RDS-1

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Joe One, the first Soviet atomic test.

The first Soviet atomic bomb, "RDS-1", was an implosion type like the U.S. "Fat Man" bomb, even in appearance; the front "eyes" are radar fuzes.

The RDS-1 (Russian: РДС-1), also Joe-1, was the U.S.S.R.'s first nuclear weapon test, named in reference to Joseph Stalin. It was test-exploded on August 29, 1949, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, U.S.S.R.

The Joe-1 explosion yielded 22 kilotons of TNT force, similar to the U.S.'s "Gadget" and "Fat Man" bombs. At Lavrenty Beria's insistence, the RDS-1 bomb was designed like the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The Soviets called it Lightning's First Strike (Первая молния, Pervaya molniya), and its development surprised complacent American military-intelligence. Later, they discovered that the Soviets' extensive Manhattan Project knowledge came from spies such as Klaus Fuchs, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, among others.

There are several explanations for the U.S.S.R. code-name of RDS-1, usually an arbitrary designation, a backronym" "Stalin's Rocket Engine" (Реактивный двигатель Сталина, Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina), or "Russia does it herself" (Россия делает сама, Rossiya Delayet Sama); later weapons were designated RDS, with different model numbers.