Size of the first Chinese H-Bomb?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve got another obscure nuclear weapons question.

That is…are there any estimates (or can anyone help me estimate) the size of China’s first 3 megaton H-Bomb, first tested in 1967?

According to the page on nuclearweaponarchive.org, this is a photo of the weapon, dropped from a Chinese Hong-6 bomber (a copy of the Soviet Tu-16 “Badger” bomber). This was one of only two photos I’ve been able to find online of what’s supposedly a deliverable Chinese nuclear weapon. This BBC page apparently has another, but of a different weapon.

All I’ve been able to dig up online that’s of any help is that the bomb would have been carried internally, the H-6 could carry some 13,000lbs of armament internally, and nuclear-armed H-6es only carried one bomb at a time. From that, and what I know about thermonuclear weapons, I’m estimating the weight at about…8-9 thousand pounds. (Roughly. Could be wrong.)

But I still don’t know what the dimentions of the thing are. Can…anyone help me out?

2

Not really, but about half way down this page it says: ‘One of the objectives of the final series of Chinese nuclear tests was to miniaturize China’s nuclear warheads, dropping their weight from 2200 kgs to 700 kgs in order to accommodate the next generation of solid-fueled missile systems.’
So that implies that the warhead section weighed around 4840 lbs. Maybe.
Don’t know if that helps at all.

3

I’m afraid not—1967 was probably too early in the thermonuclear program to have gotten the bomb miniaturized that much. Thanks, though. :frowning: