A bomb treaty.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Combwork

No, I spent most of my childhood until I was about 10 at Bicester R.A.F. base in Oxfordshire. The U.S.A.F. base at Upper Hayford was just down the road from us. This was in the early 1950's when a lot of runways were the same as used in WW2. Bombers were just too big to use a short runway so to get them off the ground they used JATO bottles strapped under the wings.

Solid fuel boosters. Re-usable, they'd be dropped off when the plane reached take off speed. Not dissimilar to the solid fuel boosters used on the Space Shuttle and like them, if they misfired the airplane was in deep shit. Landing was something else. Again like the Shuttle, parachutes were deployed to slow the thing down, quite an impressive display for a small boy.

When you think back on it, putting aircraft like the Vulcan and B52 allegedly carrying an atomic bomb onto a runway that was known to be too short was kind of risky, wasn't it? The only major incident that the public are aware of was when a U.S.A.F. bomber (can't remember the type) carrying at least one atomic bomb (not a dummy) crash landed and caught fire. Fire crews attended and used all their water to cool the thing down; the crew were left to die.

I was an Air Force brat and spent some formative years in/around Upper Heyford. (My brother was born in Banbury.)

I always found it interesting that, other than the fight line, the base was -- essentially -- "open."

You've got F-111's, with tactical nukes, a thousand yards away, but anyone could walk darned near anywhere.

Odd...