Originally Posted by
Finningley Boy
Up until the arrival of the Jaguar, the Canberras and Phantoms carried US Bombs. The Americans provided the maintenance and the ultimate level of Security. It was the same at St Mawgan with the nuclear armed Torpedos, this time the US Navy provided the engineers while the a US Marine Corps Security detachment provided a security ring inside the RAF Police one. All were armed.
FB
The units that supported US Nuclear weapons based in the US and oversea went by various names as time went on. Timelord is correct in that by the time he was involved they were known as Munition Support Squadrons, before that Tactical Depot Squadrons / Tactical Support Squadron and before that Aviation Field Depot Squadrons. The link below covers how the squadrons were set up and the fact that a squadron covered a number of bases with detachments, with what seems to be a specialist Training and Staneval flight that knew what was going on across the whole unit. As the author states, almost everything was extremely compartmentalised, to the point that the security element was separated from the engineering element in the case of unit he was at.
https://usafnukes.com/break-room/bio...d-read-1st-tds
The information about these units on the internet seem to be very limited, however 6th Tactical Depot Squadron seems to be related to weapons supplied to the RAF, not just because of your source (which if I was a betting man would be a TTW operations order out of the annex of the station's F540), but thanks to the unit having a badge that somebody has put on a USAF badge collection page on the net. According to that site, 6th TDS had detachments at Tours in France, plus Marham and Coningsby in the UK. I suspect that the windy cabbage patch is a mistake as according to Wynn's book, RAF Nuclear Deterrent Forces, the only RAF stations that actually had US bombs stored at them for the MBF and NATO TBF were Marham, Waddington and Honington. The Bombs for the MBF were actually a major pain for Bomber Command as they couldn't be deployed to the dispersal airfields with the aircraft like the UK owned weapons could. Wynn states that the US bombs were gone from Waddington and Honington by 1962 and from Marham in 1965. I suspect that your document refers to the Detachment 5 as the maintenance personnel (and dependants), while the 6th TDS HQ security were responsible for the guard force (and dependants) who didn't share the same chain of command as the maintenance guys. A guess on my part, but logical one.