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It looks like it could be an album cover from Led Zeppelin.
Who could’ve known blimps weren’t nuke-proof? They seem so rigid.
can someone give context. this seems like bs.
The US Navy actively used blimps for recon and patrol up into WW2, and at least produced (I don’t know if they were used) models into the 1950s. During the early days of nuclear testing, since we knew jack about shit about how everything would react to a nuclear shockwave, we had all sorts of crazy tests, mock-up villages, scrapped tanks, soldiers standing in the open away from the kill zone (Big Cancer Moment), everything. One of these tests included what you see here - an old US Navy blimp left flying free (and unmanned) to see the effects of a nuclear blast on a non-rigid aircraft.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it did not stay afloat.
https://www.pickenspast.com/post/the-georgia-nuclear-aircraft-laboratory-of-dawson-county is a fascinating read. They irradiated all sorts of stuff with an unshielded reactor. Sounds crazy, but honestly, if you read about all the difficulties they had with machines and electronics breaking and malfunctioning while trying to deal with the aftermath of Chernobyl, it starts to sound a lot less crazy to find it all out beforehand. It’s quite a shame that information like that doesn’t get shared like it should.
thanks.
Happy to help!
It’s real. It was an unmanned blimp flown near a test site to see what would happen, basically.
Who approves the budget for these crazy ideas instead of just testing them on a small scale?
“Hey what would happen if we nuked a high speed train? Only one way to find out!”
It’s Tom Cruise. It just comes out of the Mission Impossible budget. And he insists on driving the train himself.
In all seriousness, though: this was the small scale test - the nuclear bombs designed for wars have much higher payloads. It’s not the sort of thing that can be tested in labs.
thanks.
