The RAF had no nukes until the Early '60s

[Load Toad]

They only had to work once Colin. 1950 lab versions or not.

[tornadoken]

RIH: the joy of conspiracies is the problem of proving a negative. An element of bluff assists all formed force - in cricket it's "sledging". Let's concede bluff for UK's Violet Club. After Blue Danube's live drop, 11/10/56, 138 Sqdn. Valiant/Wittering was progressively brought to 8 rounds/Unit Establishment, followed from 21/5/57 by 83 Sqdn.Vulcan 1/Waddington, then 10 Sqdn. Victor 1/Cottesmore. Red Beard followed from 9/60, Yellow Sun Mk.1 from early-1960. Many thousands of professionals, some posting here, believed it was all for very real.

So if they were all deceived - say by AWRE shipping ballast, say by Barnham/Faldingworth MU personnel happily conniving at not knowing what was inside the (empty) physics packages - then some hundreds of cheats in the AW production industry - all those Risleys/Cardiffs/Burghfields - have since kept very stumm.

If your point is the lack of publicity to the fit of US stores to RAFG Canberra B.(I)6/8 from 5/58, from the Canberra B.6 Tactical Bomber Force from 2/7/59 and from much of the Medium Bomber Force from 1/10/58...well, yes, and...?? If your point is that indigenous UK stores were few and fraught, before rollover for US-data-infused Red Snow and later warheads, well, we know that. Wynn's Official History removes US weapons from MBF 17/3/62 and from the TBF, 7/65.

[RIHoward]

The Conspiracy!

tornadoken

Thanks for your informative post.

I'm sure the vast majority of the populations of USSR UK USA and most of the rest of humanity thought it was for real.

But we now know what the CIA's assessment of the real Soviet threat was and we now know what Krushchev thought about actually starting a war, nuclear or conventional, it was never going to happen (well lets say it had a very low probability of occurring).

The Conspiracy comes from the very top of the hierarchy in this very authoritarian society, you might call them the 'investors in British interests' who use Intelligence services and the media to create reality. (See Edward Bernays), The Conspiracy is about using public money to develop new technologies that the very top of the hierarchy will benefit from when the technologies become viable and profitable and are 'privatised', So V-Bombers transform into Civil Airlines and mass tourism, Nuclear technologies transform into Power stations and the Nuclear Industry, and Ballistic missiles transform into commercial satellite launch vehicles for telecoms and SKY etc. While the UK population were undergoing the harsh austerity and fear of post war Britain, the weapons manufacturers were fighting over the 1/8th of GDP that was going into these not fit for purpose 'weapons' systems.

So there was no real threat and the threat was exaggerated in the media, the population are kept frightened and stump up the cash to pay for these largely useless and expensive weapons. So in order to maintain the 'big lie' as Dr Goebbels liked to call it, the population are fed a lot of scare-mongering 'information' about the potential threat from a perceived enemy. It's interesting to see that the Mig's in Korea had Russian versions of Rolls Royce Nenes in them and that the USSR was largely funded by credits from the Bank of England between the wars. The so called 'Iron Curtain' was somehow not impervious to western capital investment and trade. Fordson Tractors were featured on Soviet stamps in 1922, Standard Oil did very well out of the Communist revolution as did Rio Tinto, and many more.

Western monopolistic capitalists like John ('control everything') Rockerfeller could see a lot of efficiency advantages in the 'Socialist' means of production.

The main threat from the Soviets was ideological. The problem with Socialism was that the workers in the UK might actually believe in it and want to start a revolution of their own here!

[CNH]

Whereas what really happened is that the socialists realised what a load of bollocks socialism was, and decided to become capitalists.

[ColinB]

They only had to work once Colin. 1950 lab versions or not.

One or two probably would have been usable and deliverable to distant Soviet targets but the majority would not. The threat was that many were deliverable.
A great PR coup.
There was a reported problem in the bombs dropped from altitude breaking the sound barrier, i.e. faster than the aircraft carrying them

[Tim McLelland]

I'm sure the vast majority of the populations of USSR UK USA and most of the rest of humanity thought it was for real.

