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With evidence mounting that the United States Air Force intends to return nuclear weapons to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, the Nuclear Free Local Authorities have written to emergency planners in the county, and on their recommendation now to the Ministry of Defence, to question their preparedness for any future accident involving the destruction of a military aircraft carrying nuclear weapons, either at Lakenheath or in transit to or from the airbase.
Whilst this might seem the stuff of a fanciful Hollywood disaster movie, two such accidents have already happened at Lakenheath in the past – the first of which, in 1956, prompted a USAF officer to say that the near detonation of a nuclear bomb with the explosive power ten times that dropped on Hiroshima had only been averted by ‘A combination of tremendous heroism, good fortune and the will of God’ . The NFLAs are gravely concerned that the county may not have such good fortune third time lucky.
Although Lakenheath is notionally an RAF base, its website reveals its actual status as ‘the largest U.S. Air Force-operated base in England’ with 4,000 military personnel. As well as F15-E fighter-bomber aircraft, two operational F35-A squadrons are now stationed at Lakenheath with the aircraft being ‘nuclear capable’.
From 1954, the United States Air Force stockpiled nuclear bombs at the base and, in the 1990’s, the arsenal was modified to permit the storage on site of up to 132 weapons. With the thawing of the Cold War, and after protests by activists, 110 of the older variant gravity bombs B61s were only finally withdrawn in 2008.
Now official documents exposed by the Federation of American Scientists have revealed plans to build a new dormitory to accommodate a further 144 service personnel to carry out a ‘potential surety mission’, Pentagon code for its intention to again stockpile the latest variant of the guided B61 for deployment on the F35-A.
When replying to enquiries from MPs concerned about the return of nuclear weapons to Lakenheath, Government Ministers fall back on a standard response: ‘It remains longstanding UK and NATO policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at a given location’.
Aside from the decision to bring B61-12 nuclear bombs back to Lakenheath painting ‘a great big target on the base inviting a nuclear, rather than conventional, strike in the event of war with Russia’, an issue the NFLAs will be taking up separately with government ministers, we are concerned that little has been said in the public domain – aside from one commendable effort by Norwich City Council – about accident planning, which is a matter of responsibility shared by all local authorities and emergency services in the county, as set out in the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004. These bodies all sit on the Suffolk Resilience Forum.
In his letter to the Forum and subsequently to the Ministry of Defence, Councillor O’Neill has posed this central question ‘What is being done, or is planned to be done, to prepare for any number of possible future accident scenarios involving nuclear weapons in transit, or a nuclear weapon-equipped armed aircraft on the ground or in the air, or nuclear weapons held in store at Lakenheath?’
To its credit, the Suffolk Joint Emergency Planning Unit has already sent a reply, which is shown below, and on the Unit’s recommendation the NFLAs have today written to the MOD’s Ministerial Correspondence Team.
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For more information, please contact NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email to richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk
Notes to Editors
The letter sent to Mr Jon Lacey, Chair of the Suffolk Resilience Forum and the Suffolk Joint Emergency Planning Unit dated 11 September 2023
Dear Mr Lacey and Suffolk JEPU colleagues,
Emergency planning for future accidents involving the transportation and maintenance of US nuclear weapons at RAF Lakenheath
In the Suffolk Community Risk Register you commendably recognise as a:
High risk: a ‘Large transport accident (road, rail, or air)’
Medium risk: an ‘Accident at (a) high consequence area (chemical, nuclear etc)’
And, on your website, you helpfully provide a tool to enable residents to identify their proximity to three military airbases in the county, Lakenheath, Mildenhall and Honington.
Like Mildenhall, Lakenheath is in fact only notionally an RAF base. The base website describes it as ‘the largest U.S. Air Force-operated base in England’ with 4,000 military personnel. As well as F15-E aircraft, two operational F35-A squadrons have now been deployed to Lakenheath with the aircraft being ‘nuclear capable’ and able to deploy the latest B61-12 guided bomb.
I am quite sure that you are aware of the increasing evidence that there are advanced preparations to reintroduce a stockpile of nuclear weapons to Lakenheath. This has been extensively covered by national media outlets including the BBC, The Guardian, and The Telegraph.
The Federation of American Scientists first reported that the US Air Force’s Financial Year budgetary justification package, dated March 2023, lists a requirement to: ‘Construct a 144-bed dormitory to house the increase in enlisted personnel as the result of a potential Surety Mission’. A reference to a ‘surety dormitory’ was also made in Department of Defense testimony to the US Congress that same month. The FAS describes ‘surety’ as a term commonly used within the Departments of Defense and Energy to denote missions necessitating custodianship of nuclear weapons. Construction is due to begin in June 2024 and last until February 2026.
