A Northrop F-89J Scorpion fires a live MB-1 (AIR-2 Genie) rocket during Operation Plumbbob/John on 19 July 1957 - the only life firing of an air-to-air nuclear rocket ever

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Historical_Gur_3054@reddit

Fireball radius: 341 ft (0.01 mi²)
Heavy blast damage radius (20 psi): 817 ft (0.08 mi²)
Radiation radius (5,000 rem): 1,810 ft (0.37 mi²)
5,000 rem ionizing radiation dose; fatal, incapacitating within five minutes with recovery period, death within four to six days.
Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns): 1,980 ft (0.44 mi²)
Radiation radius (1,000 rem): 2,580 ft (0.75 mi²)
1,000 rem ionizing radiation dose; fatal, incapacitating within five minutes with recovery period, death within four to six days.
Radiation radius (600 rem): 0.54 mi (0.91 mi²)
600 rem ionizing radiation dose; likely fatal, in about 1 month; 18% of survivors will eventually die of cancer as a result of exposure.
Radiation radius (500 rem): 0.56 mi (0.98 mi²)
500 rem ionizing radiation dose; likely fatal, in about 1 month; 15% of survivors will eventually die of cancer as a result of exposure.

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Flyinmanm@reddit

who got the short straw of being irradiated???

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Lolnomoron@reddit

5 on camera, all volunteers: Col. Sidney Bruce Lt. Col. Frank P. Ball Maj. Norman "Bodie" Bodinger Maj. John Hughes Col (I think?) Don Luttrell

Cameraman who was given the assignment, but says he was fine with it: George Yoshitake

(As this was a high-altitude air-burst, radiation was pretty minimal)

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Flyinmanm@reddit

Wonder how they were 25 years from this

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Historical_Gur_3054@reddit

Colonel Sidney C. Bruce, later professor of Electrical Engineering at Colorado University, died in 2005

Lieutenant Colonel Frank P. Ball, died in 2003

Major John W. Hughes II, died in 1990

Major Norman B. Bodinger, died in 1997

Major Donald A. Luttrell, died in 2014

The videographer, Akira "George" Yoshitake, died in 2013.

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seanrm92@reddit

The idea was to fire these into the middle of a bomber formation, and even though the rocket was unguided the explosion would have been big enough to have a significant kill radius.

It was derived from similar unguided rockets with conventional charges used by the Germans against Allied bombers in WWII.

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fulltiltboogie1971@reddit

Didn't the Nike SAM work along the same principal??

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Those did have active guidance, it's just that both the rocket and the target would have been moving with such high velocity that they had to rely on proximity damage since a direct hit would have been unlikely.

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fulltiltboogie1971@reddit

If I remember right there was quite a significant threat from fallout which begs the question why bother stopping Russian nuclear bombers if it requires irradiating yourself to do it.

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richdrich@reddit

Hence the poor guys standing at ground zero to demonstrate the "safety" of the weapon.

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seanrm92@reddit

Irradiating a random patch of land or sea was infinitely preferable to those bombers reaching a city.

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fulltiltboogie1971@reddit

I would agree, I watched something on history channel about the one Nike SAM site here in the US that they restored to near working order and I thought they said something about launching being almost as dangerous for as it would be to the Russians.

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Zealousideal_Bee8631@reddit

Didn't they also make a Nuclear version of a Falcon Missile too?

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LordMoos3@reddit

Pilot: Missile away!

Observers: Oh... yeah, we're not going to do that ever again, that was kind of stupid, actually.

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meh_69420@reddit

Read up on the MK101 Lulu for some more nuclear depravity...

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Mountain_Pangolin186@reddit

What in the holy name of Lockheed was this:

The Lulu lacked an important safety/arming device: it had no sensors to detect the freefall from an aircraft that would follow from the depth charge's being intentionally dropped. As a result, if an armed Mk 101 bomb accidentally fell off an aircraft while it was parked on the deck of a warship, and then it rolled overboard, it would detonate at the preset depth^(.)

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Bill_Brasky01@reddit

Uh, that seems like a MINOR oversight for a nuclear weapon…

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jdb326@reddit

I would NOT want to be a Shackleton pilot with that!

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Cesalv@reddit

Those were crazy years, they felt the need of slapping atomic power to anything, not like today with ai... oh, wait

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InsertCutesyPunHere@reddit

For a brief period, nuclear anti-aircraft actually made sense, from a military perspective. If a swarm of Soviet nuclear bombers approached, the US had 1 attempt to stop all of them, and at the time the guidance systems on anti-air missiles weren't advanced enough to make sure missile hit the target, just that the missile got near the target, so the interim solution was to make "near the target" still good enough to destroy it by strapping a nuke to the front of it.

