When Vulcans nuked the USA - twice...

[NARSES2]

We'd all better hope it's a dummy, because they've also got the arming keys and instructions on how to use them there. You know those tubular keys that were all the rage on cycle/motorbike locks until someone proved you could pick them with a BiC pen barrel? Yep, same keys...

Never heard of that, but there again the guys who developed the thing would have used Parkers and Sheaffers, nothing so "urban" as a BIC 

[jcf]

I wonder how many times the USAF and USN 'nuked' the UK?

Probably lots of times, but it wouldn't have meant as much because after some point in the late '50s/early '60s, nobody was seriously trying to defend the whole of UK airspace against all attacks. All the RAF was supposed to do was defend the V-bomber bases long enough for them to get off the ground and on their way to Russia. With the UK being so small and so densely packed, less than a dozen decent-sized nukes dropped literally anywhere is game over for most of the population within the next year. A defence would have to be near 100% perfect to be worth having at all, and no defence in history has ever come close to that standard. Certainly nothing the UK could afford in 1960.

True, but I was thinking of late '40s - mid '50s scenarios.

[Weaver]

I wonder how many times the USAF and USN 'nuked' the UK?

Probably lots of times, but it wouldn't have meant as much because after some point in the late '50s/early '60s, nobody was seriously trying to defend the whole of UK airspace against all attacks. All the RAF was supposed to do was defend the V-bomber bases long enough for them to get off the ground and on their way to Russia. With the UK being so small and so densely packed, less than a dozen decent-sized nukes dropped literally anywhere is game over for most of the population within the next year. A defence would have to be near 100% perfect to be worth having at all, and no defence in history has ever come close to that standard. Certainly nothing the UK could afford in 1960.

True, but I was thinking of late '40s - mid '50s scenarios.

I have half a memory of there being an air defence exercise in the 1950s (early?) in which the RAF did badly against bomber attacks, which were part RAF, part USAAF.