Nuclear weapons were previously housed in Lakenheath, with the first arriving in September 1954. The base was equipped with 33 nuclear weapon vaults in protected aircraft shelters in the 1990’s, each capable of accommodating up to four B61 bombs. 110 B61 gravity bombs were stored for use from the F15-E aircraft. When these weapons were withdrawn in 2008, at that time Harold Smith, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense stated the vaults (at Lakenheath and elsewhere) were “mothballed in such a way that if we chose to go back into those bases we can do it.”
Aside from the obvious fact that the storage of US nuclear weapons at Lakenheath ‘paints a great big target’ on the base inviting a nuclear, rather than conventional, strike in the event of open hostilities with Russia, there are real concerns that there might be a peacetime accident involving a B61-12 bomb at the base and that such an accident could be serious and might be catastrophic.
This is no idle threat as when it comes to Lakenheath and accidents involving US nuclear weapons there is history.
The first in July 1956 involved a B-47 bomber which crashed into a storage igloo containing three Mark-6 nuclear weapons, each with a yield of ten times the Little Boy device which destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On that occasion, it was fortunate (but sad) that only four servicemen died, as the plane exploded covering the bombs with burning aviation fuel. One of the bombs had an exposed detonator. An official report described it as a ‘miracle’ this bomb did not explode as it would have released nuclear material and an USAF officer later described the near disaster’ as averted only by a combination of ‘tremendous heroism, good fortune, and the will of God’.
The second nuclear near-disaster occurred five years later in January 1961 and involved a parked F-100 Super Sabre jet fighter loaded with a Mark-28 weapon which caught fire after the pilot accidentally jettisoned his fuel tanks when turning his engines on. The tanks ruptured when they struck the runway beneath, igniting the fuel which engulfed the nuclear weapon leaving it ‘scorched and blistered’. The hydrogen bomb had a yield of almost five times that of Little Boy.
In March 1958, another similar accident involving a nuclear armed aircraft occurred at RAF Greenham Common.
Elsewhere in the world there have been numerous other incidents involving crashed American bombers and bombs that have been dropped accidentally from aircraft and have either partially exploded or disappeared (the latter being so called ‘broken arrow’ incidents).
It is therefore not inconceivable that an accident could occur in the future involving a transport aircraft bringing these weapons to the UK or a nuclear armed F-35 in flight or on the ground.
The B61-12 has a yield that can be up to 50 KT. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has published data describing the impact of a 50 KT ground and airburst.
https://nuclearweaponsedproj.mit.edu/Node/104
At 1.1 kilometres the impact of a ground burst is described thus: ‘Most people are killed’, at 1.7 kms ‘Most buildings collapse. Injuries are universal, fatalities are widespread’, and at 2.3 kms ‘Residential structures collapse. Serious injuries are common, fatalities may occur’. These effects are similar with airbursts, but at slightly greater distances. This ignores the further impact of fire and radiation that follows such an event. And of course, should such an incident occur, unlike a missile strike, there would be no ‘three-minute warning’ so the populace would have no time to find shelter.
This of course is the most extreme scenario. More likely would be the possibility of a fire and the probability of conventional explosives in the device detonating leading to the release of radioactive materials. These might be carried some distance by the prevailing wind.
I need not remind you that local authorities and other first tier responders, like the fire and rescue service, have the ultimate responsibility for public health and safety through their emergency planning function.
To therefore come to the crux of the matter I should therefore like to know what is being done, or is planned to be done, by the Suffolk Resilience Forum, in conjunction with the US and British military authorities, to prepare for any number of possible future accident scenarios involving nuclear weapons in transit, or a nuclear weapon-equipped armed aircraft on the ground or in the air, or nuclear weapons held in store at Lakenheath?
I completely recognise that the details of the plan will be, by necessity, secret and that the timescale for the eventual deployment of US nuclear weapons remains uncertain.
Nonetheless it would be good to receive your reassurance that:
1. Such accident scenarios are recognised as being credible and are being actively considered by the Forum and its partners.
2. Emergency plans involving Forum partners and the US and British authorities are, or will be, drawn up to respond to such scenarios.
3. Future exercises will be carried out involving all parties to test responses to these scenarios.
4. The Forum and the Lakenheath base commanders are, as far as is practicable within the constraints of military security, committed to an ongoing dialogue with the local community and its elected representatives on emergency planning matters.
5. Consideration will be given to the pre-distribution of Iodine tablets and the issue of instructions on evacuation procedures to the local population likely to be impacted by any accident.
