Mark 41 Bomb
Bounce the Rubble Higher
The Mark 41 was the most powerful nuclear weapon built by the US–but bigger ones–such as the Ripple Concept and Flashback–were contemplated, even planned for. This bomb is located at the National Museum of the US Air Force, in Dayton, Ohio.
The Mark 41 would be slowed in it fall by parachute but only had air burst or contact fuzing 9and lacked lay-doan capability), limited even by the standards of the early 1960s. (Located at the National Museum of the USAF.)
The Mark 41 was considered highly efficient, one of the most efficient ever made, in terms of its use use fissile matrerial to its explosive power. Of course, being such a powerful weapon it still used a lot of fissile material. (Located at the National Museum of the USAF.)
This Mark 41, at the National Museum of the USAF, in Dayton Ohio, may be the only one on display anywhere.
About 500 Mark 41s were built. These were the days when the military’s plan for nuclear war envisaged multiple waves of bombers attacking and counterattacking with nuclear weapons over several days. This unit is located at the National Museum of the US Air Force, in Dayton, Ohio.
The Navaho, a large cruise missule that traveled at three times the speed of sound, was never deployed. It was to have used a form of the Mark 41 as a warhead and had an expected range of about 4000 miles. Designs from the Navaho found their way into the Hound Dog missile, the Polaris submarine, and various early ICBMs. This scale model is located at the Smithsonian Air and Space Annex in Chantilly, Virginia.
Weapon Specifications
Note that the relationship between explosive power and destruction is not linear—a weapon’s destructive effects grow far more slowly than its explosive power.
Explosive Power
9 Megatons or 23 Megatons
Hiroshima Equivalent Factor
Up to 1666x
Dimensions
12 ft. 4 inches x 52 inches
Weight
10,670 lbs.
Year(s)
1961–1976
Purpose
Our biggest bomb
NukeMap
Simulated destruction of a Mark 41 bomb at Livermore, California. Click on the map to change parameters.
Videos
These curated videos provide additional context for this weapon — showing test footage, deployment scenes, technical explanations, interviews, or other historical material, allowing viewers to go deeper into the weapon’s design, use, and place in nuclear history.
Further Reading
- Wikipedia, Nuclear Weapons Archive,
- The unclassified “History of the Mk 41 Weapon” from Sandia Labs, written in 1967.
- Alex Wellerstein, writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, offers a history of bombs with massive explosive power, including the Mark 41, The Soviet Bomba Tsar, and more.
- More on Flashback (mentioned in Wellerstein’s article, above: “Flashback: America’s Tsar Bomb?“).
- A more technical but still largely readable outline of efforts to build a more advanced (not just more explosive power) nuclear weapon in the 1960s: Ripple: An Investigation of the World’s Most Advanced High-Yield Thermonuclear Weapon Design by Jon Grams.
- A short clip from Trinity and Beyond which shows a Mark 41 bomb being loaded into a B-52, then dropped, with its parachute deploying.