Talk:Project E

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Article milestones Date Process Result November 13, 2008 Articles for deletion Kept March 11, 2017 Good article nominee Listed May 9, 2017 WikiProject A-class review Approved November 6, 2018 Featured article candidate Promoted June 26, 2019 Good topic candidate Promoted A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on March 16, 2017. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the United States gave nuclear weapons to Britain as part of Project E? Current status: Featured article

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This article is based directly on the source quoted (more details here):

RAF Nuclear Deterrent Forces by Humphrey Wynn (Ministry of Defence Air Historical Branch) publised by HMSO in 1996, ISBN 011 72833 0, pages 254, 258, 262-270 etc.

It is no hoax, and the content itself should demonstrate that. Soarhead77 (talk) 10:52, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Content demonstrates nothing. What you need to do is to cite all available reliable sources. I'm formatting the article so that your reference does show, but much more needs to be done, in my view (others may differ) in order that the article survives. If it is as you say then it can be better cited. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 11:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

content may demonstrate nothing, but don't forget the "hoax" tag was placed on this page since it "looked plausible". It is based entirely on a reliable source. As normal if anyone comes up with anything more they are welcome to add it. Just not claim its a hoax. AFAIK no public announcement of this was ever made. Soarhead77 (talk) 11:59, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A good approach would be to quote small passages form the book that verify the article within the {{cite book}} template. At present you have an article which may or may not be a hoax, that looks plausible, that may or may not be notable if it is not a hoax. There are some options here:

1. cite the article well and the issue goes away
2. take it to a full deletion discussion at AfD

The one thing I am convinced of is that rhetoric will not save an article. Th eonly thing that does so is good, hard facts. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 12:17, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since time may be against you I have chosen the AfD option to prevent summary execution. I suggest the article be enhanced with references. I will be content to withdraw my nomination if you can demonstrate verifiability and notability. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 12:31, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The person who tagged this for speedy deletion needs some more practice using search engines. Juzhong (talk) 13:36, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps, but civility is important when saying so. If you have found useful; citations then add them to the article. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 13:50, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt anyone would find reference to this matter in a search engine but I stand to be corrected. As you may know, anything regarding nuclear weapon policy is more or less never discussed in public... But occasionally things slip out in books like this. People like Humphrey Wynn have the advantage of being able to examine official notes, and memos etc - most of this is inconsequential and boring. However this seemed to me to be a bit of evidence of collaboration in the early days of the cold war. On the other hand you need to be a bit of an aspie to plough through this sort of stuff :-). It has long been known that US nuclear weapons were carried on RAF planes - this page Mk 7 on Wikipedia confirms this. This article attempts to say why and how and give a bit of background to this. It may be lacking here, I leave it to others to expand it...

Some quotations and the internal references given from the same book (related to Project 'E'):

"... in this practical embodiment of RAF/USAF nuclear strike plans, co-ordination of those plans and the supply of nuclear weapons to the RAF were inextricably linked"

(correspondence in ID9/240/16, Pt3)

"... the question of dispersing, in time of tension, that part of the V-force allocated to support Project 'E'. It is clear that refusal to release or delay in releasing the American weapons could make it impossible to disperse these aircraft with the rest of Bomber Command"

(Acting DD Bomber Ops (Wg. Cdr. A R Scott)/AOC in C Bomber Command, 13 June 1958)

I attempt to be civil at all times :-) However, when Google is regarded as more authoritative than the MoD I recognise that I am at last lost. Soarhead77 (talk) 14:18, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that you add these citations to the article, ideally quoting the page numbers etc, and linking them to the salient points in the article. The issue is, to me, verifiability and notability. By using these tools within the article you persuade me and others of the notability. At that point I will be perfectly content to withdraw my nomination for deletion. Pedantic as it may seem, until that point, and in my opinion, the article does not work here. Others may have a different view, and that is Ok. That's what consensus is about. If I see clearly that I am wrong (by reference to the article) I have no hesitation in withdrawing. But it is the article that persuades me, not the talk page. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 15:07, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have added some inline citations to this - see what you think. Soarhead77 (talk) 10:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Inline citations are great but don't feel obliged to add them just because of people who don't know how to search for two terms (e.g. "project E" + "nuclear weapons") instead of one. If they really wanted to do something positive they could cite some of it themselves from google books. Juzhong (talk) 10:27, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This article seems to have generated more than its perhaps fair share of interest since it was created, from all sorts of people. There might be more that I can add in the fullness of time, but as you may know (and just from the citations) the book this is summarised from is a fair door stop of a book covering all manner of items from the genesis of the V-bombers to the TSR-2, perhaps worth inline citations simply because of that. I take exception to people who think it might be a hoax! (May a Mk 36 drop on their heads) The book is also cited (wrongly as it happens) on the PGM-17 Thor page. I do agree with all the categories it's been added to, and that its been made part of the Military History project. The right place for it IMVHO. As you can see from my talk page the cold war is one of my interests. Soarhead77 (talk) 12:56, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can I also encourage anyone else with any information on this to share it? There must be more sources around on this than the one I cited. 08:28, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I think that the Eisenhower note should state that it is cited by Wynn rather than being a direct quote sourced to Wynn itself. Something along the lines of primary source, cited in Wynn 258-9. Can someone with ready access to the book fix this, please? - Eldereft (cont.) 16:05, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly this is one thing that isn't directly attributed by a citation in the book - otherwise I would have used it. All it says is something not related at all to this quotation, but to the nuclear arming of Canberra bombers. Soarhead77 (talk) 21:57, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How credible is the claim that the Mk 5 weapon was supplied to the British, and in particular that it remained in service so late?

