Just stumbled across some *terrible* quality photos from circa 1967 showing a B-52 with its bomb bay doors removed and a bomb stuffed in and partly protruding since it was too big to actually fit within. This was the “Flashback,” best as I can tell, and seems to have been designed as an actual nuke, and perhaps built as an actual nuke. It was apparently tested somewhere near Oahu without the nuclear bits. The reports I have are stunningly unenlightening, but this seems to have been a full-up weight & aerodynamics & instruments/electronics test for a bomb that was just way too damn big. Currently working on putting together diagrams, because why wouldn’t I.
This seems new to me. But is it just something I seem to have missed in my reading, something everybody always knew about?