The Mk 36 was a heavy high-yield

nuclear bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

designed in the 1950s. It was a

thermonuclear Thermonuclear fusion is the process of atomic nuclei combining or “fusing” using high temperatures to drive them close enough together for this to become possible. There are two forms of thermonuclear fusion: ''uncontrolled'', in which the re ...

, using a multi-stage fusion secondary system to generate yields up to about 10 megatons

TNT equivalent TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a m ...

History

The Mark 36 was a more advanced version of the earlier

Mark 21 nuclear bomb The Mark 21 nuclear bomb was a United States thermonuclear gravity bomb first produced in 1955. It was based on the TX 21 "Shrimp" prototype that had been detonated during the Castle Bravo test in March 1954. While most of the Operation Castle t ...

, which was a weaponized version of the "Shrimp" design, the first "dry" (

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 ...

) fuel thermonuclear bomb the United States tested, in the

Castle Bravo Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of ''Operation Castle''. Detonated on March 1, 1954, the device was the most powerful ...

thermonuclear test in 1954. The Mark 21 bomb was developed and deployed immediately after Castle Bravo, in 1955. The Mark 21 design continued to be improved and the Mark 36 device started production in April 1956. In 1957, all older Mark 21 bombs were converted to Mark 36 Y1 Mod 1 bombs. A total of 920 Mark 36 bombs were produced as new build or converted from the 275 Mark 21 bombs produced earlier. All Mark 36 nuclear bombs were retired between August 1961 and January 1962, replaced by the higher yield

B41 nuclear bomb The B-41 (also known as Mk-41) was a thermonuclear weapon deployed by the United States Strategic Air Command in the early 1960s. It was the most powerful nuclear bomb ever developed by the United States, with a maximum yield of . The B-41 was ...

Survivors

A Mark 36 casing is on display in the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

Gallery at the

National Museum of the United States Air Force The National Museum of the United States Air Force (formerly the United States Air Force Museum) is the official museum of the United States Air Force located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, northeast of Dayton, Ohio. The NMUSAF is the ...

Dayton, Ohio Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Day ...

. A Mark 36 casing can be found at the

Strategic Air and Space Museum The Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum is a museum focusing on aircraft and nuclear missiles of the United States Air Force during the Cold War. It is located near Ashland, Nebraska, along Interstate 80 southwest of Omaha. The objective of t ...

near

Ashland, Nebraska Ashland is a city in Saunders County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 2,453 at the 2010 census. History Ashland is located at the site of a low-water limestone ledge along the bottom of Salt Creek, an otherwise mud-bottomed stream ...

. A MK 36 can be found in the "Wings Over the Rockies" air museum in the Lowry neighborhood of Denver, Colorado.

Specifications

The Mark 36 bomb was in diameter, depending on version, and long. It weighed depending on version. There were 2 major variants, conventional ("dirty") weapon designated the Y1 and a low fission fraction "clean" Y2 version. The clean variant used an inert fusion stage tamper-pusher assembly (see

Teller-Ulam Design 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 ...

) such as lead or tungsten. The "dirty" variant used a

depleted uranium Depleted uranium (DU; also referred to in the past as Q-metal, depletalloy or D-38) is uranium with a lower content of the fissile isotope than natural uranium.: "Depleted uranium possesses only 60% of the radioactivity of natural uranium, hav ...

or U-238 tamper-pusher which would undergo fission during the second stage fusion burn, doubling the weapon yield.

Chuck Hansen Chuck Hansen (May 13, 1947 - March 26, 2003) was the compiler, over a period of 30 years, of the world's largest private collection of unclassified documents on how America developed atomic and thermonuclear weapons. Research Hansen's documents w ...

wrote in Swords of Armageddon (1995) that Mark 36 nuclear bomb was produced in two yield versions, clean and dirty. He stated that a clean version of a Mark 36 had a yield of 6 megatons and that a dirty version of a Mark 36 had a maximum yield of 19 megatons.

References

* 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

History

Survivors

Specifications

See also

References