I have got into the habit of checking the Obituary column of the Times Newspaper pretty much every day. I started doing this when I found there were relevant obituaries that I could use on my WW1 site and also the site for the invasion of Crete.  In January 2004, before I had decided to start this site, I saw the obituary to Group Captain Kenneth Hubbard. Luckily I saved it as it has some relevance to this site.

The column said that Hubbard was the “RAF pilot who flew the aircraft which dropped Britain’s first H-bomb.”

The scientists subsequently confirmed that the yield had been of the order of 200-300 kilotons, considerably below the 1 megaton they had expected.

The column came out on the 27th January, 2004. Hubbard died on January 22, 2004, aged 83.

The following extracts are taken from the Times column.

One of the handful of men who have dropped a nuclear bomb from an aircraft, Kenneth Hubbard made RAF and British defence history when, in May 1957, he commanded the Vickers Valiant jet bomber which delivered Britain’s first hydrogen bomb from an altitude of 45,000ft over Malden Island, 400 miles south of Christmas Island, in the Pacific Ocean.  To those in the V-bomber who had conducted a faultless flight to the target zone, the moment was one of elation and awe. As Hubbard recorded in his book Operation Grapple (1985), written with Michael Simmons, “as we turned the sight which met our eyes was truly breathtaking.  There, towering above us ... was a huge mushroom shaped cloud, with the stem a cauldron mass of orange as the fireball had developed and the hot gases risen into the atmosphere, progressively fanning out and forming a white canopy ... This top must have reached an altitude of 60,000ft with ice caps forming.  It really was a sight of such majestic and grotesque beauty that it defies adequate description.”

For the crew of Valiant XD818 of 49 Squadron, which Hubbard commanded, May 15, 1957, was the culmination of an intense training period, in which accuracy of navigation and airmanship were paramount.  The bomb had to be delivered from 45,000ft, 1.5 miles from the target, with the Valiant travelling at exactly Mach 0.76.  After release the Valiant was then to make a sharp turn to port through 130 degrees to give it a chance to open the range to ten miles from the nuclear burst, which was to take place at 8,000ft.  The crew flew blind, with anti-flash screens in place to prevent tissue damage.

A contingency that had to be planned for was the appalling possibility that the bomb release mechanism might fail. In such circumstances it would clearly have been unthinkable that the Valiant could return to its Christmas Island base, now the home of 3,000 service personnel living under canvas, with an armed nuclear weapon on board.  In the event of a release mechanism failure the plan was that the non-flight deck crew members would immediately bale out over the light fleet carrier Warrior, which was monitoring the tests.  Hubbard and his co-pilot would fly the aircraft and bomb a further 50 miles, setting another 200 miles on the automatic pilot, before ejecting themselves.  Two hundred miles further on, the aircraft’s engines would be automatically shut off and it would crash into the sea where the bomb would explode. Long before that time, it was hoped, Hubbard and his co-pilot would have been picked up by one of Warrior’s helicopters.

In the event no such grim contingency was necessary. The bomb release and the subsequent explosion at 8,000ft went exactly to plan.  It was the first time that a country had joined the thermonuclear club by dropping its first H-bomb.  ..... Hubbard and the crew of XD818 received immediate awards of the Air Force Cross.

Hubbard joined the RAF in 1940 and served two tours in Wellingtons, based in the Middle EAst and Italy.  He was awarded the DFC and promoted to Squadron Leader while on 70 Squadron supporting the advance up the peninsula of Italy. In 1950 he converted to the Gloster Meteor and after serving again in the Middle East he was awarded the OBE in 1952. Following this he converted to the Canberra and then in July 1956 to the Valiant, becoming C.O. of 49 Squadron in September of 1956. He remainded in charge of 49 until the end of the Grapple tests in the autumn of 1958, going then to the staff at HQ Bomber Command where he was responsible for the operational requirements of the V-Bomber force.

From 1961 to 1962 he commanded RAF El Adem, and then moved to Scampton where there were three Vulcan squadrons with Blue Steel, he was C.O. from 1963-4.

Group Captain Kenneth Hubbard, OBE, DFC, AFC, RAF bomber pilot;

February 26, 1920 to January 22, 2004.