XBradTC

In the early 1950s, the Royal Navy faced a not altogether new problem. The Soviet Navy was fielding the fast light cruisers of the Sverdlov class. Those cruisers had the potential to be very effective commerce raiders in the North Sea and the Barents. The traditional Royal Navy solution would be to build a class of cruisers to counter them. But post-war financial strain meant that wasn’t really an option, and building a counter simply encouraged a naval arms race.

Instead, the RN decided, in keeping with the thinking that was common in the atomic age, to try a new approach.  Need to sink a Sverdlov?  Nuke it.

While today the thought of unleashing nuclear weapons for any reason is fraught with the risk of a world wide nuclear exchange that would destroy civilization as we know it, in those days, it was almost taken as a given that nuclear weapons use would be common, both at sea, and on the battlefield. The hydrogen bomb of megaton proportions wasn’t terribly common, and the ballistic missile was not yet fielded. 

To deliver a nuclear weapon against the Soviet cruisers, the RN needed a fast, long range attack jet that could operate from its existing fleet carriers. A low level, high speed attack run would end with a “long toss” attack, where the jet pulled up into an Immelman, releasing its nuclear bomb at about the 45 degree point.  At the top of the half loop, the jet would roll upright, dive back to the deck, now headed away from the target, and escape the blast. The bomb, in the meantime, would travel in an arc to the cruiser, and detonate somewhere in the vicinity, close enough to at least put the ship out of the fight, if not outright sinking it.

Several companies in Britain proposed plans to fulfill the requirement, and eventually Blackburn, a traditional supplier of attack aircraft to the Royal Navy, won the competition, and designed and produced the Blackburn Buccaneer.

The Buccaneer would enter service with the Royal Navy in the early 1960s. Eventually, the idea of using nuclear weapons at sea was supplanted (though the Bucs retained a nuclear strike role for use in Western Europe) and the Bucs instead focused on using conventional weapons, anti-ship guided missiles, and a land attack role.

Primarily for financial reasons, the Royal Navy phased its large fleet carriers out of service during the 1970s. At the same time, the Royal Air Force  was facing a problem. Its plan to field the TSR.2 was cancelled on cost grounds. The replacement for the TSR.2, the F-111K, was similarly cancelled.  And the replacement for the F-111K, the Panavia Tornado, was many years from service. Somewhat reluctantly, beginning in the late 1960s, the RAF accepted surplus Bucaneers from the RN, strictly as an interim aircraft. In the event, the Buccaneer would provide yeoman service to the RAF from 1968 to 1993, including combat in Desert Storm.