Operation Snowball (test)

Operation Snowball
Detonation of a 500-short-ton (450 t) hemispherical surface charge of TNT. The shock wave front is visible and can be seen affecting the smoke trails. Objects in the foreground give a sense of the massive scale of the explosion.
Information
CountryCanada
Test siteSuffield Experimental Station, Alberta
DateJuly 17, 1964
Number of tests1
AgencyDefence Research Board, TTCP
ExplosiveTNT
ConfigurationStacked hemisphere
Yield0.5 kilotons of TNT (2.1 TJ)
Test chronology

Operation Snowball was a conventional explosive test to obtain information on nuclear weapon detonations run by the Defence Research Board[1] with participation from the United Kingdom and United States. A detonation of 500 short tons (450 t) of TNT was used to study the resulting phenomena. The test was held at the Suffield Experimental Station in Alberta and was the largest ever man-made, non-accidental explosion in Canada. The test was also the first of its kind using a stacked TNT block hemisphere of such magnitude, a method repeated in six subsequent tests such as Operation Sailor Hat and Prairie Flat. The test allowed verifying predicted properties of shock and blast and determining its effect on a variety of military targets at varied distances from ground zero.[2][3]

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