Post by lordroel on Aug 15, 2020 8:30:04 GMT
What if: RAF 240 bomber fleet in the 1950s
In the early 1950s, the RAF planned for a medium bomber force of 240 aircraft – a mix of the Vickers Valiant, Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor. That force was to be based on twelve Class 1 airfields, most obviously distinguished by their 3,000-yard (9,000-foot) runways.
Photo: RAF V-bombers in flight — Avro Vulcan, Vickers Valiant and Handley-Page Victor
After a succession of defence reviews, this was cut down to just 144 planned aircraft. The deployed force peaked at 159 bombers in 1964, but this included a number of Valiants assigned to SACEUR as tactical bombers. These were deployed on eight Class 1 airfields: RAF Finningley, RAF Scampton, RAF Waddington, RAF Coningsby, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Wittering, RAF Marham and RAF Honington.
Two other Class 1 airfields were in RAF service in the UK, for a total of ten. RAF Wyton was the home of the Strategic Reconnaissance Force, which as far as medium bombers go meant 543 Squadron’s Valiants and Victors, but never hosted any squadrons of the Main Force. Likewise, RAF Gaydon was used as an operational base only by the first Main Force squadron, 138 Squadron with Valiants, for a few months in 1955 before moving to Wittering. Thereafter, Gaydon only seems to have been employed as a test and training base.
RAF Watton and RAF Bassingbourn were planned to have been the other two bases, as reported in RAF Historical Society Journal 26. As the planned fleet reduced, the need for bases reduced, so their reconstruction to Class 1 airfields was cancelled.
This seems to make sense, on the face of it. 240 aircraft on 12 airfields, for 20 aircraft per base. Perfect. But then look at it more closely. A bomber squadron had eight aircraft. Twenty aircraft on an airfield means two and a half squadrons on each base, which doesn’t really make sense. Perhaps some would have had two squadrons and two would have three squadrons? That’s feasible, at least.
Photo: Three Vulcans in flight during 1957
But then, each airfield had the same size bomb store, with space for 12 Blue Danube atomic bombs. If some bases were to have 16 bombers and some 24, you’d expect to see the bomb stores reflect that, but they don’t. You could do it with ten operating bases – add one for training (Gaydon) and one for the reconnaissance force (Wyton) and you get twelve airfields. Again, perfect sense!
But wait a minute. We’re forgetting about another couple of bits of evidence: RAF Faldingworth and RAF Barnham. Both were non-flying stations, home to 92 Maintenance Unit and 94 Maintenance Unit – specialist units designed to maintain the Blue Danube bombs and store the second-line munitions.
At these two bases, helpfully visited by Subterrannea Britannica (Faldingworth and Barnham) there were three large buildings to hold the bombs themselves, and 57 ‘hutches’ for fissile cores. Of those ‘hutches’, 48 held a single core and 9 could hold two, whilst each of the bomb stores could hold 16 sets of non-nuclear components.
It seems likely that the two-core ‘hutches’ held non-fissile cores for inspection purposes, and the others the ‘live’ cores. That being the case, 48 weapons at each of Faldingworth and Barnham seems to have been the plan. So – two nuclear bomb Maintenance Units with 48 weapons each, and twelve airfields with twelve weapons each. Total, 240 bombs.
Oh. Isn’t that a convenient number?
So – a hypothesis. Twenty aircraft and twelve bombs to each base. Each base was to have two squadrons of eight first-line and two reserve aircraft.2 On any given day, 75% of the operational aircraft could carry out a strike order, which is broadly comparable to expected figures in the Second World War – at that time, a recent memory. So, twelve aircraft able to launch, needing twelve bombs on the base. In those days, it wasn’t thought to be automatic that a nuclear war would be over in an afternoon. So, bring up the bombs from 92 MU and 94 MU, make the remaining 8 aircraft on each base operational – probably using a mixture of crews recalled from leave and those that survived the first attack – and that’s your second wave.
So what about the cuts to the force size? Well, the target first went from 240 to 200 aircraft. Well, if we lose the four maintenance reserves on each base, there go 48 aircraft for a total of 192. Close enough. Finally it went to 144. That’s your initial wave, 12 aircraft from 12 bases, and by 1960 it was expected that the bases (along with reserve aircraft, crews and bombs) would be flattened by a Soviet strike before the second wave could launch. So why bother providing for it?
