TheTallboyBomb

ALancasterDeliveredEarthquake

In the spring of 1942 the Nazis were building reinforced concrete submarine bases that were bomb-proof against any existing weapons. At this
time the largest penetrating bomb available to Bomber Command weighed a mere 1000 pounds.

As early as the fall of 1940, the brilliant Vickers Armstrong

engineer and designer of the Wellington Bomber, Barnes
Wallis, had demonstrated in his research how extra-large,
penetrating bombs could create an earthquake like pressure
wave that would destroy nearby structures by displacing
their foundations. Wallis was envisioning a weapon
weighing 20,000 pounds that would be dropped from an
altitude of 40,000 feet, and reach the speed of sound. Known
as the "Tallboy," there was no aircraft in the foreseeable
future that could carry it so the design was put on hold.

Following the success of Wallis's "Bouncing Bomb" in the

Dambusters Raid, his Tallboy design was reviewed. There
was still no aircraft capable of carrying the original design to
40,000 feet but the Lancaster was now operational and had
proven itself able to carry a 12,000 pound weapon. Wallis
revised his design, including offsetting the tailfins by five
degrees. This improved the weapons stability significantly.
Released from the optimum height of 18,000 feet the bomb
took 37 seconds to reach the ground, impacting with a speed
of 750 miles per hour. During the night of June 8, 1944 the
first Tallboy was dropped, causing extensive damage to the
Saumur Railway Tunnel, preventing enemy reinforcements
including tank units from reaching the beaches of
Normandy.

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Battleship Tirpitz
Lancaster Bomber
60th Anniversary of Tirpitz Sinking

Frank Hawkins looks up at a

tallboy in position in a Lancaster's bomb bay.
The aircraft's bomb doors were modified
so that they could close around
the weapon's 38" (95 cm) diameter.

An example of the Tallboy's effectiveness occurred when they were used against the underground V-1 assembly and launch facilities at
Wizernes, France. One caused a landslide that completely blocked an entrance to the underground storage area and on a second raid, additional
landslides were caused that completely blocked the remaining four entrances. The earthquake-effect of the weapon was demonstrated on
numerous other occasions such as when a "near miss" of sixty feet was sufficient to destroy the railway bridge at Bad Oeynhausen.

By the end of the war, a total of 854 Tallboys had been dropped on heavily reinforced V-1 and V-2 assembly and launch sites, submarine pens,
tunnels, oil refining and storage sites, viaducts, canals, and bridges. Its most spectacular success was with the sinking of the Battleship Tirpitz.

The Tallboy was 21 feet in length and 38 inches at its maximum diameter. Its hardened steel case had a thickness of more than 4 inches in the
nose. The tail of the bomb was made of aluminum. The weapon was filled with 5200 pounds of Torpex explosive and the actual detonation
could be delayed up to sixty minutes.

This Tallboy mock-up was built by John Morel and Andy Lockhart.
It was unveiled during the museum's commemoration of the Sixtieth Anniversary
of the Sinking of the Battleship Tirpitz.
The museum's Tallboy was made possible through a donation byS/L John Birrell M.D. (Ret'd)
and his wife F/O Dorothy Birrell R.N. (Ret'd) of Calgary.
Dr. Birrell served as a medical officer with the Royal Canadian Air Force during WW II
and his wife Dorothy was a nurse with the RCAF.

During March, 1945 a larger version of the weapon, the 22,000 pound "Grand Slam" became operational. With a length of 25 feet, 5 inches and
a diameter of 46 inches, this bomb required the complete removal of the Lancaster's bomb bay doors. A total of 41 Grand Slams were dropped
during the closing days of the war.

Grand Slam

Guide to 'bunker-busting' bombs

The Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28), often known as a "bunker buster", was
developed during the 1991 Gulf War for penetrating fortified Iraqi command centres
deep underground.
These relatively simple, yet devastatingly effective weapons are now being used
against underground positions in Afghanistan.
Carried by B-2 stealth bombers and F-15 fighters, the GBU28 is a 5,000lb laser-guided, conventionally-armed bomb
fitted with a 4,400lb penetrating warhead.
The operator illuminates a target with a laser and the bomb
guides itself on to the mark.
The BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Marcus says the
US armed forces have been increasingly interested in
developing a new range of weapons to hit deeply buried
targets.
"The need arose during the air campaign against Iraq, but
strategic concerns in the Korean peninsula and elsewhere
have added to the urgency of developing such systems," he
said.

Bunker busters can be

delivered by B-2 stealth
bombers

"The concern is driven by the fact that as the power of surveillance and satellite
systems increase, so an enemy is likely to bury vital assets below ground.
Mountain missile bases

"The Americans, for example, believe that key elements of North Korea's nuclear
programme may be underground. And the utility of cave networks and subterranan
passages for groups like al-Qaeda is obvious."
The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said in a media briefing on Thursday
that "a lot of countries have done a lot of digging underground" - it was not unique to
Afghanistan.
"It does make much more complicated the task of dealing with targets because, as
you've known from photographs you've seen of North Korea, it is perfectly possible to
dig into the side of a mountain and put a large ballistic missile in there and erect it
and fire it out of the mountain from an underground post."
He said equipment such as that used to dig the Channel Tunnel could cut holes 50ft
across and 200ft deep in a day.
Referring to the attacks in Afghanistan, he added: "You bet, to the extent we see a
good deal of activity, a lot of so-called adits and tunnel entries and external indication
of internal activity, we have targeted them."
Gulf War
Bunker busters were developed extremely quickly during the
air campaign in the Gulf War in 1991 after it became clear
that existing weapons were proving ineffective against
underground targets.
The GBU-28 was not even in the planning stages when
Kuwait was invaded in 1990. The US Air Force asked for ideas
a week after military operations started.
The first bunker buster was built on 1 February 1991 using
surplus 8-inch artillery tubes. The project received an official
go-ahead a fortnight later.

The bombs were originally

carried by now-retired F-111
aircraft

Success
Initial development and testing
could penetrate more than 20 ft of
test demonstrated the bomb's ability
100 ft of earth.

proved that the bombs

concrete, while a flight
to penetrate more than

The first operational bombs were

27 February. Only two bunker busters
Storm, both by F-111 fighter-

delivered to the Gulf on

were dropped in Desert
bombers.

One bomb hit its target, confirmed by

video camera which revealed smoke
entrance about six seconds after

A ground-support team
prepares to attach a 'bunker
buster'

the aircraft's onboard

pouring from a bunker
impact.

After Operation Desert Storm, the Air Force made modifications and undertook
further testing.
In 1997, the US spent $18.4m on producing more than 160 GBU-28s, a sign that the
weapon had become an integral part of the US arsenal.

Although spurred by the campaign against Iraq, our correspondent says strategic
concerns in the Korean peninsula and elsewhere have added to the urgency of
developing such systems.
The Americans, for example, believe that key elements of North Korea's nuclear
programme may be underground.

