This first of a series of posts is an attempt to show locations or all nuclear explosions from the first in 1945 to the most recent, in 1998. There is an enormous amount of information on the web, and some posts on the BBS have already provided good information about some of the testing. I'll try to provide links to all of them as I proceed. I also want to thank ink_polaroid and greenwood for contributing help with getting all of the data to a managable state and for providing other guidance.

US nuclear devices 1945-1949 (attachment)
The first nuclear bomb, nicknamed " the Gadget", was detonated at Trinity Site at the Alamogordo Bombing Range (now renamed The White Sands Missile Range) On July 16, 1945, a false dawn lit the dark desert sky in south central New Mexico and the age of nuclear weapons was born. The next two atomic bombs were not considered tests, but weapons, because they obliterated the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing about 350,000 people as an immediate result of the blasts, and brought an abrupt end to World War II. Five more tests took place prior to 1950 in the Pacific Test Range on and near Bikini and Enewetak Islands, two of the Marshall Islands. By mid-1949 the Soviet Union had joined the "club", detonating its first A-bomb in a remote site.


The "gadget" Many pictures and quotes from this series of posts are from nuclearweaponarchive.org/

The Trinity bomb


Little Boy and Fat Man
For more about the bombs dropped on Japan see this site.

For more on nuclear weapons see nuclearweaponarchive.org

To see about all testing by all countries, go here.

There was no US testing in 1950, but testing resumed in 1951 at the Nevada Test Site and Enewetak. On May 8, 1951, the largest fission or A-, bomb was detonated at Enewetak. Yield was 225 kilotons; Fat Man and Little Boy were about 5% of that.


"George" 225 kt

In 1952, tests continued in the Pacific and Nevada. The largest fission device ever detonated was King at 500 kt. The first experimental fusion weapon was Mike at 10.2 Mt.
1 kt = kiloton = 1000 tons of TNT equivalent
1 Mt = megaton = 1,000,000 tons of TNT equivalent


Ivy Mike - Ivy denotes the test series; Mike is the particular device.


Ivy Mike


The island before and after.

Very interesting set of placemarks Hill. By the way, this would be a nice data set to attach a timestamp to. I imagine little nuclear bombs icons going off in proper sequence. Do you also have the coordinates for the underground tests?

All of the tests in 1953 were at the Nevada Test Site. Grable in that series was fired from a 280mm gun.

For 1954, the tests moved back to the Pacific Test Range, with Bikini Atoll now taking most of the damage. Unfortunately, not just the Island received Bravo's effects.

Quote:

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The Bravo crater in the atoll reef had a diameter of 6510 ft, with a depth of 250 ft. Within one minute the mushroom cloud had reached 50,000 feet (15 km), breaking 100,000 feet (30 km) two minutes later. The cloud top rose and peaked at 130,000 feet (almost 40 km) after only six minutes. Eight minutes after the test the cloud had reached its full dimensions with a diameter of 100 km, a stem 7 km thick, and a cloud bottom rising above 55,000 feet (16.5 km).

The Bravo test created the worst radiological disaster in US history. Due to failure to postpone the test following unfavorable changes in the weather, combined with the unexpectedly high yield and the failure to conduct pre-test evacuations as a precaution, the Marshallese Islanders on Rongerik, Rongelap, Ailinginae, and Utirik atolls were blanketed with the fallout plume. They were evacuated on March 3 but 64 Marshallese received doses of 175 R. In addition, the Japanese fishing vessel Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Fifth Lucky Dragon) was also heavily contaminated, with the 23 crewmen receiving exposures of 300 R (one later died - apparently from complications). The entire Bikini Atoll was contaminated to varying degrees, and many operation Castle personnel were subsequently over-exposed as a result. Personnel in the firing bunker on Nan Island were trapped for a time when external radiation levels reached 250 roentgens/hr an hour after the shot. After this test the exclusion zone around the Castle tests was increased to 570,000 square miles, a circle 850 miles across (for comparison this is equal to about 1% of the entire Earth's land area).

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1955 was quite busy with some 14 tests completed. The Nevada test site bombs were low yield designs. One was dropped from a B-36 bomber and detonated at high altitude as it drifted down on a parachute, the only test of its kind.



The only Pacific test was Wigwam, an underwater test detonated at a depth of 2000 ft less than 600 miles SW of Los Angeles.

1956 testing again shifted to the Pacific

Quote:

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Test: Seminole
Time: 00:55 6 June 1956 (GMT)
12:55 6 June 1956 (local)
Location: Eniwetak Atoll, Bogon Island
Test Height and Type: Surface burst, elevation 7 feet
Yield: 13.7 kt

Seminole was one of the most peculiar weapon effects tests ever conducted, as well as one of the most spectacular. This was a combined weapons development/effects test in which the device was exploded in a large tank of water to couple the shock wave to the ground. In effect the above-ground water tank simulated an underground nuclear test. The device was housed in a circular chamber inside the water tank which was accessible by a corridor through the tank. The chamber was 10 feet off center from the tank center, which led to a significant asymmetry in the crater produced. The crater produced was 660 feet wide and 32 feet deep.

The shot was designed so that by the time the fireball reached the wall of the tank, it had transitioned from thermal radiation-driven growth to hydrodynamic (shock wave driven) growth. As can be seen in the images below, the shock wave front of the fireball is still quite luminous.

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Attachment has all tests 1945-1958.

1957 and 1959 showed increased testing in multiple sites in the Pacific, the South Atlantic Ocean, and the Nevada Test Site. Then testing stopped for almost three years.

Quote:

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In it closing days, the Eisenhower administration initiated negotitations on a nuclear test ban with the Soviet Union (this intention was announced by Eisenhower on 22 August 1958). As an important confidence building measure, Eisenhower also announced a one-year voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing (if the Soviets made a reciprocal commitment) would go into effect on 31 October 1958. This ban was later extended to 13 months (31 December 1959), but on 29 December 1959 the U.S. announced an end to the voluntary moratorium although it also promised not the renew testing without advance public notice. This decision not the extend the formal moratorium commitment may have been due to the status of the negotiations, which were faring very poorly. On 3 January 1960, Khrushchev pledged that the Soviet Union would not conduct nuclear testing unless the Western nations resumed it. The US, the UK and France made no move to resume testing, and so the matter rested for nearly three years.

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from The Nuclear Weapon Archive


The effects of the deep underground test "Rainier".

Very cool data, Hill. Glad I could help.