W30

The W30 was an American nuclear warhead used on the RIM-8 Talos surface-to-air missile and the Tactical Atomic Demolition Munition (TADM).

The W30 was 22 inches in diameter and 48 inches long, weighing 438, 450, or 490 pounds depending on the version.

The Talos missile variants were produced from 1959 to 1965, and used until 1979. A total of 300 were produced as missile warheads. The W30 Mod 1, 2, and 3 for Talos all had yields of 5 (sometimes more precisely reported as 4.7) kilotons.

The TADM warhead was produced from 1961 and saw service until 1966. There were two variants, the W30 Mod 4 Y1 with 0.3 kiloton yield (300 tons TNT) and the W30 Mod 4 Y2 with 0.5 kiloton (500 tons TNT) yield. 300 TADM W30s were produced, between the two versions.

A yield of 19 kilotons is given in some references for an unspecified version, possibly a not-deployed high yield test only unit.

The W30 is stated by nuclear researcher Chuck Hansen to have been one of two weapons using a common fission bomb core design, the Boa primary; the other weapon using the Boa is claimed to have been the 200 kiloton W52 thermonuclear warhead.

Spoke

A spoke is one of some number of rods radiating from the center of a wheel (the hub where the axle connects), connecting the hub with the round traction surface.

The term originally referred to portions of a log that had been split lengthwise into four or six sections. The radial members of a wagon wheel were made by carving a spoke (from a log) into their finished shape. A spokeshave is a tool originally developed for this purpose. Eventually, the term spoke was more commonly applied to the finished product of the wheelwright's work, than to the materials he used.

History

The spoked wheel was invented to allow the construction of lighter and swifter vehicles. The earliest known examples are in the context of the Andronovo culture, dating to ca. 2000 BC. Soon after this, horse cultures of the Caucasus region used horse-drawn spoked-wheel war chariots for the greater part of three centuries. They moved deep into the Greek peninsula where they joined with the existing Mediterranean peoples to give rise, eventually, to classical Greece after the breaking of Minoan dominance and consolidations led by pre-classical Sparta and Athens. Celtic chariots introduced an iron rim around the wheel in the 1st millennium BC. The spoked wheel was in continued use without major modification until the 1870s, when wire wheels and rubber tires were invented.

Spoke (disambiguation)

A spoke is a rod connecting the hub of a wheel with the traction surface.

Spoke or Spokes may also refer to:

See also

Spoke (album)

Spoke is the 1996 debut album of Calexico, an Americana/indie rock band from Arizona. It was initially released in Germany (Hausmusik label) under the group name Spoke.

Track listing

Personnel