page_title: Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
section_title: British nuclear weapons
hierarchical_section_title: Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom / History / British nuclear weapons
caption_attribution_description: English: Oblique view of a British "Yellow Sun" nuclear bomb, photographed under the wing of a Vickers Valiant bomber at RAF Cosford (Aerospace Museum), UK.
context_page_description: In 1952 the United Kingdom became the third country to develop and test nuclear weapons, and is one of the five nuclear-weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
  The UK initiated a nuclear weapons programme, codenamed Tube Alloys, during the Second World War. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, it was merged with the American Manhattan Project. The British contribution to the Manhattan Project saw British scientists participate in most of its work. The British government considered nuclear weapons to be a joint discovery, but the American Atomic Energy Act of 1946 restricted other countries, including the UK, from access to information about nuclear weapons. Fearing the loss of Britain's great power status, the UK resumed its own project, now codenamed High Explosive Research. On 3 October 1952, it detonated an atomic bomb in the Monte Bello Islands of Western Australia in Operation Hurricane. Eleven more British nuclear weapons tests in Australia were carried out over the following decade, including seven British nuclear tests at Maralinga in 1956 and 1957.
context_section_description: The MDA made fully developed and tested American designs available quickly and cheaply. The first of these was the Mark 28, which was "Anglicised" and manufactured in the UK as Red Snow. Exact copies of American designs were not pursued; the high explosive used in American warheads were more sensitive than British high explosive, and had caused fatal accidents in the US. Its use was not contemplated in the UK after an accident at Aldermaston on 28 February 1959 when two men were killed after a piece of British high explosive fell from a lorry. British high explosive was also bulkier, so a redesign was required.
  Red Snow was far more economical in its use of fissile material than the Green Grass warhead in the Yellow Sun Mk.1 bomb, Britain's first production hydrogen bomb. A Yellow Sun Mk.2 with Red Snow, therefore, cost £500,000 compared to £1.2 million for the Mk.1. RAF Bomber Command wanted Violet Club replaced as soon as possible, so 37 Yellow Sun Mk.1s were delivered by the end of 1959. Deliveries of the Yellow Sun Mk.2 commenced in January 1961, and 43 were delivered by the end of the year. In November 1958. Red Snow also replaced Green Grass as the warhead in the Blue Steel stand-off missile.
  The kiloton Red Beard, was developed for use by the Canberras and the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. Technical problems delayed its introduction into service, but over 100 were delivered by the end of 1961. Up to 48 Red Beards were secretly stowed in a highly secured weapons storage facility at RAF Tengah in Singapore between 1962 and 1971 for possible use V bombers and for Britain's military commitment to SEATO.
  In 1960 the government decided to cancel the Blue Streak missile based on the Chiefs of Staff's conclusion that it was too vulnerable to attack and thus was only useful for a first strike, and decided to purchase the American air-launched Skybolt missile instead. Macmillan met with Eisenhower in March 1960, and secured permission to buy Skybolt without strings attached. In return, the Americans were given permission to base the US Navy's Polaris-equipped ballistic missile submarines at Holy Loch in Scotland.
  The Americans initially intended to pair Skybolt with the W47 warhead, an innovative light-weight design from the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory developed for Polaris. The British wanted to use Red Snow, partly for safety reasons and partly because it was not certain that the advanced M47 design would be made available without strings attached. The technical problem was that Red Snow was 1,000 pounds (450 kg) heavier, and therefore the range of the Skybolt would be reduced from 1,000 to 650 miles (1,610 to 1,050 km). A megaton design known as RE.179 based on the W49 warhead used in American ICBMs was developed for Skybolt.
  At the same time, work was in progress on a Red Beard replacement for use with the RAF's BAC TSR-2 and the Royal Navy's Blackburn Buccaneer. Ultimately, a warhead was produced in two variants: the high-yield (300 to 450 kilotonnes of TNT (1,300 to 1,900 TJ)) WE.177B and the low-yield (0.5 or 10 kilotonnes of TNT (2.1 or 41.8 TJ)) WE.177A as a Red Beard replacement, and for use in depth charges and anti-submarine missiles. WE.177 was later adapted for use with Polaris, and would become the longest-serving British nuclear weapon.
  The deployment of ships carrying nuclear weapons caused complications during the Falklands War, and in the aftermath of that war it was decided to stockpile them ashore in peacetime. When the US withdrew its theatre nuclear weapons from Europe, the British government followed suit. The nuclear depth bombs were withdrawn from service in 1992, followed by the WE.177 free-fall bombs on 31 March 1998, and all were dismantled by the end of August.
caption: Yellow Sun, Britain's first production thermonuclear bomb
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-FX3", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.0", "Image DateTime": "2011:10:08 16:01:15", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "418", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 14, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "7060", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6920", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/4", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:10:08 16:01:15", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:10:08 16:01:15", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "33/100", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2816", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1584", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "6630", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "38", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}