(TX-33Y2 Test in Operation Nougat Aardvark on May 12, 1962) A gun-type fission device.
Our Pershing II missiles had a thermonuclear yield of 5-50KT. Selectable.
The Minuteman III ICBM carries 100KT warheads.
And, I don't think we have ever seen a 45KT fission weapon.
The exact number of 50+ KT tests conducted by the United States will never be known, but the Mark 6D Bomb was a pure fission device, with several of the higher end models estimated to be 80KT, 154KT, and 160KT respectively.
We know for sure that Ivy King was a 500KT pure fission test detonation, done in prep before Ivy Mike, the first "Super."
In the typical history of these things, a miniaturized thermonuclear device is never the first test. You would expect a several megaton detonation for the cherry pop.
I think it's almost certainly baloney.
“I don’t think we have ever seen a 45KT fission weapon.”
The largest pure-fission bomb ever constructed (Ivy King) had a 500 kiloton yield.
(TX-33Y2 Test in Operation Nougat Aardvark on May 12, 1962) A gun-type fission device.
The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of just under a ton of TNT, to upwards of 500,000 tons (500 kilotons) of TNT.
-Wikipedia
Regards,
Largest Fission weapon was 700kt detonated by England.
Very dangerous weapon as it had around 6x critical mass.
Just assembling it could have caused a blue flash.
Largest detonated by USA was 500kt
Nice idea, but our Pershing IIs were eliminated under the INF Treaty.