That's because it was!

I have to say, as politely as I can, that the paragraphs which follow your comment as shown above, are utter claptrap, old boy. If you seriously believe any of that nonsense, then perhaps you should be firing your questions at a more appropriate forum?!

[RIHoward]

OK Tim thanks for your politeness you're obviously entitled to your opinion.

But I have to say that the CIA's assessment of the Soviet threat is in the public domain as is what Krushchev's assessment of the chances of the Soviet Union actually ruling the World by military means were (slim and none). Given that the GDP of the Soviet Union was 1/5th that of the USA and the USA hadn't been devastated in a World War. What would your assessment of their chances be?

And given this factual information i.e. according to CIA the USSR offered no real military threat to Western Europe. How do you explain why the UK was spending 1/8th of its GDP on 'defence'?

[Groundloop]

And given this factual information i.e. according to CIA the USSR offered no real military threat to Western Europe. How do you explain why the UK was spending 1/8th of its GDP on 'defence'?

For a start the CIA would probably not have passed that little gem on to the British Government, being the CIA... !

[Tim McLelland]

Point is, you keep making statements like "given this factual information" but of course it isn't "given" nor is it "factual" in any way. It is merely supposition and flawed supposition at that.

Simple truth of the matter is that the RAF most certainly did have nukes, after a shaky start and a slow introduction. If the history of the RAF's nuclear weaponry had been any different then the documentation outlining this period would say so. It isn't secret any longer and of course there's absolutely no reason to imagine that any "dark forces" have somehow re-written history, not least because there would be no reason to do it. You have to ask yourself why - fifty years later - the British Government would even care about such matters. If the truth had been in any way different, it would be clear for all to see in the records at Kew.

Like so many fascinating conspiracy theories, I think you ought to accept that there is no conspiracy, and any pundits or writers who try to suggest otherwise are simply wasting your time and intelligence, peddling half-baked theories to make a fast buck or feed their psychological disorders.

[tornadoken]

The dummy point. I think the first US device to be handled by aliens was BAOR/Corporal F SSM, 1957. Warheads were held on a US Army base at Dortmund. Thor warheads were held at USAF base, Lakenheath. US Army Jupiter IRBMs in Italy and Turkey were on the same dual-key scheme, warheads held in US custody, on nearby US bases. Genie AAMs on RCAF CF101, same; NATO Forces' M109/110 howitzers' nuclear shells, Atomic Demolition Munitions...same.

We see in Museums inert training rounds of, say, WE177. May I suggest that day-to-day exercise-use of all this ordnance employed ballast that was electrically+fit/form representative..but not in function. Might the real things, needing temp/moisture/vibration cosseting, seldom sally forth from their snugly-guarded vaults? Deliberate ambiguity. Doesn't mean they were not available at some hours' notice.

[RIHoward]

Tim as I've said you're entitled to your opinion.

The CIA report is in the public domain, I have read the report, now whether the CIA shared this information with UK intelligence is obviously up for conjecture. I would suggest that it was shared. The USA were spending equally ludicrous amounts of money on daft and useless weapons and spreading fear and propaganda through their population about a Soviet threat that simply did not exist.

[RIHoward]

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.

[Feathers McGraw]

It took a long time for Britain to realise that its place in the world had changed massively post-WWII, and the attempts to produce indigenous weapon systems continued for over 20 years while this realisation took root.

It's only natural for a world power to take time to adjust its thinking, and for those in power and those trying to provide them with military hardware to continue on what, with the benefit of hindsight, turns out not to have been the best way of doing things.

Given that some of this happened when we were trying to recover from the massive spending required during wartime and pay back the lend-lease loans I can quite believe that what was seen as necessary to protect the nation, no matter how misguided when viewed from the present, took up a significant amount of scarce government money. It's very hard to believe your suggestions about the attempt to turn the swords into ploughshares either, all of our indigenous civil aircraft projects ended up with relatively low sales and few economies of scale, and Black Arrow managed to launch one single satellite and cost about £9m to do it, which is a paltry sum for the late 1960s.

