Thin Man nuclear bomb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The "Thin Man" (formally, Mark 2) nuclear bomb was a proposed plutonium gun-type nuclear bomb which the United States was developing during the Manhattan Project. Its development was aborted when it was discovered that the spontaneous fission rate of nuclear reactor-bred plutonium was too high for use in a gun-type design.
Contents |
[edit] Specifications
The "Thin Man" design was an early nuclear weapon design proposed before plutonium had been successfully bred in a nuclear reactor from the irradiation of uranium-238. It was assumed that plutonium, like uranium-235, would be able to be assembled into a critical mass by simply shooting a sub-critical piece of it into another sub-critical piece. To avoid pre-detonation, a plutonium "bullet" would need to be accelerated to a speed of at least 3,000 feet per second (900 m/s) — if not, then the plutonium would begin a nuclear fission reaction before fully assembling and blow itself apart prematurely.
Estimated dimensions of the Mark 2 were a diameter of 2 ft diameter and a length of 18 ft; the long length was necessary in order for the plutonium "bullet" to pick up adequate speed before reaching the "target". Weight was estimated at 7,500 pounds for the final weapon model.
[edit] History
[edit] Early decisions
In 1942, prior to the Army taking over wartime atomic research, Robert Oppenheimer held a conference in Berkeley, California at which various engineers and physicists discussed nuclear bomb design issues. Three designs were put forth: a uranium-235 gun-type bomb, a plutonium gun-type bomb, and an early form of a plutonium implosion-type bomb. These later became the "Little Boy" (uranium gun), "Thin Man" (plutonium gun), and "Fat Man" (plutonium implosion) code-named design projects.
The names for all three projects were created by Robert Serber, a former student of Oppenheimer's who worked on the project. According to his later memoirs, he chose them based on their design shapes; the "Thin Man" would be a very long device, and the name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel and series of movies by the same name; the "Fat Man" bomb would be round and fat and was named after Sidney Greenstreet's character in The Maltese Falcon. "Little Boy" would come last and be named only to contrast to the "Thin Man" bomb.[1]
At that conference, it was generally agreed that the known physical and nuclear characteristics of uranium-235 and plutonium easily allowed production of gun-type uranium bombs, and with some difficulty plutonium gun-type bombs. Because plutonium had a higher spontaneous fission rate, the plutonium gun bomb would have to have a higher assembly velocity (and a longer, physically much larger gun) than a uranium bomb.
It was estimated that the design of a uranium gun-type bomb would be much easier than a plutonium gun-type bomb, with its higher velocity. The early analysis of production methods for plutonium and uranium showed that the Manhattan Project would have problems getting enough uranium for many gun-type bombs before the projected end of the war, but could probably produce enough plutonium.
Implosion-type bombs were determined to be significantly more efficient (in terms of explosive yield per unit mass of fissile material in the bomb), because compressed fissile materials react more rapidly.
Oppenheimer, reviewing his options in early 1943, determined that two projects should proceed forwards: the "Thin Man" project (plutonium gun) and the "Fat Man" project (plutonium implosion). It was decided that the plutonium gun would receive the bulk of the research effort, since it was the project with the most uncertainty involved. It was assumed that the uranium gun-type bomb could be more easily adapted from it after the fact.
[edit] Development
Oppenheimer assembled a team including senior engineer Edwin Rose and senior physicist Charles Critchfield to begin design work on plutonium gun designs. In June 1943, Navy Capt. William Sterling Parsons took over the Ordnance Division and direct management of the "Thin Man" project. [1]
[edit] Design issues
Two major concerns were identified with the "Thin Man" design during its development: first, bomb aerodynamics after being dropped from an aircraft, and second, predetonation.
[edit] Aerodynamics
The great length of the "Thin Man" bomb led to aerodynamic instabilities. Subscale models of the bomb were dropped from a TBF Avenger at the US Navy test range at Dahlgren, Virginia starting in August, 1943. The bombs would spin sideways after being dropped, and broke up when they hit the ground.
Extensive aerodynamic testing, particularly of the shape of the bomb's nose and tail and the tail fins, proceeded for the next year. The design ended up with a bulging nose, thin body, and wider tail assembly with the plutonium "target" assembly, plus very long tail fins for stability.
Full scale test units were dropped starting on March 6, 1944, at Muroc Army Air Base (now Edwards Air Force Base) and were successful.
[edit] Predetonation
In April 1944, experiments by Emilio G. Segrè on the newly reactor-produced plutonium from Hanford showed that some plutonium isotopes produced during reactor production had far higher spontaneous fission rates and radioactivity than the cyclotron-produced Pu-239 isotopes on which the original measurements had been made. The production of those other isotopes appeared unavoidable and the fission rate was so high that gun-type plutonium nuclear bombs were shown to be impractical — even if it would work, it would require a gun barrel too long for any existing or planned bomber. The only way to use plutonium in a workable bomb was thus implosion — a far more difficult engineering task.
Following this discovery, the "Thin Man" bomb design was determined to be unworkable. All gun-type work in the Manhattan Project was directed to the enriched uranium gun design, and almost all of the research at Los Alamos was re-oriented around the problems of implosion.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Robert Serber, Peace & War: Reminiscences of a Life on the Frontiers of Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998): 104.
[edit] External links
[edit] History links
- Plutonium Complicates Early Gun Work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory history website
- Little Boy and Fat Man at LANL history website
- Nuclear weapons timeline
- The Enola Gay at US Air Force Association
- Silverplate: Aircraft of the Manhattan Project
- Allbombs.html list of all American nuclear bombs at nuclearweaponarchive.org
