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Armed Forces Special Weapons Project military effects studies of the Operation Teapot 1955 nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site.
Reupload of a previously uploaded film, in one piece instead of multiple parts, and with improved video & sound.
Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
Operation Teapot was a series of fourteen nuclear test explosions conducted at the Nevada Test Site in the first half of 1955.
During shot “Wasp”, ground forces took part in Exercise Desert Rock VI which included an armored task force “Razor” moving to within 900 meters of ground zero, under the still-forming mushroom cloud.
The Civil Defense “Apple-2” shot on 5 May 1955 was intended to test various building construction types (nicknamed as “Survival Town”) in a nuclear blast. A few of the buildings still stand at Area 1, Nevada Test Site. A documentary film was produced showing the buildings being damaged by the blast; in the film, the test is called “Operation Cue”. Stock footage from the nuclear test was used in the 1983 TV movie The Day After during the explosion sequence. A retrospective documentary film known as The “Survival Town” Atom Test recorded the nuclear detonation effects of the test.
An augmented test unit from the United States Marine Corps participated in Shot “Bee” during the March 1955 exercises.
The notable MET (Military Effects Test, shown in all images at right) was the first bomb core to use uranium-233 (a rarely used fissile isotope that is the product of thorium-232 neutron absorption), along with plutonium. It produced a yield comparable to the “Fat Man” plutonium weapon exploded over Nagasaki, but a third less than the expected amount.
Teapot “MET” (Military Effects Test) detonated on a 400-foot tower over Frenchman Flat on 15 April 1955, with a yield of 22 KT. This bomb is notable as the first inclusion of uranium-233 (rather than uranium-235) in its core.
This series preceded Wigwam and followed Operation Castle…
The Nevada National Security Site, previously the Nevada Test Site (NTS), is a United States Department of Energy reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 mi (105 km) northwest of the city of Las Vegas. Formerly known as the Nevada Proving Grounds, the site, established on 11 January 1951, for the testing of nuclear devices, is composed of approximately 1,360 sq mi (3,500 km2) of desert and mountainous terrain. Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site began with a 1-kilotonne-of-TNT (4.2 TJ) bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat on 27 January 1951. Many of the iconic images of the nuclear era come from NTS.
The Nevada Test Site contains 28 areas, 1,100 buildings, 400 miles (640 km) of paved roads, 300 miles (480 km) of unpaved roads, ten heliports and two airstrips.
History
Established as a 680-square-mile (1,800 km2) area by president Harry Truman on December 18, 1950 within the Nellis Air Force Gunnery and Bombing Range.
1951–1992
Between 1951 and 1992, there were a total of 928 announced nuclear tests at Nevada Test Site. Of those, 828 were underground. (Sixty-two of the underground tests included multiple, simultaneous nuclear detonations, adding 93 detonations and bringing the total number of NTS nuclear detonations to 1,021, of which 921 were underground.) The site is covered with subsidence craters from the testing. The Nevada Test Site was the primary testing location of American nuclear devices; 126 tests were conducted elsewhere (many at the Pacific Proving Grounds in the Marshall Islands).
During the 1950s, the mushroom clouds from these tests could be seen for almost 100 mi (160 km) in either direction, including the city of Las Vegas, where the tests became tourist attractions. Americans headed for Las Vegas to witness the distant mushroom clouds that could be seen from the downtown hotels.
On 17 July 1962, the test shot “Little Feller I” of Operation Sunbeam became the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada Test Site. Underground testing of weapons continued until 23 September 1992…
