The Mark 6 nuclear bomb was an American

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 bom ...

based on the earlier Mark 4 nuclear bomb and its predecessor, the Mark 3 Fat Man nuclear bomb design. The Mark 6 was in production from 1951 to 1955 and saw service until 1962. Seven variants and versions were produced, with a total production run of all models of 1100 bombs. The basic Mark 6 design was in diameter and long, the same basic dimensions as the Mark 4. Various models of the Mark 6 were roughly 25% lighter than either the Mark 4 or Fat Man, and weighed . Early models of the Mark 6 used the same 32-point implosion system design concept as the earlier Mark 4 and Mark 3; the Mark 6 Mod 2 and later used a different, 60-point implosion system. Various models and pit options gave nuclear yields of 18, 26, 80, 154, and 160 kilotons for Mark 6 models.

Survivors

There are several Mark 6 casings on display: * Defense Nuclear Weapons School on Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico *

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 t ...

Gallery of 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 List of cities in Ohio, sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County, Ohio, Greene County. The 2020 United S ...

* Museum of Aviation (Warner Robins) in

Warner Robins, Georgia Warner Robins (typically ) is a city in the U.S. state of Georgia, located in Houston and Peach counties in the central part of the state. It is currently Georgia's eleventh-largest incorporated city, with an estimated population of 80,308 in t ...

* Hill Aerospace Museum in Ogden, Utah

Variants

Mark 13

The

Mark 13 nuclear bomb The Mark 13 nuclear bomb and its variant, the W-13 nuclear warhead, were experimental nuclear weapons developed by the United States from 1951 to 1954. The Mark 13 design was based on the earlier Mark 6 nuclear bomb design, which was in turn based ...

and W13 missile warhead were developed as higher-efficiency Mark 6 successors, the same size and basic configuration as the Mark 6 but utilizing an improved 92-point implosion system. The Mark 13 was cancelled in August 1954 and the W13 cancelled September 1954, in both cases without ever seeing production service.

Mark 18

The

Mark 18 nuclear bomb The Mark 18 nuclear bomb, also known as the SOB or Super Oralloy Bomb, was an American nuclear bomb design which was the highest yield fission bomb produced by the US. The Mark 18 had a design yield of 500 kilotons. Noted nuclear weapon designer ...

was a follow-on to the Mark 6 and Mark 13, utilizing a fissile pit assembly with around 60 kilograms of HEU and delivering a yield of 500

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, the largest pure-fission (non-thermonuclear) bomb design ever developed by the US. Mark 18 bombs were eventually recycled into Mark 6 Mod 6 bombs after thermonuclear weapons were deployed in quantity. The Mark 18 was tested once in Operation

Ivy King Ivy King was the largest pure- fission nuclear bomb ever tested by the United States. The bomb was tested during the Truman administration as part of Operation Ivy. This series of tests involved the development of very powerful nuclear weapons ...

XM1 Atomic Demolition Munition

An Atomic Demolition Munition, the XM1 was developed. Few details on the system exist.

References

External links

Allbombs.html
list of all US nuclear warheads a
nuclearweaponarchive.org
{{United States nuclear devices Mark 06 Nuclear bombs of the United States Military equipment introduced in the 1950s