Britain Reveals Secret Weapon - Chicken Powered Nuclear Bomb !

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Chicken bomb was true, Britain insists



Associated Press

London -- A claim that Britain considered using live chickens in a
nuclear weapon aroused skepticism Thursday, but officials insisted that
it was not an April Fool's hoax.

"It's a genuine story," said Robert Smith, head of press and publicity
at The National Archives.

The archives released a secret 1957 Ministry of Defence report showing
that scientists contemplated putting chickens in the casing of a
plutonium landmine.

The chickens' body heat was considered a possible means of preventing
the mine's mechanism from freezing.

Listing ways of extending the armed life of the landmine, the
declassified document proposed "incorporating some form of heating
independent of power supplies under the weapon hull in the emplacement.
Chickens, with a heat output of the order of 1,000 BTU (British Thermal
Units) per bird per day are a possibility."

The seven-tonne device, code named Blue Peacock, would have been
detonated from a distance or by timer in the event of a retreat from
invading Soviet troops, to prevent them from occupying the area.

Andy Oppenheimer, co-editor of Jane's World Armies, said he found the
idea of using chickens hard to believe.

"I have a feeling that it's an April Fool," he said in a phone
interview. He said wrapping the device in fibreglass to keep it warm
would have been a better option.

Some newspapers also expressed skepticism.

"Is today the day to reveal the chicken-powered nuke?" The Times of
London wrote, referring to the April 1 date. Nonetheless, The Times put
it on page one.

Tom O'Leary, head of education and interpretation at the National
Archives, said he had no doubt that the document was authentic.

"None whatsoever," he said in a telephone interview with the Associated
Press. "It's not the kind of thing the civil service does, to set up an
April Fool's joke."

Mr. O'Leary said the idea is mentioned briefly in a long document.

"It's purely a suggestion in an official document that that is a
possibility that was proposed," he said, and there was no indication
that the feasibility was ever tested.

The Blue Peacock project began in 1954 and was aimed at preventing
enemy occupation of territory due to nuclear contamination. Designs
were based on Britain's Blue Danube free-fall bomb, which consisted of
a plutonium core surrounded by a sphere of high explosive with
detonators spread across the surface.

Officials decided in 1957 to acquire 10 Blue Peacock landmines, each
weighing 7,250 kilograms, and to station them with the British Army of
the Rhine in Germany. In 1958, however, the Ministry of Defence Weapons
Policy Committee decided that work on Blue Peacock should stop because
of reservations about the fallout hazard.

A prototype survives in the historical collection of the Atomic Weapons
Establishment, a government agency which has its headquarters at
Aldermaston west of London.

"The whole operational scenario appeared somewhat theatrical," an
article in the AWE's magazine said in January. It did not mention
chickens but did deal with the problem of maintaining the right
temperature.

"The nuclear warhead had to be kept within a specific temperature
range, but environmental trials suggested it might not have survived
the rigours of a mid-European winter," the article said.

Details of the chicken proposal feature in an April 2-Oct. 30
exhibition titled The Secret State at the National Archives in Kew,
west London.





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nternational/


There were plans for a PGB way back in WWII! Only thing is the P didin't
mean Precision - it meant Pidgeon!