Castle Romeo

Castle Romeo
Castle Romeo mushroom cloud
Information
Country	United States
Test series	Operation Castle
Test site	Bikini Atoll
Date	March 26, 1954 (70 years ago) (1954-03-26)
Test type	Atmospheric
Yield	11 Mt
Test chronology
← Castle Bravo Castle Koon →

Castle Romeo was the code name given to one of the tests in the Operation Castle series of U.S. nuclear tests. It was the first test of the TX-17 thermonuclear weapon, the first deployed thermonuclear bomb.

It was detonated on March 26, 1954, at Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands, on a barge moored in the middle of the crater from the Castle Bravo test. It was the first such barge-based test, a necessity that had come about because the powerful thermonuclear devices obliterated the small islands following detonation.