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	CNN.com - UK recalls nuclear bomb plans - April 16, 2002
		The plans relate to Britain's first operational nuclear bomb, the 15 kilotonne Blue Danube, which was in service with the Royal Air Force's B-bomber fleet from 1953 to 1961.
		A Ministry of Defence spokesman confirmed to CNN that information relating to the Blue Danube bomb had been declassified seven years ago and put in the public domain at the records office.
		Blue Danube is tested on a range in Australia in 1956
	edition.cnn.com /2002/WORLD/europe/04/16/uk.bomb (537 words)

	Vulcans in Camera - Blue Danube.
		Britain's first atomic bomb, the 10000lb Blue Danube, was delivered to the Bomber Command Armaments School at RAF Wittering in 1953.
		Blue Danube's fins extended after dropping so that it could be carried inside the bomb bays of Valiants, Vulcans and Victors.
		Blue Danube was supplemented with US Mk-5 atomic bombs in 1958, pending the introduction of smaller tactical atomic bombs and strategic megaton weapons.
	www.avrovulcan.org.uk /nukes/bluedanube.htm (180 words)

	Blue Danube Nuclear Bomb Delivered to RAF
		Britain's first operational nuclear weapon, Blue Danube, was based on the Hurricane trials device and was in service from 1953 to 1961.
		With a yield specified by the Chiefs of Staff of 10KT, Blue Danube weighed in at 10,000 pounds and could just squeeze into the bomb bays of the V bombers which carried it.
		Flight tests of Blue Danube with an inert warhead were carried out at the Orfordness range in Suffolk, and elsewhere.
	www.awe.co.uk /main_site/about_awe/history/timeline/1953/index.html (157 words)

	O lucky Canada \| thebulletin.org
		The Blue Danube was the first operational British nuclear weapon, entering service in November 1953.
		The Blue Danube, a 1.52-meter diameter sphere, was essentially a lab-built, limited-production fission bomb that initially used plutonium but was later modified to use a composite plutonium-uranium core.
		In most of the Blue Danube tests, the fireball touched the ground, vaporizing the soil and rock and leaving a crater.
	www.thebulletin.org /article.php?art_ofn=ja03clearwater (2384 words)

	Blue Peacock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Blue Peacock—dubbed the "chicken-powered nuclear bomb"—was the codename of a British project in the 1950s with the goal to store a number of ten-kiloton nuclear mines in Germany, to be placed at target locations on the North German Plain in the case of war.
		The Blue Peacock consisted of a huge steel sphere casing containing a plutonium core surrounded by high explosives.
		In July 1957 the British Army ordered ten Blue Peacocks for use in Germany, under the cover story that they were atomic power units for troops in the field.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Blue_Peacock (435 words)

	The Vickers Valiant
		A Valiant B.1 of 49 Squadron was the first RAF aircraft to drop a British operational atomic bomb, performing a test drop of a downrated "Blue Danube" weapon on Maralinga, South Australia, on 11 October 1956.
		Valiants were originally assigned to the strategic nuclear bombing role, carrying either British-built weapons such as Blue Danube, Yellow Sun, and Red Beard, or US-supplied weapons under a "dual key" arrangement.
		In the tactical bombing role, improved air defenses had made high-altitude bombing tactics questionable, and the Valiants were switched to low-altitude tactics.
	www.vectorsite.net /avval.html (4281 words)

	Publish and be Damned \| The fourth Arm (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
		By chance, the bombs had fallen on a very densely populated part of London, and there was no real means of providing an air raid warning.
		The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted the official study of the effects of atomic bombardment by both the armed forces and the Home Office but the official policy was that no war would take place for at least the next ten years.
		In the baldest terms, the casualties caused by the atomic bombs were similar or slightly less than those of the final, large-scale fire raids at Dresden and Tokyo – it was only after considerable study that the effects of radiation and fall-out were begun to be understood.
	www.pabd.com /2004/books/jaitken/Excerpt (2145 words)

