V-force

V-Force: Britain’s Nuclear Bombers

Nearly 30 years after giving them up, the RAF is poised to reacquire air-dropped nuclear weapons

Almost exactly 80 years ago, the world’s first atomic test explosion shattered the quiet of a New Mexico morning. A few weeks later, and in the space of a few days, nuclear weapons were dropped on Hir

The failed high-altitude fighter that proved crucial to the liberation of Europe as a deadly ground-attack aircraft

The Royal Air Force was formed in the last year of the First World War. And by the time that the guns fell silent at the end of the Second World War, it had grown to almost one million serving personn

The first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan by an American B-29 bomber, preceding the country’s capitulation in WWII. Here navigator Theodore Van Kirk recalls his experience of the day that changed history