I question was raised in another group that intrigued me. I followed up
on a link someone else had posted, and got some fascinating information,
but couldn't answer the question.

Then I remembered r.a.m.

I'll post this back to that group (alt.fan.cecil-adams), as well; I
thought about setting FU to that group, but it seems like this might
be a topic that some in r.a.m might find of interest as well.

Here's a copy. Anybody have numbers on this?

quote ----------

The question arose about whether or not there were any US fusion bombs
dropped from aircraft for testing purposes. Someone provided a page
with a detailed list of all US atmospheric (and underwater) nuclear
tests.[1]

From that list I grepped 52 airdropped nuclear detonations. I can't
tell from the page which ones were fusion devices, and can't assume that
*all* of them, after the first fusion bomb tested, were. That one was
touched off on November 1, 1952 (the Mike event of the Ivy series), and
is rated at 10.4 megatons. (The largest detonation was 15 megatons:
Castle/Bravo, March 1, 1954.) But there was a whole range of devices
being tested then, and later. For instance, Mike's companion in the Ivy
series, King, went 400 kilotons, and while that was much less than
Mike's yield, it was still nearly twice as powerful as anything before
Mike -- but it was *not* a fusion bomb.

Thus, to refine that raw number of 52 total airdrops, to determine the
number of those that were fusion devices, doesn't seem possible from
this source. I base this on the fact that many of the subsequent (read:
post-Mike) tests were much, much smaller than the full-on H-weapons Mike
represented. Many of these were tactical battlefield devices. At least
one was artillery-delivered. Another test niche were rocket-launched
aerial tests with devices that were detonated at up to 300 miles
altitude; there were nine such rocket shots. There were also quite a
few "safety tests", focused on the determination of the risks of
unplanned detonation during device storage.

All in all, the range, starting with Mike, goes from its 15 megatons
down to far less than one *ton*, and I haven't the ability to sort out
the fusion devices from the fission devices. Again: this assumes that
they continued development of fission bombs for smaller applications,
even after fusion weapons had become operational.

I *can* say, however, that even remembering most of the years of our
nuclear testing heyday (born 1947), I'm astounded by the number of
devices we tested, which is summed up nicely on another page at the same
site.[2]

[1]http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/atmosphr/ustests.htm

[2]http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/atmosphr/ustable.htm

/quote -----------

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