I got to thinking about the end of Dr. Strangelove where Slim Pickens rides the nuke out of the belly of a B-52 and down onto the ground in the USSR. While it’s an amazingly iconic image, I have to wonder if it’s actually possible you could do that. The bomb’s designed to be aerodynamic, you’re not, and there’s probably nothing for you to hang on to, so I can’t see how you’d be able to do it for more than a 1/10th of a second or so.
I agree. Slim would have quickly been blown off the bomb, unless he tied his ankles together, around the far side. Then he probably would have slid up until he hit the fins (ouch!), likely messing up the bombs aerodynamics. Ironic if his gesture made the bomb tumble and splat, instead of going in nose first and detonating. Probably altitude, not impact fused, anyway.
The unprotected human body will have signficant problems at an airspeed of 200kts; by 300 it’s in danger of structural failure.
I don’t know at what speed a B-52 releases its bombs. It probably could be under 200, but would not normally be. So the chance of riding a bomb very far would not be good.
Best. Scene. Evah.
IIRC, they were flying in low to evade radar, which would mean that the bomb wouldn’t reach terminal velocity. Since the bomb was a dead drop, wouldn’t they fly at a slower speed to ensure accuracy?
And, at least in the props department if not the Defense Dept, bombs have hand-hold slots:
(One of the most life-affirming moments in American cinema, albeit perversely so)
The USAF developed some amazing parachutes that could slow down a nuclear weapon from a high-speed release to a slow and gentle descent in a few seconds. The weapon could be fused to lay on the ground and detonate after a programmed delay, giving the aircraft enough time to get out of the area. Major Kong would probably have been ripped off the weapon by his own momentum after the parachute was deployed.
For that matter, wouldn’t a drop from low altitude with the subsequent quick detonation engulf the plane as well?
Like what mks57 said.
Ole Slim woulda had his spurs dug in real good. 
Excerpt from the script:
Sounds like a lay-down attack.
Former USAF bomb dropper, nuclear checking in.
Just like everybody since then-Col Sweeney, I never got to drop the real meal deal live, but I’ve dropped quite a few for practice.
In low altitude combat, a B-52 is gonna want to be going as fast as it can. At low altitiude, that’s about 300 knots or 350 mph. When the bomb bay doors open, ol’ Slim is gonna get ripped off the bomb and smashed into something hard someplace in the bay, then his mangled body will fall out & the sudden arrival of the ground 20 seconds or so later will finish him off.
As to aircraft survival, there are several distinct tactics & techniques.
I flew the F-16. For a low altitude attack, a “lay down” in the vernacular, we’d let the bomb go at 100 ft’ above the ground goin’ as fast as we could pedal, ~650 mph.
The most incredible parachute in the world would deploy and slow the bomb to about 50mph (IIRC) by the time it impacted the ground. That was slow enough the bomb wasn’t damaged. (Consider the engineering required to have the bomb survive hitting a granite wall at 50mph and still have the explosive lenses perform perfectly).
The bomb would sit there ticking for awhile until we got farther away, then … : Sunrise. The timer was set about as short as possible for us to survive the blast.
Considering that we’re going almost Mach 1, and the shockwave can’t sustain speeds above that once it clears the fireball, it amounts to a race where we have a head start & it is just a little faster than we are. The intensity drops off at R[sup]2[/sup], so all we have to do is run far & fast enough for it to dissipate to survivable levels before it catches up to us.
Exactly like every corny Star Trek scene where they aaaallmmooossst outrun the alien weapon & then get their hair mussed when it fffffiiiinnnnaaalllllyyyy catches up to them.
I don’t feel comfortable quoting numbers here, but it’s closer than you probably expect. The time delay is waay too short for James Bond to find the bomb & defuse it while the babe falling out of her shirt looks on nervously.
The B-52 isn’t nearly as fast or as rugged as a tactical fighter, so the delay timer would be set longer, but still the concept is the same: overfly the target as low & fast as you can, drop the bomb, let the plane get X miles away & light 'er off.
