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The RDS-1 (), also known as Izdeliye 501 (device 501) and First Lightning (), was the nuclear bomb used in the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
's first
nuclear weapon test Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the performance of nuclear weapons and the effects of their explosion. Nuclear testing is a sensitive political issue. Governments have often performed tests to signal strength. Bec ...
. The United States assigned it the code-name Joe-1, in reference to
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
. It was detonated on 29 August 1949 at 7:00 a.m., at the
Semipalatinsk Test Site The Semipalatinsk Test Site or Semipalatinsk-21 (; ), also known as "The Polygon", was the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. It is located in Zhanasemey District, Abai Region, Kazakhstan, south of the valley of the Ir ...
,
Kazakh SSR The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Kazakhstan, the Kazakh SSR, KSSR, or simply Kazakhstan, was one of the transcontinental constituent republics of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1936 to 1991. Located in northern Centr ...
, after top-secret research and development as part of the
Soviet atomic bomb project The Soviet atomic bomb project was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II. Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov suspected that the Allied powers were secretly developing a " superwea ...
.


Etymology

There are several explanations for the Soviet code-name of RDS-1, usually an arbitrary designation: a
backronym A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...
"Special Jet Engine" (, ''Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Spetsialnyi''), or "Stalin's Jet Engine" (, ''Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina''), or "Russia does it herself" (, ''Rossiya Delayet Sama''). Later weapons were also designated RDS but with different model numbers.


Description

The weapon was designed at the
Kurchatov Institute The Kurchatov Institute (, National Research Centre "Kurchatov Institute") is Russia's leading research and development institution in the field of nuclear power, nuclear energy. It is named after Igor Kurchatov and is located at 1 Kurchatov Sq ...
, then at the time officially known as "Laboratory № 2" but designated as the "office" or "base" in internal documents, starting in April 1946. Plutonium for the bomb was produced at the industrial complex Chelyabinsk-40. The RDS-1 explosive yield was 22 kilotons
TNT equivalent TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. A ton of TNT equivalent is a unit of energy defined by convention to be (). It is the approximate energy released in the de ...
, similar to the US
Gadget A gadget is a machine, mechanical device or any ingenious article. Gadgets are sometimes referred to as ''wikt:gizmo, gizmos''. History The etymology of the word is disputed. The word first appears as reference to an 18th-century tool in Glass ...
and
Fat Man "Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) was the design of the nuclear weapon the United States used for seven of the first eight nuclear weapons ever detonated in history. It is also the most powerful design to ever be used in warfare. A Fat Man ...
bombs. At
Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria ka, ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია} ''Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria'' ( – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph ...
's insistence, the RDS-1 bomb was designed as an implosion type weapon, similar to the Fat Man bomb dropped on
Nagasaki , officially , is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Founded by the Portuguese, the port of Portuguese_Nagasaki, Nagasaki became the sole Nanban trade, port used for tr ...
, Japan; RDS-1 also had a solid
plutonium Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is a silvery-gray actinide metal that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four ...
core. The bomb designers had developed a more sophisticated design (tested later as
RDS-2 The RDS-2 (Russian: РДС-2) was the second atomic bomb developed by the Soviet Union as an improved version of the RDS-1. It included new explosive lenses along with a new core design to decrease the probability of pre-detonation or 'fizzle'. The ...
) but rejected it because of the known reliability of the Fat Man type design, the Soviets having received extensive intelligence on the design of the Fat Man bomb during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, which was discovered in the espionage case of
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (born Greenglass; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were an American married couple who were convicted of First Chief Directorate, spying for the Soviet Union, including ...
and during the
Venona project The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, u ...
. To test the effects of the new weapon, workers constructed houses made of wood and bricks, along with a bridge, and a simulated
metro railway Rapid transit or mass rapid transit (MRT) or heavy rail, commonly referred to as metro, is a type of high-capacity public transport that is generally built in urban areas. A grade separated rapid transit line below ground surface through a tu ...
in the vicinity of the test site. Armoured hardware and approximately 50 aircraft were also brought to the testing grounds as well as over 1,500 animals to test the bomb's effects on life. In a sector of artillery about 100 guns and mortars were placed at distances ranging from 250 to 1,800 meters from ground zero. At distances 500 to 550 meters from ground zero artillery pieces were either totally destroyed or needed factory repair.''First Soviet atomic bomb. Film report (1949)''
/ref> The resulting data showed the RDS explosion to be 50% more destructive than originally estimated by its engineers.
Mikhail Pervukhin Mikhail Georgiyevich Pervukhin (; 14 October Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>O.S. 1 October1904 – 22 July 1978) was a Soviet people">Soviet politician and an engineer who served as people's commissar for various commis ...
served as the chairman of the commission in charge of the RDS-1 testing. Five RDS-1 weapons were completed as a pilot series by March 1950 with serial production of the weapon beginning in December 1951.


Detection by the West

Some
United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...
WB-29 The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is a United States Army Air Forces long range, strategic heavy bomber that was produced in many experimental and production models from 1943 to 1946. XB-29 : ''Section source: Baugher'' The XB-29, Boeing Model 345 ...
weather reconnaissance aircraft were fitted with special filters to collect atmospheric radioactive debris. On 3 September 1949, the Air Force Office of Atomic Energy had a WB-29 fly from
Misawa Air Base is an air base of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), List of United States Air Force installations, the United States Air Force, and the United States Navy located in Misawa, Aomori, Misawa, Aomori Prefecture, Aomori, in the northern p ...
in Japan to
Eielson Air Force Base Eielson Air Force Base is a United States Air Force (USAF) base located approximately southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, and just southeast of Moose Creek, Alaska. It was established in 1943 as Mile 26 Satellite Field and redesignated Eielson Ai ...
in Alaska. The plane collected some debris during this flight. This data was then cross-checked with data from later flights, and it was determined that the Soviet Union had effectively tested a nuclear weapon.