	Telegraph \| News
		Blue Danube, a British Mk1 fission bomb, had a 3.6 inch-wide core with 17lb of plutonium wrapped in high explosive which increased the bomb's diameter to 4ft 9in and its weight to just under three tons.
		Despite scientific advances, the core of an atomic bomb is a relatively feeble emitter of gamma rays and scientists admit that finding one among all the containers entering Britain would be worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.
		The first was to build a bomb into the structure of a ship, sail into a major British port such as Liverpool, Southampton or even London, and then detonate it.
	www.telegraph.co.uk /news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/04/15/nuke115.xml (636 words)

	[1.0] Vulcan Development
		The bomb bay had a width of 3.2 meters (10 feet 6 inches) and the doors were 8.84 meters (29 feet) long.
		It was big enough to fit the 40 kilotonne Blue Danube fission bomb, which was so huge that it had to have pop-out fins to fit.
		The Blue Danube was soon replaced by the lighter 500 kilotonne Yellow Sun Mark 1 fusion bomb, and then the 1 megatonne Yellow Sun Mark 2.
	www.vectorsite.net /avvulcan_1.html (4260 words)

	The Telegraph - Calcutta : Opinion (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
		And so they got on with it, taking the standard British free-fall nuclear bomb of the time, the fetchingly named Blue Danube, and designing a pressurized, water-tight casing for the land-mine version.
		When completed, the new weapon, Blue Peacock, weighing 7 tonnes, could be buried in the ground or sunk in a lake, and it could be detonated either by wire, from a command post up to 3 miles away or by an 8-day clockwork device.
		Blue Peacock was cancelled in favour of a more compact nuclear land-mine based on newer technology and with a built-in heater.
	www.telegraphindia.com /1050228/asp/opinion/story_4285747.asp (596 words)

	456th Bomb Group Association: Flight of the Lady Corinne
		Bomb Group was preparing to participate in today’s mission.
		Upon “bombs away,” our plane rose slightly as her load lightened, and with this, Group took a hurried descent to a lower level.
		He retired as a colonel and at present is the 456th Bomb Group President for the 2002 Reunion in Charleston, South Carolina, May 15th to 19th.
	www.456thbombgroup.org /lady_corinne.html (3001 words)

	theage.com.au - UK reveals atomic bomb guide
		There are complete cross-sections, precise measurements and full details of the materials used in the first British A-bomb, including the two key parts - the plutonium core and the initiator that sets off the chain reaction causing the blast.
		The files relate to the construction of Blue Danube, the first British atom bomb built in the early 1950s after the Americans cut off cooperation on atomic weapons because of fears over British security.
		It included a Defence Ministry report that concluded that bomb components could be brought in easily by ship and reassembled in the target city.
	www.theage.com.au /articles/2002/04/15/1018333480701.html (487 words)

	Where Her Majesty's weapons were \| thebulletin.org
		Stand-off weapons replaced free-fall bombs, and by the end of the 1960s American Polaris missiles were deployed on British submarines (they were replaced by Tridents in the 1990s).
		The bombs stored in Germany and Cyprus were nevertheless replaced by new British weapons at the end of the 1960s, and nuclear-armed navy surface ships continued to exercise worldwide.
		A 1957 Air Ministry report found that British Valiant, Vulcan, and Victor aircraft (known as "V-bombers") carrying the Blue Danube bomb would be unable to reach the Far East because of short runways and limited facilities at key airfields along the route.
	www.thebulletin.org /article.php?art_ofn=jf01moore_050 (3432 words)

	Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The first Blue Danube weapons issued to the RAF were of 10-12 kt yield, approx the same yield as the Hiroshima bomb, although that was much smaller, being of a gun-type, whereas Blue Danube was of the implosion type similar to the Nagasaki bomb.
		A nuclear landmine dubbed Brown Bunny, later Blue Bunny, and finally Blue Peacock that used the Blue Danube warhead was developed from 1954 with the goal of deployment in the Rhine area of Germany.
		A Blue Danube bomb released from a Valiant bomber at 500 knots at 45'000ft would accelerate to a terminal speed of 2'100 feet per sec (approx Mach 2.2).
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_Kingdom (6878 words)

