US nuclear weapons 'leave British soil at last' after half a century of controversy (maybe)

[struggle4progress]

Published Date: 27 June 2008
By Emily Pykett

... a watchdog said Washington had removed a stockpile of 110 B-61 bombs from the RAF base at Lakenheath, Suffolk ...

Each B-61 has the potential to destroy an entire city. Their maximum yield is 340 kilotons of TNT – compared to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima which yielded 16 kilotons ...

Both the Ministry of Defence and the Pentagon declined to comment yesterday, on the grounds that Nato policies prevent them from confirming or denying the whereabouts of nuclear weapons.

However, the report's author, nuclear weapons expert Hans Kristensen, of the Federation of American Scientists, said sources had confirmed that the removal had happened in the past few years ...

http://news.scotsman.com/uk/US-nuclear-weapons--39leave.4229196.jp


From The Times
June 27, 2008
Last US nuclear weapons ‘withdrawn from UK’
Michael Evans, Defence Editor

... The report by the Federation of American Scientists says that US nuclear weapons are located mostly at American Air Force bases at Aviano in Italy and at Incirlik in Turkey. Four other bases, in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, are also said to have some nuclear weapons stocks ...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4221834.ece


U.S. Nuclear Weapons Withdrawn From the United Kingdom
http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2008/06/us-nuclear-weapons-withdrawn-from-the-united-kingdom.php

[stillcool]

1. I guess that's a good thing...

Dr Johnson, who lives in Helensburgh and went on to become a senior adviser for Hans Blix, the UN's former monitor for weapons of mass destruction, is now director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy.

"The B-61s are relatively small bombs, fairly portable, and can only really be used in a military role as they are designed to be dropped from planes.

"Each of them is several times larger than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"It seems ironic to call them 'tactical' when each of them could devastate a whole city."
-----------------------

At the height of the Cold War, the United States had more than 7,000 nuclear weapons in Europe.

The first nuclear bombs arrived in Britain in September 1954.

Most were withdrawn in the early 1990s, and today the Federation of American Scientists estimates the number of American weapons at fewer than 240 in Europe as a whole.
http://news.scotsman.com/uk/US-nuclear-weapons--39leave.4229196.jp

but for some reason it reminds me of this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKX6luiMINQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjXPOxnu2N8&feature=related