Map: Distances of Soviet cities from UK and Middle East Bases
Now, back to the actual bases. Twelve of them. Look at the planned airfields on a map: there are six north-west of the Wash, which fell into No. 1 Group . There are five south and east of the Wash – two formed No. 3 group, two were never built, and Wyton makes five. The twenty Thor ballistic missile bases were similarly divided, the Wikipedia article on Project Emily shows this well.
Gaydon just doesn’t fit. It’s miles and miles to the west of the deployment area3, and was only briefly used as an operational base even when the Medium Bomber Force was being built up at great pace. I don’t believe it was initially intended to be one of the twelve operational bases. That means we’re missing a base. The Subbrit article on Barnham lists the bases it served. All were Class 1 airfields, including Wyton, but also RAF Upwood – I think this may well be the missing base, even further down the priority list than Bassinbourn and Watton.
That’s a bit speculative. Can we cross-reference it?
Yes, we can. The English Electric Canberra was the RAF’s first jet bomber, and the initial B.2 model was used by Bomber Command (with conventional bombs) temporarily whilst the Valiant was under development. Look at the list of Canberra squadrons, with particular reference to the B.2 squadrons. There are very familiar names. All of the Class 1 airfields apart from Gaydon and Bassingbourn, in fact. Plus a few more in the deployment area: Binbrook, Hemswell, Upwood and West Raynham. Any of these would be perfectly credible as bases for the Medium Bomber Force.
I think that Wyton was probably intended as a Main Force base, with the Strategic Reconnaissance Force moving to Gaydon alongside the training units. But if it wasn’t, one of the other Canberra bases might have made up the shortfall.
Of course, once the force had been cut down to 144 aircraft, the bases were for peacetime purposes. In wartime, the bombers would have been dispersed in pairs and fours to airfields across the UK. With four minutes of warning of an incoming missile attack, and crews trained to get their aircraft clear of an airfield within five minutes of the ‘scramble’ order, some would probably get away to take their chances with Soviet air defences.
At which point they might or might not contribute towards the general destruction of then-modern society.
Page comes from: RAF V-Bomber Bases – Unravelling the Original Plan
Another good article is: UK Governments and the British Bomber-borne Nuclear Deterrent, 1945–1955
In the early 1950s, the RAF planned for a medium bomber force of 240 aircraft – a mix of the Vickers Valiant, Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor. That force was to be based on twelve Class 1 airfields, most obviously distinguished by their 3,000-yard (9,000-foot) runways.
Photo: RAF V-bombers in flight — Avro Vulcan, Vickers Valiant and Handley-Page Victor
After a succession of defence reviews, this was cut down to just 144 planned aircraft. The deployed force peaked at 159 bombers in 1964, but this included a number of Valiants assigned to SACEUR as tactical bombers. These were deployed on eight Class 1 airfields: RAF Finningley, RAF Scampton, RAF Waddington, RAF Coningsby, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Wittering, RAF Marham and RAF Honington.
Two other Class 1 airfields were in RAF service in the UK, for a total of ten. RAF Wyton was the home of the Strategic Reconnaissance Force, which as far as medium bombers go meant 543 Squadron’s Valiants and Victors, but never hosted any squadrons of the Main Force. Likewise, RAF Gaydon was used as an operational base only by the first Main Force squadron, 138 Squadron with Valiants, for a few months in 1955 before moving to Wittering. Thereafter, Gaydon only seems to have been employed as a test and training base.
RAF Watton and RAF Bassingbourn were planned to have been the other two bases, as reported in RAF Historical Society Journal 26. As the planned fleet reduced, the need for bases reduced, so their reconstruction to Class 1 airfields was cancelled.
This seems to make sense, on the face of it. 240 aircraft on 12 airfields, for 20 aircraft per base. Perfect. But then look at it more closely. A bomber squadron had eight aircraft. Twenty aircraft on an airfield means two and a half squadrons on each base, which doesn’t really make sense. Perhaps some would have had two squadrons and two would have three squadrons? That’s feasible, at least.
Photo: Three Vulcans in flight during 1957
But then, each airfield had the same size bomb store, with space for 12 Blue Danube atomic bombs. If some bases were to have 16 bombers and some 24, you’d expect to see the bomb stores reflect that, but they don’t. You could do it with ten operating bases – add one for training (Gaydon) and one for the reconnaissance force (Wyton) and you get twelve airfields. Again, perfect sense!