Response in the West

The test surprised the Western powers. American intelligence had estimated that the Soviets would not produce an atomic weapon until 1953, while the British did not expect it until 1954. When the
nuclear fission product Nuclear fission products are the atomic fragments left after a large atomic nucleus undergoes nuclear fission. Typically, a large nucleus like that of uranium fissions by splitting into two smaller nuclei, along with a few neutrons, the releas ...
s from the test were detected by the U.S. Air Force, the United States began to follow the trail of the
nuclear fallout Nuclear fallout is residual radioactive material that is created by the reactions producing a nuclear explosion. It is initially present in the mushroom cloud, radioactive cloud created by the explosion, and "falls out" of the cloud as it is ...
debris.''U.S. Intelligence and the Detection of the First Soviet Nuclear Test, September 1949''
William Burr, Washington, D.C., 22 September 2009
President
Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. As the 34th vice president in 1945, he assumed the presidency upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt that year. Subsequen ...
notified the world of the situation on 23 September 1949: "We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R." Truman's statement likely in turn surprised the Soviets, who had hoped to keep the test a secret to avoid encouraging the Americans to increase their atomic programs, and did not know that the United States had built a test-detection system using the WB-29 Superfortress. The announcement was a turning point in the
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
, that had just begun. Once the Soviet Union was confirmed to be in possession of the atomic bomb, pressure mounted to develop the first
hydrogen bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lo ...
.


Response in the Soviet Union

Following Truman's announcement, Soviet state newspaper
TASS The Russian News Agency TASS, or simply TASS, is a Russian state-owned news agency founded in 1904. It is the largest Russian news agency and one of the largest news agencies worldwide. TASS is registered as a Federal State Unitary Enterpri ...
released a report. It suggested the West had detected signatures from excavation works in the Soviet Union. Nonetheless it stated the Soviet Union possessed nuclear weapons, and noted the November 1947 claim by Minister of Foreign Affairs
Vyacheslav Molotov Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (; – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician, diplomat, and revolutionary who was a leading figure in the government of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s, as one of Joseph Stalin's closest allies. ...
, that the Soviet Union understood the "secret" of nuclear weapons design.
Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers This is a list of all deputy premiers of the Soviet Union. List Deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars * Lev Kamenev (July 6, 1923 - January 16, 1926) * Alexei Rykov (July 6, 1923 - February 2, 1924) * Alexander Tsiurupa (July ...
Kliment Voroshilov internationally reiterated nuclear capability five months later in March 1950. The RDS-1 device was put into weapons production from 1949 to 1951, stockpiling 29 bombs, compared to the US' 1947 to 1949 production of 120 first-generation
Fat Man "Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) was the design of the nuclear weapon the United States used for seven of the first eight nuclear weapons ever detonated in history. It is also the most powerful design to ever be used in warfare. A Fat Man ...
bombs.


See also

*
RDS-2 The RDS-2 (Russian: РДС-2) was the second atomic bomb developed by the Soviet Union as an improved version of the RDS-1. It included new explosive lenses along with a new core design to decrease the probability of pre-detonation or 'fizzle'. The ...
*
RDS-3 RDS-3 () was the third atomic bomb developed by the Soviet Union in 1951, after the RDS-1 and RDS-2. It was called ''Marya'' in the military. The bomb had a composite design with a plutonium core inside a uranium shell, providing an explosive powe ...
*
RDS-4 RDS-4 (, also known as ''Tatyana'') was a Soviet nuclear bomb that was first tested at Semipalatinsk Test Site, on August 23, 1953. The device weighed approximately . The device was approximately one-third the size of the RDS-3. The bomb was dropp ...
*
RDS-6s RDS-6s (; American codename: "Joe 4") was the first Soviet attempted test of a thermonuclear weapon that occurred on August 12, 1953, that detonated with an energy equivalent to 400 kilotons of TNT. RDS-6 utilized a scheme in which fission and ...
*
RDS-37 RDS-37 () was the Soviet Union's first two-stage hydrogen bomb, first tested on 22 November 1955. The weapon had a nominal yield of approximately 3 megatons. It was scaled down to 1.6 megatons for the live test. Leading to the RDS-37 The R ...
* AN602 (Tsar Bomba) *
Plan Totality Plan Totality was a disinformation ploy established by US General Dwight D. Eisenhower in August 1945 by order of US President Harry S. Truman after the Potsdam Conference. The plan was for a nuclear attack on the USSR with 20 to 30 atomic bomb ...
*
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (born Greenglass; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were an American married couple who were convicted of First Chief Directorate, spying for the Soviet Union, including ...


References


External links

{{Soviet nuclear weapons Joseph Stalin 1949 in the Soviet Union 1949 in military history Explosions in 1949 August 1949 Nuclear proliferation Soviet nuclear weapons testing 1949 in international relations Nuclear weapons policy Nuclear bombs of the Soviet Union Cold War military history of the Soviet Union August 1949 in Asia