Red Beard (Nuclear Weapon) (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Red Beard was the first British tactical nuclear weapon. It was carried by the English Electric Canberra and the V bombers of the Royal Air Force, and by the Blackburn Buccaneers, Sea Vixens and Supermarine Scimitars of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. Developed to Operational Requirement 1127 (OR.1127), it entered service in 1962 and was withdrawn in 1971. Red Beard was an unboosted fission weapon that used a composite core (mixed core in British terminology of the time). The composite core used both weapons-grade plutonium and weapons-grade uranium-235, and was intended to minimise risks of predetonation that was a feature of all-plutonium designs of that period with yields larger than 10 kilotons.