The Mark 14 nuclear bomb was a 1950s

strategic Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the "art ...

thermonuclear weapon A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...

, the first solid-fuel staged hydrogen bomb. It was an experimental design, and only five units were produced in early 1954. It was tested in April 1954 during the

Castle Union Castle Union was the code name given to one of the tests in the Operation Castle series of United States Nuclear testing, nuclear tests. It was the first test of the Mark 14 nuclear bomb, TX-14 thermonuclear weapon (initially the "emergency capa ...

nuclear test and had a yield of 6.9 Mt. The bomb is often listed as the TX-14 (for "experimental") or EC-14 (for "Emergency Capability"). It has also been referred to as the "Alarm Clock" device though it has nothing to do with the design by the same name proposed earlier by Edward Teller and known as the Sloika in the Soviet Union. The fusion fuel used by the bomb was 95% enriched Lithium

isotope Isotopes are two or more types of atoms that have the same atomic number (number of protons in their nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemical element), and that differ in nucleon numbers (mass numbers) ...

lithium deuteride Lithium hydride is an inorganic compound with the formula Li H. This alkali metal hydride is a colorless solid, although commercial samples are grey. Characteristic of a salt-like (ionic) hydride, it has a high melting point, and it is not solub ...

, which at the time was a scarce resource, this scarcity being chiefly responsible for its limited deployment. The Castle Bravo test showed that unenriched Lithium isotope 7 functioned as well for

nuclear fusion reaction Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifeste ...

s as isotope 6. The Mk-14 bomb had a diameter of and a length of . They weighed between , and used a parachute. The version tested at Castle Union used a RACER IV primary. 5 Mt of its total yield came from fission, making it a very "dirty" weapon.Operation Castle
at NuclearWeaponArchive.org By 1956, the components of all five of the produced Mk-14 bombs had been recycled into Mark 17s.

References

;Citations ;Further reading * Hansen, Chuck,
Swords of Armageddon
U.S. Nuclear Weapons Development since 1945" (CD-ROM & download available). PDF-2.67 Mb. 2,600 pages, Sunnyvale, California, Chucklea Publications, 1995, 2007. (2nd Ed.) {{United States nuclear devices Cold War aerial bombs of the United States Nuclear bombs of the United States Military equipment introduced in the 1950s

See also

References