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The RDS-1 (russian: РДС-1), also known as Izdeliye 501 (device 501) and First Lightning (), was the nuclear bomb used in the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
's first nuclear weapon test. The United States assigned it the code-name Joe-1, in reference to
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
. It was detonated on 29 August 1949 at 7:00 a.m., at the Semipalatinsk Test Site,
Kazakh SSR ; kk, Қазақ Советтік Социалистік Республикасы) *1991: Republic of Kazakhstan (russian: Республика Казахстан; kk, Қазақстан Республикасы) , linking_name = the ...
, after top-secret research and development as part of the Soviet atomic bomb project.


Description

The weapon was designed at the Kurchatov Institute, then at the time officially known as "Laboratory № 2" but designated as the "office" or "base" in internal documents, starting in April 1946. Plutonium for the bomb was produced at the industrial complex
Chelyabinsk-40 Ozyorsk or Ozersk (russian: Озёрск) is a closed city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. The population was: Law #287-ZO specifies that the borders of Ozyorsky Urban Okrug match the borders of the closed administrative-territorial formation of ...
. The RDS-1 explosive yield was 22 kilotons
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 ...
, similar to the US Gadget and
Fat Man "Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) is the codename for the type of nuclear bomb the United States Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki#Bombing of Nagasaki, detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second ...
bombs. At
Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ;  – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik ...
's insistence, the RDS-1 bomb was designed as an implosion type weapon, similar to the Fat Man bomb dropped on
Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in th ...
, Japan; RDS-1 also had a solid
plutonium Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhib ...
core. The bomb designers had developed a more sophisticated design (tested later as RDS-2) but rejected it because of the known reliability of the Fat Man type design, the Soviets having received extensive intelligence on the design of the Fat Man bomb during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, which was discovered in the espionage case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and during the Venona project. To test the effects of the new weapon, workers constructed houses made of wood and bricks, along with a bridge, and a simulated metro railway in the vicinity of the test site. Armoured hardware and approximately 50 aircraft were also brought to the testing grounds as well as over 1,500 animals to test the bomb's effects on life. In a sector of artillery about 100 guns and mortars were placed at distances ranging from 250 to 1,800 meters from ground zero. At distances 500 to 550 meters from zero artillery pieces were either totally destroyed or needed factory repair.''First Soviet atomic bomb. Film report (1949)''
/ref> The resulting data showed the RDS explosion to be 50% more destructive than originally estimated by its engineers. There are several explanations for the Soviet code-name of RDS-1, usually an arbitrary designation: a backronym "Special Jet Engine" (, ''Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Spetsialnyi''), or "Stalin's Jet Engine" (, ''Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina''), or "Russia does it herself" (, ''Rossiya Delayet Sama''). Later weapons were also designated RDS but with different model numbers. Mikhail Pervukhin served as the chairman of the commission in charge of the RDS-1 testing. Five RDS-1 weapons were completed as a pilot series by March 1950 with a serial production of the weapon that began in December 1951.


Detection by the West

Some
United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army S ...
WB-29 weather reconnaissance aircraft were fitted with special filters to collect atmospheric radioactive debris. On 3 September 1949, the Air Force Office of Atomic Energy had a WB-29 fly from
Misawa Air Base is an air base of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), the United States Air Force, and the United States Navy located in Misawa, Aomori, in the northern part of the island of Honshū of Japan. It is located northeast of Misawa rail ...
in Japan to Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. The plane collected some debris during this flight. This data was then cross-checked with data from later flights, and it was determined that the Soviet Union had effectively tested a nuclear weapon.


Response in the West

The test surprised the Western powers. American intelligence had estimated that the Soviets would not produce an atomic weapon until 1953, while the British did not expect it until 1954. When the nuclear fission products from the test were detected by the U.S. Air Force, the United States began to follow the trail of the nuclear fallout debris.''U.S. Intelligence and the Detection of the First Soviet Nuclear Test, September 1949''
William Burr, Washington, D.C., 22 September 2009
President Harry S. Truman notified the world of the situation on 23 September 1949: "We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R." Truman's statement likely in turn surprised the Soviets, who had hoped to keep the test a secret to avoid encouraging the Americans to increase their atomic programs, and did not know that the United States had built a test-detection system using the WB-29 Superfortress. The announcement was a turning point in the Cold War, that had just begun. Once the Soviet Union was confirmed to be in possession of the atomic bomb, pressure mounted to develop the first hydrogen bomb.


See also

* RDS-2 * RDS-3 * RDS-4 * RDS-6s * RDS-37 * AN602 (Tsar Bomba) *
Plan Totality Plan Totality was a disinformation ploy established by US General Dwight D. Eisenhower in August 1945 by order of US President Harry S. Truman after the Potsdam Conference. The plan was for a nuclear attack on the USSR with 20 to 30 atomic b ...
* Julius and Ethel Rosenberg


References


External links

* Video of th
Joe-1 Nuclear Test
{Dead link, date=March 2022 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes Joseph Stalin 1949 in the Soviet Union 1949 in military history Explosions in 1949 August 1949 events Nuclear proliferation Soviet nuclear weapons testing 1949 in international relations Nuclear weapons policy Nuclear bombs of the Soviet Union Cold War military history of the Soviet Union August 1949 events in Asia