On March 1, 1954, the United States conducted a secret test that went horrifyingly wrong. The operation was codenamed Castle Bravo. It was the first field test of a deployable "dry" hydrogen bomb, detonated at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Scientists expected an explosion of about 6 megatons. They were wrong. Due to a miscalculation in how lithium-7 isotopes would react, the bomb exploded with a yield of 15 megatons—more than 2.5 times larger than predicted. It remains the largest nuclea

87K views · 730 reactions | On March 1, 1954, a B-57B Canberra jet filmed Castle Bravo, the largest U.S. nuclear test, at Bikini Atoll, capturing its 15-megaton blast—bigger than the expected 6 megatons—as part of Operation Castle. The plane recorded the huge fireball and cloud, but the explosion’s fallout spread far, harming people nearby and a Japanese fishing crew, making the footage a key Cold War record. | Historyinmemes | Facebook

Castle Bravo, 1954—15 megatons of raw explosive force. The largest U.S. nuclear test ever conducted. What’s wild? That’s the same magnitude as the Tunguska event—a cosmic blast that flattened Siberia in 1908. Nuclear tests gave us more than fallout. They gave us insight into the terrifying power of celestial impacts. | The Randall Carlson