	smh.com.au - How to make your very own nuclear bomb
		There are complete cross-sections, precise measurements and details of the materials used for all the components of the first British bomb, including the two key parts - the plutonium core and the initiator that sets off the chain reaction to cause the blast.
		Brian Burnell said he was not normally an advocate of greater secrecy, but "these documents should never have been declassified, and since the events of September 11 there is a case for removing them from public access".
		Britain developed its own atomic bomb following the discovery in 1946 that Alan Nunn May, one the British scientific team working on Allied atomic weapons, was a Soviet spy.
	www.smh.com.au /articles/2002/04/15/1018333482457.html (458 words)

	British army planned nuclear landmines - 16 July 2003 - New Scientist (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
		Each mine was expected to produce an explosive yield of 10 kilotons, about half that of the atom bomb the US dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in 1945.
		Development work on the mine, which was codenamed Blue Peacock, began at the Armament Research and Development Establishment at Fort Halstead in Kent in 1954.
		Blue Peacock was to consist of a plutonium core surrounded by a sphere of high explosives, all encased in steel.
	www.newscientist.com /article.ns?id=dn3943 (566 words)

	UK Nuclear
		At the end of the countdown, there was a blinding electric blue light, of such an intensity I had not seen before or ever since.
		To test the effects of a ship-smuggled bomb (a threat of great concern to the British at the time), Hurricane was exploded inside the hull of the HMS Plym (1450 ton frigate) which was anchored in 40 feet of water 400 yards off shore.
		The bomb was placed in a shallow pit so the center of the nuclear reaction would be exactly at the surface.
	dr.abdulqadeer.8m.net /uk.htm (1601 words)

	Operation Buffalo - 1956
		It was a test of the Red Beard tactical bomb and yielded 15 kilotons, the largest nuclear test fired during Buffalo.
		The Blue Danube bomb was dropped from a Valiant bomber and detonated at an altitude of 480 feet.
		Plans of using a 40 kiloton version of the bomb was scrapped due to concerns of the air burst fuze failing, resulting in a surface explosion.
	www.atomicforum.org /uk/buffalo.html (617 words)

	Danube River @ nationalgeographic.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
		The contrast between Blue Danube nostalgia and reality couldn’t be sharper than in Yugoslavia, which was bombed by NATO to halt President Slobodan Milosevic’s attacks on ethnic Albanians in the southern province of Kosovo.
		“No one expected the bombs to hit that close to the houses.” Milan was in the doorway of their home when a bomb landed across the road.
		Hear the sounds from along the river, from the Blue Danube waltz to a Ukrainian wedding.
	www.nationalgeographic.com /ngm/data/2002/03/01/html/ft_20020301.4.html (1100 words)

	CNN.com - UK reveals nuclear bomb plans - April 15, 2002
		The newspaper said the ministry had also released papers to the Public Record Office describing ways that such a bomb could be smuggled into the country.
		A Ministry of Defence spokesman confirmed to CNN that information relating to the Blue Danube bomb had been declassified seven years ago and put in the public domain at the UK's Public Record Office.
		But Burnell, who worked on the British atomic weapons programme, told the Daily Telegraph that the plans were enough to enable a terrorist to make an atomic bomb without difficulty.
	archives.cnn.com /2002/WORLD/europe/04/15/uk.nuclear (567 words)

	Defense Tech: UK'S CHICKEN-POWERED NUKE
		One proposal put forward consisted of filling the casing of the nuke with live chickens, who would give off sufficient heat, prior to suffocating or starving to death, to keep the delicate explosive mechanism from freezing.
		Despite the potential importance of chickens to the project, the mine was codenamed 'Blue Peacock'.
		The design was based on Blue Danube, a free-fall nuclear bomb weighing several tonnes that was already in service with the Royal Air Force.
	www.defensetech.org /archives/001490.html (478 words)

