JRL NEWSWATCH VIDEO: “Russia Declassifies Video From 1961 of Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Detonated” – Smithsonian Magazine/ Theresa Machemer

“The blast was over 3,000 times bigger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.”

“… [D]eclassified Russian footage [features] the 1961 Tsar Bomba hydrogen bomb test …  [of] the largest bomb … detonated on Earth …. a 50-million-ton hydrogen bomb, officially named RDS-220[,] … [set off] late October 1961 … during the height of the Cold War[,] …. 26 feet long … almost seven feet tall. … [T]he … mushroom cloud [was] 42 miles high … expand[ing] through the stratosphere … form[ing] its cap in … the mesosphere. … just months after the construction of the Berlin Wall … days after a tense 16-hour standoff between U.S. and Soviet troops at … Checkpoint Charlie. … [M]ilitary border guards … in northern Norway reported seeing the flash. …. [R]adioactive fallout swept over Scandinavia and drew international condemnation ….”

However, U.S. defense official Roswell Gilpatric said, about that time, that such a weapon had questionable value, “not worth developing.” Stronger focus was placed on nuclear weapons that could be deployed on such delivery vehicles as missiles, submarines or mobile ground transport.

Click here for: “Russia Declassifies Video From 1961 of Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Detonated; The blast was over 3,000 times bigger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima” – Smithsonian Magazine/ Theresa Machemer

[Video with English subtitles: youtube.com/watch?v=nbC7BxXtOlo&feature=youtu.be]
[featured image is file photo adapted from image at https://www.acq.osd.mil/]