Might the Royal Air Force go nuclear again?
The defence review suggests that Britain could soon wield tactical nuclear bombs
THE RUMOUR among locals in the 1960s was that the base was a secret centre for breeding chimpanzees for Britain’s space programme. There was no such space programme. And there were certainly no chimpanzees. The heavily defended buildings at RAF Barnham in Norfolk were home to the nuclear bombs carried by British planes. Nuclear convoys of cargo trucks were routine. In one town’s High Street, recalls an officer, the drivers “discovered that, by blipping their throttles at the right moment they could lift the mini-skirts of the girls on the pavement alongside them.”
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