	Operation Grapple X - 1957
		The bomb was ready for testing by November 5, the intended deadline, but rains pushed back the firing date by three days.
		The release of the bomb activated the telemetry recording instruments on the island which were focused on the intended zero point of the explosion.
		The bomb caused some damage to the infrastructure on the island and repairs were needed.
	www.atomicforum.org /uk/grapplex.html (1672 words)

	Subterranea Britannica: Research Study Group: Sites: Barnham (94 Maintainance Unit) Nuclear Bomb Store
		In the early l950s, the WW2 mustard gas weapons storage depot at Barnham, on the south side of the 94 Maintenance Unit Air Ammunition Park (serving RAF Honington and other airfields), was selected for development as a dedicated storage and maintenance facility for nuclear weapons, in particular for Blue Danube, Britain's first nuclear bomb.
		The 10000lb Blue Danube, was delivered to the Bomber Command Armaments School at RAF Wittering in 1953.
		At the entrance to each store there is an overall roof supported on concrete pillars with a gantry crane for lifting the heavy Blue Danube bombs from the large delivery trucks.
	www.subbrit.org.uk /rsg/sites/b/barnham_nuclear_bomb_store/index.html (726 words)

	Environmental Aftermath in Kosovo
		Diesel fuel used to generate electricity was essential to run the factory, and the bomb that destroyed the pumping house brought the whole plant to a standstill.
		Pieces of the bomb damaged the tank, but a large explosion was averted because the factory had managed to empty the tank.
		Since the Danube has a strong current, ice will be carried downstream, and some predict the ice will get stuck at the bridges, blocking the flow of water and causing major flooding in the city.
	forum.ra.utk.edu /2000spring/environmental.html (3827 words)

	Blue Danube's Murky Future
		BELGRADE - For Yugoslavia, the Danube River is a lifeline -- a source of fish, irrigation and drinking water and an important waterway for barges carrying grain, coal, steel, ore and other freight.
		It blames the bombings for high levels of ethylene dichloride in the damaged canals of the Danube and high levels of mercury, petroleum hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the Lepenica.
		Seven months after the war's end, the Danube system suffered another devastating setback after a dam in Romania holding over 3 million cubic feet of mud, copper, heavy metals and cyanide broke and emptied into the Tisza River.
	www.fluoridealert.org /pollution/1287.html (1016 words)

	RAF Barnham
		Construction of the Bomb Store on Thetford Heath, known as RAF Barnham began in 1953 or 1954 and was completed by 1955.
		The bombs minus there fissile components were housed in three almost identical buildings These are arranged in an arrowhead formation they are accessed by the internal loop road and are surrounded by 4.5m high earth traverses, revetted by a reinforced concrete retaining wall.
		The First nuclear weapon the store held was the relatively large Blue Danube bomb it measured 7.3m in length and weighed 10,000lbs the problems in handling such a large weapon are reflected in the provision of large lifting gantries at the entrance to each store and projecting out over the road way.
	www.bunkertours.co.uk /barnham.htm (801 words)

	BBC - Codename Suffolk - The mystery of Orford Ness
		The combination of missiles and marshes and bombs and birds means it still holds a fascination for people around the world.
		Some contained a pit into which very large weapons such as Britain's first atomic bomb, Blue Danube, could be lowered by a 10-ton crane, prior to vibration units being attached.
		The work was secret although details of Orford Ness' involvement with the research and development of the British atomic bomb may become more available over the next decades and may illustrate the priority and significance this project had to the government in the post war years.
	www.bbc.co.uk /suffolk/dont_miss/codename/orford.shtml (744 words)

	news.telegraph.co.uk - Atomic bomb secrets withdrawn from view
		Government files giving precise measurements and full details of the materials used for all the components of the first British atomic bomb were withdrawn from view at the Public Record Office yesterday.
		Access to the documents, which included blueprints for the bomb's plutonium core and the initiator which sets off the atomic reaction, was put on hold pending a Ministry of Defence review of whether or not they should be available.
		The release of the documents came to light after an engineer who worked on the bomb, codenamed Blue Danube, discovered them while trying to fill in gaps in his knowledge of the project.
	www.nci.org /02/04f/16-08.htm (236 words)

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