The Mark 14 nuclear bomb was a 1950s

strategic Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "troop leadership; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the "art o ...

thermonuclear weapon 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 lowe ...

, the first deployed solid-fuel hydrogen bomb. It was an experimental design, and only five units were produced in early 1954. It was tested in April 1954 during the Castle Union nuclear test and had a yield of 6.9 Mt. The bomb is often listed as the TX-14 (for "experimental") or EC-14 (for "Emergency Capability"). It has also been referred to as the "Alarm Clock" device though it has nothing to do with the design by the same name proposed earlier by

Edward Teller Edward Teller (; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian and American Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of ...

and known as the

Sloika 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 ...

in the Soviet Union. The fusion fuel used by the bomb was 95% enriched Lithium

isotope Isotopes are distinct nuclear species (or ''nuclides'') of the same chemical element. They have the same atomic number (number of protons in their Atomic nucleus, nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemica ...

lithium deuteride Lithium hydride is an inorganic compound with the formula Lithium, LiHydride, H. This alkali metal hydride is a colorless solid, although commercial samples are grey. Characteristic of a Hydride#Ionic hydrides, salt-like (ionic) hydride, it has a ...

, which at the time was a scarce resource, this scarcity being chiefly responsible for its limited deployment. The

Castle Bravo Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of ''Operation Castle''. Detonated on 1 March 1954, the device remains the most powe ...

test showed that unenriched Lithium isotope 7 functioned as well for nuclear fusion reactions as isotope 6. The Mk-14 bomb had a diameter of and a length of . They weighed between , and used a parachute. The version tested at Castle Union used a RACER IV primary. 5 Mt of its total yield came from fission, making it a very "dirty" weapon. By 1956, the components of all five of the produced Mk-14 bombs had been recycled into Mark 17s.

Notes

References

* Hansen, Chuck,
Swords of Armageddon
U.S. Nuclear Weapons Development since 1945" (CD-ROM & download available). PDF-2.67 Mb. 2,600 pages, Sunnyvale, California, Chucklea Publications, 1995, 2007. (2nd Ed.) {{United States nuclear devices Cold War aerial bombs of the United States Nuclear bombs of the United States Military equipment introduced in the 1950s

See also

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References