This is the most famous one, but Wikipedia lists 15 nuclear anti-aircraft weapons (not all entered service), though they were mostly phased out when guidance systems became reliable enough that conventional missiles could be safely used instead.

IIRC The AIR-2 was also the only US nuke that could be launched without presidential approval, though I can't find a source for that

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Js987@reddit

The only thing I could find about that latter part was that it was designed too early for a permissive action link, which considering it stayed in service until ‘85 is wild.

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Gordon_frumann@reddit

Well the good thing is they found out, atomic cars, uranium plates, and radioactive toys were maybe actually not the the best idea.. Hopefully we figure out stuffing AI in every single thing is not necessary either.

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samy_the_samy@reddit

You can still buy radioactive health potions and other alternative medicine products, just saying,

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Gordon_frumann@reddit

Yeah you can also get your brain blasted with radiation if you have cancer, just saying.

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RollinThundaga@reddit

Uranium glaze is perfectly fine, so long as you don't chip it, and genuine antique Uranium glass is highly sought after nowadays.

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Gordon_frumann@reddit

To be fair, there's a whole subreddit for everything.

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popsicle_of_meat@reddit

Actually, it appears r/everything has been banned.

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postmodest@reddit

Listen just because a few plinks with a handgun turns a Corvega into a chain-reaction of tactical nukes is no reason to suggest that West-Tek's fusion core technology is unsafe to put into vehicles that might collide at speeds of up to 200kph!

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Gordon_frumann@reddit

Lmao, we could have had it so good bro, but those fucking tree huggers kept it from us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

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Cesalv@reddit

The only car whose crashes are better than it's shape

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FloofJet@reddit

And right after that there's a settlement needs your help.

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Spike_Ardmore@reddit

Dammit, Preston!!

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Viharabiliben@reddit

Hell you have something there! Atomic AI!!

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GlockAF@reddit

Amazon is actually trying to do that, what could possibly go wrong?

https://x-energy.com/blog/advanced-nuclear-powering-ai-power-consumption/

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BB_210@reddit

Ironically we need more nuclear plants to power AI

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Cesalv@reddit

Even better, unmanned nuclear plants managed by AI, safer and cleaner, what could go wrong?

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worm_livers@reddit

Your comparison to the current day horniness for ai is spot on.

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commissarcainrecaff@reddit

There was a (kinda) logical thinking at the time-

The idea of massed waves of slow bombers appearing on the radar a scant 10 years ago in the last war....but modern SAMs that could protect your land were 5 years away at least....so how to intercept enough of them bombers fast enough if someone goes for it today?

So instead of 1000s of Interceptors, you only need a few jet interceptors lobbing A-Bombs into a stream of bombers- the ones not immediately slagged by the heat will get spun like sycamore seeds by the blast.

Plus an A-Bomb is requires no accuracy from the pilot, doesn't use 100s of cannon shells to down a single bomber and it's the ultimate "to whom it may concern weapon"

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Apexnanoman@reddit

The level of insanity it took to figure that volley fired air-to-air unguided rockets with nuclear warheads was a good idea..... Tells you just how fucking crazy the Cold War was.

"Well you know if we fire a couple dozen unguided rockets at a time with nuclear warheads they'll smash a bomber up real good."

It's even crazier than the Germans idea to replace all their normal conventional field artillery with Davy Crocketts.

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Atholthedestroyer@reddit

I'm just surprised no-one at least mocked up an M56 'Ontos' with 6 Davy Crocketts

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zoinkability@reddit

To be fair, in the 40s and 50s there was hardly any problem where the solution of nuclear bombs was not considered

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Ill-End3169@reddit

Need a pool? Nukes baby

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ctesibius@reddit

Unguided, but they probably had proximity sensors since those had been around since WW II.

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iYAM_who_i_SAMiAM@reddit

Was this over the Bikini Atoll?

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fullouterjoin@reddit

Poor Sponge Bob.

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iYAM_who_i_SAMiAM@reddit

Right? Plumbbob = SpongeBob 🤔

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fullouterjoin@reddit

There is a bunch of lore about SpongeBob being created by the atomic tests at Bikini Atoll.

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Eric848448@reddit

Cold War engineers came up with some absolutely batshit weapons.

I assume cocaine flower freely at the Pentagon and Lockheed’s offices.

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Gamma and neutron doses received by observers on the ground were negligible.

Well that doesn't sound so bad.

Doses received by aircrew were highest for the fliers assigned to penetrate the airburst cloud ten minutes after explosion.

Oh...

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Xeelee1123@reddit (OP)

Source: https://youtu.be/tl0vDgJNXb4

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob

Source. https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/operation-plumbbob/

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-89_Scorpion

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie