Date: 00:00 UTC 29/08/1949
Type: Tower @30m
Yield: 22 Kt
The first Soviet nuclear test, code named "First Lightning" the RDS-1. Houses, a bridge, a simulated metro, armored vehicles, 50 aircraft and 1500 animals were positioned in the test grounds. The code designation RDS was actually arbitrary, one popular interpretation was "Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina" (Stalin's Rocket Engine), another was "Russia Does It Alone". The whole focus of the Soviet program at this point was to set off a Soviet atomic blast at the earliest possible time whatever the cost. At Project leader Lavrenti Beria's insistence , this device was an exact copy of the U.S. Gadget/Fat Man mainly thanks to extensive espionage. The 17,000 sq/mile test site was located 95 miles west of the city of Semipalatinsk on the steppes of present day Kazakhstan. The device would later be weaponized in RDS-1, the Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon.
