Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t, but other detonations did, like Castle Bravo.
In: Chemistry
Why does an explosion on the ground cause a crater but one high enough up in the air do not?
The answer is the same for a firecracker as for a nuclear bomb. Put a firecracker on sand and you get a small crater but a bit up in the air and there is no crater. Nuclear bombs work the same just different heights needed.
Castle Bravo was a detonation on the run because is simple to do a test with a 10 tonnes bomb where the goal is to show a new design works. So a gound detonation was simplest to do.
The nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed to do maximum damage to the city. The optimal altitude was for Hiroshima 580 meters (1,900 ft) and quite similar for Nagasaki that has a bit more powerful with another design.
The Trinity test a bomb just like the one used on Nagasaki puts it on top of a 100-foot (30 m) tower. The result was a 5-foot (1.52 m) deep and 30-foot (9.14 m) wide blast crater.
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