Thank you kindly for giving this letter your consideration. I very much look forward to your reply. Please respond by email to the NFLA Secretary Richard Outram at richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk
Yours sincerely,
Councillor Lawrence O’Neill,
Chair, UK / Ireland NFLA Steering Committee
The reply from the Suffolk Joint Emergency Planning Unit dated 14 September 2023:
Dear Councillor O’Neill
RE: Emergency planning for future accidents involving the transportation of and maintenance of US nuclear weapons at RAF Lakenheath
Thank you for your email regarding the subject of accidents involving the transportation and maintenance of US nuclear weapons at RAF Lakenheath.
I am also aware that you have also forwarded a letter regarding the same subject to Jon Lacey as Chair of the Suffolk Resilience Forum.
I would be grateful if you accept the below as a combined response from Jon Lacey and The Suffolk Joint Emergency Planning Unit.
Any matters relating to military establishments, and their operations, including those of visiting forces, such as the United States of America Airforce, in the United Kingdom are the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence, and they would be best placed to respond to your queries. Contact details can be found at Ministry of Defence – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
However, I can confirm that the Suffolk Resilience Forum does maintain a robust relationship with both RAF Lakenheath and Mildenhall as well as supporting joint exercises with both establishments.
Additionally, there are offsite response plans in place for both bases, as well as a wider Suffolk Radiation Plan, which predominantly covers Sizewell power station, which would support a response to this type of incident, but due to their sensitivity and security classifications they are not publicly available.
I am also aware that both RAF commanders liaise regularly with the local communities within the immediate vicinity of both bases.
Further information regarding Civil Authority responses to these types of incidents can also be found in the MOD LAESI publication which can be found here Local authority and emergency services information – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) [1]
I trust this answers the matters that you have raised?
Yours sincerely
Steve Henthorn
Senior Emergency Planning Officer
Suffolk Joint Emergency Planning Unit
Signed on behalf of Jon Lacey
Chair of the Suffolk Resilience Forum
An extract from ‘Playing with Fire’, published by the Nuclear Information Service (Page 98), covers the first accident:
https://www.nuclearinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/playing-with-fire-report-FINAL.pdf
‘Broken Arrow’ at Lakenheath
On the morning of 27 July 1956 Captain Russell Bowling and his crew took off from the RAF Lakenheath air base in Suffolk in one of the US Strategic Air Command’s B-47 bombers on a routine training flight.[2] During their six-hour mission they took on fuel mid-flight from a KC-97 tanker aircraft south of London, rehearsed a low approach to the US air base at Burtonwood in Cheshire, and then returned to Lakenheath in the middle of the afternoon to practice ‘touch and go’ landings.
The B-47 made three successful touch and go landings but on the fourth attempt disaster struck. The aircraft lost control and slid off the runway, ploughing into a storage igloo used to store unarmed Mark 6 atomic bombs. The crash was described in a top-secret telegram to General Curtis Lemay, Commander of the Strategic Air Command:
“The B-47 tore apart the igloo and knocked about 3 Mark Sixes. A/C [aircraft] then exploded showering burning fuel overall. Crew perished. Most of A/C wreckage pivoted on igloo and came to rest with A/C nose just beyond igloo bank which kept main fuel fire outside smashed igloo. Preliminary exam by bomb disposal officer says a miracle that one Mark Six with exposed detonators sheared didn’t go. Fire extinguishers extinguished fire around Mark Sixes fast”.
The resulting fire destroyed the aircraft and killed the four crew members. The Mark 6 nuclear weapons were stored in the igloo without their fissile cores installed, although each bomb contained around 5,000 pounds of high explosive and depleted uranium components. The damaged weapons and components were returned to the US Atomic Energy Commission after the incident.
An Air Force officer present at the scene said that it was only through “a combination of tremendous heroism, good fortune and the will of God” that this incident did not become a nuclear accident on a larger scale. If the aircraft had collided with the igloo containing the three atomic bombs and ignited a fire, a cloud of toxic uranium could have drifted off the base across the surrounding countryside. The fissile cores for the three weapons were stored in a different igloo at Lakenheath, and if the aircraft had collided with that igloo instead an even more serious dispersal of radioactive material might have occurred.
The Wikipedia article, ‘RAF Lakenheath Nuclear Weapons Accidents’ covers the first and second accidents:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Lakenheath_nuclear_weapons_accidents
1. The latest guidance can be found at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1037478/20211129-LAESI-Ed12-MHCLG-Tweak-final.pdf
2. Charles Perrow: ‘Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies’. Updated Edition. Princeton University Press, 1999. The implications of normal accident theory for nuclear weapon programmes are addressed in Scott D. Sagan: ‘The Limits of Safety: Organisations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons’. Princeton University Press, 1993