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Buried truth:

Debunking the nuclear bunker buster

By Benjamin Phelan
According to Defense Department estimates, there are perhaps 10,000 underground military installations in the world. Most, no
doubt, are crude ammo dumps, but some are literally subterranean fortresses. The most dazzling is the complex beneath Russia's
Yamantau Mountain, begun under Brezhnev but completed only recently; tunneled sideways into the Urals southeast of Moscow,
the complex sits below thousands of feet of quartz, insulated from an American ICBM attack. China, too, has an extensive system
of underground bunkers and command shelters, including hundreds of fortified missile silos, complete with living quarters, that
are scattered throughout its 3.7 million square miles. In North Korea the reliance on tunnels and bunkers is even more obsessive.
Underground weapons factories there are believed to employ as many as 20,000 workers; the nation has tunneled under the DMZ
and into South Korea, has dug in upward of 10,000 pieces of artillery along the border, and even has built underground airstrips.
Iran possesses an underground uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz that can be expanded or altered in secrecy. Libya's vast
chemical-weapons plant at Tarhunah, though now apparently in disuse, is still standing, still underground, and could be quietly
reopened by a lapsed Qaddafi. Without satellite surveillance showing its construction and burial, the world might still be ignorant
of Syria's As-Safirah chemical-weapons factory. These installations, and countless others unknown around the world, constitute
the last class of targets that America's current arsenal cannot credibly threaten with swift annihilation.
Since the Cold War, the U.S defense community has become obsessed with the problem of bunkers and how to destroy them. The
solution put forward has, of course, been expensive new weaponry. Soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush
Administration made a push for new nuclear programs, the most conspicuous of which was the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator
(RNEP), designed to destroy deeply buried bunkers. During the first presidential debate this fall, John Kerry made much of his
opposition to the program. Right now the President is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting
nuclear weapons, he said. We're telling other people, You can't have nuclear weapons, but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon
that we might even contemplate using. Not this president. I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to
the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation.
But Kerry's gesture, while well intentioned, was largely empty. The United States already has a nuclear bunker-buster, the B61-11,
which was tested during the first Bush Administration and deployed in 1997 under Bill Clinton. In the eyes of potential adversaries,
the B61-11 is inherently a weapon that, in Kerry's phrase, we might even contemplate using: alone in our vast nuclear arsenal, the
B61-11 is tailored not to deter a full-on attack by a large nuclear competitor but to preemptively strike a smaller state. If, as Kerry
rightly argues, the RNEP is a provocation to non-nuclear states in their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, it is hardly
more so than the bunker buster we already possess.
Were the effectiveness of bunker busters to be demonstrated, the weapons might conceivably be worth the risk and expense. But in
fact, even a cursory consideration of the science shows that bunker-busting nuclear weapons are a wasteful and dangerous
delusion.

A bunker-busting weapon is one that will, in principle, penetrate its target and explode only afterward. This is accomplished, again
in principle, with fuses that delay detonation until a predetermined point after impact. All current bunker busters, including the
nuclear B61-11 and the conventional GBU-37, are gravity bombs, meaning that they have no propulsion system. They rely instead
on the natural acceleration of gravity, as well as on their javelin-like construction: the B61-11, for example, is roughly twelve feet in
length but only thirteen inches in diameter, and is capped with a pointed nosecone. Such a design is supposed to allow bunker
busters to destroy targets several hundred feet down.
In real-world conditions, though, it has been difficult to make the weapons perform as advertised. Dropped from moving airplanes,
gravity bombs often strike the earth at a considerable angle, which increases the tendency of their trajectory, while underground,
to bend back up toward the surface. If the angle of attack is particularly shallow, a penetrator will actually come back up out of the
ground, skipping along the battlefield. And even when they do strike at a useful angle, they cannot be made to penetrate deeply
enough to destroy any but the shallowest of bunkers. The Defense Department's Nuclear Posture Review for 2001 laments that the
B61-11 cannot survive penetration into many types of terrain in which hardened underground facilities are located. This is a
generous analysis: the terrain referred to is the hard rock under which valuable targets are almost always buried. When dropped
from a height of 40,000 feet, the B61-11 was able to penetrate three meters at most into the Alaskan tundra, and not at all into hard
rock (that is, without self-destructing).
The inadequacy of the B61-11 is due not to a particularly poor construction but rather to the basic limitations of bomb-making
steel. In the test drops performed in Alaska, the B61-11 reached roughly 300 meters per second at impact. In order to penetrate
reinforced concrete, it would need to be traveling at approximately 500 meters per second. At around 900 meters per second, the
shock wave generated by the missile's slamming into the ground will deform it severely; at 1,200 meters per second, the missile
will in most cases break into pieces. To penetrate graniteubiquitous in mountainous bunkers, and believed to be common above
any truly valuable bunkera penetrator would have to attain upward of 3,000 meters per second, at which speed it would certainly
be crushed. Robert Nelson of Princeton University has demonstrated that because of the limitations imposed by the yield strength
of the steel used in casings, no bunker buster can ever go fast enough to penetrate reinforced concrete deeper than five times its

length without destroying itself in the process; and even this number is too high for any real-world scenario. What is more, the
length of the bomb cannot be increased much, for two reasons: there are no aircraft capable of carrying a weapon much longer
than the ones that are currently deployed; and as length increases, so does the tendency of the bomb to snap in two on impact.
Raymond Jeanloz, a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee advising Congress on earth penetrators, expresses
frustration at the defense community's obliviousness to existing research. A lot of the information is already in house, Jeanloz
said in an interview. Why don't [they] come back to Congress with a really good plan that has a good chance of working, rather
than asking for a bunch of money where it's not even clear [they've] reviewed the information [they] already have? The answer
lies, no doubt, in the seductiveness of the bunker-buster idea, whereby a bomb, after being dropped from the safety of 40,000 feet,
eliminates in a clean, swift, and invisible blast the most intractable problem facing the U.S. military. This seems to be a fantasy too
powerful to abandon.
The most stubborn part of the fantasy is that a low-yield bunker buster could be employed as a clean nuclear weapon, whose
explosion and fallout would be contained underground. This aspiration is most explicitly laid out in a report from the Defense
Department Science Board entitled Future Strategic Strike Forces, which imagines that [p]enetration [by a nuclear bunkerbuster] to a depth of 50 to 55 meters would enable disablement of 100-meter-deep underground facilities by contained 400-ton
explosions. Let us, for the moment, forget the fact that 50 meters is more than twice the depth it is physically possible for any
penetrator, real or idealized, to burrow into rock. According to the government's own guidelines, drawn up during the decades in
which it tested nuclear weapons under the Nevada desert, a 400-ton explosion would have to occur a full 600 meters underground
in order to be contained. These guidelines also stipulate a carefully sealed burial shaft to contain the blast, not a maw. Even the
B61-11, at its current, inadequate impact speeds, does not burrow a clean rabbit-hole in the ground but rather kicks up a crater like
a meteorite; any faster-moving penetrator would do so to a still greater degree.
Even supposing that the missile's point of entry were miraculously neat, a nuclear blast at the depths a real missile could attain
would invariably breach the surface of the earth, expelling a hot fallout cloud in what is known as a base surge. Base surges are
more dangerous than traditional fallout clouds because they are more toxic, containing irradiated particles of dirt and rock. They
also spread more quickly, sweeping across the surface of the earth in every direction, outward rather than upward. Bunkers are
usually built in urban areas, so many thousands of deaths would be a virtual certainty. Even a 1-kiloton bunker bustera relative
firecracker, with a tiny fraction of the explosive power of the high-yield RNEPdetonated at fifty feet underground could eject
about 1,000,000 cubic meters of radioactive soil.
Finally, it is entirely unclear whether even such a catastrophic blast would, as the Science Board claims, enable disablement of an
installation. A well-designed granite bunker could withstand four times the shock produced by such an explosion. If the bunker
housed weapons of mass destruction, studies have shown that a canister of, say, mustard gas could be insulated from the heat of
the blast by a few meters of earth, and thereby escape being vaporized. Cushioning the canister from the shock wave is more
difficult, and in the likely event that a canister is ruptured but not destroyed, the chemical agent would escape the shattered
container into the earth; a split second later it would be blasted up into the air, carried away in the fallout cloud.

