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Author:  Ben Fenton  

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Publisher/Date:  The Telegraph (UK), October 21, 1999  

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Title:  German pilots had US atomic bombs in the early Fifties  

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Original location: http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?rtmo=VMgkrSfK&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/99/10/21/wnuk21.html

LUFTWAFFE pilots had effective control of American nuclear weapons less than 10 years after the defeat of the Third Reich, according to formerly secret documents published yesterday. The Pentagon papers also show that Britain was not the first country to host American atomic weapons, but, unbeknown to the Paris government, they were deployed earlier on French-owned bases in Morocco. The files also show that America kept atomic bombs in Iceland, Spain and the Philippines.

The formerly highly secret History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons 1945-1977 has been declassified after pressure from three researchers on nuclear policy and has been published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Although much of the information has been in the public domain for some time, other parts have been released for the first time, the authors say. This includes the fact that American control over the thousands of nuclear bombs kept in Nato bases in Europe was "amazingly lax" until the Sixties. "Under President Eisenhower [1952-60] . . . West German Luftwaffe pilots, for example, had virtual control of the bombs when on alert," they write.

They add that the election of John F Kennedy in 1960 led to the introduction of "permissive action links", or locking mechanisms, to ensure that nuclear bombs could be detonated only under American supervision.

Historians have always believed that Britain was the first country to have American nuclear weapons on its territory and the papers show that the casings of such devices were first deployed in Britain in July 1950 under the orders of President Truman. But these weapons, usable only after the addition of nuclear cores kept on American soil, were not replaced with fully operational bombs until September 1954.