1945 was marked not only by the victory of the Allied countries in World War II over Nazi Germany and its allies, but also by another fateful event. Two Japanese cities were destroyed with just two bombs, one for each. Humanity has entered a new era. The nuclear age has begun.
The nuclear bomb with the funny name "Baby" became the first charge created by physicists capable of inflicting such massive destruction on the enemy and successfully used during hostilities. The historic B-29 aircraft that carried out this mission is in the Museum of American Aviation and Space, on its polished duralumin board is inscribed with the name of the mother of the ship's commander, Enola Gay, such are the cases. On August 6, the first blow was de alt, and three days later the second, on the city of Nagasaki. This nuclear bomb also had a funny name - "Fat Man".
The first bomb was arranged quite simply, according to the "cannon" principle. A supercritical mass of uranium was placed in a piece of an artillery barrel from a ship's gun, and in the breech there was a charge that created the necessary compaction for a chain reaction to occur. The nuclear bomb was three meters long, weighed four tons,and the mass of the combat uranium charge was 64 kilograms, of which only about 700 grams reacted. The rest of the weight of this terrible weapon consisted of the mentioned barrel fragment, shell, stabilizers, fuses and other minor material.
The low efficiency suffered by the first nuclear bomb resulted in relatively little radiological contamination of the soil and a small destructive force for this class of weapons, measured in the thousands of tons of TNT needed to cause such damage. At "Baby" it was about 15,000 tons. For comparison, the maximum payload of the same "Superfortress" B-29 was 9 tons. For four and a half years, such a bomber would have to make daily combat missions in order to inflict about such destruction on the enemy.
Humanity has always strived forward and upward, trying to surpass itself, and especially in the field of creating devices for the extermination of all living things. The TNT equivalent grew, new "layered" technologies and other ingenious solutions were used to increase the "efficiency" of nuclear weapons.
The apogee of the destructive power created by physicists was the “AN 602 product”. It's not that something even more terrible couldn't be created, it could, only there would be nowhere to experience it.
The most powerful nuclear bomb in history, by tradition, also received its own name, albeit unofficially, "Kuzka's mother" or "Kuzka". ExactlyN. S. threatened to show this creature to the Americans. Khrushchev, and in the days of the XXII Congress of the CPSU (1961) kept his promise.
At first they wanted to “bang” 100 megatons, but they took pity on the Norilsk Iron and Steel Works. Agreed on half the equivalent. The length of the bomb was twelve meters, the diameter was two and a half, the body remained the same, from a hundred megaton, and it did not fit into the bomb bay of an ordinary Tu-95, I had to slightly cut the edges and remove the doors. The effect exceeded all expectations, the blast wave circled the planet three times.
However, later it turned out that the military did not need such a nuclear bomb, its delivery to the target is problematic, and several less powerful charges can cause more damage to the enemy than one giant explosion.
It is hoped that the history of nuclear conflicts will end with the first two bombs dropped in 1945.
