On October 30, 1961, the sky over the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya became the scene of the most powerful explosion ever created by man. The Soviet Union detonated the RDS-220 thermonuclear device, known to the world as the "Tsar Bomb", over the test site in Mityushika Bay on Severny Island.
The explosion was airborne and took place at an altitude of about 4,000 meters. The device was launched from a specially modified Tu-95V strategic bomber. The plane carries the approximately 26-ton bomb outside its fuselage, and a huge parachute slows its descent to give the crew additional time to move away from the blast zone.
Weapon with a power of up to 100 megatons
The accepted estimate for the test today is about 50 megatons of TNT equivalent. Western estimates and some historical publications have values of 57 or 58 megatons, which explains the differences in the descriptions of the test. The Arms Control Association indicates 58 megatons, while scientific and Russian sources most often use 50 megatons.
The design was developed for a power of up to 100 megatons. However, Soviet designers replaced part of the nuclear material with lead, thus limiting radioactive contamination. The lower power also reduces the risk to the aircraft, which must move away after the launch.
The fireball reaches a size of approximately 8 to 10 kilometers, and the mushroom cloud rises about 60-67 kilometers in the atmosphere. The blast wave was recorded in three orbits of the Earth. The energy of the explosion is about 1,500 times greater than the combined power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and other comparisons place it at about 3,300 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
A show of force in the Cold War
The “Tsar Bomba“ was not created as a practical serial weapon. Its size and weight make it difficult to apply in military terms. The test was carried out during a period of sharp aggravation of relations between Moscow and Washington and after the resumption of Soviet nuclear tests in 1961.
Among the scientists involved in the development was the physicist Andrei Sakharov, who later became one of the most famous Soviet dissidents. Authors Viktor Adamsky and Yuri Smirnov define the test as a “one-time show of force“ within the framework of the rivalry between the two superpowers.
“It was a terrible weapon“, Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs.Two years after the explosion, the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It banned nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, space and underwater, but did not end underground tests. Thus “Tsar Bomba“ remains not only a record for destructive power, but also a symbol of the limits to which the nuclear race is reaching.
Sources: reuters.com, smithsonianmag.com, nationalww2museum.org