PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - The RAF had no nukes until the Early '60s
Old 13th Aug 2010, 12:32
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RIHoward
 
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tornadoken

What is the source of your information?

You have to say that Thor was a stop gap, statically sited on the surface with a LOX fuel system that meant you'd have to stand down after a short period of readiness (not sure how long that would be, do you know?). They were rapidly dumped when more advanced missiles came along (they apparently cost $750,000 each).

The main bulk of Soviet arms production was sited in the Urals and beyond the best you could hope for with a Thor retaliation, if you were lucky enough to have it ready to go within the 4 minute warning would be to knock out urban centres,

From the material that's available to me and other than Thor the only other possible US controlled (sorry shared control) RAF nukes pre '62 would be the W7 bomb fitted to Canberra P8s.
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