It’s a great place to work but they have a ridiculously large number of “items not found on shelf.” Fortunately they also have some very helpful research librarians. You might wonder why this took me so long to get, but that would only prove you don’t use the Library of Congress very much. (Last Tuesday was the 50th anniversary of the second one.) The aptly named “Little Feller” tests were held on July 7 Attorney General Robert Kennedy, among others, was present to observer the test. The last atmospheric (above ground) nuclear test series that the United States ever had - just before the Limited Test Ban Treaty took effect - was to test the Davy Crockett system. So this is a nuke that sits right at the threshold of the conventional/nuclear range, in terms of energy output. Except for, you know, the radiation, which is a big part of its selling point. The largest conventional (non-nuclear) bomb in the US arsenal is the MOAB, which has a blast yield of some 11 tons of TNT, according to Wikipedia. 01–.02 kilotons - just a baby! From a physics perspective, you’re talking about a warhead that weighed 51 lbs yet put out the explosive equivalent of 10 to 20 tons of TNT - in other words, a weapon which has the explosive output of roughly 780X what it would it would be if it were made of conventional explosives. By nuclear standards, it was, as one colleague has put it, “ a mere firecracker.” Only.
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