British Nuclear Weapons info

That's the one Ted. Operator stood with his back to the set and operated the lift controls at the end of each arm. The Valiant/Victor used the Simon lift truck with (so-called) lightweight jack. Twenty million percent advance on the original loading 'contraption', the Neal Gantry which I have described in other threads. How someone in a design office allowed the use of an adapted piece of building site equipment to be any where near new million pound 'V' Bombers escapes me! I never heard of any accidental collisions between the monster and the aircraft that it was servicing and I can put that down only to luck!

SABT
obvious one
Parked under a Victor!

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Cosford

That's the one. By the way, what's the bucket of golden sunshine sitting on it?

It's a Yellow sun practice round.
Dosn't say what Mk.
All the nukes at Cosford seem to be practice rounds.
At Hack green as a contrast they all seem to be deactivated:-o

Thanks for all this information about Nukes, as a child of the 60's all this was top secret and in emergency we should hide under our desks. My Dad's idea was 'go outside and look at it, hope it kills you as the world will be a hell of a place to live afterwords'. By the way the use of SABT's and GSE's etc. Any chance of saying what they mean to us none military types??? Probably obvious though.

Why were the bombs different for each V bomber as you would have thought the specifications for the bombers would have been similar???

I just wonder what would have happened if the we had had to use them, would they have worked and could we get enough serviceable planes in the air etc.???

Richard wrote:

Thanks for all this information about Nukes, as a child of the 60's all this was top secret and in emergency we should hide under our desks. My Dad's idea was 'go outside and look at it, hope it kills you as the world will be a hell of a place to live afterwords'. By the way the use of SABT's and GSE's etc. Any chance of saying what they mean to us none military types??? Probably obvious though.

Why were the bombs different for each V bomber as you would have thought the specifications for the bombers would have been similar???

I just wonder what would have happened if the we had had to use them, would they have worked and could we get enough serviceable planes in the air etc.???

Richard, SABT was Standard Airfield Bomb Trolley- used to carry weapons for the V force. had a hand cranked gear arrangement on each wheel and the rear wheels could be unpinned to allow steering from ewither or both ends for fine tuning under the bomb bay BUT I have to say when the armourers had me as a tractor driver they never needed them; World champion tractor and trailer reverser RAF Akrotiri 1970 -73 !!!!! Don't ask me about the weapons not much knowledge PETER is the man for that, Could we have got enough ac into the air ?? the answer to that is how many would it take to wipe each other off the face of the planet I think the answer is not too many to do that job !

TED

Ted: Just found an extract from AP 4306A, Section 12, to AL28 dated June 1956. Here it is called, in that quaint way the RAF has with words, "Transporter, Bomb, Airfield, Standard". Swinging the words rouns to make something sensible, we get Standard Airfield Bomb Transporter (as opposed to trolley). It shows the basic weight as 3,115 lb and the maximum safe loading was 14,000 lb.

WJT;68236 wrote:

Ted: Just found an extract from AP 4306A, Section 12, to AL28 dated June 1956. Here it is called, in that quaint way the RAF has with words, "Transporter, Bomb, Airfield, Standard". Swinging the words rouns to make something sensible, we get Standard Airfield Bomb Transporter (as opposed to trolley). It shows the basic weight as 3,115 lb and the maximum safe loading was 14,000 lb.

Yea transporter it is !! Daft RAF terminoligy no wonder I am 3 parts mad after all those years ! LOL re the 14,000lb another stupid term THey should have said Max load 14,000lb much simpler than maximum safe loading.

Has that AP got anything on the power pack used to lift the bomb carriers up into the Vulcans ??

TED

Ted you should know how military terminology works!!! For those that dont the reason its back to front is actually quite simple, first of all you have what the item is eg shirt and then who its for men and then any other distinguishing things such as the colour and when I joined up the fact that it was collar attached. As Alexander Orlov would say simples!!

As for whether the nukes (or in British miltary terminology strike wapons) would have worked, well if they didnt would the government have got their money back? And if it had gone to a shooting match over Cuba would anyone have known?

canberra;68253 wrote:

Ted you should know how military terminology works!!! For those that dont the reason its back to front is actually quite simple, first of all you have what the item is eg shirt and then who its for men and then any other distinguishing things such as the colour and when I joined up the fact that it was collar attached. As Alexander Orlov would say simples!!

As for whether the nukes (or in British miltary terminology strike wapons) would have worked, well if they didnt would the government have got their money back? And if it had gone to a shooting match over Cuba would anyone have known?

I don't think we would have got our money back more like a credit note for some scourched KFC or Big Macs !!!