Britain: Chicken-Equipped Nuke Not a Hoax
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Thu Apr 1,10:50 AM ET |
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By MICHAEL McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer
LONDON - A claim that Britain considered
using live chickens in a nuclear weapon aroused skepticism Thursday, but
officials insisted 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 Defense report showing that scientists contemplated putting
chickens in the casing of a plutonium land mine.
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 land mine, 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-ton 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
fiberglass 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."
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" land mines, each weighing 16,000 pounds (7,250
kilograms), and to station them with the British Army of the Rhine in Germany.
However, in 1958 the Ministry of Defense Weapons Policy Committee decided that
work on "Blue Peacock" should stop, after reservations emerged 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," said an article in the AWE's magazine 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 rigors of a mid-European winter," the article
said.
Details of the chicken proposal feature in
an April 2-Oct. 30 exhibition entitled "The Secret State" at the
National Archives in Kew, west London.
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