However, they were not the only non-military personnel who wanted to gain access to the common on which the base stood. They risked arrest and imprisonment to bring international attention to their calls for nuclear disarmament. Women from the Peace Camp even made intrusions onto the base, cutting or climbing the perimeter fence to dance on the roof of nuclear missile silos and once to host a picnic dressed as teddy bears. ![]() Local and international opposition to the NATO airbase and nuclear weapons led to the ‘Women’s Peace Camp’ movement, which maintained a presence of protesters at its perimeter fence from 1980 until the early 2000s. Now a pleasant and accessible open space, during the 1980s it had truly international significance as RAF Greenham Common, the home of 96 American ground-launched Tomahawk nuclear cruise missiles. It is also probably one of the most famous and controversial commons in England. Greenham Common is an 855-acre gravel plateau in West Berkshire. It explores the disproportionate impact of a small group of West Berkshire Commoners on the US-USSR nuclear arms race in the 1980s. No evidence of an accident involving nuclear weapons damage was found at the former air force base although the ground survey detected some low-level uranium contamination around the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston thought to be derived from that facility, and the helicopter survey found some anomalies around Harwell Laboratory.This ‘Contested Countryside’ blog by Felicity McWilliams tells a story from the Museum’s newly acquired archives of the Open Spaces Society, Britain’s oldest national conservation body. The team analysed nearly 600 samples taken from soil, lake sediment, borehole water, house dust, runway tarmac and concrete, looking for uranium and plutonium isotopes. The seven-month long survey was carried out by the Geosciences Advisory Unit of Southampton University and combined a helicopter-mounted gamma ray detector survey with a ground-based survey. However, a radiological survey commissioned in 1997 by Newbury District Council and Basingstoke and Deane found no evidence of a nuclear accident at Greenham Common, suggesting that Cripps and Stimson's claims were false. Stimson, who both worked for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, alleged in a secret 1961 report, released by the CND in 1996, that the fire detonated the high explosives in the nuclear weapon, that plutonium and uranium oxides were spread over a wide area (foliage up to 8 mi (13 km) away was contaminated with uranium-235) and that they had discovered high concentrations of radioactive contamination around the air base. Although two men were killed and eight injured, the US and UK governments kept the accident secret: as late as 1985, the British government claimed that a taxiing aircraft had struck a parked one and that no fire was involved. The conflagration took sixteen hours and over a million gallons of water to extinguish, partly because of the magnesium alloys used in the aircraft. The parked plane, which was fuelled, had a pilot on board, and was carrying a 1.1 megaton (4.6 PJ) B28 nuclear bomb, was engulfed by flames. ![]() ![]() They missed their designated safe impact area, and one hit a hangar whilst the other struck the ground 65 feet (20 m) behind a parked B-47E. On 28 February 1958, a B-47E of the 310th Bomb Wing developed problems shortly after takeoff and jettisoned its two 1,700 gallon external fuel tanks. The 51st TCW HQ followed its groups to North Africa as part of Operation Torch in November 1942. The Wing Headquarters was located in requisitioned Bowdown House, a mansion on the northeast end of the airfield, and made use of the runways for its communication and courier flights. The 51st TCW controlled the three troop carrier groups at RAF Keevil (62nd TCG), RAF Aldermaston (60th TCG) and RAF Ramsbury (64th TCG) as part of Twelfth Air Force. The first arrival was the 51st Troop Carrier Wing Headquarters, arriving in September 1942. Greenham Common was known as USAAF Station AAF-486 for security reasons by the USAAF during the war, and it was referred to by this name instead of by location. An American advance party soon arrived to ready the airfield for the incoming units. In late 1943, Greenham Common airfield was turned over to the USAAF Ninth Air Force. ![]() It was used for troop movements during the English Civil War and in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries. Before the building of an airfield, Greenham Common was mainly common land with a few houses and a pub.
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