During the Cold War, it eventually became clear that the war nuclear weapons were built to fight could never be joined. Yet the
United States and the Soviet Union kept adding more weapons to their arsenals, long after the absolute destruction of each was at
the fingertips of the other. The mechanics of Mutual Assured Destruction guaranteed that if either side launched a nuclear attack,
both sides would be destroyed, and the world as well. From their former role as war-fighting weapons, nuclear weapons were
reconceived as having the sole purpose of preventing their own use, so that any addition to the nuclear stockpile could be justified
by the word deterrence. It was a tortured, grim logic, but practical.
Deterrence remains the government's public justification for building more nuclear weapons, but the term has undergone semantic
drift. What today is passed off as deterrence by proponents of low-yield bunker busters and the RNEP is not, as it once was, the
demonstrable ability of nuclear weapons to prevent nuclear war but the unproven power of unworkable weapons to bully other
countries into abjuring any action at all deemed offensive by the United States.
Even supporters of the new projects concede that nuclear weapons don't seem to work as well in the new deterrence as they did in
the old. Sometimes they just don't deter, do they? Joseph Howard, a nuclear scientist at Los Alamos and an early and influential
voice in favor of low-yield nuclear weapons, told me recently. We're in the new world order, and I think a very low-yield
penetrator offers us some versatility. On the other hand, I don't know what to do against some of these other diaperheads. . . . The
problem is that, whatever the rogue nation is, whoever the rogue leader is, it seems like it could be very, very tough to deter them
with any type of rational means we deterred with during the Cold War.
The technology of bunker busters may yet be improved, but only slightly; and what advances can be made against the hard limits of
earth penetration are not enough to warrant the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to realize them. Even if earth penetrators
could be made to perform at their theoretical limit, the only gain would be a temporary advantage over countries that have not yet
dug bunkers at a depth that no weapon, no matter how massive, could ever reach. As soon as that comparatively easy engineering
feat is completed, the nuclear weapon that spurred it on will have brought about its own obsolescence. If we are developing nuclear
weapons that our government says we might use, there is no incentive for smaller countries not to go after their own weapons as
quickly and quietly as possibledown in the very bunkers we are unable to destroy.

8 December 2010 The Disney Bomb

Colleagues,
No, this isn't about "Tangled" or "TRON: Legacy". I haven't seen either film yet.
The Fixx were right; one thing does indeed lead to another. Late last week I found myself searching online for information on a certain
WWII-era British free-flight unrotating artillery rocket. I didnt have a lot of luck until I stumbled across a fairly heavy .pdf file of a 300+
page report by the US Army Chemical Material Destruction Agency. This 1994 doc provided all of the information I needed, including line
drawings and dimensions for the munition in question. It also, interestingly, included information about fuzing options, and noted that the
standard fuze for the item was the "British No. 721".
That seemed a little odd; as a former gunner, I was familiar with the M-series fuzes in all their infinite variety (point-detonating, basedetonating, variable time, proximity, MTSQ Mechanical Time Super-Quick and so forth), but Id never heard of a No. 721. Nor was it
simply a matter of adding an M designator; the M721 has a lot of different meanings (including the rocket body and tail cone assembly
for the M-72 disposable rocket launcher, and the illuminating shell used with the 60 mm infantry mortar which itself uses an M776
mechanical time fuze), but there is no M721 fuze on record.
I eventually found a summary document on British fuze labelling from the 1850s to the end of the Second World War which, perhaps not
surprisingly, is when labelling standards were rectified and we all started using NATO stock numbers and US labelling conventions.
According to that summary,
"A direction was given in 1887 to number all fuzes. Initially some attempt was made to apply order to this system. The numbers 1 to 19 were
for percussion fuzes and numbers 20 and 21 were for rocket fuzes. Numbers 22 to 50 were to be for time fuzes and 51 onwards was to be for
time and percussion fuzes."
So far so good; the munition Id been interested in was, in fact, a rocket, and its fuze number did end with 21. But whence came the 7?
Reading on, I discovered that again, not surprisingly nobody designing the numbering system in 1887 had made allowance for the
sudden explosion (no pun intended) in the variety and types of fuzes that came into use during the wars of the 20th Century. The end result
was an impenetrable mish-mash of disorganized numbering as producers and logisticians struggled to come to grips with the vast array of
new weapons, and the fuzes that went with them:
"Percussion fuzes numbered from 1 to 19 then jumped to 44. Combustion time fuzes started at 50 then went back to 25 as some numbers
were left over. Mechanical time fuzes began at 200. Some combustion time and percussion fuzes were converted to time only. Adding 100
to the original number of the fuze indicated this. But you had to know the original number of the fuze if this was to mean anything to you.
Fractional numbers were introduced to indicate that the original numbered time fuze had had a percussion fuze added underneath as a
gaine. Eg. 80/44. Original 500 numbered fuzes were supposed to be for naval service only. The brits ruined this by using many of these
fuzes in land systems. The 600 numbers were allocated to the demolition and booby trap stores.
The 700 series were for the rockets or proximity fuzes. RAF bomb fuzes were given the same numbers as the Army. Endless confusion here.
1941 the RAF were given the block of numbers from 844 to 999. Unfortunately the Army also used some of these numbers. Some early fuzes
were renumbered to bring the fuze into line with the new block of numbers. eg 46 became 846."
Fascinating stuff, right? The immediate point, of course, was that the 700 block had been reserved for rockets and proximity fuzes. So
again, the No. 721 was the right nomenclature for the right fuze. Mystery solved.
But on the Intertubes, every mystery you solve generates a new one. In the course of my research, I had come across another peculiar
notation regarding the principle uses of different fuzes. The British Tail Pistol No. 58, it seemed, had been used extensively in conjunction
with a weapon that had a very odd name.
In pommy explosives nomenclature, pistol is more or less interchangeable with fuze, although technically speaking it refers only to the
device designed to actuate the ignition chain, through the detonators and booster charges all the way to initiation of the main charge. A tail
pistol, of course, is a fuze designed to be inserted in the base of a munition, rather than the nose or ogive. This has always been one of the
commonest fuzing preferences for projectiles with certain specific purposes e.g., the 90 mm M691 HESH-T high explosive squash head
projectile that was developed for the LAV Assault Gun variant, which is designed to splat up against a target and be initiated by a basedetonating fuze, creating a shock-wave that spalls metal fragments off the inner armour of a target. For aircraft bombs, though, tail fuzing
has always been the preferred option, for a variety of reasons including (but not limited to) ease of access; the use of a precise number of
propeller rotations to serve a mechanical arming or timed detonation function; the fact that bad things tend to happen to the front end of a
multi-thousand-pound air-dropped projectile when it hits the ground at a thousand feet per second; and the possibility that the front of the
bomb might be compromised by inclusion of a fuze well.
This latter reason, it turns out, was the one that applied to the weapon whose peculiar name caught my attention. It was called the Disney
Bomb.
The Disney Bomb? Seriously, how can you not be intrigued by that?
It took some trawling through newsgroups and military modelling websites to figure out what this was all about. Wikipedia provided some
assistance, although I had to take a shower and some antibiotics afterwards. According to the Wiki page for Bunker Busters, the Disney
Bomb was a rocket-assisted air-dropped munition designed to penetrate hardened concrete structures, like the U-Boat pens that the RAF
and USAAF had spent so much time trying to destroy:
"Thought up by Royal Navy Captain Edward Terrell, it had a streamlined hardened case and weighed some 4,500 lb (2 tonnes). The bomb
was dropped from 20,000 ft (~6,000 m). At 5,000 ft (~1,500 m) a barometric fuze fired the rocket in the tail to give it a velocity at impact of
up to 2,400 ft/second (730 m/s). It was first used by the 92nd Bomb Group on 10 February 1945 on S-boat pens at IJmuiden, Netherlands,
one bomb under each wing of 9 B-17 Flying Fortress. On that occasion a single direct hit was scored. A total of 158 "Disney Bombs" were
used operationally by the end of hostilities in Europe."
I was also able to find, on one of the modelling websites, a picture of the device:

Figure 1

- The Disney bomb, grounded and mounted. The fins are at the rear of the weapon; the
thicker part of the bomb houses the rocket motors. And that guy in the centre looks an awful lot
like he's wearing a Royal Navy uniform. Could it be the "Captain Edward Terrel, RN" referred to
in the Wikipedia article?
(Source: allegedly T.BurakowskiandA.Sala,Rakietyipociskikierowane,1960,np).
While short on detail, this gave me something more to go on. I found a reference to a Polish book published in 1960 by T.Burakowski and
A.Sala, entitled Rakiety i pociski kierowane, or "Rockets and guided missiles"; and another to USSTAF Armament Memorandum No. 3133, dated 28 January 1945, which doesnt appear to exist on the Web. A big help was an off-hand annotation in a comment on a modelling
blog which provided a link to an old issue of Flightmagazine. The page, dated May 30th 1946, did not use the Disney designation but it
did refer to a 4500-pound rocket-assisted bomb carried by the B-17 Flying Fortress. It also noted that An official film of Project Ruby
shows that the missile resembles the German P.C. series carried by Ju-87s and -88s, though the rocket motor, detachable from the
warhead, appears even longer.
Project Ruby was the ticket; it sounded familiar. A few minutes on Google led me through a different set of links, including some historical
notations on the history of RAF Mildenhall and a few references to Eglin Field in Florida, before I finally hit the motherlode: the full project
report on Ruby, titled Comparative Test of the Effectiveness of Large Bombs against Reinforced Concrete Structures (Anglo-American
Bomb Tests Project Ruby), published at Eglin Field by the USAAF Air Proving Ground Command, on 31 October 1946.
At 12 MB the report took a while to download but the result was 310 pages of awesomeness, most of it consisting of photographs,
schematics, test data, and analysis of the test results. Fascinating stuff, and a first-class example of relevant, scientific operational research.
Tragically, the photographs are almost illegible; the .pdf copy appears to have been scanned from an old and oft-photocopied version of the
original document. Its almost impossible to see anything a real disappointment, as there are hundreds of pictures which would make any
military historian salivate.
Most interesting, though, were the line diagrams, including schematics of - you guessed it - the Disney Bomb.

Figure 2 - The Disney Bomb

(Source: the Project "Ruby" report, p. 82)

To get a better idea of how the bomb was loaded and dropped, check out this (very brief) History Channel videothat I managed to locate on
Youtube. The best part is that, according to the video, the bomb's nickname was "The Disney Swish". Sounds like a dance craze.
Project Ruby, of course, was carried out in the immediate post-war period with wartime munitions and methods - the good old days, when
"post-war nation-building" included "using the enemy's country as a test range for miscellaneous ordnance". The object of the project was
To compare the performance of British and American bombs of standard and special design when used against reinforces [sic] concrete.
During the project, particular attention would be given to assessing penetration, strength of cases, insensitivity of exploder system,
reliability of pistols and fuzes, [and] insensitivity of main fillings. (Project "Ruby" Report, p. 6). Ill spare you all the details of the
introduction, but basically the Project, over the course of a few months, used USAF B-29s and B-17s, and RAF Lancasters to drop hundreds
of different bombs on two very special targets: the submarine assembly plant at Farge, Germany, on the Weser River; and the German
submarine pens that had been built on the uninhabited island of Helgoland, about 80 km northwest of Bremerhaven in the North Sea.
The Farge target was magnificent; a reinforced concrete structure 1400 long by 318 wide. It was unfinished at the end of the war. The
Germans had been improving the ceiling; about 60% of the original ceiling (149 of reinforced concrete) remained; 40% had been improved
to 23 of reinforced concrete. Just stop and think for a moment about what 23 of reinforced concrete means (for those of you with some
knowledge of construction, according to the project report, building the Farge plant took 650,000 yards of concrete. The report also
contains detailed schematics of how the plant was intended to operate, assembling pieces of Type XXI boats delivered by barge and rail, and
releasing them into the Weser through a concealed dock).

Figure 3 - The Submarine Assembly Plant at Farge, Germany

(Source: the Project "Ruby" report, p. 82)

It was an ideal site for testing deep penetration bombs. There was only one problem; the village of Farge was not far away, and there were

houses and an electrical power plant within 500 yards of the target. That meant that Farge could only be used for non-explosive tests.
Explosive stability tests were carried out at Helgoland, where the U-Boat shelter was 506 long, 310 wide, and had a 10 reinforced concrete
roof.
The project tested 6 different weapons. The smallest used was the 2000-pound M103 special purpose bomb; after that, they got bigger. The
4500-pound Disney Bomb was next; then the 12,000-pound Tallboy and 22,000-pound Grand Slam bombs, both of WWII-fame. The tests
also trialled a new variant of the Grand Slam called the Amazon. Also weighing in at 22,000 pounds, the Amazon had a higher weight-todiameter ratio, traditionally one of the key characteristics of penetrating bombs (the other being a high length-to-diameter ratio). Finally,
the project also trialled a 1650-pound scale model of a new design based on the Disney Bomb, with the highest length-to-diameter ratio of
any of the weapons used in the test.

Figure4 - The Project "Ruby" bombs

(Source: the Project "Ruby" Report, p. 81)

Heres how the different weapons stacked up in numerical terms:
Table 1 - Bombs used in the Project "Ruby" tests (from the project report, p. 81)

Bomb
Weight
Length*
Length Overall
L/D
W/D
M103 SAP
2000 lb
5.5
7.5
3.6
5.8
1650 Model
1650 lb
9.25
13.75
8.5
9.4
Disney
4500 lb
9.75
17.25
7.9
20.0
Tallboy
12,000 lb
10
21
3.3
8.3
Grand Slam
22,000 lb
12.5
25.5
3.3
10.4
Amazon
22,000 lb
12.5
25.5
4.0
15.2
*Length is for the warhead section only; the tail sections add negligible weight
**C/W is weight of explosive fill as a proportion of overall weight

C/W**
27%
n/a
11%
43%
42%
23%

As you might expect, the next several dozen pages provide test results and data for the bomb trials. 128 bombs were dropped at Farge, and
133 at Helgoland. Most of the bombs used were, it turns out, Disney bombs. This was due to the requirement to test them both with, and
without, rocket assist. And as expected, in the pre-laser guidance/GPS era, "on target" was something of a fluid concept.

Figure 5 - Impact records for Project "Ruby" tests, Farge Submarine Assembly Plant

(Project "Ruby" Report, p. 109)

The rocket assist system was probably the most fascinating aspect of the Disney. It was achieved by adding a long tail section to the bomb
body and stuffing it with 19 3 rockets. Dropped from 20,000 at an airspeed of 220 mph, the Disney, without rocket assist, had an impact
velocity of about 1150 per second. The tail section of the bomb carried an M111A2 mechanical time fuze, which allowed 15,000 of free-fall
before igniting the rockets. The rockets burned for three seconds, increasing the impact velocity to 1450 per second. This represents a very
significant gain in kinetic energy, which is one of the key determinants of a bombs penetration capacity:
Table 2: Comparison of unassisted/rocket-assisted Disney bomb kinetic energies (calculated)

Without Rocket
Assist
With Rocket Assist
Increase

Mass(kg)

Velocity(m/s)

Kinetic
Energy (Mj)

2000
2000

353
446
26%

124.609
198.916
60%

Lets fast-forward to the end. The trials demonstrated that without rocket assist, the Disney ("Swish!") bomb was capable of penetrating an
average of 105 into reinforced concrete, with a standard deviation of 8. With rocket assist, however, the same bomb was able to penetrate
an average of 1310 of concrete, with a standard deviation of 14. One of the latter bombs fell on the thinner (149-thick) roof section of the
Farge target, penetrating it, then penetrating the 3 thick concrete floor and burying itself completely in the sand underneath the facility.
I wish some of the photos from the report were of decent quality, but they're just awful. However, in one of life's little ironies, a few years
ago a Disney bomb - still fuzed and armed, but unexploded - was discovered stuck in the roof of the Eperlecque blochaus, an infamous relict
of WWII located about 30 km southeast of Calais. The French videoabout the discovery and the bomb's subsequent disarming and
removal provides a pretty good idea of the penetrating capabilities of this weapon.
(Eperlecque, incidentally, was infamous because it was one of the launch sites for V1 flying bombs. That's relevant to this discussion, in an
oddly tangential way, for reasons that I will explain later.)
The failure of the Disney bomb to explode when it struck the Eperlecque bunker tells us a lot about the stability of the filler - which in turn
confirms the explosive sensitivity tests at Helgoland in 1946. All of the explosive mixtures trialled proved to be relatively resistant to shock;
in only a few cases were low-order detonations observed. The mixtures trialled included 70/30 Shellite (picric acid/dinitrophenol);
60/20/16 RDX/Aluminum Powder/Wax; 68/20/12 RDX/Aluminum Powder/Wax; TNT; 20/60/20 RDX/TNT/Aluminum Powder mixed
with wax and carbon black; and Picratol (52% Dunnite, or ammonium picrate, and 48% TNT).
The Ruby tests also revealed serious flaws in all of the weapons. None of the bombs were capable of penetrating the thickest (23) section of
the Farge roof. The Amazon had a maximum penetration of 1510, which was lower than the 164 maximum penetration expected from the
Disney bomb. At maximum striking velocity the dreaded Grand Slam could only penetrate 78 of concrete; the American (forged) Tallboy
penetrated 58; the British (cast) Tallboy, 57; and the M103 AP bomb, 60. The 1650-pound model bomb only managed to penetrate 44
of concrete. All of the bombs had problems withstanding side impact after perforation of a concrete slab; most of the tests resulted in
serious deformation or fracture of the bomb bodies. The most serious problem with the Disney bomb was the unreliability of its rockets;
during live testing, they failed more often than not to ignite.
Well, what was the verdict? The report concluded that:
While the Disney bomb is dimensioned properly for good penetration, it also needs modification to prevent break-up on side impact. The
stud holes in the case contribute to break-up on side impact. The bomb also needs modification to increase the reliability of the rocket

assist. Redesign of the arming wire system to reduce the lengths of the arming wires would eliminate some rocket failures, but improvement
in the firing system is also needed to ensure complete rocket action from all rocket tubes. The explosive charge of the Disney is not large
enough to cause material damage to a massive concrete target. (Project "Ruby" report, pp. 11-12)
The project report recommended a variety of fixes. One was exploring bombs with smaller diameters, more pointed noses, and greater case
strengths than the Amazon, but without materially reducing the weight of the explosive filler (in other words, make everything bigger and
stronger and heavier but make the whole thing smaller and lighter a common result of military weapon tests). Options for increasing case
strength included multiple layer or laminated walls, the use of special alloys, and the addition of internal ribs or corrugations. The project
also recommended finding ways to increase the angle of incidence, ideally to the perpendicular, in order to avoid stresses from non-normal
incidence, limit uncertainties in bomb behaviour (one Disney made an 8 crater in the Farge roof, then bounced out and was found 75
away), and minimize the distance to be penetrated. Finally, the report recommended identifying and using the most powerful explosive
fillers available.
Inclosure 14 is an interesting addendum to the report. It details the physics calculations for bomb penetration, comparing the standard
formulae used in UK and US research, and comparing their predictions to the results achieved in the Project Ruby tests. The report notes
that predictions of penetration for the unassisted Disney bombs were a maximum of 126 and an average of 106. As the average of the
trial results for unassisted Disney bombs was penetration of 105, this is a stellar example of a predictive mathematical model being
confirmed by observed results the hallmark, in short, of good, solid science.
A note on research material. Based on the Project Ruby final report, the Wikipedia article on Disney bombs, and bunker busters in general,
is chock-full of significant errors (e.g., it was a mechanical time fuze, not a "barometric fuze", that initiated the rockets; there were 19
individual rocket motors, not one unitary one; and the impact velocity was 1450 fps, not 2400 fps). Bottom line - you can use Wikipedia to
look up sources, but anybody who actually cites it when doing serious work needs to have their head examined.
At the end of all of this, one thing the question that started the whole chain of research still eluded me. Why the hell was it called the
Disney Bomb? One commenter on the modelling site suggests that it comes from the WWII patriotic cartoons distributed by Walt Disney,
at least one of which shows Donald Duck suffering various explosive mishaps in a Nazi munitions plant. Another commenter suggested that
it might be based on a WWII propaganda film called Victory Through Airpower, which tended to be shown in conjunction with WWII-era
Disney movies, and which seems to show rocket-assisted bombs being dropped on Germany.
I'm thinking that the Disney Bomb probably got its name from RAF Norton Disney in Lincolnshire, which opened in 1939 (it opened as RAF
Swinderby, but was renamed in 1940), and which served as a WWII-era munitions FFD (Forward Filling Depot) for the RAF that specialized
in, amongst other things, doing final assembly and storage of large bombs including, interestingly, chemical bombs. A lot of British
mustard bombs were moved there in 1955, shortly before Norton Disney closed in 1958. In 1998, the year after the Chemical Weapons
Conventionentered into force, this large dump of mustard gas bombs was uncovered and slated for destruction.
Theres not much left at RAF Norton Disney these days a few concrete walls, and some odd, rusty metal trash. Its just another of the
many derelict places left over from a bygone era.

