Blue Peacock - how the British planned to blow up Germany

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It was assumed that the explosion of nuclear mines "will not only destroy buildings and structures over a large area, but also prevent its occupation due to radioactive contamination of the area." As the nuclear filling of such mines, the British Blue Danube atomic bombs (Blue Danube) were used. Each of the mines was enormous and weighed over 7 tons. The mines were supposed to lie unprotected in German soil - therefore, their corps was carried out practically unopened. Once activated, each mine would detonate 10 seconds after someone moved it, or the internal pressure and humidity readings would change.

On April 1, 2004, the National Archives of Great Britain disseminated information: during the Cold War, the British were going to use the Blue Peacock nuclear bomb, stuffed with live chickens, against the Soviet troops. Naturally, everyone thought it was a joke. It turned out to be true.

"This is a true story," said Robert Smith, head of press for the British National Archives, which opened The Secret State, an exhibition of state secrets and British military secrets in the 1950s.

“The civil service is not kidding,” his colleague Tom O'Leary echoes.

So the magazine New Scientist confirms some facts: he published a message about a British nuclear warhead on a serious July 3, 2003.

Immediately after dropping the atomic bombs on Japan, then British Prime Minister Clement Attlee sent a top-secret memo to the Atomic Energy Committee. Attlee wrote that if Britain wants to remain a great power, it needs a powerful deterrent that can raze the enemy's major cities to the ground. British nuclear weapons were developed in such secrecy that Winston Churchill, who returned to his homeland in 1951, was amazed how Attlee was able to hide the cost of the bomb from parliament and ordinary citizens.

In the early fifties, when the post-war picture of the world had already in many respects come to a bipolar scheme of confrontation between the communist east and the capitalist west, the threat of a new war loomed over Europe. The Western powers were aware that the USSR significantly outnumbered them in terms of the number of conventional weapons, so the main deterrent that could stop the proposed invasion was to be nuclear weapons - the West had more of them. In preparation for the next war, the British secret enterprise RARDE developed a special type of mines that were supposed to leave behind for the troops in case they had to retreat from Europe under the onslaught of the communist hordes. The mines of this project, dubbed the Blue Peacock, were, in fact, ordinary nuclear bombs - only intended to be installed underground, and not thrown from the air.

The charges were to be installed at points strategically important for advancing the advancing troops - on major highways, under bridges (in special concrete wells), etc. troops for two or three days.

In November 1953, the first atomic bomb, the Blue Danube, entered the Royal Air Force. A year later, the Danube formed the basis for a new project called Blue Peacock.

The goal of the project is to prevent enemy occupation of the territory due to its destruction, as well as nuclear (and not only) pollution. It is clear who, at the height of the Cold War, the British considered a potential enemy - the Soviet Union.

It was his "nuclear offensive" that they anxiously awaited and calculated the damage in advance. The British had no illusions about the outcome of the Third World War: the combined power of a dozen hydrogen bombs of the Russians would be equivalent to all the allied bombs dropped on Germany, Italy and France during the Second World War.

12 million people die in the first seconds, another 4 million are seriously injured, poisonous clouds travel across the country. The forecast turned out to be so grim that it was not shown to the public until 2002, when the materials reached the National Archives.

The nuclear mine of the Blue Peacock project weighed about 7.2 tons and was an impressive steel cylinder, inside which there was a plutonium core surrounded by detonating chemical explosives, as well as a rather complex electronic filling at that time. The power of the bomb was about 10 kilotons. The British planned to bury ten such mines near strategically important objects in West Germany, where the British military contingent was located, and use them if the USSR did decide to invade. The mines were supposed to detonate eight days after activating the built-in timer. In addition, they could be detonated remotely, from a distance of up to 5 km. The device was also equipped with a system to prevent mine clearance: any attempt to open or move an activated bomb would result in an immediate explosion.

When creating the mines, the developers faced a rather unpleasant problem associated with the unstable operation of the electronic systems of the bomb in low winter temperatures. To solve this problem, it was proposed to use an insulating shell and … chickens. It was assumed that the chickens would be walled up in a mine along with a supply of water and feed. In a few weeks, the chickens would have died, but their body heat would have been enough to warm the mine's electronics. About the chickens became known after the declassification of the documents of the Blue Peacock. At first, everyone thought it was an April Fools' joke, but Tom O'Leary, the head of the UK National Archives, said "it looks like a joke, but this is definitely not a joke …"

However, there was also a more traditional version using ordinary glass wool insulation.

In the mid-fifties, the project culminated in the creation of two working prototypes, which were successfully tested, but not tested - not a single nuclear mine was detonated. However, in 1957, the British military ordered the construction of ten mines of the Blue Peacock project, planning to place them in Germany under the guise of small nuclear reactors designed to generate electricity. However, in the same year, the British government decided to close the project: the very idea of secretly deploying nuclear weapons on the territory of another country was considered a political blunder of the army leadership. The discovery of these mines threatened England with very serious diplomatic complications, therefore, as a result, the level of risk associated with the implementation of the Blue Peacock project was deemed unacceptably high.

A prototype "chicken mine" has been added to the historical collection of the government's Atomic Weapons Establishment.

At one time, the foreign press repeatedly reported that the Armed Forces of the USSR were ready to use nuclear mines to cover the border with China. This, however, is about a long period of very unfriendly relations between Moscow and Beijing.

