Nuclear Tests

[Pontius Navigator]

tornadoken, If I read them correctly you say the Vulcan had WE177A whereas they were of course the WE177B.

Then your figures show:

9 Sqd/Cottesmore, 9/66-25/2/69: 8
12 Sqd/Cottesmore, 9/66-29/12/67: 8
35 Sqd/Cottesmore, 9/66-14/1/69: 8
44 Sqd/Waddington, mid-67-21/12/82: 8
50 Sqd/Waddington, 10/66-30/6/82: 8
101 Sqd/Waddington, 1/1/68-4/8/82: 8

Of the 24 Waddington weapons, I held the keys but 4 weapons were held at Finningley. During generation I had to wait until I was told the weapon number before I could issue the key to the crew (IIRC).

That is 48 weapons but 12 and 101 didn't have the WE177 at the same time so that drops to 40. 50 sqn was certainly the first Mk 1A sqn to convert but the WE177 was not introduced until the war plan change on 1 Jul 68.

27 Sqd/Scampton (bombs held in Waddo SSA, ex-12 Sqd), 1/1/70-29/3/72: } 8 but they were MRR from end 1971.
617 Sqd/Scampton (bombs held in Waddo SSA, ex-12 Sqd), 1/1/71-31/12/81: }


9 Sqd/Akrotiri (bombs held at Tuxedo SSA, Cape Gata, Dhekelia): 26/2/69-31/12/74: 8
35 Sqd/Akrotiri (bombs held at Tuxedo SSA, Cape Gata, Dhekelia), 15/1/69-15/1/75: 8

I can't think why the bombs would have been stored in Dhekelia as Akrotiri had a perfectly adequate SSA of its own with 9 bunkers. You can get more than 2 WE177 in each bunker. Also, as far as I am aware, Cape Gata is on the Akrotiri peninsular. When we had generation exercises the weapons were certainly available minutes after startex. I am of the opinion that my source is better than the Soton one.

Now by my reckoning we should have had 56 WE177B but my source is adamant the there were only ever 53 and we lost one of those to a lightning strike. He said that 3 WE177A were issued to Akrotiri to bring there holding to 16 but I was not aware of that until 27 relinquished their weapons.

Returning to the dates, the production rate in 1967 was in the region of 4 WE177B per month.