The RAF Accepts Its First Atom Bomb
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The RAF Accepts Its First Atom Bomb
On 7th November 1953, three months after the detonation of the first Russian H-bomb, the first British atom bomb was issued to the RAF at Wittering It was 5 feet in diameter, 24 feet long, weighed 10,000lbs and was called Blue Danube. Its size was determined by current technology and the V-bombers bomb-bays were designed to carry it. It was planned to manufacture 20 more before the end of 1954.
We did not have any current aircraft capable of carrying this monster until the Valiant entered operational service with 138 Squadron in 1955/56.
This raises a number of questions about its inception. Which unit at Wittering accepted the first weapon? Was there a secure unit on site? Were the other 20 also stored there? Who flew the first aircraft armed with an active weapon? Were difficulties experienced in loading it into operational aircraft? I understand the weapons originally issued did not have their bomb casings tested until 1956 at Maralinga. Were the squadrons flying with untested units?
There must be some people personally involved at all levels in this fascinating period who are still out there.
We did not have any current aircraft capable of carrying this monster until the Valiant entered operational service with 138 Squadron in 1955/56.
This raises a number of questions about its inception. Which unit at Wittering accepted the first weapon? Was there a secure unit on site? Were the other 20 also stored there? Who flew the first aircraft armed with an active weapon? Were difficulties experienced in loading it into operational aircraft? I understand the weapons originally issued did not have their bomb casings tested until 1956 at Maralinga. Were the squadrons flying with untested units?
There must be some people personally involved at all levels in this fascinating period who are still out there.
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WIP, Brian Burnell's site: nuclear-weapons.info
Blue Danube had many limitations and was phased out of production after Sandys did the US 3/57 and 8/58 Collaboration Agreements. Wynn, a deliberately hard read to get past censors, has: "RAF had an atomic bombing capability from July,1955...with the conjunction of BC Armament School, No.1321 Flight and No.138 Sqdn. at Wittering" so "had an emergency arisen in mid-1955, (BD) could have been deployed operationally" (P.98). First live drop, by 49 Sqdn as Trials Unit, was 11/10/56; 138 Sqdn/Valiant with 8 Bombs then became atomic-operational with Sqdn, not instructor, personnel, and with Approved tools and manuals, progressively through 1957. 83 Sqdn Vulcan 1/Waddington from 21/5/57, 10 Sqdn Victor 1/Cottesmore from 1/5/58. They shared (Burnell: 20, me: 24) Bombs to 8/60. 15 Sqdn/Victor 1 shared Cottesmore's 8, and 49 Sqdn Valiant/Wittering took Waddington's 8 from 21/10/58 after 83 Sqdn took US Mk.5.
Bombs were held at Supplementary Storage Areas on the RAF Stations, and at 94MU/Barnham and 92MU/Faldingworth. For more, find Wynn.
Blue Danube had many limitations and was phased out of production after Sandys did the US 3/57 and 8/58 Collaboration Agreements. Wynn, a deliberately hard read to get past censors, has: "RAF had an atomic bombing capability from July,1955...with the conjunction of BC Armament School, No.1321 Flight and No.138 Sqdn. at Wittering" so "had an emergency arisen in mid-1955, (BD) could have been deployed operationally" (P.98). First live drop, by 49 Sqdn as Trials Unit, was 11/10/56; 138 Sqdn/Valiant with 8 Bombs then became atomic-operational with Sqdn, not instructor, personnel, and with Approved tools and manuals, progressively through 1957. 83 Sqdn Vulcan 1/Waddington from 21/5/57, 10 Sqdn Victor 1/Cottesmore from 1/5/58. They shared (Burnell: 20, me: 24) Bombs to 8/60. 15 Sqdn/Victor 1 shared Cottesmore's 8, and 49 Sqdn Valiant/Wittering took Waddington's 8 from 21/10/58 after 83 Sqdn took US Mk.5.
Bombs were held at Supplementary Storage Areas on the RAF Stations, and at 94MU/Barnham and 92MU/Faldingworth. For more, find Wynn.
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Were the squadrons flying with untested units?
It was 5 feet in diameter, 24 feet long, weighed 10,000lbs and was called Blue Danube
Quote
"Bombs were held at Supplementary Storage Areas on the RAF Stations, and at 94MU/Barnham and 92MU/Faldingworth."
For anyone who wants to see what these, and some of the other storage sites look like now, (well in 2000/01 to be precise) see here.
