Operation Ivy: Mike Shot

On November 1, 1952, the United States tested its first ever thermonuclear device at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The Mike Shot yielded 10.4 megatons of TNT and was roughly 1000 times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima seven years earlier. “Ivy Mike“ vaporized the island of Elugelab and was the fourth largest nuclear test ever conducted by the U.S. Video courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory Archives. For more information on the hydrogen bomb: