British nuclear weapons links

The quality of information on the internet relating to British nuclear weapons is extremely variable.  The links included below have been chosen for reliability and interest.

A good starting-place for any internet research on nuclear weapons is the The Nuclear Weapon Archive (formerly the High-Energy Weapons Archive).  Amongst the resources linked from the archive homepage are Carey Sublette's "Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions" – including surely the most extensive and reliable public-domain information on nuclear weapons design.  Of specific interest to students of British nuclear weapons are full and fairly reliable accounts, with excellent pictures, of early and later British nuclear testing and the development of the British nuclear arsenal from Blue Danube to Trident.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) website at Aldermaston includes an authoritative timeline of British nuclear history with links to information on individual weapons and projects, including photographs. The historical information on the AWE site was also published in David Hawkings's book Keeping the peace: the Aldermaston story (AWE/Leo Cooper 2000), where more photographs can be found.

Some information on the history of British nuclear weapons can also be gleaned from another official site, that of the National Archives (formerly Public Records Office) at Kew, where there's a summary of records management policy on nuclear weapons after 1967.

The splendid "Vulcans in camera" site in the UK includes a good deal more than just information on the RAF's famous delta-winged bomber.  In particular there's a nuclear weapons page with links to individual weapons carried by the Vulcan, including more excellent photographs (mostly UK crown copyright).  This is a very reliable site with information not available elsewhere.

Other sites offering reasonably reliable data on British nuclear weapons include those of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Center for Defense Information, Natural Resources Defence Council and Robert Johnston in the US; the British American Security Information Council in mid-Atlantic; the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and a British company called Anglia Media Services.  The Bulletin, CDI and NRDC focus on up-to-date information on recent weapons systems, and BASIC and CND on current issues of controversy, for example Trident replacement; the others include historical information.  Unfortunately not all of these sites include information on the sources they've used.

No researcher into postwar British defence can have failed to notice the bewildering number of codenames involved.  Chris Gibson's skomer website has the most comprehensive guide on the internet, including brief data on nuclear projects and much else of interest.  I compiled the glossary on the Mountbatten Centre’s own site for publication in the journal Prospero.  A link to information about Prospero, along with a great deal of other information, can be found at Nick Hill's British rocketry site.  The nuclear delivery systems Blue Streak and Blue Steel in particular are featured.

British nuclear testing, and the environmental and medical legacy thereof, are covered by a number of sites.  The British Nuclear Test Veterans' Association site is worth a visit, and there are lots of excellent photographs on another veterans' site www.christmas-island.org.  Southampton University takes no position on the medical effects of British testing; interested researchers will want to search the Health Protection Agency (formerly NRPB) site for relevant papers, as well as looking at the veterans' sites.  The testing programme at Maralinga, and subsequent clean-up operations, are described in detail by Alan Parkinson in an article for the Medical Association for Prevention of War.  Meanwhile an excellent article by Jim Walsh in the Nonproliferation Review called Surprise Down Under gives information on Australia's ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons of its own during the 1950s and 1960s, and its talks with the British government on the subject.  The Swiss Seismological Institute has a full British test listing with relevant data.

Amidst a flurry of publicity, information on accidents involving British nuclear weapons between 1960 and 1991 was released by the Ministry of Defence in late 2003.  More information, and a link to a copy of the paper released by the MoD, can be found at the Memory Hole site.  None of the accidents appears to have been as hair-raising as some over the years involving US nuclear weapons, and the MoD paper suggests no release of ra dioactivity has taken place following any UK accident. 

There are several websites with information from Cold War archaeologists on British nuclear weapons storage sites such as RAF Barnham in Norfolk and RAF Faldingworth in Lincolnshire, including those of Bunker Tours, Subterranea Britannica and David Farrant, who includes a good deal of incidental (and mostly accurate) information on British nuclear weapons.

Odd items of academic research relating to Britain's nuclear weapons appear on the internet.  Len Scott and Stephen Twigge's paper for the Electronic Journal of International History on The Other Other Missiles of October addresses command and control issues during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and my own article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Where Her Majesty's Weapons Were, details overseas deployments of Britain's nuclear arsenal.

Finally for those needing to know more the online catalogue of the UK National Archives (formerly Public Records Office) is indispensable.  Other relevant archives in the UK include the Zuckerman papers at UEA in Norwich; various collections at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge and the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College, London, which also has what it calls a Nuclear History Database including extracts from the PRO catalogue; and the Mountbatten papers here in Southampton.

Richard Moore

July 2006