RAF late Cold War munitions
 

I hope I have the right forum.

I have been reading some National Archive files regarding the 1981 Defence Review. In it there is listed some RAF munitions figures for 1981.

It mentions 12100 conventional bombs for 1981. I am assuming these are GP 1000Ibs.

But what has got me confused is the fact it lists 27800 "anti-armour" munitions in RAF inventory in 1981.

I am wondering what these anti-armour munitions are? I can only think they were BL755 but it seems an awful lot of bombs compared to the conventional bomb numbers.

Does anyone know what these munitions were? Might they include rockets?

It also mentions 296 air-to-air surface missiles - what is an air-to-air surface missile?! Were these the anti-ship Martels?

Many thanks.

Anti-armour could be SNEBs perhaps?

Armour-piercing cannon rounds perhaps?

Maybe to make Ivan think we had more than we actually had they multiplied the number of bomblets in each 755 by the number of 755's....;)

Number of BL755 "bomblets" rather than the number of bombs?

If that were the case then we only had circa 189 BLs....:8

I seem to recall mentioned in "Vulcan 607" that there was a huge problem in finding enough 1000lb bombs for the Black Buck raids by the Vulcans, so the figure of 12100 conventional bombs for 1981 unlikely.

Sounds about right to me!:ok:;)

Knowing how many 1000lb bombs we had in Bracht in the the 80's I dont think that final figure will be far out. Also an awful lot of 600lb Cluster bombs and Sneb.................... happy days in the biggest explosive storage area in Europe!

It's not BL755 as somebody has already pointed out I divided the number and came to not many bombs!

I am happy the figures are accurate since they come from declassified Government documents and minutes in 1981 and Prime Ministerial correspondence.

I didn't realise that the RAF had 500Ib bombs so the 12100 figure for "conventional bombs" covers those as well.

I know we dropped 6000 conventional bombs on Granby so it doesn't seem such a bizarre figure to me.

The figures incase anyone is interested also mention 750 ALARM by 1991 and 1500 JP233 by 1991.

I am suspecting that the SNEB rockets are included in the anti-armour totals, although was it considered an anti-armour weapon?