> Torpedo on the submarine was a T-5 and if the submarine was within 6-10 miles of the blast it would have ripped the submarine apart.
Do you have any additional info on this? A quick wikipedia search turned up a little bit of info[0], but suggests the targets destroyed were 6.5 miles from the submarine that launched the torpedo and presumably that the launching submarine was not destroyed:
On 10 October 1957, in another test at Novaya Zemlya, S-144, a Whiskey class submarine, launched a T-5. The test weapon, code named Korall, detonated with a force of 4.8 kilotonnes twenty meters under the surface of the bay sending a huge plume of highly radioactive water high into the air. Three decommissioned submarines were used as targets at a distance of 6.5 miles. Both S-20 and S-34 sank completely, and S-19 was critically damaged.
I'm not sure how you came to those conclusions. A live fire test of a nuclear torpedo prototype seems ... more than a little unlikely. What you have here is the description of a test just like any of the American tests: a bare warhead is detonated under certain conditions, with perhaps targets nearby to determine the effects. Meaning that the targets were 6.5 miles from the warhead. And no "launching submarine" was involved, since only the warhead was tested not the end to end weapons system (which is an extraordinarily unusual occurrence with nuclear weapons systems and has only been done a handful of times in history).
> A live fire test of a nuclear torpedo prototype seems ... more than a little unlikely. What you have here is the description of a test just like any of the American tests: a bare warhead is detonated under certain conditions, with perhaps targets nearby to determine the effects. Meaning that the targets were 6.5 miles from the warhead. And no "launching submarine" was involved,
I was just going off what I quoted from wikipedia, which does specifically say that a submarine launched a T-5. Beyond that I can't speak to the accuracy of the wikipedia article.
The Soviets were pretty keen on live fire tests - their very first test of a staged thermonuclear device was air dropped. Air drop tests were fairly common, AFAIK the only people who have done a live launch of a nuke on a missile were the Chinese.
The Soviets tested an R-13 SLBM with a live warhead in 1961. A Polaris SLBM with a live warhead was tested by the US in 1962 as part of Operation Dominic. I don't think either country did a live test of an ICBM though.
The US tested a live Polaris in 1962. They were responsible enough to cook it off at 11,000 ft, a real combat launch would likely have been detonated closer to the ground.
I have no solid evidence to help you, but my intuition says this is believable. Pressure waves can travel a long ways in dense media, and it's the interface between media of different densities, such as water of the ocean and the air inside a submarine, where the most devastating effects are felt. Jelly-fish swimming next to a submarine might not feel a thing even while the submariners inside the submarine are being smashed to bits.
Prior to WWII, that intuition led navies to greatly overestimate the lethal range of their depth charges. Once in combat, they discovered that they were way off, close to an order-of-magnitude in some cases.
Do you have any additional info on this? A quick wikipedia search turned up a little bit of info[0], but suggests the targets destroyed were 6.5 miles from the submarine that launched the torpedo and presumably that the launching submarine was not destroyed:
On 10 October 1957, in another test at Novaya Zemlya, S-144, a Whiskey class submarine, launched a T-5. The test weapon, code named Korall, detonated with a force of 4.8 kilotonnes twenty meters under the surface of the bay sending a huge plume of highly radioactive water high into the air. Three decommissioned submarines were used as targets at a distance of 6.5 miles. Both S-20 and S-34 sank completely, and S-19 was critically damaged.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_torpedo#T-5