Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

[Nyrath]

http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=4514

 

Egads. What were they thinking?

 

Apparently this is what passes for good military planning back in 1956.

 

What do you do about incoming hordes of Soviet nuclear bombers, coming to wipe out the USA? Why, send out a single plane with a one megaton city-killer air to air missile, to vaporize the entire swarm in one go. And rendering the surface under ground zero a radioactive wasteland.

 

In reality, I doubt the Soviet bombers would bunch up like that.

(and I used a bit of hyperbole. A "city killer" is generally at least 25 megatons)

[DusterBoy]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

Well, using a 1mT-warhead equipped AAM would ensure that it would be a suicide run, since the blast radius would probably be greater than the range.

 

And it was the '50s. All the miltary type had mushroom clouds in their eyes and nukes were the things to put in every weapon, including recoilless rifles

[Markdoc]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

And it was the '50s. All the miltary type had mushroom clouds in their eyes and nukes were the things to put in every weapon' date=' including recoilless rifles

 

Davy Crockett! Killed him a bar when he was only three! (Also himself and everything else in a half mile radius).

 

Seriously, though given some of the ideas floated back then , you can see why the peace movement took off like it did. "Excuse me, you are planning letting WHAT off in our neighborhood?"

 

cheers, Mark.

[Panpiper]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

Egads. What were they thinking?

Those bombers would have been intercepted over the high arctic or tundra. There were no human beings or settled lands beneath where the warhead would have detonated. Secondly, everyone seems to universally overestimate the lethality of these weapons. A one megaton blast happening at a height of six or seven miles would not turn the area below into a radioactive wasteland. You certainly wouldn't want to be beneath it when it went off, but it's effect on the ground would have been transitory. Yes, there would however be a good chance the Soviets would be trying to fly in under the radar (hugging the ground, which would slow them down, giving their opponents more time to find them and intercept, so six of one, half a dozen of the other), so...

 

What was their alternative? Those bombers if it came down to a shooting war, HAD to be stopped. Allowing even one to get through would be unthinkable. And the technology for making reliably targetable air to air missiles simply was not there yet. Giving them a nuclear warhead, made it very likely that an interceptor 'could' bring down whatever bomber they detected. "That's" what they were thinking.

[austenandrews]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

When the alternative is armageddon, all options are on the table.

[Beast]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

you have to consider that in the last war the only way to do enough damage to a city was to do a massive bombing strike

in 56 the best you had was the Sidewinder missile for Air to Air and it had only a 3 mile range and had to be in a 45 degree cone aft of the target

so getting to your targets they would need to go in packs for mutual defense

 

I'm going to assume that this weapon was meant to be used over the ice cap or at least uninhabited areas or enemy territory

you also have the F101 Voodoo with 3 Genie rockets(each about 5kt)

 

http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=4514

 

Egads. What were they thinking?

 

Apparently this is what passes for good military planning back in 1956.

 

What do you do about incoming hordes of Soviet nuclear bombers, coming to wipe out the USA? Why, send out a single plane with a one megaton city-killer air to air missile, to vaporize the entire swarm in one go. And rendering the surface under ground zero a radioactive wasteland.

 

In reality, I doubt the Soviet bombers would bunch up like that.

(and I used a bit of hyperbole. A "city killer" is generally at least 25 megatons)

[SuperPheemy]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

I love the exaggerated cones protruding from the intakes. Classic 1950s design sense there. And without an "impenetrable Atomic Shield" defense, the Cold War would have not been the same.

[Sundog]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

You have to consider what they figured on facing.

 

The standard Russian bomber in 1956 was slow, unmanouverable, but with a very good range - as it was a prop job. The ONLY way the Soviets were going to get some to the US via the polar route was by sending HORDES of the things. So, this was a plan for reducing the hordes.

 

Oh and btw, the Davy Crockett was a very effective weapon, actually. It was diallable as to output, and the idea that it's Alpha Kill Zone exceeded it's range is an urban myth.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

Interception is a huge problem here. Yes, the planes were slow. But not that slow. Distances were great, radar coverage poor, and the interception envelope terrible. The bomb was intended to fight waves of incoming bombers, yes; but in the sense that the small number of available fighters would almost certainly not get a good interception envelope on a detected aircraft. So the only viable alternative is an area-effect weapon.

Using one 1(2 --I doubt they had a clear idea of the yield before the test burst) megaton bomb to shoot down a single bomber might seem like overkill, but not if said bomber was itself carrying a MT yield weapon. Every one of those shot down is a million North Americans saved.

That said, the Canadian government was not impressed. Tundra might not even have been the issue. Those things look like (many) accidents waiting to happen, and who wants to be the person who tells John Diefenbaker that "we lost North Bay."

 

Oh, heck, what am I saying? It's North Bay.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

Well, using a 1mT-warhead equipped AAM would ensure that it would be a suicide run, since the blast radius would probably be greater than the range.

