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Originally Posted by Pierre
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Your previous answer was incorrect - you focused on Vulcans, and ignored Buccaneers, Jaguars, and Tornados, which carried the free-fall WE177s…
You tried to move the goalposts from
"Bombers as a delivery mechanism for nuclear warhead ended in the 60's." to "
They stopped being primary delivery mechanism in the 60’s", even though your link and post stated "
The Vulcan continued to carry nuclear weapons through to the end of the 1970’s in a tactical role.".
Pretty sure the 70s were after the 60s…
Anyhoo, Buccaneers, Jaguars, and Tornadoes carried nuclear bombs in the 80s…
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bri...clear-weapons/
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In the tense decade of the 1980s, those strategic weapons comprised the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) deployed on four Resolution-class nuclear-powered submarines. One of these submarines was to be on patrol at any one time according to the doctrine of "continuous at-sea deterrence" (CASD). Each had sixteen vertical-launch missile tubes with a Polaris A3 missile carrying three thermonuclear warheads, each of these in turn having a reported destructive power of 200 kilotons (about sixteen times that of the Hiroshima bomb, dropped by the United States over this Japanese city on 6 August 1945).
Polaris was far from alone in Britain's nuclear arsenal. The Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, and the army each had its own nuclear forces. In the RAF, three different aircraft types could deliver tactical nuclear free-fall bombs, variants of the WE-177 comparable with the ones in the Dean Hill accident. Their destructive power was reputed to be similar to, or rather more powerful than, Hiroshima. These nuclear-capable aircraft were the elderly but robust UK-based Buccaneer, potentially for low-level attacks against land and marine targets; the Anglo-French Jaguar single-seat aircraft; and the new Panavia Tornado, with up to 220 of the GR1 nuclear-capable version on order. In time the Tornado would replace the Buccaneer and Jaguar, and like the Jaguar be based both in the UK and West Germany.
In addition, the RAF deployed the Nimrod long-range maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine strike-aircraft from St Mawgan in Cornwall and Kinloss in Scotland. The Nimrod could carry the US B57 nuclear depth-bomb, which was normally under US custody but could be made available for the RAF to use under a dual-control arrangement.
All the navy’s tactical nuclear weapons were of the British-developed WE-177 type, of two variants: either free-fall bombs for delivery against land targets by Sea Harrier jets operating from aircraft-carriers (HMS Illustrious, HMS Invincible, or HMS Ark Royal) or nuclear depth-bombs for delivery by Sea King or Lynx helicopters.
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