“The Crazy Plan to Explode a Nuclear Bomb on the Moon as a Show of Force against the Soviet Union – Project A119”

Reading time: 2 min — Spotted on BBC

An H-bomb on the Moon: this is the project that, for a time, the UNITED STATES, as part of a top secret file known as Project A119. This hydrogen bomb, or fusion bomb, is renowned for its destructive potential far superior to that of the atomic bomb. And Leonardo Reiffel, one of the American nuclear physics pundits during the 1950s, was obviously aware of this.

Working with Enrico Fermi, known as the“architect of the nuclear bomb”, Reiffel was the chief rapporteur of Project A119. Summoned by the US Air Force to make this project a priority, he produced numerous reports on the subject between May 1958 and January 1959, explains the BBC. Objective: to give his estimate of the feasibility of such an operation.

There is absolutely no doubt about the primary purpose of this project to bomb the Moon with hydrogen: it was above all a question of carrying out a demonstration of force aimed at the Soviet Union. If the mission had been carried out successfully, the bomb was expected to explode at the level of the «terminator line», name given to the dividing line between the hidden side and the illuminated side of the Moon. The choice of such a location owes nothing to chance: there was no better choice for the explosion to be visible to the naked eye from Earth – and in particular from the USSR.

In a Cold War context, it was all about impressing an increasingly successful Soviet enemy. In 1952 the United States used their first H-bombbefore being imitated three years later by the USSR. And in 1957, drama for the Americans: the launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite of the Earth, then gave them the impression of being left behind by their adversaries in terms of advanced technology. It must be said that at the same time, the plan to launch an artificial moon mounted by the United States ended in failure in the form of an explosion.

mark your territory

This is when Project A119 appears, which looks like a desperate attempt to regain the upper hand over the Soviet Union: carrying out this project would have been above all a way of marking its territory. Fortunately, the mission ended up being shelved, and who knows what escalation it would have caused, because theUSSR certainly wouldn’t have stopped there.

In any case, according to Leonardo Reiffel, who spoke on the subject in 2000, this project aimed at detonating an H-bomb on the Moon was feasible in all respects: technically, all the lights were green, and the explosion would indeed have been visible from the Terre – not in the form of a mushroom cloud, due to the absence of the atmosphere under the Moon, but in the form of a bright luminous flash.

Historian of nuclear science and technology, Alex Wellerstein also told the BBC that among the other projects once considered by the United States, there was that of the bombing raid of Sputnik 1. Finally, a more reasonable option was chosen: the Americans launched their own artificial satellite, as if to pick up the score.

Much information related to Project A119 is still missing, which leaves a lot of gray areas. According to specialists, a large quantity of documents would have been destroyed so that the United States could be certain that their most insane projects never fell into the hands of their worst enemies.