Bombers production

Soviet interceptor fighter development , note by the Chief of Air Staff, COS (50) 357, 13 Sep. 1950 Minister of Defence to Prime Minister, 17 Nov. 1950 Minister of Supply to Prime Minister, 22 Nov. 1950, PREM 8/1357, TNA. This file also contains a report, dated 16 May 1950, by the Joint Intelligence Bureau on production of Russian aircraft, including jet fighters with swept-back wings and twin-jet bombers. 

The British aircraft industry appeared to be backward compared with its American and Soviet counterparts, but this was mainly because the expectation that the maximum danger of war lay in the future, about 1957, led to a gap in British development and production of a number of important weapons systems. The timing of up-to-date strategic bombers was linked to the development of the British atomic bomb, which, although first tested in October 1952, would not be ready for operational use until about 1956. Meanwhile Britain was wholly dependent on the United States for nuclear deterrence. 

Policymaking was not made any easier by the rapidity of technical change in nuclear warfare, on the one hand, and by the slowness of the development of British delivery systems, on the other. The first examples of Blue Danube, the production model of the British atomic bomb, were delivered to Bomber Command s Armament School in November 1953 to enable RAF personnel to be trained in their storage, service and use. It would have been possible to adapt the ageing Lincoln piston-engined bombers to carry Blue Danube, but the decision was taken to... 

Lung irritants can be produced from commercially supplied compounds, or as by-products of chemical reactions. There have been recorded cases of bombers trying to include chemicals together with their explosives with the apparent intent to emit a poisonous gas. 

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