To paraphrase Bugs Bunny; “What a Maroon!”
OK, that is a nice over-the-top hysterical hyperbole even for a London tabloid. Start with simple physics, it takes a great BIG ROCKET to get anything to the Moon. The Soviets did hit the Moon with Luna 2 in 1959 and that weighed 860 lbs. but we have to remember the fact that the USSR did have better throw-weight rockets than we did. Our best rockets at that time were the Atlas and Titan series and it took until 1962 for the Ranger 4 (806 lbs.) to actually hit the Moon [Atlas-Agena Rocket]!
Anybody care to guess what the lightest A-Bomb was at that time? I don’t know but I am willing to guess it was far more than 500 lbs. and then add G-Force resistance and an instrument package capable of controlling even a ballistic radar fused bomb would put it over the top there for that time period.
So what we have is an idiot newspaper looking at an old “blue sky project” and an even greater idiot writing the headline and introduction. Really stuck on stupid!
If we focus on warheads, then the lightest one in 1959 was the W-25 which weighed between 218 and 221 pounds; however, it had a yield of only 1.7 kilotons (much lower than either Fat Man or Little Boy). Lager yield warheads ranged in weight from about 900 pounds to over 6,000 pounds - the US nuclear bombs were even heavier (the Mk.24 bomb weighed over 40,000 pounds).
Actually The smallest US warhead was the W54
These were subkilton, but in the Nagasaki range was the W44/Tsetse at 175lb. The Brits considered using an anglised version of Tsetse (Tony) as a primary for their 60s bombs, but eventually decided on UK designed Katie, which was even lighter
These all date from the early 60s