The Tsar Bomba, a Soviet nuclear bomb code named “Ivan”, was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested. The testing of this bomb would be the Soviet’s declaration of nuclear competence to the United States, which held superiority over the USSR in the nuclear weapons race.
In order to drop (and survive) the largest nuclear bomb, the Soviets modified a T-U-95-V bomber for the test.
On 30 October 1961, At 9:30 a.m., a specially modified Tupolev Tu-95V bomber, under the command of Major Andrey Ergorovich Durnovtsev, departed Olenegorsk Air Base carrying 9 crew. The Tu-95 was accompanied by a Tupolev Tu-16 instrumentation ship which would act as a flying laboratory to monitor the blast.