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The bomb was hailed as a hydrogen bomb, and the truth that it was actually a large fission bomb was kept secret by the British government until the end of the Cold War. [135] [136] An Operational Requirement (OR1142) had been issued in 1955 for a thermonuclear warhead for a medium-range ballistic missile, which became Blue Streak. This was ...
The British hydrogen bomb programme demonstrated Britain's ability to produce thermonuclear weapons in the Operation Grapple nuclear tests in the Pacific, and led to the amendment of the McMahon Act. Since the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement , the US and the UK have cooperated extensively on nuclear security matters.
April: 1957 Defence White Paper emphasises nuclear weapons to replace Britain's declining conventional military capabilities. [53] May: First British hydrogen bomb test in Operation Grapple off Malden Island in the Pacific is a failure. [64] May: Memorandum of Understanding with the US regarding the loan of nuclear weapons to the UK in wartime ...
These sites were built specifically to store bomb components in small buildings called 'hutches' with the high explosive elements of the weapons stored in dedicated storage areas. [3] [4] [5] The storage facilities were probably closed in 1963 and put up for sale in 1966, the Barnham site becoming an industrial estate. The site at Barnham is a ...
This U.S. design was the heavy but highly efficient (i.e., nuclear weapon yield per unit bomb weight) 25 Mt (100 PJ) B41 nuclear bomb. [22] The Soviet Union is thought to have used multiple stages (including more than one tertiary fusion stage) in their 50 Mt (210 PJ) (100 Mt (420 PJ) in intended use) Tsar Bomba.
British nuclear weapons are designed and developed by the UK's Atomic Weapons Establishment. The United Kingdom has four Vanguard -class submarines armed with nuclear armed Trident missiles . The principle of operation is based on maintaining deterrent effect by always having at least one submarine at sea, and was designed during the Cold War ...
Operation Grapple was a set of four series of British nuclear weapons tests of early atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs carried out in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Kiritimati (Christmas Island) in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the Pacific Ocean (modern Kiribati) as part of the British hydrogen bomb programme.
Red Snow was a British thermonuclear weapon, [1] based on the US W28 (then called Mark 28) design used in the B28 thermonuclear bomb and AGM-28 Hound Dog missile. [2] The US W28 had yields of 70, 350, 1,100 and 1,450 kilotonnes of TNT (0.29, 1.46, 4.60 and 6.07 PJ) [3] and while Red Snow yields are still classified, declassified British documents indicate the existence of "kiloton Red Snow ...