Operation Mosaic The first British atomic bomb was tested in Operation Hurricane at the Monte Bello Islands in Western Australia on 3 October 1952. Britain thereby became the third nuclear power after the United States and the Soviet Union, but just four weeks after Operation Hurricane, the United States successfully demonstrated a hydrogen bomb. The technology mastered in Operation Hurricane was six years old, and with the hydrogen bomb in hand, the US Congress saw no benefit in renewing cooperation with the UK. All the while Britain strove for independence, at the same time it sought interdependence in the form of a
Soviet atomic bomb project CIA. RDS-3 was the third Soviet atomic bomb. On October 18, 1951, the 41.2 kiloton device was detonated - a boosted weapon using a composite construction of levitated plutonium core and a uranium-235 shell. Code named "Joe 3" in the USA, this was the first Soviet air-dropped bomb test. Released at an altitude of 10 km, it detonated 400 meters above the ground. RDS-4 represented a branch of research on small tactical weapons. It was a boosted fission device using plutonium in a "levitated" core design. The first test was an air drop on August 23, 1953, yielding 28 kilotons.