No, I just don't buy it, and the evidence, as others have pointed out, can be found at the PRO in Kew if you want to devote some time to research it.

[RIHoward]

Thanks for that feathers

I agree the UK failed to turn most of the swords to plough shears, there were any number of reasons for this some of which you've pointed out.

One fascinating one for me is the production of a swept wing which requires massive dynamic matrix calculations that involve infinite series at the tips and root, a huge calculation. It was only with the advent of digital computers and finite element modelling that this technology could be realised in the West.

The British approach was for a 'genius' designer to come up with a drawing and then a calculation would be done. Calculations were done by hand with pencil and paper, though some analogue computers were built, you can't use them for iterative calculations because the error just gets bigger and bigger. The Soviet approach was to use large numbers of human beings to do the calcs, the US could do the same to some extent, but mathematicians were more expensive in the West. This is why the Soviets stole a lead in some areas of aircraft development in the early period of the cold war particularly in wing designs. They could simply crunch more numbers. The Soviets had also kidnapped the best Nazi rocket Scientists and so their rockets and missiles were more advanced than the West.

There are sources other than KEW, like Hansard and the on line Airade Archive at Cranfield University. My point about swords to plough shares comes from reading Hansard.

You don't think it odd then that as soon as a new technology is proved and profitable it's always taken into private hands? The development cost are never recovered fully by the taxpayer who paid for it.

BOAC and BEA are prime examples of what I'm talking about. Paid for by the Taxpayer until profitable and then handed over to private hands at bargain prices.

[Load Toad]

a Soviet threat that simply did not exist

If that was the case why did the Soviets incarcerate and murder their own citizens, support communist governments (e.g. Cuba, N.Korea,Vietnam) around the world with arms, military support and su...


Oh yeah! They didn't - it was disinformation by OUR governments.


I think you've been doing a bit too much David Icke.

[RIHoward]

Lord Toad

David Icke is of course nuts.

All I'm saying is that according to the CIA the Soviets posed no military threat to Western Europe. at this time.

[CNH]

You say that according to the CIA, the Soviets posed no threat to Europe ... would you care to give us a reference for this interesting document?

And the UK did not spend one eight of its budget on defence. It peaked during the Korean War - hot war, not cold war - but one of the points of the Sandys White Paper of 1957 was to bring defence expenditure down to 7% of GDP. How? By deploying nuclear weapons and thus reducing conventional manpower.

[Johnboyes]

Thor info

Just a couple of points of information. The Thor warheads were not stored at Lakenheath, other than if they were passing through there. The original US intention was indeed to store them centrally but it was calculated that it would take up to 52 hours to distribute them and mount them on the missiles. To have any credibility of launching within the prescribed 15 minutes they HAD to be actually mounted on the missiles and in that respect they were different from (and not part of) the Project E weapons. The Jupiters in Italy and Turkey were USAF not US Army weapons although they were developed by von Braun's US Army team. They were handed over to the USAF when the US Army was restricted to the development of missiles of range not exceeded 200 miles

[RIHoward]

Some Weekend Reading

First an apology I mis-read GDP figures from G.C. Pedden's book 'Arms, Economics and British Strategy'
which I read about a year ago it was US defence spending that was at 12.7 % GDP in '54. I guess the figure just stuck.

Here are the numbers from Pedden's Book

For the UK the average from '46 to '62 was 8.8% with the highest period of spend being '52-'58 with an average 9.2% of GDP. '52 being 10% and '58 8%

Macmillan to Eden, 23 Mar. 1956, PREM 11/1326, TNA.
‘it is defence expenditure which has broken our backs . . . [and] we get no
defence from the defence expenditure.'

