A bomb tower is a lightly constructed

tower A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures. Towers are specific ...

, often 100 to 700 feet (30 to 210 meters) high, built to hold a

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

for an above ground nuclear test. The tower holds the bomb for the purpose of the investigation of its destructive effects (such as

burst height An air burst or airburst is the detonation of an explosive device such as an anti-personnel artillery shell or a nuclear weapon in the air instead of on contact with the ground or target. The principal military advantage of an air burst over ...

and distance with given explosive yield) and for the adjustment of measuring instruments, such as

high-speed camera A high-speed camera is a device capable of capturing moving images with exposures of less than 1/1,000 second or frame rates in excess of 250 fps. It is used for recording fast-moving objects as photographic images onto a storage medium. After r ...

s. Normally, the bomb tower disintegrates completely on detonation due to the enormous heat of the explosion.

References

Nuclear weapons testing Towers {{struct-type-stub