But wait a minute. We’re forgetting about another couple of bits of evidence: RAF Faldingworth and RAF Barnham. Both were non-flying stations, home to 92 Maintenance Unit and 94 Maintenance Unit – specialist units designed to maintain the Blue Danube bombs and store the second-line munitions.
At these two bases, helpfully visited by Subterrannea Britannica (Faldingworth and Barnham) there were three large buildings to hold the bombs themselves, and 57 ‘hutches’ for fissile cores. Of those ‘hutches’, 48 held a single core and 9 could hold two, whilst each of the bomb stores could hold 16 sets of non-nuclear components.
It seems likely that the two-core ‘hutches’ held non-fissile cores for inspection purposes, and the others the ‘live’ cores. That being the case, 48 weapons at each of Faldingworth and Barnham seems to have been the plan. So – two nuclear bomb Maintenance Units with 48 weapons each, and twelve airfields with twelve weapons each. Total, 240 bombs.
Oh. Isn’t that a convenient number?
So – a hypothesis. Twenty aircraft and twelve bombs to each base. Each base was to have two squadrons of eight first-line and two reserve aircraft.2 On any given day, 75% of the operational aircraft could carry out a strike order, which is broadly comparable to expected figures in the Second World War – at that time, a recent memory. So, twelve aircraft able to launch, needing twelve bombs on the base. In those days, it wasn’t thought to be automatic that a nuclear war would be over in an afternoon. So, bring up the bombs from 92 MU and 94 MU, make the remaining 8 aircraft on each base operational – probably using a mixture of crews recalled from leave and those that survived the first attack – and that’s your second wave.
So what about the cuts to the force size? Well, the target first went from 240 to 200 aircraft. Well, if we lose the four maintenance reserves on each base, there go 48 aircraft for a total of 192. Close enough. Finally it went to 144. That’s your initial wave, 12 aircraft from 12 bases, and by 1960 it was expected that the bases (along with reserve aircraft, crews and bombs) would be flattened by a Soviet strike before the second wave could launch. So why bother providing for it?
Map: Distances of Soviet cities from UK and Middle East Bases
Now, back to the actual bases. Twelve of them. Look at the planned airfields on a map: there are six north-west of the Wash, which fell into No. 1 Group . There are five south and east of the Wash – two formed No. 3 group, two were never built, and Wyton makes five. The twenty Thor ballistic missile bases were similarly divided, the Wikipedia article on Project Emily shows this well.
Gaydon just doesn’t fit. It’s miles and miles to the west of the deployment area3, and was only briefly used as an operational base even when the Medium Bomber Force was being built up at great pace. I don’t believe it was initially intended to be one of the twelve operational bases. That means we’re missing a base. The Subbrit article on Barnham lists the bases it served. All were Class 1 airfields, including Wyton, but also RAF Upwood – I think this may well be the missing base, even further down the priority list than Bassinbourn and Watton.
That’s a bit speculative. Can we cross-reference it?
Yes, we can. The English Electric Canberra was the RAF’s first jet bomber, and the initial B.2 model was used by Bomber Command (with conventional bombs) temporarily whilst the Valiant was under development. Look at the list of Canberra squadrons, with particular reference to the B.2 squadrons. There are very familiar names. All of the Class 1 airfields apart from Gaydon and Bassingbourn, in fact. Plus a few more in the deployment area: Binbrook, Hemswell, Upwood and West Raynham. Any of these would be perfectly credible as bases for the Medium Bomber Force.
I think that Wyton was probably intended as a Main Force base, with the Strategic Reconnaissance Force moving to Gaydon alongside the training units. But if it wasn’t, one of the other Canberra bases might have made up the shortfall.
Of course, once the force had been cut down to 144 aircraft, the bases were for peacetime purposes. In wartime, the bombers would have been dispersed in pairs and fours to airfields across the UK. With four minutes of warning of an incoming missile attack, and crews trained to get their aircraft clear of an airfield within five minutes of the ‘scramble’ order, some would probably get away to take their chances with Soviet air defences.
At which point they might or might not contribute towards the general destruction of then-modern society.
Page comes from: RAF V-Bomber Bases – Unravelling the Original Plan
Another good article is: UK Governments and the British Bomber-borne Nuclear Deterrent, 1945–1955
