back in 45, how the did the planes escape...
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... when the nukes were launched?
i don't think bombers flew fast enough back then to be able to avoid the shockwaves from the blast. -
did they escape?
If they did, it would mean that they flew fast enough.
Or maybe they got the radiation and become......Xmen... -
They were flying pretty high as well, and the nuke itself was only a what? 15-20 kiloton device... Pretty small for what ws to come later which was more powerful then these bombs by several thousands of magnitude in the megaton range. The fission bombs in WW2 were but firecrackers next to them.
Considering that most stragetic bombers nowadays or back in the cold war fly more then thrice faster then B-29 can, but still can drop bombs that were thousands of times more powerful, and not blow themselves to bits... it is safe to say that the small fission devices the B-29s dropped gave them a more then enough safety margin. -
i wonder how they know the power of the current nukes if they've never fired 1 before.
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What you mean untested? Until they all agreeded to stop testing nukes, there has been over 500 above ground nuclear tests during the cold war period! The most massive of which was a soviet superbomb of 150megatons... this is, the power of over 7500 Horishima weapons! The blast wave mushroomed 130 miles into the atomosphere and the island they tested it on was blasted off the face of the earth.
Yup, modern nukes are quite well tested, and proven, if that's what you want to know. -
The blast from the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was strong enough to give the B-29 a rough ride for a few full minutes.
The blast effect probably pushed the planes home faster. -
Both bombs were dropped by parachute. Little Boy detonated at 1885 feet and an area of 13 square kilometres was completely destroyed. Fat Man detonated at 1625 feet and an area of 6.7 square kilometres was destroyed - the detonation was more vertical than for Little Boy.
In either case, because of the amount of time required for the parachute descent to airburst height, the B29s were well out of the blast radius at the time of detonation. -
The plane that dropped the nukes, Enola Gay (can't remember whether one or both of them though), is still around in one of the museums in the US. I think it is in the Smithsonian, can't be sure.
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ooooooh.
ok thx. was just curious. -
There were 3 B-29's on the 1st bombing raid.The 1st 1 had the bomb,2nd 1 had instruments that were doing to be dropped and the 3rd was the take pictures of the boom.The 3rd plane stayed well out of the way while the other 2 went in at 30,000ft(9-10km).
They turned away at an angle which would mathematically put it far far far away from the blast.IE they were on a tangent i think.
In the 52 seconds it took for the bomb to detonate the planes had travelled 12miles(18km) away.The sky then turned white and the planes were hit by a shockwave. -
This one's funny.Originally posted by Atobe:The blast from the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was strong enough to give the B-29 a rough ride for a few full minutes.
The blast effect probably pushed the planes home faster.