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The Mark 5 nuclear bomb and W5 nuclear warhead were a common core American nuclear weapon design, designed in the early 1950s and which saw service from 1952 to 1963.
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{{United States nuclear devices Mark 05 Nuclear bombs of the United States Military equipment introduced in the 1950s
The Mark 5 nuclear bomb and W5 nuclear warhead were a common core American nuclear weapon design, designed in the early 1950s and which saw service from 1952 to 1963.
Description
The Mark 5 design was the first production American nuclear weapon which, with a diameter of , was significantly smaller than the diameter implosion system of the 1945Fat Man
"Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) is the codename for the type of nuclear bomb the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the fir ...
nuclear bomb design. The Mark 5 design used a 92-point implosion system (see Nuclear weapon design
Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package of a nuclear weapon to detonate. There are three existing basic design types:
* pure fission weapons, the simplest and least technically ...
) and a composite uranium/plutonium fissile material core or pit.
The Mark 5 core and W5 warhead were in diameter and long; the total Mark 5 bomb had a diameter of and was long. The different versions of Mark 5 weighed ; the W5 versions weighed .
The Mark 5 and W5 were pure fission weapons. There were at least four basic models of core design used, and sub-variants with yields of 6, 16, 55, 60, 100, and 120 kiloton
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 ...
s have been reported.
As with many early US nuclear weapon designs, the fissile material or pit could be kept separately from the bomb and assembled into it during flight. This technology is known as In Flight Insertion or IFI. The Mark 5 had an automatic IFI mechanism which could insert the pit into the center of the explosive assembly from a storage position in the bomb nose. The image here shows the doors to that nose compartment open.
History
The Mark 5 was in service from 1952 to 1963. The W5 saw service from 1954 to 1963. Approximately 72 Mark 5 weapons were supplied for delivery by RAF bombers but under US control, under the auspices of Project E. A Mark 5 was used as the primary fission trigger used inIvy Mike
Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first full-scale test of a thermonuclear device, in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion.
Ivy Mike was detonated on November 1, 1952, by the United States on the island of Elugelab ...
, the first thermonuclear device in history.
See also
*List of nuclear weapons
This is a list of nuclear weapons listed according to country of origin, and then by type within the states.
United States
US nuclear weapons of all types – bombs, warheads, shells, and others – are numbered in the same sequence starting wi ...
* Nuclear weapon design
Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package of a nuclear weapon to detonate. There are three existing basic design types:
* pure fission weapons, the simplest and least technically ...
References
Bibliography
* Leitch, Andy. "V-Force Arsenal: Weapons for the Valiant, Victor and Vulcan". ''Air Enthusiast
''Air Enthusiast'' was a British, bi-monthly, aviation magazine, published by the Key Publishing group. Initially begun in 1974 as ''Air Enthusiast Quarterly'', the magazine was conceived as a historical adjunct to ''Air International'' maga ...
'' No. 107, September/October 2003. pp. 52–59.
External links
Allbombs.html
list of all US nuclear warheads a
nuclearweaponarchive.org
{{United States nuclear devices Mark 05 Nuclear bombs of the United States Military equipment introduced in the 1950s