 

And it was the '50s. All the miltary type had mushroom clouds in their eyes and nukes were the things to put in every weapon, including recoilless rifles

Wow! The Fat Man from Fallout 3 has a direct, real world inspiration. That's so cool.

 

And looking at the bottom of the Fat Man page, there is a reference to the Davy Crockett.

[Clonus]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

Well, using a 1mT-warhead equipped AAM would ensure that it would be a suicide run, since the blast radius would probably be greater than the range.

 

 

Tsk. Read the article. The flight range of the missile was 125 miles. The launch platform would be just fine. And of course a one megaton air burst at cruising height is _not_ going to leave a radioactive wasteland. It wouldn't be much worse than the effects of a forest fire. Cube square law applies.

[Nyrath]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

Tsk. Read the article. The flight range of the missile was 125 miles. The launch platform would be just fine. And of course a one megaton air burst at cruising height is _not_ going to leave a radioactive wasteland. It wouldn't be much worse than the effects of a forest fire. Cube square law applies.

 

I'm finding hard data about this difficult to come by, unsurprisingly.

 

If you assume that a Soviet bomber can be mission-killed by 3 PSI of overpressure, a naive calculation would say that a 2 megaton air burst would mission kill all Soviet bombers in about a 4 kilometer radius.

 

Naive calculation:

R = cubeRoot(Y) / ( 0.408 * cubeRoot(P))

where

R = radius in nautical miles (1852 meters = 1 NM)

Y = weapon yield in megatons

P = overpressure in PSI

 

I've seen mission kill figures from 3 to 10 PSI. This document suggest it is hideously complicated, depending upon such factors as orientation of aircraft with respect to burst.

http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/caw1960-9.pdf

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

why does this article seem like a scene out of Doctor Strangelove?

 

dont forget the sillyness of the atomic powered aircraft project, the NB-36 Peacemaker that carried its own nuclear reactor

 

my personal favorite is still Project Daedalus or Project Orion, the bomb drives, which provided thrust generated by focused nuclear explosions

[Kristopher]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

why does this article seem like a scene out of Doctor Strangelove?

 

dont forget the sillyness of the atomic powered aircraft project, the NB-36 Peacemaker that carried its own nuclear reactor

 

my personal favorite is still Project Daedalus or Project Orion, the bomb drives, which provided thrust generated by focused nuclear explosions

 

Orion was, IIRC, the reactor-thermal drive.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=4514

 

Egads. What were they thinking?

 

Apparently this is what passes for good military planning back in 1956.

 

Hey, it was the 1950s. At one time or another, there were projects to fit nuclear warheads on just about every weapon system you could possibly imagine - torpedoes, depth charges, landmines, artillery shells, you name it.

 

What do you do about incoming hordes of Soviet nuclear bombers' date=' coming to wipe out the USA? Why, send out a single plane with a one megaton city-killer air to air missile, to vaporize the entire swarm in one go. And rendering the surface under ground zero a radioactive wasteland.[/quote']

 

Depends on the size of the nuke in question, and how high up it is detonated. Airbursts tend to cause more widespread immediate damage than ground bursts, but much less fall-out - as I understand it.

Also consider that it was intended for use against a group of enemy aircraft that, in all likelihood, was carrying SEVERAL nukes of their own. Some might consider that to be a more than reasonable trade-off.

 

In reality' date=' I doubt the Soviet bombers would bunch up like that.[/quote']

 

I think, to some extent, they would have. At that time, a big chunk of the Soviets' strategic bomber force were knock-offs of the US's B-29. They would probably have been travelling in a bunch for at least part of the trip, for mutual protection from enemy fighters and improved communications / control. Especially the latter - Soviet military doctrine was very big on the control part.

 

... And, if you thought Davy Crockett was freaky, check out the following (Some strong language, definitely NSFW):

 

http://www.cracked.com/article/153_nuke-moon-5-certifiably-insane-cold-war-projects/

[Nyrath]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

Orion was' date=' IIRC, the reactor-thermal drive.[/quote']

Ummm, that turns out not to be the case.

NERVA was the reactor-thermal drive.

Project Orion was the nuclear bomb drive.

[lemming]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

nuking an orbiting planetary body for no particular reason might cross the line between "illustrating our technical prowess" and "cartoonish supervillainy

[egaroadkill]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

I never heard of Sky Scorcher, very cool. Thanks for the atomic holocaust tidbit. My favorite wow factor, I can’t believe they even considered it, atomic holocaust weapon is still the old SLAM from Project Pluto.

[Yansuf]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=4514

 

Egads. What were they thinking?

 

Apparently this is what passes for good military planning back in 1956.

 

What do you do about incoming hordes of Soviet nuclear bombers, coming to wipe out the USA? Why, send out a single plane with a one megaton city-killer air to air missile, to vaporize the entire swarm in one go. And rendering the surface under ground zero a radioactive wasteland.

 

In reality, I doubt the Soviet bombers would bunch up like that.

(and I used a bit of hyperbole. A "city killer" is generally at least 25 megatons)

 

If this was good planning, why didn't it get built?

