Grapple Z
With a nuclear testing moratorium quickly approaching, Operation Grapple Z was carried out at Christmas Island during mid-1958. This was a four-bomb test series, and the largest of the four in the Grapple series. Grapple Z sought to develop lighter nuclear warheads as well as weapons that were radiologically hardened - meaning they would not detonate prematurely if they were exposed to nuclear radiation from other nuclear explosions. Two of the Grapple Z tests were fission bombs tested for development of the primary stage of a two-stage hydrogen bomb.
The first shot, with the code name of Pendant, was detonated on August 22, 1958. Rather than being dropped from a bomber, this bomb was suspended from a string of four vertically stacked barrage balloons. The Pendant test had a yield of about 24 kilotons, and it used solid hydrogen fusion boosting using lithium deuteride. The next shot, called Flagpole, was dropped by a bomber flying over Christmas Island on September 2, 1958. This bomb was a smaller version of the one exploded in Grapple Y, and it detonated with a yield of about 1.2 megatons. This test was followed by one called Halliard 1, on September 11, 1958, which was an unusual three-stage bomb with two nuclear-fission components followed by one thermonuclear stage. This bomb had its predicted yield of 800 kilotons, and it was supposedly immune to exposure from another bomb despite its not using boosting. The final test was called Burgee, on September 23, 1958, which another balloon-borne test which was an atomic bomb boosted with gaseous tritium. It had a yield of about 25 kilotons.
The last bomb in the Grapple Z series was the very last nuclear explosion carried out in the atmosphere by the U.K. The result of it was that the weapon makers of the U.K. had demonstrated all of the technologies that were needed to produce a one-megaton hydrogen bomb that weighed no more than one ton (2,200 pounds), and it was also immune to premature detonation caused by nearby nuclear explosions.
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