1954 ... F-100 North American "Super-Sabre"

... shown here in a 'conventional' ground-support role, the F-100 "Hun" was also nuclear capable. Hell - in the fifties and 60's if it had wings they would strap a small H-bomb on it!

all images- Right click- open in New Window= super colossal size!

1953 ... first use of Atomic bomb against Martians!

... frame capture from George Pal's 1953 production of "The War of the Worlds". Our heroes wait tensely for the arrival overhead of non-other than the mighty YB-49 Flying Wing to nuke those pesky Aliens!

1954 ... all the glory!

... here we have NACA test-pilot George Cooper doing the brave test-pilot pose by his sleek and wonderful F-86D North American "Sabre-Dog". Here at Atomic-Annihilation we try to keep a balanced and politically correct presentation of the Nuclear Triad. But let's face it; missile silos and submarines are not nearly as cool looking as big silvery airplanes.

For gosh sakes- two legs of the Triad are either underwater or underground! The reality is;  for the first twenty years of the Cold War the deterrent force was either exclusively airborne or heavily reliant on it. And nobody remembers the good old Army! Between their battlefield atomic artillery, short and medium range missiles and the nuclear tipped Nike anti-aircraft batteries, the Army had the biggest pile of warheads by number if not by megatonage.

... yep - the Air Force gets all the primo 'photo-ops'.

1951 ... Fairchild XC-120 "Packplane"

... LINK

all images- Right click- open in New Window= super colossal size!

1947 ... NO to Red Canada!

... who knew that our neighbors to the North also feared gigantic hairy hands from Russia plucking up their blue-green churches! 

1960 ... Polaris test firing

LINK

1966 ... "Polaris To Poseidon"

1953 ... better toilets for World War 3 !

... this is the hapless two story average American home mentioned here. It is a series of motion picture frames from "Operation: Upshot Knothole" that we have seen over and over. Only recently have I spotted what appears to be an American Standard toilet being ejected out the back of the dwelling (?)

In the second frame and the enlargement it certainly seems shaped like a toilet.(enlarge each image by: right click/open in new tab) The test house had furniture, mannequins a kitchen. I suppose it would make sense to have a bathroom. Or at least a basic W/C so the doomed store-dummy family would have a place to re-leave themselves as the seconds ticked down to zero.

The initial position and trajectory seem a bit high, unless it was in the attic. However the house is simultaneously collapsing, being pushed backwards and the roof is peeling back. If the toilet was connected to a sturdy waste stack then it is possible that it is simply 'holding it's own' while the house is being blown apart around it.

Given the mystery of "the stray shoe" (see link above) it is also possible that the Corporal in charge of installing the toilet simply stashed it in the attic: not knowing that 61 years later his slovenly actions would be discovered!

... When Britain Ruled the Skies! [video]

... very informative presentation about the British Aerospace Industry after WWII and how it lost it's lead to the United States.

1962 ... 'Commies' on the moon!

all images- Right click- open in New Window= super colossal size!

 

1953 ... safe in the basement!

...  "Operation: Doorstep" a part of "Upshot Knothole" was the construction of several typical American suburban homes at the Nevada test site in order to study blast effects and the effectiveness of various types of shelters. Seen here is a lean to construction in the basement. If everything was pre-cut, you had the right tools and had drunk a couple of cups of black coffee; you could wham it together in, say, 30 minutes?

... the deal is that it worked! At 3,500 feet from ground-zero of shot "Annie" a 16 kiloton  (Hiroshima size A-bomb) the mannequins inside did just fine. However the house did collapse partially into the basement so getting out to find flee or find shelter from the coming fallout would be difficult.

... the shoe? Ironic historical humor? We'll have to check with the Army Corps of Engineers.

... see the KAFLOOEY footage below!

... at about 30 sec. you get to see (for the zillionth time) the kaflooey of the two story house. In still frames; I am sure that a we see an 'American Standard' toilet shoot out the the rear of the second story [more on that later].

... the house is at 3,500 feet from ground zero- which is around the same distance as Indiana Jones finds himself at minus 10 seconds ...

1952 ... first microseconds

... there is some confusion about the terminology. One millionth of a second is a 'Micro-second'. ( I think milliseconds [one thousandth sec]sounds cooler and gets used more often. These images are produced by a "Rapatronic Camera" developed by EG&G.

"... At this point in the explosion, a true hydrodynamic shock front has just formed. Prior to this moment the growth of the fireball was due to radiative transport, i.e. thermal x-rays outran the expanding bomb debris. Now however the fireball expansion is caused by the shock front driven by hydrodynamic pressure (as in a conventional explosion, only far more intense). The glowing surface of the fireball is due to shock compression heating of the air. This means that the fireball is now growing far more slowly than before. The bomb (and shot cab) vapors were initially accelerated to very high velocities (several tens of kilometers/sec) and clumps of this material are now splashing against the back of the shock front in an irregular pattern (due to initial variations in mass distribution around the bomb core), creating the curious mottled appearance." via

... in microsecond time- I second would last 11 days. 13 hrs!

... at 1/15th millionth of a sec - 'footage' of first moments of nuclear detonation- lower kiloton fission weapons tests.

(although toward the end they throw-in footage of the Mike H-bomb test and even some Soviet shots)