Answer, it was an idiot idea, and quickly recognized as such.

 

No competent military planner would have taken this seriously. For all practical purposes, the "kill radius" goes up with the cube root of WH power, meaning increasing WH power is NOT the way to go.

 

The US built a number of anti-aircraft weapons (missiles and rockets) in the cold war that had nuclear warheads, none of them were thermonuclear. The weapon yields were all in the low (or very low) kiloton range.

As an aside, the navy did have a torpedo (Mk-45 as I recall) with a thermonuclear WH, but it was really for attacking navy bases.

 

There are a VAST number of stories about weapons supposedly designed (and even built) in the 50's and 60's that clearly make no sense; the "atomic hand grenade" is probably the most quoted one. Very few of these stories have any real basis, at most someone did a paper study before the idea was scrapped.

One that I believe (not sure) did make it into actual engineering design was the "atomic bullet" for light weapons. We are not talking the "nuclear mortar" here (which was made, and worked quite well) but shells for light cannon or smaller. As I heard it (when I was in military R&D) it was concluded that it was possible to make an "atomic bullet" with a yield of several hundred pound of TNT that could be fired from a 0.45 pistol.

The idea was deemed worthless because the design required the use of material with a half life of less than a week. (The problems with that should be obvious.)

 

For the record, true nuclear airbursts (fireball does not touch ground) leave effectively NO fallout. The only radioactive material that can "fall out" of the cloud is the bomb's own material, which was about 10 tons for the earliest bombs, and quickly dropped to much less. A surface burst vaporizes millions of tons of material, which is made radioactive in the process.

 

Concerning "city killers", one megaton does qualify. The most powerful weapons the US had in the cold war were approximately 20 megatons, and were bombs (for B-52s and such to drop), not missile warheads.

[Nyrath]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

I vaguely remember another reason why huge nuclear weapons were problematic.

 

Nuclear detonations radiate their destructive energy isotropically, that is, in a sphere. So if your target approximates a two dimensional plane (like a city or a formation of bombers at a given altitude), any energy that does not intersect the plane is wasted. That is, if you target the center of the formation, any blast that goes up or down is wasted. Which is a large percentage of the blast.

 

In order to minimize waste, instead of a 1 megaton detonation, it is more optimal to divide the attack into, say, 100 ten-kiloton detonations evenly distributed in the the plane of the target. More of the blast is concentrated in the target plane, less is wasted.

 

Or so I remembered.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

Now I have this image of some anime mecha/fighter launching 100 10kt warheads in one of those missile swarm moments. At least I shall go to sleep with a smile on my face. Nukes are too awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At least in fiction.

[clsage]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

why does this article seem like a scene out of Doctor Strangelove?

 

dont forget the sillyness of the atomic powered aircraft project, the NB-36 Peacemaker that carried its own nuclear reactor

 

I still recall, with some fondness, the model kit I built back when: atomic powered bomber....with a "parasite" fighter that docked to the bombers tail !!!

 

 

-Carl-

[clsage]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

I vaguely remember another reason why huge nuclear weapons were problematic.

 

Nuclear detonations radiate their destructive energy isotropically, that is, in a sphere. So if your target approximates a two dimensional plane (like a city or a formation of bombers at a given altitude), any energy that does not intersect the plane is wasted. That is, if you target the center of the formation, any blast that goes up or down is wasted. Which is a large percentage of the blast.

 

In order to minimize waste, instead of a 1 megaton detonation, it is more optimal to divide the attack into, say, 100 ten-kiloton detonations evenly distributed in the the plane of the target. More of the blast is concentrated in the target plane, less is wasted.

 

Or so I remembered.

 

Plus, as I recall from my long since reading of "Life After Doomsday" and the Venn diagram like atomic weapons tables in "The Morrow Project" ( ) there is a potential shockwave interaction where the blast energies overlap when multiple warheads are used.

 

Oh, to have a "shaped charge-able" nuclear device......

 

-Carl-

[clsage]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

One that I believe (not sure) did make it into actual engineering design was the "atomic bullet" for light weapons. We are not talking the "nuclear mortar" here (which was made, and worked quite well) but shells for light cannon or smaller. As I heard it (when I was in military R&D) it was concluded that it was possible to make an "atomic bullet" with a yield of several hundred pound of TNT that could be fired from a 0.45 pistol.

The idea was deemed worthless because the design required the use of material with a half life of less than a week. (The problems with that should be obvious.)

 

The fabled "collapsing round" of song and story ?

 

I well recall that gadget rearing it's metaphorical head in a gaming scenario (or two) back in the 1980's.

 

 

-Carl-

[Kristopher]

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956)

 

Ummm, that turns out not to be the case.

NERVA was the reactor-thermal drive.

Project Orion was the nuclear bomb drive.

 

You're right, of course, but for some reason I had the two backwards in my head that day.

 

Maybe was thinking of Project Pluto and getting all three confused.