And that was the case then. In the event of a war between the PRC and its northern neighbor, real hordes would rush into its territory, consisting of the formations of the People's Liberation Army of China and the militia - minbing. Only the latter, we note, significantly outnumbered all the fully mobilized Soviet divisions. That is why on the borders separating the USSR from the Celestial Empire, in addition to the many tanks dug into the ground, it was allegedly planned to resort to the installation of nuclear mines. Each of them was able, according to the American journalist and former Soviet officer Mark Steinberg, to turn a 10-kilometer section of the border zone into a radioactive obstacle.

It is known that sappers are engaged in mining and demining, dealing with anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, unexploded bombs, shells and other extremely dangerous gizmos. But few people heard that in the Soviet army there were secret sapper units for special purposes, created to eliminate nuclear bombs.

The presence of such units was explained by the fact that during the Cold War, American troops in Europe placed nuclear explosive devices in special wells. They were supposed to work after the outbreak of hostilities between NATO and the Warsaw Pact Organization on the way of the Soviet tank armies breaking through to the English Channel (the Pentagon's nightmare at that time!). Approaches to nuclear bombs could be covered with conventional minefields.

Meanwhile, civilians in the same West Germany, for example, lived and did not know that there was a well with an American atomic weapon nearby. Such concrete mines, up to 6 meters deep, could be found under bridges, at road junctions, right on highways and at other strategically important points. They were usually arranged in groups. Moreover, the banal-looking metal covers made nuclear wells practically indistinguishable from ordinary sewer manholes.

However, there is also an opinion that in reality no landmines were installed in these structures, they were empty and atomic ammunition should have been lowered there only in case of a real threat of a military conflict between the West and the East - in a "special period in an administrative order" according to the terminology adopted in the Soviet army.

The reconnaissance and destruction squads of enemy nuclear bombs appeared in the staff of engineer battalions of Soviet tank divisions stationed in the territory of the Warsaw Pact countries in 1972. The personnel of these units knew the structure of atomic "hellish machines" and had the necessary equipment for their search and neutralization. The sappers, who, as you know, make mistakes once, were absolutely not allowed to make a mistake here.

These American landmines included the M31, M59, T-4, XM113, M167, M172 and M175 with TNT equivalent from 0.5 to 70 kilotons, united under the common abbreviation ADM - Atomic Demolition Munition. They were quite heavy devices weighing from 159 to 770 kilograms. The first and heaviest of the landmines, the M59, was adopted by the US Army back in 1953. For the installation of nuclear bombs, the United States troops in Europe had special sapper units, such as the 567th Engineering Company, whose veterans even acquired a completely nostalgic website on the Internet.

In the arsenal of the likely foe, there were other exotic nuclear weapons. "Green Berets" - special forces, rangers - servicemen of deep reconnaissance units, "navy seals" - saboteurs of the US naval special intelligence were trained to lay special small-sized nuclear mines, but already on enemy ground, that is, in the USSR and other states of the Warsaw Pact. It is known that these mines were M129 and M159. For example, the M159 nuclear mine had a mass of 68 kilograms and a power, depending on the modification, 0.01 and 0.25 kilotons. These mines were produced in the years 1964-1983.

At one time, there were rumors in the West that American intelligence was trying to implement a program for installing portable radio-controlled nuclear bombs in the Soviet Union (in particular, in large cities, areas where hydraulic structures are located, etc.). In any case, the units of American nuclear saboteurs, nicknamed Green Light ("Green Light"), conducted training, during which they learned to lay nuclear "hell machines" in hydroelectric dams, tunnels and other objects relatively resistant to "conventional" nuclear bombardment.

And what about the Soviet Union? Of course, he also had such means - this is no longer a secret. The special forces units of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff were armed with special nuclear mines RA41, RA47, RA97 and RA115, the production of which was carried out in 1967-1993.

The aforementioned Mark Steinberg once reported on the presence in the Soviet army of portable explosive devices of the RYa-6 knapsack type (RYa is a nuclear knapsack). In one of his publications, an ex-citizen of the USSR writes: “The weight of the RYA-6 is about 25 kilograms. It has a thermonuclear charge, in which thorium and californium are used. The charge power varies from 0.2 to 1 kilotons in TNT equivalent: A nuclear mine is activated either with a delayed fuse or remote control equipment at a distance of up to 40 kilometers. It is equipped with several non-neutralization systems: vibration, optical, acoustic and electromagnetic, so it is almost impossible to remove it from the installation site or neutralize it."

That's right, and after all, our special sappers learned to neutralize American atomic "infernal machines". Well, all that remains is to take off your hat to the domestic scientists and engineers who have created such a weapon. We should also mention vague information about the allegedly (the key word in this article) plans considered by the Soviet leadership to plant sabotage nuclear mines in the areas of silo launchers of American ICBMs - they were supposed to be triggered immediately after the launch of the rocket, destroying it with a shock wave. Although it certainly looks more like a James Bond action movie. For such "counterforce bookmarks" would require about a thousand, which a priori made these intentions practically unrealizable.

On the initiative of the leadership of the United States and Russia, the sabotage nuclear mines of both countries have already been disposed of. In total, the United States and the USSR (Russia) released more than 600 and about 250 small-sized backpack-type nuclear weapons for special forces, respectively. The last of them, the Russian RA115, were disarmed in 1998. It is not known whether other countries have similar "hell machines". Veteran experts agree that most likely not. But there is hardly any doubt that the same China, for example, has the capabilities of their creation and deployment - the scientific, technical and production potential of the Celestial Empire is quite sufficient for this.

And some other experts suspect that North Korea may have its own nuclear bombs planted in the tunnels dug in advance. Even though the adherents of the Juche ideas are skillful masters of the underground war.