The Mk 5 was a very early US weapon. They were all built before 1955, about 140 in total. After this they were gradually retired from active service and into the stockpile, with retirement commencing fairly soon and being complete by January 1963. (All my information here is from Chuck Hansen's paper book, which doesn't mention UK use of them at all).

As such an early weapon, it has several drawbacks for V bomber service.

• Early models used IFI (in-flight insertion) of the core, hence the nose doors, and required access to the bomb bay in flight. This was however superseded in later models (by a motorised mechanism), so isn't an issue.

• The US didn't deploy them from high speed aircraft. They trialled them from the B47, but there were high-speed separation problems that were finally abandoned by 1954. I would expect the V bombers to have just the same issues, if not worse.

• They were withdrawn at pretty much the same time as the claimed service with the V bombers. Now it's obviously likely that the "poor cousins" would be given the less capable weapons, but would this really be to the extent that the withdrawal of a weapon would be delayed, just to keep it in service with a foreign power?

• These are old weapons, with an old physics package. That means a simple fuzing system, certainly no PAL. It also means a considerable consumption of fissile materials, compared to later weapons (actually a relative minor point, compared to their sheer age - the greatest reduction in fissiles was in going from the 4 to the 5, not the 5 to the 7). I don't see that the Pentagon would be keen on letting such weapons overseas (when later weapons were available), for the risk of their mis-use or mis-direction of their materials.

Given the relatively low credibility of the source [1] involved in the specific Mk 5 claim (I'd really want to see papers from the PRO), I find it hard to believe that the Mk 5 was in use by the RAF around 1960, rather than a later weapon such as the Mk 7 (or even the 28 or 43). Andy Dingley (talk) 12:59, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The high priority accorded to the atomic bomb programme was not shared by the V-bomber programme.[20] The first production order for 25 Vickers Valiants was issued on 9 February 1951, and they were not delivered until 8 February 1955.[22] I've marked this as dubious; there are plenty of sources that state the contrary. --MarchOrDie (talk) 09:02, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Name one that is in an official history. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:10, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What is an "official history"? And what difference does that make? What we need is a selection of decent sources. Here's one:

...in general, neither the Vickers Valiant, nor the Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor, encountered serious problems in development...^[1]

--MarchOrDie (talk) 09:21, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The official history is Gowing and Arnold, which says:

Finally, September 1950, the Prime Minister had issued the directive giving the topmost importance to Harwell and Risley, and equal importance just below that to research and development on the atomic weapon and the means to delivering it. Thereafter aircraft disappeared again from the top-priority class, for in the summer of 1950 the Defence Department had decided simply that guided missiles should have priority equal to all aspects of the atomic energy project, a ruling that lasted for the rest of the life of the Labour Government.

Partly because of the lack of priority and the overload on the aircraft industry, none of the prototype V-bombers was ready at the end of 1950, while the plans for the next three years' expenditure on the forces still included no provision for the build-up of the effective bomber force which Britain did not possess. It was only at the end of December 1950 that the first production order was placed for 25 Valiants, the most orthodox model of the three aircraft. The first Valiant prototype did not fly until May 1951 and crashed in January 1952. The second prototype flew in April 1952 and was grounded six months later after an accident. All three V-bombers suffered delays invariably associated with new aircraft. It had been hoped that the first Valiant production delivery to the RAF would be in 1953-4, but the first aircraft did not enter service until January 1955, and the first squadron was not operational until 1957, the year when the delivery of the first production aircraft of the two other V-bombers began

— Gowing and Arnold, Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy, 1945–1952, Volume 1, Policy Making. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-15781-7. OCLC 611555258.

Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:53, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you. Even your source has a "partly" in there. And how often does a new weapon system, particularly a complex one like a jet bomber, enter mass service three years after a prototype is demonstrated? When wording is disputed, the proper course is to compromise. --MarchOrDie (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  It only happens when the new weapons system is given priority, as was the case, for example, with the atomic bomb and Polaris. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:42, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  Perhaps, but it isn't as simple as that, and your summary doesn't accurately capture either the source or the larger nuanced picture. Guided missiles were going to eclipse manned aircraft in this era, and the Valiant was the conservative option that would maintain capability if something went wrong with the more futuristic Vulcan and Victor. Even with priority, six years from prototype to squadron service isn't bad going. If the planners are to be faulted, it might be more for having three new bombers come on stream at the same time, than for not putting enough "priority" to the bomber programme. As your source puts it, "All three V-bombers suffered delays invariably associated with new aircraft." I'd still hold out for better wording. --MarchOrDie (talk) 22:54, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose a new wording and I'll consider it. I took all the V-bomber articles to GA to create a Good Topic from them, so I'm quite familiar with this. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:12, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  I propose to skip the opinion sentence and just state the facts: The first production order for 25 Vickers Valiants was issued on 9 February 1951, and they were delivered on 8 February 1955.[22] --MarchOrDie (talk) 07:29, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi User:Hawkeye7, is me again. Beside the issue I rise at Talk:1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement#Which one is correct?, I have another small question for this article.

Section "British Army of the Rhine", at the end of second paragraph: "The British government's September 1965 announcement of the withdrawal of the Corporal missiles raised concerns in Germany that Britain might "de-denuclearise" the BAOR." West Germany I presume?--Jarodalien (talk) 16:51, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes. Changed to "West Germany". Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]