Flickr: 814man's Photostream
Pictures were taken by me to record the closure of the ASU Unit at Wittering and the ending of the RAF full time involvement with nuclear weapons, as part of a joint project with English Heritage and Air Historical Branch.
"Bombs were held at Supplementary Storage Areas on the RAF Stations, and at 94MU/Barnham and 92MU/Faldingworth."
For anyone who wants to see what these, and some of the other storage sites look like now, (well in 2000/01 to be precise) see here.
Flickr: 814man's Photostream
Pictures were taken by me to record the closure of the ASU Unit at Wittering and the ending of the RAF full time involvement with nuclear weapons, as part of a joint project with English Heritage and Air Historical Branch.
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Quote :
... but beware that some of the info in the Wynn book isn't strictly accurate...
unquote
I hope that those inaccuracies are due to OPSEC reasons not actual errors ???????
.
... but beware that some of the info in the Wynn book isn't strictly accurate...
unquote
I hope that those inaccuracies are due to OPSEC reasons not actual errors ???????
.
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I posted this earlier on the 'Did you fly the Vulcan' thread. It may be of interest here. 1964.
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchi...0-%200386.html
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchi...0-%200386.html
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Not sure what the reasons for the various mistakes are but errerors are certainly there. Guess it's inevitable with a book that relies on so many documents, some of which doubtless conflict with each other.
814man you have some brilliant images there!
Blacksheep, I must find-out some more about Shrinking Violet...
814man you have some brilliant images there!
Blacksheep, I must find-out some more about Shrinking Violet...
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I must find-out some more about Shrinking Violet...
While you're at it, ask Jones about the green, green grass of home.
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4Greens: See: R.Moore, RN and Nuclear Weapons,Harwood,2001. P190: Scimitar/Sea Vixen FAW.2 were store-cleared August,1960 for catapult launch, not arrested landing. 3 Red Beard Mk.1 were loaned in 1960, and 5 assigned in 1962 for “emergency use only”. Red Beard Mk.2(RN) went to sea on Ark, Buccaneer S.1, 19/2/63.
E.J.Grove,Vanguard to Trident, Bodley Head,1987,P.384 has “2 doz. or so” Mk.57/NDB on Sea King/Lynx HAS.2/3, 1969-11/91.
E.J.Grove,Vanguard to Trident, Bodley Head,1987,P.384 has “2 doz. or so” Mk.57/NDB on Sea King/Lynx HAS.2/3, 1969-11/91.
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I was under the impression that from the late sixties the RN had quite a few WE177s for use as helicopter-delivered nuclear depth charges?
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4Greens & Tornadoken I'd be inclined to accept the account by Richard Moore as the most accurate. Have collaborated with him and am confident he is about right.
The first RB's deployed to sea aboard modernised HMS Victorious. Don't have a date readily to hand.
The other ref was published a long, long time ago when there was no info in the public domain on this topic other than disinfo and speculation. Dr Eric Groves is a distinguished academic, but on this ocassion he got it wrong. Neither Sea King nor naval Lynx ever carried the US B57 bomb. Only WE.177A. Lots of PRO material supports that. The Navy were unwilling to agree to carry US weapons custodians on HM Ships. Lots of evidence for that. Another factor was that the US weapon could only be used in area in support of NATO, whereas RN ships were expected to deploy worldwide at no-notice, as with the Falklands campaign.
RAF Nimrods did carry the B57. These were stored under USMC guard at RAF St Mawgan, Cornwall, where weapons were also stored for Dutch Navy MPA. Another weapons store for RAF Nimrods was at Signorella, Sicily. See here nuclear-weapons.info (WE.176 footnote 8) and http://nuclear-weapons.info/images/t...-691e28_06.JPG
Enough for now ...
The first RB's deployed to sea aboard modernised HMS Victorious. Don't have a date readily to hand.
The other ref was published a long, long time ago when there was no info in the public domain on this topic other than disinfo and speculation. Dr Eric Groves is a distinguished academic, but on this ocassion he got it wrong. Neither Sea King nor naval Lynx ever carried the US B57 bomb. Only WE.177A. Lots of PRO material supports that. The Navy were unwilling to agree to carry US weapons custodians on HM Ships. Lots of evidence for that. Another factor was that the US weapon could only be used in area in support of NATO, whereas RN ships were expected to deploy worldwide at no-notice, as with the Falklands campaign.
