Nuke Vs Airplane tests (1 Viewer)

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comiso90

Senior Master Sergeant
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Dec 19, 2006
FL
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Operation Tumbler-Snapper | Airspacemag.com

Operation Tumbler-Snapper

In the spring of 1952, the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency conducted a series of atomic bomb drops and tower shots at the Nevada Proving Ground, code-named "Operation Tumbler Snapper." One of Tumbler-Snapper's objectives was to see how soldiers and military equipment—including one of only two Lockheed XF-90 fighters ever built—reacted to the detonation. Jet aircraft (including the XF-90 and some F-47s) were seen to be less damaged by the atomic blast than were the bombers (a B-45, a B-29, and some B-17s). This excerpt from a contemporary U.S. Air Force documentary about the Tumbler-Snapper program focuses on the airplane testing.

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The XF-90 made it to a museum:

In 2003, the heavily damaged hulk of the second XF-90A (48-688) was recovered from the Nevada test site and moved to the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. It is currently undergoing minor restoration in one of the Museum's restoration facility hangars. Its wings have been removed, and its nose is mangled from the nuclear blasts. During the decontamination process, all the rivets had to be removed to free the plane from radioactive sand. At present, the museum plans to display the plane in its damaged, mostly unrestored condition, to demonstrate the effects of nuclear weaponry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_XF-90

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Cool. Note that nothing was said about EMP on the avionics. Even though we are talking about tube equipment, I would have thought they would say something. Must have been part of "top secret" portion of the test results.
 

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