Pedden concludes on the economic effects of defence expenditure in this period ('50-'69)

It was only from the late 1930s that the balance of payments and confidence in
sterling were significantly affected by the level of defence expenditure in
peace-time. Frequent sterling crises, and de-valuations in 1949 and
1967, showed that the proportion of national income being spent on
defence in the post-war period was clearly at the upper limit of what the
balance of payments would bear.


Some quotes from
From the Truman Doctrine to Detente: The Rise and Fall of the Cold War - Michael Cox Feb 1990

(if you search for the title you'll find a download-able pdf)

In a Top Secret document drawn up by the Joint Intelligence Sub Committee of the British Joint Chiefs of staff in August 1947 it was concluded that for different reasons both economic and military the USSR would 'wish to avoid a protracted war at any rate before 1955-60.'

In the first analysis from Kennan's policy Planning Staff in May 1947 it was conceded that communist activities' were not at the 'root of the difficulties of Western Europe'. Hence the US goal was not 'to combat communism' as such but 'economic maladjustment'.

Even 5 years after the war, those justifying rearmament in the US still had to agree that the US possessed 'the greatest military potential of any single nation in the world'. The Bureau of the Budget, which opposed the new build up ....... pointed out that the US was militarily superior to the USSR in five crucial areas: at sea, in the air, in terms of the economic and military potential of its allies who were moreover situated close to the Soviet Union and the supply of fission bombs as well as thermonuclear potential.

From
FOREIGN SERVICE DISPATCH 116, of September 8, 1952
FROM AMERICAN EMBASSY, MOSCOW
TO DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON
SUBJECT: The Soviet Union and the Atlantic Pact

When World War II came to an end, the leaders of the Soviet Union had no desire to face another major foreign war for a long, long time to come. Within the Soviet Union, the war had left great exhaustion and physical damage in its train. In addition to this, it had meant a setback of approximately a decade in the effort of the Soviet leaders to make out of the traditional Russian territory a powerful military-industrial center. It was plain that even when recovery from the damages and fatigues of the war had been effected, Russia would still be a country with a crude and unbalanced industrial foundation, lacking an adequate energetic basis and a modern transportation system. Finally, in the newly won satellite area, the Kremlin faced a formidable problem in the task of consolidation of its power, involving the liquidation of the older influential classes and political groups, the training of a new administrative class, the formation of new police and military forces, etc. All of these things were bound to take time. The building of a modern transportation system in the Soviet Union, in the absence of major aid
from capitalist sources, would alone represent at least a ten- to fifteen year operation. Another major military involvement, striking into the heart of the programs for the completion of these tasks, would obviously have most disruptive and undesirable effects, in part even dangerous to the security of Soviet power. For all of these specific domestic reasons the Kremlin leaders had no desire, at the close of World War II, to become involved in another major foreign war for the foreseeable future, and this—in terms of Soviet policy determination meant anything up to fifteen or twenty years..........

GEORGE F. KENNAN
Ambassador

The opinion of a Daily Mail Journalist.
Comment: The Soviet threat was a myth | World news | The Guardian

Excerpts from CIA Documents from 1950 during the Korean War

Weekly Summary Excerpt, 28 April 1950, The Soviet Offensive (CIA)
Although the USSR has improved its power position by announcing its possession of atomic secrets ...... there is no indication that the USSR is yet willing to initiate armed conflict with the West

Daily Summary Excerpt, 26 June 1950, Embassy Moscow’s Views on Korean Conflict
(CIA Comment)
... In sponsoring the aggression in Korea, the Kremlin probably calculated that no firm or effective countermeasures would be taken by the West. However the Kremlin is not willing to undertake a global war at this time.

Intelligence Memorandum 301, 30 June 1950, Estimate of Soviet Intentions and
Capabilities for Military Aggression

Although the USSR is considered to be unwilling to undertake a global conflict with the West at this time...

And so on and so forth

[Hipper]

Hello Richard.

I would be interested in more information on these statements please.

1. Given that the treasury were trying to half the size of the V-Force because there were 'no bombs' to put in them.

1. Given that one ex Air crew when asked if there were any bombs in the RAF pre '62 replied Only iron ones.