RAF Nimrods did carry the B57. These were stored under USMC guard at RAF St Mawgan, Cornwall, where weapons were also stored for Dutch Navy MPA. Another weapons store for RAF Nimrods was at Signorella, Sicily. See here nuclear-weapons.info (WE.176 footnote 8) and http://nuclear-weapons.info/images/t...-691e28_06.JPG
Enough for now ...
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Blacksheep:
43 actually old chap. Another 20 were handed over to the RAF with the RN Buccs, but the weapons were completely interchangable.
Not many people kno this, but the RAF never wanted WE.177A. They fought tooth and nail for a much bigger yield of approx 200 kt. It was down to the NATO assigned targets for TSR2. RAF said these targets needed a bigger bomb, but politicos said no. Culprit was SuperMac who limited them to 10 kt, and the Navy were happy with that, but the RAF began to study stick-bombing with up to four WE.177A on TSR2.
Sourced from recently declassified PRO documents.
43 actually old chap. Another 20 were handed over to the RAF with the RN Buccs, but the weapons were completely interchangable.
Not many people kno this, but the RAF never wanted WE.177A. They fought tooth and nail for a much bigger yield of approx 200 kt. It was down to the NATO assigned targets for TSR2. RAF said these targets needed a bigger bomb, but politicos said no. Culprit was SuperMac who limited them to 10 kt, and the Navy were happy with that, but the RAF began to study stick-bombing with up to four WE.177A on TSR2.
Sourced from recently declassified PRO documents.
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4Greens & Tornadoken I'd be inclined to accept the account by Richard Moore as the most accurate. Have collaborated with him and am confident he is about right.
The first RB's deployed to sea aboard modernised HMS Victorious. Don't have a date readily to hand.
The other ref was published a long, long time ago when there was no info in the public domain on this topic other than disinfo and speculation. Dr Eric Groves is a distinguished academic, but on this ocassion he got it wrong. Neither Sea King nor naval Lynx ever carried the US B57 bomb. Only WE.177A. Lots of PRO material supports that. The Navy were unwilling to agree to carry US weapons custodians on HM Ships. Lots of evidence for that. Another factor was that the US weapon could only be used in area in support of NATO, whereas RN ships were expected to deploy worldwide at no-notice, as with the Falklands campaign.
RAF Nimrods did carry the B57. These were stored under USMC guard at RAF St Mawgan, Cornwall, where weapons were also stored for Dutch Navy MPA. Another weapons store for RAF Nimrods was at Signorella, Sicily. See here nuclear-weapons.info and http://nuclear-weapons.info/images/t...-691e28_06.JPG
Enough for now ...
The first RB's deployed to sea aboard modernised HMS Victorious. Don't have a date readily to hand.
The other ref was published a long, long time ago when there was no info in the public domain on this topic other than disinfo and speculation. Dr Eric Groves is a distinguished academic, but on this ocassion he got it wrong. Neither Sea King nor naval Lynx ever carried the US B57 bomb. Only WE.177A. Lots of PRO material supports that. The Navy were unwilling to agree to carry US weapons custodians on HM Ships. Lots of evidence for that. Another factor was that the US weapon could only be used in area in support of NATO, whereas RN ships were expected to deploy worldwide at no-notice, as with the Falklands campaign.
RAF Nimrods did carry the B57. These were stored under USMC guard at RAF St Mawgan, Cornwall, where weapons were also stored for Dutch Navy MPA. Another weapons store for RAF Nimrods was at Signorella, Sicily. See here nuclear-weapons.info and http://nuclear-weapons.info/images/t...-691e28_06.JPG
Enough for now ...
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Bevin's Legacy
After the Depression, the struggle to recover from it in the 1930s and WWII we, as a nation, were broke when the GEN 75 discussions concerning the building of a UK Atomic Bomb took place in 1945/6.
The powerful arguments concerning the apportioning of major units of man-power and resources, the use of 5% of the nations electricity supplies to drive the gaseous diffusion plant and the need to acquire large quantities of uranium had great momentum until Ernest Bevin famously stated “That won’t do at all….we’ve got to have this…..I don’t mind for myself, but I don’t want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked to or at by a Secretary of State of the United States as I have just had in my discussions with Mr Byrnes. We’ve got to have this thing over here no matter what it costs….We’ve got to have the Bloody Union Jack on top of it” and he took the day.
The subsequent scramble by the Civil Servants who ran our project to put together enough plutonium to enable the testing at Monte Bello Island on 3rd October 1952 of our first atomic device was one of the last demonstrations of our industrial might but at a great and damaging cost.
