The W40 nuclear warhead was an American
fusion-boosted fission nuclear warhead
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 ...
developed in the late 1950s and which saw service from 1959 to 1972.
The W40 design was reportedly the common
Python primary
According to researcher Chuck Hansen, the W34 Python was a gas-boosted fission primary used in several designs of American thermonuclear weapons.
Hansen's research indicates that the W34 Python primary was used in the US B28 nuclear bomb, W28, W ...
or fission core used by the US
B28 nuclear bomb
The B28, originally Mark 28, was a thermonuclear bomb carried by U.S. tactical fighter bombers, attack aircraft and bomber aircraft. From 1962 to 1972 under the NATO nuclear weapons sharing program, American B28s also equipped six Europe-based ...
,
W28 nuclear warhead, and
W49 nuclear warhead.
The W40 was in diameter, long, and weighed around . It had a design yield of 10
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 t ...
s.
The W40 was used in the
MGM-18 Lacrosse
The MGM-18 Lacrosse was a short-ranged tactical weapon intended for close support of ground troops.
Its first flight test was in 1954 and was deployed by the United States Army beginning in 1959, despite being still in the development stage. The ...
surface to surface missile (SRBM) and
CIM-10 Bomarc
The Boeing CIM-10 BOMARC (Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center) (IM-99 Weapon System prior to September 1962) was a supersonic ramjet powered long-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) used during the Cold War for the air defense of North ...
surface to air missile
A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft syst ...
(SAM).
The Bomarc warhead was lethal to a medium bomber aircraft up to about one kilometer. The warheads were mounted to the missiles for 90 day intervals, after which they underwent periodic inspection and maintenance.
The first production device was made in January 1959, with production starting in June, withdrawal in August due to a significant safety issue, and re-release in September with a temporary fix. A one-point safety problem was discovered in 1960 and a W40 mod 2 with a fix was developed and sent out in December 1963.
See also
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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 ...
External links
Allbombs.htmllist of all US nuclear weapons a
nuclearweaponarchive.org
Nuclear warheads of the United States
Military equipment introduced in the 1950s
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