Figure 6 - RAF Norton Disney as it looks today

(source: Century20war.co.uk)
But there's still a little more. According to the Michelin Guide for Disneyland Paris, Walt Disney's great-grandfather, Arundel Elias Disney
of Ireland, was descended from one Robert D'Isigny, a companion of William the Conqueror who went north with the duke in 1066.
D'Isigny settled in Lincolnshire, in a town called Norton, which later came to be known as Norton Disney, and which - nine hundred years
later - was the origin of Walt's surname.
So when all is said and done, there just might be a connection, however remote, between Walt Disney and the Disney Bomb. It's not
surprising, really; after all, Disney was connected to a lot of folks, at least one of whom had some small knowledge of rocketry, as well as
an...er...historical connection to places like the V1 launch site at Eperlecque.

(Source: NASAofficial government website)

For example, this fellow: a German ex-pat with a promising future who knew a thing or two about rockets, named Werner von Braun.
And th-th-th-that's all, folks!

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Nukes for NATO

By Rebecca Grant
Contributing Editor
Extended deterrence will go on, and the F-35 fighter will take up the burden.

For more than 60 years, nuclear-armed fighters have been a key part of the US deterrence calculus,
particularly in Europe. Indeed, providing the umbrella of "extended deterrence" to NATO nations has
been a mission performed by generations of USAF air crews, maintainers, and security forces.

It now appears that, before long, the iconic nuclear fighter role, performed in recent years by the F-15E
and F-16, will pass to a new heavyweightthe F-35 Lightning II.
As the Obama Administration sees it, nuclear weapons delivered by fighters will continue to play an
important role in the nations international affairs. The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, released in April,
reaffirmed the requirement for tactical nuclear weapons in US defense strategy.
The United States, it said, will "retain the capability to forward deploy US nuclear weapons on tactical
fighter-bombers ... and proceed with full scope life extension for the B61 bomb, including enhancing
safety, security, and use control."

Lightning II fighters complete a test flight. The

F-35 will inherit the nuclear deterrence mission.
(Photo by David Drais)

The Air Force, the NPR made clear, will "retain a dual-capable fighter ... as it replaces F-16s with the F35." The NPR also announced final retirement of the nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missile (TLAMN), a theater-range nuke. The Army long ago eliminated its theater nuclear missiles. Thus, USAF will
do all of Washingtons heavy lifting for extended tactical deterrence.
Several NATO countries have the technical capability to deliver US nuclear warheads with nuclearcertified fighters. Each munitions storage sitesome were completed as recently as 1998can
securely house a score or more of warheads in NATOs central and southern regions.
NATO members Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway formally requested that
the alliance discuss potential withdrawal of US weapons from the continent as the alliance reviews its
strategic concept. Other nations, including several formerly under Soviet domination, disagree. They
say such weapons are critical symbols of the US military commitment to Europe.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rebuffed the call. "First," she said, "we should recognize that, as long
as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance."
In short, the policy of extended deterrence is alive and well, but meeting the NPRs guidance over the
long run will hinge on success with the F-35 and the B61 bomb refurbishment.
The Air Force has a long and successful track record with extended deterrence. In fact, fighters
carrying tactical nuclear weapons have been around nearly as long as NATO itself.

An F-15E takes off from RAF Lakenheath,

Britain. In recent years, the nuclear fighter
burden has fallen on F-16 and F-15E aircraft, but
theyre getting old. (USAF photo by A1C Perry
Aston)

In the late 1940s, war plans for a confrontation with the Soviet Union in Europe first depended on B-36
intercontinental bombers attacking Soviet targets. But planners conceded that the strategic bombing
would not prevent the battle-hardened Red Army from trampling much of Europe if Stalin chose to
invade. With Europe demobilized, atomic weapons were seen as vital to the ground force engagement.
A new forward defense war plan code-named Ironbark incorporated a limited form of tactical atomic
weaponry for NATO from 1950 onward. At first, when plans anticipated that much of Europe would be
overrun, it was mainly a mission for Navy attack aircraft. Up to 16 aircraft carriers on NATOs flanks
would use nuclear weapons against invading Soviet forces.
In February 1951, the US Sixth Fleet, operating on permanent assignment in the Mediterranean,
received AJ-1 Savage attack aircraft capable of carrying atomic bombs from the fleets aircraft carriers.
"We certainly need their atomic capabilities," declared five-star Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was
NATOs first Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
Meanwhile, Tactical Air Command was training the first cadre of F-84 pilots for nuclear alert in Europe.
When atomic artillery in the form of the 280 mm howitzer arrived in Europe in the fall of 1952,
Eisenhowers staff put the guns in their plans.
As a NATO strategy paper recounted: "To deter major war in Europe, nuclear weapons were integrated
into the whole of NATOs force structure, and the alliance maintained a variety of targeting plans which
could be executed at short notice."
Just Across the Border
The result was a mission known as Victor Alert. Fine-tuned command and control of NATOs extensive
arsenal required continuous practice and exercises. Officers at US Air Forces in Europe became
experts in the high-stakes task of moving nuclear weapons to aircraft to arm and get them airborne
under tight time lines.
A 1987 list compiled by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists identified nearly a dozen aircraft types
certified to drop nuclear bombs, not including strategic bombers. The F-100 pulled the mission for
years. The F-104G Starfighter was nuclear-certified for the air forces of Italy, Greece, and Turkey.

Two F-111 aircraft over RAF Upper Heyford,

Britain. Under some 1970s nuclear war plans, F111 wings were tasked to quickly launch up to
60 aircraft. (DOD photo)

For USAF, the main aircraft for nuclear operations were the F-4, F-111, F-16, and much later, the F15E. The F-111 wings in England in the 1970s were tasked to quickly launch up to 60 aircraft under
certain war plans. F-111s could carry multiple B61 warheads.

