> It seems at this point that Churchill’s wartime directive that operational codenames should be suitably martial, or at least not silly, had either worn off or didn’t apply to weapons development projects. During the dark days of the war, Churchill had been understandably sensitive that he was in the business of sending many young men to fight in operations from which they might not return. Mindful of the letters that would be written to grieving next of kin and ever mindful of history’s verdict, he issued an edict that silly, cute, and fun names were not to be used for activities that were neither silly, cute, or fun.
> It seems the memo didn’t get through to the Atomic Weapons Establishment where Britain’s atom bombs were being invented, improved, and manufactured. The land mine project duly began under the name Brown Bunny, managing to hit the trifecta of being silly, cute, and fun all at the same time. Luckily, wiser councils prevailed, and the project was renamed [checks notes] Blue Bunny. This new name, which presumably made it past the committee stage, had the advantage of being in line with the “Blue” codenames that were in use for a series of atom bomb weapons, such as Blue Slug, Blue Water and the aforementioned Blue Danube, but still failed the silly, cute and fun test.
> Luckily the Blue Bunny atomic landmine was never used in anger, preserving its unsullied codename for the exclusive use of the Blue Bunny Ice Cream company. At this stage my legal advisors would like me to clarify that ice cream manufacturers are entitled to have a silly, cute and fun brand name and are in no way associated with destructive power of a 10 kiloton atom bomb.
> It was about this stage that it emerged that the Blue Bunny codename wasn’t as secret as hoped and rather than risk being mocked by the Russians, the name was changed to the immeasurably more macho “Blue Peacock”. To the relief of project administrators and future ice cream manufacturers, at this point the designers stopped messing about with the name and turned their minds and turned their mind to the final question at hand…
> As our friends at Blue Bunny Ice Cream know, an ice cream that gets too warm fails to behave as an ice cream should. Some things are sensitive to temperature, and it turns out that an atom bomb warhead that gets too cold might also fail to behave as a bomb should. Whilst the ice cream industry relied on the introduction of reliable freezers to deliver their product, the atom bomb industry had the opposite problem.
Jake_American on
CIA never gave a flying f*** as well, looking at you Operation Paper clip and Acoustic Kitty
Acrobatic-List-6503 on
Atomic Weapons Establishment: they put the AWE in SHOCK and AWE.
4 Comments
https://absorb.medium.com/blue-peacock-the-atomic-land-mine-with-a-hidden-secret-29c9d8fc6a9b
> Author: Chris (2022)
> It seems at this point that Churchill’s wartime directive that operational codenames should be suitably martial, or at least not silly, had either worn off or didn’t apply to weapons development projects. During the dark days of the war, Churchill had been understandably sensitive that he was in the business of sending many young men to fight in operations from which they might not return. Mindful of the letters that would be written to grieving next of kin and ever mindful of history’s verdict, he issued an edict that silly, cute, and fun names were not to be used for activities that were neither silly, cute, or fun.
> It seems the memo didn’t get through to the Atomic Weapons Establishment where Britain’s atom bombs were being invented, improved, and manufactured. The land mine project duly began under the name Brown Bunny, managing to hit the trifecta of being silly, cute, and fun all at the same time. Luckily, wiser councils prevailed, and the project was renamed [checks notes] Blue Bunny. This new name, which presumably made it past the committee stage, had the advantage of being in line with the “Blue” codenames that were in use for a series of atom bomb weapons, such as Blue Slug, Blue Water and the aforementioned Blue Danube, but still failed the silly, cute and fun test.
> Luckily the Blue Bunny atomic landmine was never used in anger, preserving its unsullied codename for the exclusive use of the Blue Bunny Ice Cream company. At this stage my legal advisors would like me to clarify that ice cream manufacturers are entitled to have a silly, cute and fun brand name and are in no way associated with destructive power of a 10 kiloton atom bomb.
> It was about this stage that it emerged that the Blue Bunny codename wasn’t as secret as hoped and rather than risk being mocked by the Russians, the name was changed to the immeasurably more macho “Blue Peacock”. To the relief of project administrators and future ice cream manufacturers, at this point the designers stopped messing about with the name and turned their minds and turned their mind to the final question at hand…
> As our friends at Blue Bunny Ice Cream know, an ice cream that gets too warm fails to behave as an ice cream should. Some things are sensitive to temperature, and it turns out that an atom bomb warhead that gets too cold might also fail to behave as a bomb should. Whilst the ice cream industry relied on the introduction of reliable freezers to deliver their product, the atom bomb industry had the opposite problem.
CIA never gave a flying f*** as well, looking at you Operation Paper clip and Acoustic Kitty
Atomic Weapons Establishment: they put the AWE in SHOCK and AWE.
It’s not even limited to American weapons