Pilots Fly Into Ivy Mike

The Air Force tasked four pilots to fly into the mushroom cloud of Ivy Mike, the first hydrogen bomb test. On 1 November 1952 at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific, the explosion yielded about 10.4 megatons of TNT and produced a towering radioactive cloud that the jets had to enter to collect data before turning back. Three pilots made it home, but Captain Jimmy Robinson ran low on fuel after leaving the cloud, crashed into the ocean on his way back to base, and never returned.

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