There were official assurances that somehow the prompt radiation dose that close would not be harmful, but many of us doubted/still doubt the veracity of that.
There are other delivery tactics from both low & high altitude, but laydown has the advantage of very accurate placement of the bomb. Even with a weapon as powerful as a nuke, accuracy counts for a lot if you’re trying to dig up underground bunkers, silos, etc.
OTOH, just cookin’ civilians in a city, well, … accuracy, we don’t need no steenkin accuracy.
Sleep tight America & Europe. Several thousand underpaid Russians are maintaining obsolete & rusting equipment just like this aimed at you right now. Maybe nothing will go wrong tonight; then again maybe not.
It’s posts like that that make me love the SDMB. Thanks, LSLGuy!
Consider ignorance successfully fought, and in an entertaining style as well. A tip of the Hometownboy hat to LSLGuy, and a big thanks from this civilian for your years of service.
I don’t feel comfortable quoting numbers here, but it’s closer than you probably expect. The time delay is waay too short for James Bond to find the bomb & defuse it while the babe falling out of her shirt looks on nervously.
From LSLGuy’s excellent post.
Why’s the fuse set so short? It doesn’t seem like a minute or two is going to make much difference to anyone but the pilot and crew. There’s no time for anyone on the ground to do anything about it. They can’t hide more than they already are.
But I do insist on the babe falling out of her shirt though, you gotta draw the line somewhere.
You forgot the most important part of doing a low-altitude bombing run: Singing “Downtown” enthusiastically off-key as you fly away. 
Hey, hey, HEY! Quit that! … the post-attack egress song is classified. Don’t be spilling the beans here on teh internets.
As to why such a short fuse, well I don’t know all the reasons.
One is that the bomb going off is one hell of a diversion. Almost anybody nearby is gonna quit worrying about killing me & start worrying about saving themselves.
Another reason is that the attack plans involve a lot of tight timing. If we’re gonna send a bunch of missiles & aircraft in to take out airfields, cities, key indutrial sites, command centers, etc., scattered through a densly populated country in, say, eastern Europe, well we have to be concerned that my bomb is gonna get somebody else enroute to or (less importantly) from his target. Between the dangers of flash blindness & just getting blown up, not to mention the enemy trying their damndest to put up a spirited defense, it is/was not going to be an environment conducive to survival. Anything that reduces uncertainty in the overall attack plan is good.
I also suspect, but do not know, that the engineers concluded that the bomb may be damaged in some impacts, and waiting longer than absolutely necessary would increase the dud rate. If so, I’d expect the slope of that curve would override any/all other considerations.
On another note …
Thanks guys (& gals). It’s gratifying to finally see at least a couple of US taxpayers get some benefit from all that time & money spent on and by me.
Actually, I’m no cynic about the US & the DOD & …; To have stopped the Soviets without killing half the planet was a very real acheivment of truly historic proportions & I’m both proud & humbled to have made my small contribution.
As a long-time student of international politics, I fear we have a rather different problem on our hands with Militant Islam than we did with Communist Totalitarianism. And having a bunch of aging Cold Warriors in charge for the last few years has supplied exactly the wrong attempted solutions to the current set of problems. But that’s not exactly GQ material, so I’ll quit for now.
LSLGuy, might part of the reason for the short delay also be an actual concern about disarming the bomb on the ground? And by “disarming”, I mean “lobbing a grenade at”. As I understand it, wouldn’t that keep the bomb from going off, by knocking the shaped charges out of whack, or whatever?
I’ve spent nine years wondering:
The pilot or weapons officer sets the delay by themselves? It’s not decided upon on base (are carrier aircraft nuke capable, BTW?) before loading?
That was Felix Leiter.
Bond was about to pee on himself, watching the timer, and Felix reached over his shoulder and pulled a wire off.
The Soviets attached a parachute to the Tsar Bomb to slow down it’s descent … thus giving the air crew more time to flee.