This eFLYER was developed in HTML for viewing with Microsoft Internet Explorer while connected to the Internet: View Online.
To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add eFLYER@barnstormers.com to your address book or list of approved senders. |
|
ISSUE
38 - October 2008
Over 7,000 Total Ads Listed
1,000 NEW Ads Per Week
|
RUSSIAN NUCLEAR TEST
MISSION |
By Sergei
N. Stepanenko, Contributing Editor
St. Petersburg, Russia
|
Commander Major Andrei E. Durnovtsev
and his crew of 8 had, under their unlimited control for
a period of 2 hours and 03 minutes, the most powerful weapon
in the history of the mankind. |
|
Major Andrei E. Durnovtsev’ |
On a dark gloomy
morning of October 30 in 1961, at 9.27 AM, their TU-95V “Bear” took
off from “Olenya” (“Deer's”), a
top secret airbase hidden in the tundra of the Kola Peninsula.
They followed a route to the Mityushikha Bay test range
located on Novaya Zemlya Island in north-west Russia. Under
the “Bear's” belly, partially recessed within
the plane, half protruding into the airstream, they carried
a huge bomb. This was a 50 megaton ton nuclear weapon.
26 ft long, 7 ft in diameter, it weighed 57,320 lb. and
was the equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT. It was as
large as any nuclear weapon ever built, before or since.
|
Arriving over the test site two
hours later, they released the bomb at 11.30AM from an
altitude of 34680 ft.
|
A parachute retarded it's descent
down to an altitude of 13120 ft where it detonated at 11.32.
The effects were spectacular. |
A vast fireball reached the Earth
and swelled upward nearly back to the height of the Bear.
The blast pressure below the burst point reached 300 PSI,
six times the peak pressure experienced at Hiroshima. The
flash of light was so bright as to be visible at a distance
of 1,000 kilometers. Even at a distance of 270 km., through
dark goggles, participating observers saw a bright flash
and felt the effects of the thermal pulse. A shock wave
was observed at Dickson Settlement 700 km from the blast;
windowpanes were broken to distances of 900 km. All buildings,
both wooden and brick, within 55 km were completely destroyed.
In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero, wooden
houses were destroyed and stone structures lost their roofs,
windows and doors. Radio communications were interrupted
for almost an hour. The atmospheric disturbance generated
by the explosion orbited the earth three times. A gigantic
mushroom cloud rose to 210,000 ft. One cameraman recalled
the spectacle as fantastic, unreal, supernatural. Original
U.S. estimates put its yield at 57 megatons.
|
Major Durnovtsev was immediately
promoted to lieutenant colonel and made Hero of the Soviet
Union. The entire crew received numerous rewards and promotions
and each crewmember received an automobile, presented by
the Soviet Government.
Lieutenant Colonel Durnovtsev retired to Kiev,The Ukraine
in 1965, and died in October 1976, at the age of 53.
|
|
Lieutenant Colonel Durnovtsev |
|
|
Visit www.barnstormers.com - post an ad to be viewed by over 500,000 visitors per month.
Over 12 years bringing more online buyers and sellers together than any other aviation marketplace. |
Copyright © 2008 All rights reserved.
|
UNSUBSCRIBE INSTRUCTIONS: If you no longer wish to receive this eFLYER, unsubscribe here or mail a written request to the attention of: eFLYER Editor BARNSTORMERS, INC. 312 West Fourth Street, Carson City, NV 89703. NOTE: If you registered for one or more hangar accounts on barnstormers.com, you must opt out of all of them so the eFLYER mailings will be fully discontinued. |
|