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USSR Archive
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Joe-1-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 00:00 UTC 29/08/1949 | Type: Tower @30m | Yield: 22 Kt
The first Soviet nuclear test, code name 'First Lightning. The entire focus of the Soviet program at this point was to detonate a nuclear bomb, as soon as possible, whatever the cost. The device was an exact copy of the US Gadget mainly thanks to extensive espionage. The 27,000 sq/km test site was located in present day Kazakhstan. Houses, a simulated metro, armored vehicles, 50 aircraft and 1,500 animals were placed in the test grounds. The device would later be weaponized in RDS-1, the USSRs first nuclear weapon.
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Joe-2-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 06:19 UTC 24/09/1951 | Type: Tower @30m | Yield: 38.3 Kt
A plutonium implosion bomb, it incorporated improvements such as tritium boosting and pit levitation that Beria had prevented from being used in Joe-1. The rush to build and test Joe-1 had been so intense, that Soviet scientists had made no preparation for long term nuclear weapons research. Subsequently there was a two year gap between the first and second nuclear test.
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Joe-3-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 03:53 UTC 18/10/1951 | Type: Airdrop @380m | Yield: 42 Kt
Code named Joe-3 by the US, this was the first Soviet air-dropped bomb test. Released from an altitude of 10 km, it detonated 380 meters above the ground. It was a boosted weapon using a composite construction of levitated plutonium core with a uranium 235 shell.
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Joe-4-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 12/08/1953 | Type: Tower @30m | Yield: 400 Kt
Joe-4 was the fifth Soviet nuclear test and demonstrated the use of fusion in a weaponizable design known as the Sloika or 'Layer Cake'. It obtained nearly all of its yield from fission and was limited for practical purposes to yields of less than 1Mt. The RDS-6s warhead used a U-235 core surrounded by layers of lithium-6 deuteride spiked with tritium, and a uranium fusion tamper. The RDS-6t 'Truba' was a two stage gun-type bomb with a Deuterium-Tritium secondary. Sloika was the brain child of physicist Andrei Sakharov the head of the RDS-6s research project. Though not a true thermonuclear weapon as the Soviets claimed, in conjunction with the fact that it was air-deliverable caused great embarrassment to the US. The US did not successfully test a deliverable thermonuclear bomb until 1954.
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Joe-8-|Totask|
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Date: 06:33 UTC 14/09/1954 | Type: Airdrop @350m | Yield: 40 Kt
Joe-8 involved 44,000 troops at the Totsk range in the Orenberg region. Troops were positioned as close as 5 km to ground zero, with one group of troops in a forward post about 2.5 km from the epicenter. A Tu-4 bomber was used to deliver a RDS-3 bomb. It was 280m off target, placing it even closer to the forward positioned troops. Totsk was chosen because of it's similarity to Western Germany, where a possible war between the USSR and the US might be fought. 40 minutes after detonation, troops engaged in a mock battle under the still rising cloud, with some soldiers coming as close as 800m of ground zero. Some soldiers were suffering radiation sickness even before their return to base.
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Joe-14-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 30/10/1954
Type: Airburst @55m
Yield: 10kt
No further data available
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Joe-17-|Novaya Zemlya|
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Date: 21/09/1955 | Type: Torpedo @-10m | Yield: 3.5 Kt
An underwater test of the RDS-9 warhead deployed on the 53-58 (T-5) torpedo, it was the first test shot at test fired at Novaya Zemlya. Over 30 ships were positioned at distances from 300m to 1.6Km. Among the ships were 4 destroyers, 3 submarines, minesweepers and seaplanes. Over 500 goats and sheep, 100 dogs, and other animals were on board the ships. Only one ship was sunk by the explosion, a destroyer less than 300m from the explosion.
Surface zero
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Assembly and loading
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Joe-18-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 06/11/1955 | Type: Airdrop @1000m | Yield: 250 Kt
The RDS-27 was almost identical to the RDS-6s design, except that is did not use tritium. Photos of this test are often mislabeled as being the 1955 test of the RDS-37 warhead. This was the world's first airdrop of a device that used thermonuclear reactions. The test was originally scheduled for the 5th, but was postponed until the 6th due to adverse weather conditions. It was dropped by a Tu-16 bomber from an altitude of 12 km, exploding 1 km. The yield was within estimates, with 90% due to fission.
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Joe-19-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 22/11/1955 | Type: Airdrop @1550m | Yield: 1.6 Mt
The Soviet Union's first test of a two-stage radiation implosion design aka Sakharov's 'Third Idea', a rediscovery of the Teller Ulam design, later weaponised and designated RDS-37. The bomb's yield was reduced by 50% for the test by replacing part of the Li-6 D fusion fuel with lithium hydride. Air dropped by a crew commanded by F. P. Golovashko, the bomb exploded underneath a thermal inversion layer, which focused the shock back toward the ground unexpectedly. This refracted shock wave did unanticipated collateral damage, killing two people. The RDS-37 gave the USSR a short lived monopoly on thermonuclear weapons. It demonstrated, along with the RDS-27 test, that the USSR had air deliverable thermonuclear weapons. The US would not achieve this until 1956 with shot Cherokee during operation Redwing.