During the 1980s, F-16s in "triple doc" squadronsthose tasked with air-to-air, air-to-ground, and
nuclear missionssat Victor Alert at bases in Europe. Under NATOs quick-response mandates, two
aircraft from each squadron in a wing of three squadrons might be on alert, with B61s loaded, at all
times. The aircrews had to demonstrate they could take off within 15 minutes of an alert order.
NATO discontinued the rapid alerts as the Cold War receded. The alert culture once inculcated in
thousands of Air Force officers and enlisted members went with it. Todays dual-capable fighters still
train to the mission, but on a scale anticipating a slower buildup of readiness over a period of weeks.
Part of the reason that nuclear fighters remain in NATO is because Russia still has thousands of
nonstrategic nuclear warheads. For many of the new NATO members, thats still just across the border.
The Air Forces forward deployed presence "is a response to the volume of nonstrategic nuclear
weapons Russia has in its arsenal," said Maj. Gen. C. Donald Alston, assistant chief of staff for nuclear
matters at Air Force headquarters.
Thus, the US remains firmly committed to extended deterrence. Maintaining its credibility depends on
the stockpile, dual-capable aircraft, and crews trained to deliver nukes.
According to Amy F. Woolf of the Congressional Research Service, the US in 2010 keeps in Europe
only "a few hundred" nuclear weapons for fighters. As to platforms, the burden for USAF falls on its F16s and, in recent years, the F-15Es. They, however, are getting old.
It was a foregone conclusion that the F-35 would inherit the extended deterrence mantle. Early in the
program, some questioned whether such nuclear capability was truly needed, but Pentagon officials
held firm on that requirement.
Actually, most of the aircraft the F-35 is designed to replace had nuclear missions. For the Navy, the
dual-capable antecedents lay in certified aircraft such as the A-6 and A-7, plus the F/A-18. The Marine
Corps AV-8B was also nuclear certified.

An F-100C releases a dummy nuclear bomb.

(USAF photo)

For the British, in addition to the Harrier, there was the nuclear-certified Panavia Tornado GR1 with a
low-level interdiction role. Britain armed its Tornados with the WE177, a low-yield tactical nuclear
weapon ultimately retired from RAF service in 1998. (Though the WE177s were dismantled, Britain
retains D5 warheads for the Trident missile in its submarine fleet.)
NATO members Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy did not develop indigenous nuclear
weapons programs. Instead, they maintained dual-certified aircraft capable of uploading US B61s
during a crisis.
Given this background, the requirement for nuclear weapons certification for F-35 was planned from
the beginning.
A Strong Commitment
Air Force plans dating back to the 1980s called for the F-16s replacement to take over the tactical
nuclear role, and due to the effort involved in full nuclear certification, the Air Force wanted only one
nuclear fighter type in its future arsenal. A nuclear-capable F-16 replacement also needed to be an
interoperable export fighter that NATO allies in particular could buy to maintain their extended
deterrence role. Therefore, the F-22 was never intended to be a nuclear fighter, and was instead
optimized for air-to-air operations and destruction of enemy air defenses.
"The NPR, ... in essence, reaffirms the alliance position to have nuclear weapons as part of the alliance
force structure," said Alston. "Those dual-capable aircraft historically have been the F-16 and the F15E, and they will continue to be those aircraft until such time as the F-35 is deployed."

Full certification of the F-35 for the nuclear role will ultimately require an additional $339 million in
funding. Key elements include special attention to internal wiring and avionics, with additional costs to
cover the test and certification process. It will begin after early testing is complete, taking place as part
of a stage called follow-on development.
Although F-35 costs are under scrutiny, the Pentagons commitment is strong. "I have no lack of
confidence in us absolutely following through" on F-35 nuclear certification plans, Alston said. "The
Department of Defense has made it clear that were committed to doing this, to making the F-35 dualcapable," he said.
Just as important is funding a B61 life extension on a schedule synchronized with F-35 development.
"It will matter that the B61 life extension program moves forward and that we can have a life-extended
B61 to marry up to a nuclear-capable F-35," acknowledged Alston.

A USAF F-104 lands at Morn AB, Spain, in

March 1964. The F-104 was also nuclearcertified for the air forces of Italy, Greece, and
Turkey. (Photo by Bruce Aro)

The B61 has seen so many variants that experts refer to it as the B61 family of weapons. Production
took place from the 1960s through the 1980s. Some variants were converted to the B61 family after
beginning design under other monikers. The most recent variant was the B61 developed for use with
the B-2 bomber. Its ballistic shapewithout nuclear material, of coursewas tested in 1998.
"One of the things the life extension program would do would be to reduce the number of variants of
the B61," said Alston. "We dont need that number of variants. There are some aging problems with the
B61, and the life extension program will overcome those."
Stable funding is critical because pipeline capacity for warhead refurbishment is very limited. As Alston
described it, the "life extension program drives infrastructure demands on the Department of Energy to
build the production capacity. Their infrastructure is hurting. The Navy has the W76 system under way
right now. We couldnt do [the B61] at the same time, thats how limiting [it] is."
Modernizing the B61 will take steady investment. "Theres a considerable amount of infrastructure that
has to come through for the Department of Energy to be able to move forward on the B61," Alston said.
At US Strategic Command, Gen. Kevin P. Chilton is adamant about the need for a B61 life extension
regardless of F-35 scheduling. "A lot of folks are linking 2017 to F-35. We need the B61 in first
production in 2017 regardless of the F-35 because the B61 also is a weapon that is used by the B-2, by
our strategic deterrent," he told the House Armed Services Committee on April 14.

Despite the Administrations support, shifting policy winds could derail B61 modernization and perhaps
even final certification of the F-35. For example, Congressional committees have tossed around cuts to
the B61 life extension program, although support for the W76 program for the Navy has been solid.
The Nuclear Umbrella
The longer-term risk comes from those who were not happy about what they saw as a free pass for
tactical nukes. One school of thought regards tactical nuclear weapons as a skeleton in the closet
forgotten by the Obama Administrations nuclear strategy reviewand ready to haunt US foreign policy.
"So before anyone cracks open the champagne for Obamas vision of a nuclear-free world, dont take
your eye off the little guys," warned David E. Hoffman in an article for Foreign Policy in April.
Yet as Hoffman noted, "Tactical nukes are going to be very, very hard to negotiate."

A B61 nuclear bomb rests in a protective hangar

next to an F-16. The B61 is receiving a full-scope
life extension. (USAF photo)

A large part of the reason for that is that DOD, the State Department, and NATO see continued utility
for tactical nuclear weapons. Nuclear fighters provide extended deterrence beyond NATOs border.
There is every possibility that, over the life of the F-35, Middle East states or Pacific region allies will
confront regional nuclear threats.
According to the NPR, the "nuclear umbrella" of extended deterrence included the strategic triad,
nonstrategic forward deployed forces, and US weapons that "could be deployed forward quickly to
meet regional contingencies."
What is certain is that a dual-capable F-35 is moving to the center of extended deterrence plans. With
its stealth and specialized sensors, the F-35 will soon be the only nuclear-capable fighter able to
penetrate the most sophisticated enemy air defenses.
The F-35 could be thrust into the spotlight if the planners judge that the B-2 reaches a point where it is
no longer able to penetrate enemy air defensesespecially in daytime. The B-2 does not carry
standoff weapons, noted Alston. Threats that keep a B-2 from performing direct nuclear attacks could,
in effect, hand that mission, too, to the F-35.

