The Mark 101 Lulu was an airdropped nuclear depth charge developed by the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

and the Atomic Energy Commission during the 1950s. It carried a W34

nuclear warhead A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...

, with an explosive yield of about 11

kiloton TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a ...

s. It was deployed by the U.S. Navy for the purposes of

antisubmarine warfare Anti-submarine warfare (ASW, or in older form A/S) is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, submarines, or other platforms, to find, track, and deter, damage, or destroy enemy submarines. Such operations are ty ...

, in at least five different models, from 1958 through 1971. These nuclear weapons were also stockpiled overseas at the bases of

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two N ...

allies, under American military guard and control, for the potential use by maritime patrol planes of NATO. Thus was most notable at the

air base An air base (sometimes referred to as a military air base, military airfield, military airport, air station, naval air station, air force station, or air force base) is an aerodrome used as a military base by a military force for the operation ...

of RAF St. Mawgan in

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a Historic counties of England, historic county and Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people ...

, for potential use by British

Avro Shackleton The Avro Shackleton is a British long-range maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) which was used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the South African Air Force (SAAF). It was developed by Avro from the Avro Lincoln bomber, which itself had been a develo ...

patrol planes and the

Royal Netherlands Navy The Royal Netherlands Navy ( nl, Koninklijke Marine, links=no) is the naval force of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. During the 17th century, the navy of the Dutch Republic (1581–1795) was one of the most powerful naval forces in the world an ...

P-2 Neptune The Lockheed P-2 Neptune (designated P2V by the United States Navy prior to September 1962) is a maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft. It was developed for the US Navy by Lockheed to replace the Lockheed PV-1 Ventura and ...

and

P-3 Orion The Lockheed P-3 Orion is a four-engined, turboprop Anti-submarine warfare, anti-submarine and maritime patrol aircraft, maritime surveillance aircraft developed for the United States Navy and introduced in the 1960s. Lockheed Corporation, Lockh ...

patrol planes. Neither the Lulu nor any other kind of nuclear antisubmarine or antiship weapon was ever used in combat by any country. The Mk-101 "Lulu" started to be replaced by the multipurpose

B57 nuclear bomb The B57 nuclear bomb was a tactical nuclear weapon developed by the United States during the Cold War. Entering production in 1963 as the Mk 57, the bomb was designed to be dropped from high-speed tactical aircraft. It had a streamlined casing ...

during the mid-1960s. The B-57 was a bomb that could be used by tactical aircraft against land targets, as well as a nuclear depth charge. The Mk-101 "Lulu" had a length of , diameter of , and weighed . In RAF service for carriage by Shackleton MR2 and MR3 maritime patrol bombers it was known as Bomb, AS, 1200 lb, MC. The Lulu lacked an important safety/arming device: it had no sensors to detect the freefall from an aircraft that would follow from the depth charge's being intentionally dropped. As a result, if an armed Mk 101 bomb accidentally fell off an aircraft while it was parked on the deck of a warship, and then it rolled overboard, it would detonate at the preset depth.TNA AVIA 65/2082 ''Proceedings of the Ordnance Board in Joint Session with the

Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment The Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE) was a research facility for British military aviation from 1918 to 1992. Established at Martlesham Heath, Suffolk, the unit moved in 1939 to Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, where its work ...

'' The weapon's W34 nuclear warhead was also used in several other weapons such as the Mark 45 torpedo and

Mk 105 Hotpoint The Mark 105 Hotpoint was an airdropped nuclear bomb developed for the United States Navy using the 11 kiloton W34 warhead. It was developed in the 1950s as the first nuclear bomb purposely designed for laydown delivery (bunker buster) but could a ...

. An Anglicanised version, codenamed "Peter", was used as the primary for the thermonuclear Yellow Sun weapon, and with the codename Python in the American

B28 nuclear bomb The B28, originally Mark 28, was a thermonuclear bomb carried by U.S. tactical fighter bombers, attack aircraft and bomber aircraft. From 1962 to 1972 under the NATO nuclear weapons sharing program, American B28s also equipped six Europe-based ...

References

Notes

Bibliography

* James N. Gibson, ''Nuclear Weapons of the United States: An Illustrated History'' (Schiffer Publishing, 1996): Chapter 12, "Nuclear Antisubmarine Weapons". * https://web.archive.org/web/20120314120957/http://www.mcis.soton.ac.uk/Site_Files/pdf/nuclear_history/glossary.pdf {{United States nuclear devices Cold War anti-submarine weapons of the United States Depth charges Nuclear bombs of the United States Military equipment introduced in the 1950s