NUCLEAR bombs stored at British military bases in the late 1950s could have
exploded by accident, according to declassified Royal Air Force papers. Just one
going off would have been like 25 Hiroshima blasts.
Rushed into service as a stop-gap while Britain developed its own H-bomb, the
gigantic devices held so much fissionable material that they risked going
critical when armed, the documents reveal.
Up to a dozen of the huge fission weapons, based on a design codenamed Violet
Club, were supplied to RAF bases including those at Finningley in South
Yorkshire, Scampton in Lincolnshire and Wittering in Cambridgeshire between…