The Birth of a Nuclear Bomb: B61-11

The history of how the first U.S. post-testing nuclear weapon, the B61-11, was developed and deployed has become
clearer following the partial declassification and released of a number of documents by the Department of Energy and
Department of Defense under the Freedom of Information Act. Plans to build more "modified" nuclear weapons make it
important to revisit how the B61-11 bomb was planned, approved, and produced.
Before the Clinton administration initiated a moratorium on nuclear weapons test explosions in 1992, such experiments
served mainly to develop and certify new nuclear weapons. Absent nuclear testing, however, development of nuclear
weapons in the future must rely mainly on modification of existing designs and simulation. The B61-11 is the first such
example in what over the next decade will rebuild most or all of the warhead types in the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
The B61-11 is significant because it is the first post-testing modification and is significantly different than the weapon it
replaced. The B61-11 was first mentioned in public in September 1995 in "Stockpile Surveillance: Past and Future," a
report published by the three nuclear weapons laboratories. An obscure footnote on page 11 remarked:
"A modification of the B61 is expected to replace the B53 by the year 2000. Since this modification of the B61 is not
currently in the stockpile, there is no Stockpile Evaluation data for it. The B61-7 data can be used to represent this
weapon."
At that point the program had already been approved by Congress and underway for two and a half years. After the lab
report was discovered by the Los Alamos Study Group and the B61-11 program disclosed to the public, DOE issued a
press release on September 20, 1995, which explained that the B61-11 was not a new bomb but simply a modified
version of the existing B61-7 to replace the older and unsafe B53. "There is no new mission," DOE assured.
"This is not new, in any way, shape or form," a DOE official told Defense News in March 1997. General Eugene
Habiger, then command in chief of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) further explained: "All we have done is put
the components into a case-hardened steel shell that has the capability of burrowing quite a ways underground, through
frozen tundra, through significant layers of concrete."

The B53 Nuclear Bomb

The B61-11 officially replaced the B53, a nine-megatons thermonuclear

bomb first deployed in 1962. The large yield could destroy facilities
buried 750 feet (250 meters) underground.

Nuclear Conception
The B61-11 program initially began on July 16, 1993, when then DOE Deputy Assistant Secretary for Military
Application (Defense Programs) Winford Ellis "strongly recommended" to the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense
(Atomic Energy) Harold Smith that the B53 bomb be retired "at the earliest possible date." The nine-megatons
behemoth, first deployed in 1962, did not meet modern nuclear safety design criteria, DOE said.

A "Quick Look" study of alternatives to the B53 was completed in December 1993 and cited a formal STRATCOM
request for a program to replace the bomb.
The government had known about safety issues in the B53 "for twenty years," Sandia Director Paul Robinson stated in
1997. But the brute force of the weapon was considered the only means for holding a few high-priority Soviet
underground targets at risk, so public safety was disregarded. Not until the late 1980s did the planners consider replacing
the B53 with an earth-penetrating weapon: the Strategic Earth Penetrating Weapon (SEPW). The SEPW program, which
examined a spectrum of penetrator designs with relatively large nuclear yields, advanced through Phase II before it was
cancelled in 1990 (despite cancellation, some SEPW work continued as late as 1998).
Next on the nuclear drawing table was the W61, a nuclear earth-penetrator warhead based on a retrofitted B61-7 bomb
and modified for delivery in a missile. The W61 was proposed as the warhead for the Tiger (Terminal Guided and
Extended-Range) II missile (later renamed Extended Range Bomb (ERB), advanced tactical air-delivered weapon,
TASM (Tactical Air-to-Surface Weapon), and briefly the ALSOM (Air-Launched Stand-Off Missile). The W61 program
received Phase III authorization in 1990 as an interim solution to the target set of the SEPW, but when the TASM was
canceled in 1992, the W61 was canceled as well, according to a Sandia report.

B61-11 Chronology
1993
Jul 16: Rear Admiral W. G. Ellis, DOE Defense
Programs, asks ATSD(AE) to retire and if
necessary replace B53 "at the earliest possible
date."
Dec 10: DOE Quick Look study identifies
baseline design as modified B61-7 with nose
from cancelled W61 program.
1994
Sep 22: Nuclear Posture Review recommends
B61-11.
Sep: PDD/NSC-30 directs development of B6111.
Nov: B61-11 "B61-7 look-alike" concept
developed.
Dec: SAF/AQQ, PEO/ST, XOF approve B61-11
concept.
1995
Jan 18: NWCSSC approves baseline design and
recommends approval.
Feb 6: Nuclear Weapons Council approves B6111 concept.
Apr: Congressional committees are briefed.
Jul 18: Congress approves request to start
B61-11 effort.
Jul: NWC asks Air Force to lead B61-11 Project
Officers Group (POG) to implement project.
Jul: SAF formally tasks B61-11 POG to
implement the project and report back in 90
days.
Aug 2: Designers informed by DOE that
Congress had approved.

Aug 4: DOE directs Albuquerque and National

Labs to begin work on the B61-11 program.
Aug 8: B61-11 Kick-off meeting held at Kirtland
AFB.
Sep 1: First draft of Military Characteristics
(MC) and Stockpile to Target Sequence (STS).
Sep 6: DOE holds first all-agency B61-11
meeting. First time people in production
complex see the B61-11 concept.
Sep 8: First draft B61-11 MC circulated for
comments.
Sep 15: Program authorized.
Sep: The B61-11 program is first mentioned in
public.
Oct 3: SNLA/DOE proposes accelerating First
Production Unit by nine months from August
1997 to December 31, 1996.
Oct 18: B61-11 requirements finalized.
Nov 15: Harold Smith informs NWC that FPU
should be accelerated.
Nov 21: ATSD(AE) selects Option 2 (W61-like
design) as leading candidate and asks DOE to
"devote full resources to this design."
Dec: Final design selected.
1996
Feb: FPU delivery formally accelerated to
December 31, 1996.
Apr: Harold Smith states that B61-11 could be
"weapon of choice" against Libya
Nov 20: Flight test certification passed.
Dec: B61-11 is accepted as "limited stockpile
item" pending further flight tests.
1997
Jan: First B61-11 enters stockpile.
Nov: The B61-11 enters service with the 509
Wing at Whiteman AFB in Missouri.
1998
Oct: ALT 336 begins.
1999
Oct: ALT 349 begins.
2000
Sep: ALT 349 completed and certified.
Dec: ALT 349 recommended for acceptance to
the NWCSSC.
Sandia led inter-agency group "to understand
more fully the weapon's penetration
capabilities."
2001