Nuclear Missile Test Gone Horribly Wrong

See related ICBM sites in California here: http://www.terrastories.com/bearings/vandenberg-abandoned-missile

A doctor testifying to an advisory committe said of this experiment "84 percent of the men that were exposed at Johnston Island to that detonation -- it wasn't a detonation -- to that abort, 84 percent of them have cancers or are dead. Their children are all affected."

The Johnston Island area segment of Operation Dominic. Much of the film was devoted to the failures that occurred in the high-altitude program. In one test, a rocket was destroyed because it was believed to be off-course, but post flight data revealed that it was on the correct trajectory. Another rocket blew up on the launch pad because of a sticking fuel valve. This caused the high explosives in the weapon to detonate, resulting in the destruction and contamination of the launch pad and surrounding area. In another instance, a rocket had flight irregularities stemming from the wrong configuration of a flight plan. The nuclear device detonated directly over Johnston Island, instead of 26 miles away as planned.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• icbm
• nuclear
• missile
• test
• johnston
• island
• thor
• atomic

[puncheex]

@klin1klinom: You're so right (about your turn). Welcome. So, what are your plans? Hope you don't get second guessed, like you're doing.

They were simultaneously testing the launch platform, the ICBM concept, and the effects of very high altitude detonations; 3 for the price of 1. It isn't as if they hadn't done it before. Three missiles with nukes were fired in Project Argus. In Dominic/Frigatebird, a Polaris was launched underwater to go 2000 miles downrange and explode.

[klin1klinom]

@puncheex Your time is over, pops, it's my world now.I wasn't talking about general ICBM testing,but rather about using live warheads for such tests,which is simply senseless-you don't need to carry the warhead on top of the missile to verify the missile and reentry vehicle technical characteristics and you don't need missile to test live warhead either.Fission/fusion isn't an issue here,who gets to keep the warhead or have plutonium infused rain shower over their heads is,if the missile fails.

[puncheex]

Today's bombs are a lot safer, but (when testing was ongoing) safety tests remained a substantial percentage of testing. Bombs lost in the 60s in Spain, South Carolina and Greenland (and possibly others) all suffered explosions of their primary lenses; the one in Greenland may have actually been a significant nuclear event, but no one alive was a witness. Scary times.

So yes. Those people at Johnston Island were lucky when all they suffered was plutonium rain.

[puncheex]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what will or won't set off a nuke. These W-49 thermonuke warheads (ca 1962) had fission primaries which used 2 ignition points; it was hoped if only one point fired, the TNT lens would explode unevenly, squirting the plutonium out the end unfizzed. According to wiki: "Out of 25 tests conducted in 1957 and 1958, 7 had 0 or slight nuclear yield (success), three had high yields (severe failure), and the rest had unacceptable yields between those extremes."

[puncheex]

@klin1klinom: Somewhere, sometime, it comes time to test the system concept of an ICBM. You have a better way? You may disagree about the need for it, but you don't seem to have been complaining back in 1955. At least I didn't hear you.

[puncheex]

@stubbostubbs: And yet that is what happened. Sorry you missed the boat on that.

[puncheex]

@NeonGenesisPlatinum: Wrong. They most certainly can. Multiple test were done in Operation Plumbob and subsequent, which routinely failed more often than succeeded, in the earlier warheads.

[puncheex]

@NeonGenesisPlatinum: Ummmm, that's wrong. Of the early warhead series (using lensing 2-point ignition bombs), 27 tests had 15 failures (I think). A failure was one in which fission was detected.

[puncheex]

@qtrtilldawn: You're right. The implosion charges fired, but not in the smooth sequence that would have caused a nuke blast. They were very lucky; test of that warhead in failure modes in NTS showed a 60% failure rate (that is, 60% of test showed some fission occurring). And, yes, plutonium was spread all over the area. The pad had to be torn out and rebuilt from scratch.

[qtrtilldawn]

The video does not say the warhead went off in the fire, it said it burned up. They said they used an airplane dropped bomb to complete testing.

And no, a fire will not set off a nuke, heck dynamite taped to the warhead  wouldn't set it off. The warhead is surrounded by HE, (high explosives), that MUST explode exactly correct or all you have is radioactive material in little pieces.

The HE is some really bad a** stuff though, if it did explode in a fire, it would make a big boom.