{"id":8725,"date":"2014-08-26T15:22:43","date_gmt":"2014-08-26T15:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/?p=8725"},"modified":"2025-03-14T21:34:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T21:34:02","slug":"raf-upper-heyford-bomb-loads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/blog\/raf-upper-heyford-bomb-loads","title":{"rendered":"RAF Upper Heyford bomb loads"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, this airbase\u00a0is a pretty big place and there are some cool relics. Including the control centre which has some very cryptic numbers and letters on various boards around the walls. We were curious as to what they were so set about decoding the designations to try find out what they had\u00a0been upto.<\/p>\n

Turns out one board is the names of the crews that flew the missions in Operation Desert Storm, \u00a0from UH during its final days as an operation airbase. Read more about the Gulf War here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Crew<\/a>
Crew names<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thats all interesting, but what ordnance did they actually have at Upper Heyford? We know they had nukes, but what else? This board gives some tantalising clues.<\/p>\n

\"Bomb<\/a>
Bomb Types<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lets find\u00a0out what they are:<\/p>\n

B-57 \u0096 \u00a0Tactical Nuclear Weapon (5-20 Kiloton depending on variant)*https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/B57_nuclear_bomb<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

B-61 \u0096 Variable Yield (0.3 to 340kilotons) Thermonuclear Weapon*\u00a0https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/B61_nuclear_bomb<\/a>\u00a0(*NB The Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 16kilotons and the Fatman Bomb dropped on Nagasaki was 21Kilotons.)<\/em><\/p>\n

BDU-38 \u0096 Practice Nuclear Bomb for training\u00a0https:\/\/www.globalsecurity.org\/military\/systems\/munitions\/bdu-38.htm<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

MK-20 \u0096 Anti-Armour Rockeye Cluster Bomb\u00a0https:\/\/www.globalsecurity.org\/military\/systems\/munitions\/mk20.htm<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

MK-82 \u0096 General Purpose Bomb\u00a0https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mark_82_bomb<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

MK-84 \u0096 Heavy General Purpose Bomb\u00a0https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mark_84_bomb<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Durandal \u0096 Runway Penetration Bomb\u00a0https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anti-runway_penetration_bomb<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

CBU-52 \u0096 Anti-Personnel Cluster Bomb\u00a0https:\/\/www.fas.org\/man\/dod-101\/sys\/dumb\/cbu-52.htm<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

CBU-58 \u0096 Cluster Bomb useful against flammable targets\u00a0https:\/\/www.fas.org\/man\/dod-101\/sys\/dumb\/cbu-58.htm<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

CBU-71 \u0096 Cluster Bomb with incendiary and fragmentation action\u00a0https:\/\/www.fas.org\/man\/dod-101\/sys\/dumb\/cbu-71.htm<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Quite a selection of weapons available then!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, this airbase\u00a0is a pretty big place and there are some cool relics. Including the control centre which has some very cryptic numbers and letters on various boards around the walls. We were curious as to what they were so set about decoding the designations to try find out what they had\u00a0been upto. Turns out … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “RAF Upper Heyford bomb loads”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8726,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/DSC_7474.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2FkD4-2gJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23506,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8725\/revisions\/23506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetimechamber.co.uk\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}