On this day in 1954 a Soviet Tu-4 bomber dropped a 40-kiloton RDS-4 nuclear bomb over the Totskoye range in Russia's Urals region. Five minutes after the blast, planes were ordered to bomb the test site. Three hours later, 40,000 personal of the 270th Rifle Division in 600 tanks and 600 armored personnel carriers drove over the epicenter to practice taking a stronghold after a nuclear attack. The aim of the test was to determine whether nuclear weapons could be used effectively on the battlefield. The soldiers were told that the nuclear test was a mock one, not a real one.
