Castle BRAVO at 70: The Worst Nuclear Test in U.S. History | National Security Archive
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Washington, D.C., February 29, 2024 - Seventy years ago, on 1 March 1954 (28 February in Washington), the U.S. government air-dropped a thermonuclear weapon, code-named “Shrimp,” on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in what turned out to be the largest nuclear test in U.S. history.

Seventy years ago, on 1 March 1954 (28 February in Washington), the U.S. government air-dropped a thermonuclear weapon, code-named “Shrimp,” on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in what turned out to be the largest nuclear test in U.S. history. The Bravo detonation in the Castle test series had an explosive yield of 15 megatons—1,000 times that of the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima and nearly three times the six megatons that its planners estimated.