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Joe-23-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 24/08/1956 | Type: Tower @93m | Yield: 27 Kt
Codenamed Joe-23 by the USA, and numbered '28' by the USSR, this atomic bomb test took place on 24/08/1956 at the Semipalatinsk Test Site (STS) in Kazakhstan. The device was mounted on top of a tower, and had a yield of 27 kilotons.
Preperation
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Joe-25-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 02/09/1956 | Type: Airburst @1050m | Yield:51 Kt
Unsuccessful test of a thermonuclear device, nominal yield was 400kt but the actual yield was 51kt due to the second stage failing to ignite.
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Roza-|Novaya Zemlya|
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Date: 12/09/1961 | Type: Airburst @1190m | Yield: 1150 Kt
Operation Roza was conducted under the command of Colonel General Victor Anisimovich Bolyatko. An R-12 balistic missile with a 'product 49' warhead (a thermonuclear device, derived from the RDS-37) was launched in Vorkuta, north of Ural mountains. The launch was delayed when communication between the launch point and the base in Novaya Zemlya was broken twenty minutes before the launch. Communication was restored and the rocket launched, exploding in Mityushika bay at an altitude of 1,190 meters with a yield of 1150 kt.
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Korall-|Novaya Zemlya|
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Date: 23/10/1961 | Type: Subsurface @-20m | Yield: 4.8 Kt
An experiment with the objective of studying the effectiveness of the nuclear torpedo T-5 and the use of a new warhead system named ASBZO. Testing took place in Chyornaya bay. Launched from a B-130 submarine, commanded by Captain N.A.Shumkov at a range of 12.5 km. The system was initially tested with a conventional explosive warheads, and later on the 27th of October with a more powerful 16kt warhead.
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Tsar Bomba-|Novaya Zemlya|
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Date: 08:33 UTC 30/10/1961 | Type: Airburst @4000m | Yield: 50 Mt
Tsar Bomba, the King of all Bombs. No other man made explosion has come close to the power of 1961 test. Its yield was 10X greater than all munitions exploded during WWII. It was not a practical weapon, but a Cold War political stunt to frighten the West. Weighing 27 tons and 8
meters long, the TU-95 that carried it had to be specially modified. Parachute retarded, it detonated 4km over the Novaya Zemlya testing grounds. The initial fireball was 6.5km wide. It's light visible 1,000 km away, the mushroom cloud rose to 64 km developing a width of 30-40 km. The yield of the Tsar is often incorrectly described as being 57Mt. This mis-information came from inaccurate US measurements, a mistake the Soviets were in no rush to correct.
Initial fireball
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Chagan-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 06:00 UTC 15/01/1965 | Type: Subsurface @-178m | Yield: 140 Kt
Chagan was the USSR's first Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE), to gather data on the use of nuclear explosives for industrial purposes. A 140 kt low-fission thermonuclear device utilized a pure fusion secondary and a 5-7 kiloton fission primary. The test was situated in the Chagan River dry bed so that the crater lip formed by the explosion would serve as a dam during the Spring. It formed a crater 400m wide and 100m deep. A lake was formed behind the 34m upraised lip. A channel was cut through the lip allowing the river to enter the crater, filling it with 12 billion litres of water. The reservoir was named Lake Chagan also known as Lake Balapan. Approximately 20% of the released fission products escaped into the atmosphere. While the test did not violate the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty as it was underground, radiation was later detected over Japan.
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Butan-|Bashkir|
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Date: 08:00 UTC 30/03/1965 | Type: subsurface @-1350m | Yield: 2.3-7.6 Kt
1965, two 2.3kt devices are used to stimulate the release of butane and oil from subterranean deposits at the Grachevskij oil field, 40 km east of the city of Meleuz, Bashkortostan, Russia. A third 7.6kt was detonated 3 months later. The operation was repeated again in the 1980s with a further two 3.2kt devices.
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Urta-Bulak-|Uzbekistan|
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Date: 05:59 UTC 30/09/1966 | Type: subsurface @-1532m | Yield: 30 Kt
Control of the Urtabulak gas well in the Bukhara region had been lost. When conventional techniques to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, a subsurface 30 kiloton nuclear device was used to seal off the well. It was listed as a 'seismic event' by the Soviets to conceal the true nature of
ordnance used.
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Taiga-|Semipalatinsk|
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Date: 07:00 UTC 23/03/1971 | Type: Subsurface @-124m | Yield: 15 Kt (x3)
The Taiga experiment was a set of Soviet PNE's in 1969. Three 15 kt kiloton devices were detonated 124m underground. They were specially designed to have a minimal fission yield with only 0.3 kilotons coming from fission reactions. Despite these measures, the radiation from the explosion was detected outside the Soviet Union by several countries, including the US and Sweden.
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No ID 1
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Date: N/A
Type: N/A
Yield: N/A
No additional data
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No ID 2
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Date: N/A
Type: N/A
Yield:N/A
No additional data
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No ID 3
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Date: N/A
Type: N/A
Yield: N/A
No additional data
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No ID 4
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Date: N/A
Type: N/A
Yield: N/A
No additional data
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No ID 5
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Date: N/A
Type: N/A
Yield: N/A
No additional data
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