was in the Navy. Just for the record, we never said “niner” or “fiver”.
“Next to War all other human endeavors PALE in comparison “
George Patton
With all that smoking hazard it's indeed senseless to worry about radiation hazard
Everyone ought to smoke strong cigarettes, drink strong alcohol and have plutonium in their daily diet. Makes the mind keen as well as putting hairs on ones chest and introducing one to the world of manhood.
Hydrogen gas, deuterium and tritium, are highly explosive.
Wouldn't make sense to have some smoker set off a fuel air explosion around the bomb would it?
Tobacco is radioactive. What larks!
@@whangie1 Cigarettes were not manly enough. Real men smoked cigars or pipes, or both.
@@jamallabarge2665 It seems as if you believe such an explosion would be _nuclear_ in nature - it would not! It would destroy an expensive test rig, but there'd be no nuclear, nor thermonuclear (obviously), event.
It will be a miracle if the human race survives another 10-20 years.
There speaks an optimist!
Especially with that maniac Hitler wannabe, Vladimir Putin, and Slow Joe, Xie around.
That's what they thought in 1955 I'm sure. Yet here we are.
@@wes11bravo yeah maybe. But more luck than judgement, eh! Still enough time for the morons' to nause it up. Love & peas.
@@wes11bravo
I recall my dad, who would have been 108 this year, saying back in the 70s that he thought we had 75 to 100 years. He was at Pearl Harbor on 7 Dec. 41 and did two tours in Korea in the early 50s. I suppose he was a bit more optimistic than I.
All I remember is during this time period we weren't allowed to play in the snow until Civil Defense tested it for radioactivity and gave the all clear- Sometimes they did
but sometimes they didn't
The nuclear explosion was so earthshaking some men where reportedly crying for their mum.
We cannot understand the fear they felt
This Vape isn't gettin' it anymore... I really want a cigarette!
More nuke films! Thanks!!
No, Reed, I DIDN'T KNOW that ship was the flagship for task force f*** wad, THANK YOU VERY F****** much lol
HEY you,, yeah Reed is a real tool but what can you expect from a guy who likes army chow but smokes that ridiculous Berkshire pipe or whatever it is...
18:11,, guy says,, that's quite a subject,, idiot Reed says seriously,, it sure is...
4:09 cue epic Tiki Taane beats
Rejecting the logic of nuclear weapons DOES NOT mean surrendering to evil. Evil must still be guarded against. Rejecting nuclear weapons is to assert what is human over the evil nature of the weapon.