The financial cost of the atomic energy program in the period 1946 to 1952 was £104.7 million (mostly concealed in the budget statements) and there was a major re-direction of supplies, construction materials, building personnel, key scientists and technicians to build Harwell, Risley, Calder Hall, Aldermaston, Windscale and Dounreay. This investment was made at a time when the country really needed to apply all of its resources in re-building a war-torn and ravaged country.
Was it really worth such a price in such parlous times to “get a seat at the top table”?
It seems to me that such a great sacrifice resulting in one gigantic, untested and unusable device being sent by lorry to a concrete hut at RAF Wittering on 7th November 1953 (the first operational aircraft did not arrive at Wittering until July 1956) was not our finest hour.
It was known that we would need to manufacture H-bombs to maintain our posture but we continued to build 58 Blue Danubes at the 10Kton level. I understand they were to be used to bomb Russian airfields, so we were considering pre-emptive air strikes even in the mid-1950s
Having said all of that I do understand that the RAF people involved in the handling of the first bombs in whatever capacity must have been the brightest and the best and it is their story I am trying to bring to light.
The powerful arguments concerning the apportioning of major units of man-power and resources, the use of 5% of the nations electricity supplies to drive the gaseous diffusion plant and the need to acquire large quantities of uranium had great momentum until Ernest Bevin famously stated “That won’t do at all….we’ve got to have this…..I don’t mind for myself, but I don’t want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked to or at by a Secretary of State of the United States as I have just had in my discussions with Mr Byrnes. We’ve got to have this thing over here no matter what it costs….We’ve got to have the Bloody Union Jack on top of it” and he took the day.
The subsequent scramble by the Civil Servants who ran our project to put together enough plutonium to enable the testing at Monte Bello Island on 3rd October 1952 of our first atomic device was one of the last demonstrations of our industrial might but at a great and damaging cost.
The financial cost of the atomic energy program in the period 1946 to 1952 was £104.7 million (mostly concealed in the budget statements) and there was a major re-direction of supplies, construction materials, building personnel, key scientists and technicians to build Harwell, Risley, Calder Hall, Aldermaston, Windscale and Dounreay. This investment was made at a time when the country really needed to apply all of its resources in re-building a war-torn and ravaged country.
Was it really worth such a price in such parlous times to “get a seat at the top table”?
It seems to me that such a great sacrifice resulting in one gigantic, untested and unusable device being sent by lorry to a concrete hut at RAF Wittering on 7th November 1953 (the first operational aircraft did not arrive at Wittering until July 1956) was not our finest hour.
It was known that we would need to manufacture H-bombs to maintain our posture but we continued to build 58 Blue Danubes at the 10Kton level. I understand they were to be used to bomb Russian airfields, so we were considering pre-emptive air strikes even in the mid-1950s
Having said all of that I do understand that the RAF people involved in the handling of the first bombs in whatever capacity must have been the brightest and the best and it is their story I am trying to bring to light.
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I don't think that political posturing is the best way to get their co-operation. What you have to remember is that everyone has their political prejudices. Not all will read your pre-prepared agenda and will want to help you make the facts fit your version of events. Respectable researchers try to do it the other way around.On the narrower topic of Ernest Bevin .... the quote you attribute is not found in any printed record of those Cabinet committees, and I have searched diligently for them, and read the boring lot.
Where they are found is in the verbal recollections of an aging civil servant, recorded fifty years after the event by an academic. The civil servant did not record this material in writing at the time, or at any later time. While I have great respect for Professor Peter Hennessy, he himself would be the first to acknowledge that his writings on this event were no more that a populist political polemic for a newspaper.
As for the old man's recollections of fifty years ago, try thinking of it in this way. An identification by an old man at a police ID parade held fifty years after the event would be abolutely worthless as reliable evidence in any courtroom.
BTW. You rather give away the game you play by confusing Blue Danube with an H-bomb in the same sentence. Then you refer to 'one gigantic device sent by lorry to a concrete hut ...' Well ... it was not one gigantic device, nor was it sent by lorry in that condition. It does seem that the source material freely available at the PRO has not been read by you. Had you done that first your elementary mistakes would not have appeared here. And there is a broader point to this. How can you seriously expect those like me who worked painstakingly on this device to design it, to keep you safe from it, yet have it available for use if needed, ever trust a person who fails to research properly, and gets his facts so wrong? Had I and my many colleagues been so lax in our standards you might well be buried under a heap of self-inflicted radioactive ash.