While the Comission was planning the 1954 series the Soviet Union
announced the explosion of a hydrogen barb.
Actually the Russians had
probably Getonated a large fission weapon which burned some thermmuclear fuel.
For security reasons the Commission could not explain
that the Soviets hardly had a deliverable thermonuclear weapon .2°
To
most Americans the Cammission had to work even harder so as not to lose
‘the grim race with the Soviet Union.
The 1954 spring Pacific tests series, called Castle, provided
perhaps the greatest technical successes of any tests other than Trinity
or Mike.
Six thermonuclear shots were fired and most of these surpassed
the Commission's most optimistic predictions.
Not only did the Canmis-
sion have a deliverable thermonuclear weapon but it also could produce a
whole "family" of thermonuclear weapons in a spectrum of yields from
small tactical to large strategic weapons.
Now the Cammission could use
a whole new philosophy in building the stockpile.
Rather than build
bombs with a balanced distribution of yields, the Commission concentrated
on
making
specific
types
of
weapons
characteristics into them. >+
Castle,
however,
and working
|
unexpectedly
demonstrated
that
optimm
|
multi-megatcn
thermonuclear weapons also could produce significant amounts of deadly
fallout.
The first shot,of the series, a fifteen megaton blast called
Bravo, produced a massive fallout cloud which rose more than twenty
miles into the stratosphere and triggered thunderstorms and rain squalls
throughout the Pacific test area.
Fallout from the cloudwas scattered
over more than seven thousand square miles of ocean, the naval task
15