Service
RAF stocks of Red Beard for the Canberra and V-bomber forces totalled 110. Of these, 48 were stockpiled in Cyprus to meet the UK's commitments to CENTO, 48 were stockpiled in Singapore (RAF Tengah) to meet commitments to SEATO, and the remainder were located in the UK. Royal Navy stocks are believed, from archived declassified documents, to total 35 weapons to be shared between five aircraft carriers and shore-based supply and overhaul infrastructure. The carriers were thought (from similar sources) to each have an air-conditioned storage capacity for five Red Beard weapons.
Before the Red Beard codename was issued in 1952, it was frequently referred to in official documents as the "Javelin Bomb", because it was originally conceived as a weapon for the "thin-wing Javelin bomber", a projected derivative of the (thick wing) Gloster Javelin all-weather fighter. The designation "Target Marker Bomb" was a euphemism used to disguise the nature of the bomb, so that its dimensions and weights etc. could be circulated to aircraft and aircraft equipment designers without compromising security.
It was replaced by the WE.177 in the early 1970s.
Read more about this topic: Red Beard (nuclear Weapon)
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“But when with moving accents thou
Shalt constant faith and service vow,
Thy Celia shall receive those charms
With open ears, and with unfolded arms.”
—Thomas Carew (1589–1639)
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The socialism of our day has done good service in setting men to thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by the opulent, can be enjoyed by all.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)