Nuclear Weapon Tests
An unforeseen use for surplus barrage balloons was as tethered shot balloons for nuclear weapon tests, throughout most of the period when nuclear weapons were tested in the atmosphere. The weapon or shot was carried aloft to the required altitude slung underneath the barrage balloon, allowing test shots at much higher altitudes than tower shots, in controlled conditions. Several of the shots in the Operation Plumbob series were carried out using barrage balloons to carry the devices.
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Famous quotes containing the words nuclear, weapon and/or tests:
“American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“But what is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of reason.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)