Nuclear Bomb (model)

'Yellow Sun' is the name given to this bomb, and the model was requested to help illustrate talks on 'The Cold War'. It is made of light alloy throughout, to 1/24th scale, and is 2" diameter and 10 1/4" long. A dimensioned sketch was supplied, which I augmented by careful examination and perspective scaling of some photographs of bombs on their trolleys, adjacent to a Valiant and a Vulcan.

The simple body shape comprises two distinct sections: a parallel front end housed the warhead and supporting hardware, including significant electrical power supplies, whilst the rear is a stright taper carrying four stabilising fins.

The surprising flat nose was deliberately chosen to keep the dropping speed subsonic, in order that no shock waves would form and disturb the operation of the barostat triggers, set to a detonation altitude.

This model is of a later version with american designed warhead, using ram-air turbine generators to provide electrical power during descent. The earlier all-British design employed half a ton of lead acid accumulators which had to filled with electrolyte and charged before flight - hardly a viable rapid-response technology.

Dummy fin roots were fitted into fin slots whilst the body shape was turned, then discarded. A plug threaded into the tail end had a centre hole for in-lathe support, and was later shortened into the finishing truncated tailcone.

For some reason unknown to me, but perhaps obvious to others, the photographs appear in reverse order to that in which they were entered, and so give a step by step 'deconstruction' of the model. Just go to the end and work backwards. I'll do better next time. Thanks for looking.

I should have said that short explanations of each photo appear in my album Yellow Sun. they have not transferred with the photos to this thread.

Is not the aim for every model engineer to make working models, so when is the test explosion in the backyard? Niko.

It always amazes me that we were cranking stuff like this out in the 1950s

Now here we are with 2020 on the horizon and even entire countries will all the resources of the state at their disposal are struggling to get the same thing done

...then they tell us the tewwowists can make them...lol

Guess who help Israel go nuclear

Can I ask what the red plastic plugs are for?

Don't think it matters if its active or deactivated if that thing dropped from the RC plane in your avitar it would do some damage unless there is a chute.

J

The later WE177 (1960s) was a much more elegant shape and fully parachute retarded.

Hardly, Wikipedia got there first.

Unfortunately, in 1/24 scale the Green Grass warhead will only contain less than 5g of fusionable material, far too little to achieve critical mass. As LBSC said, (and for once nobody can argue), you can't scale nature.

If you can't find some dilithium crystals, you'll just have to shout 'bang'.

Red plugs - ram air vents for the generators. Plug in  the side? Either air outlet or where they removed the ball bearings (see wikipedia).

Neil

P.S. Hudswell Clark made the casings for Blue Danube, the predecessor to Yellow Sun

P.P.S. I had 1/48 Fat Man and Little Boy models from a kit of a Superfortress. I filled fat man with plasticine, and used to drop him from teh landing. Then I grew up, saw Dr Stangelove and got cynical, but these things still fascinate.

Edited By Stub Mandrel on 29/07/2013 21:13:49

Funnily enough there was a bloke in New Zealand, Bruce Simpson, got into all kinds of trouble for building a working cruise missile in his shed. Based on a pulse jet it could carry a 10kg payload and had GPS etc all bought on eBay. See the below link for some very interesting details.

**LINK**

Ken
Just thinking about what you are building gives me the shivers, I am not a pacafist by any means but have seen the destruction it caused.

Bob

Bob, You should also think about the lives that would have been lost taking the Japanese Islands by land force, far, far more would have been lost in those assaults.

I think there is a vidio of Bruce driving a pulse jet powered go-cart. His cruise missile was a fraction of the price of even the V1, but with the technoligy of the 21st century. Ian S C

Have you thrown it out of an upstairs window to ensure the flat nose remains sub-sonic?

Look at his model air plane in his avatar to Ken King, maybe drop the nuclear bomb from the model airplane..

Really nice work of non functioning nuclear bomb, Thank God, the nuclear material is not available for private users and mad people.

Edited By Jens Eirik Skogstad on 30/07/2013 12:42:45

Mad people enough with nuclear material, think only of Kim Jong Un, to name only one. Niko.

fantastic, love it

what are you going to do with it once its finished?