First NUCLEAR TEST by USSR | Today in History | History Today | World History Today
Channel: History Continued
Date: 2021-08-29

On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test, code-named 'RDS-1', at the Semipalatinsk test site in modern-day Kazakhstan. The device had a yield of 22 kilotons.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 had prompted Joseph Stalin to order the development of nuclear weapons within five years. The young nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov was charged with leading this project.

It is no coincidence that the RDS-1-device bore a close resemblance to the U.S. "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki, as Soviet espionage had managed to obtain details about the U.S. Manhattan Project and the "Trinity" test on 16 July 1945. The Soviet device was therefore also a plutonium-based implosion device.

The fallout from the nuclear test drifted to the northeast, reaching the region of Altai Krai. Some United States Air Force WB-29 weather reconnaissance aircraft were fitted with special filters to collect atmospheric radioactive debris. On 3 September 1949, the Air Force Office of Atomic Energy had a WB-29 fly from Misawa Air Base in Japan to Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. The plane collected some debris during this flight. This data was then cross-checked with data from later flights, and it was determined that the Soviet Union had effectively tested a nuclear weapon, altering it to the fact that its monopoly on nuclear weapons had been broken, which was publicly confirmed by U.S. President Truman on 23 September 1949 and a day later by the Soviet Union itself.

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