> Almost literally never been cheaper. Under £3 for 50 on AliExpress,
Oh, good to know.
Back when I played the most prized ones were steel ball bearings, which the NCO engineers filched them from the RAF Vulcan bombers. Us flight officers kids didn't get access to this stuff.
Somewhat interesting factoid (so I am told - be interested to see a real source), ball bearings were packed into the RAF nuclear weapons to prevent horrible accidents if the aircraft crashed (which quite a few did) - tales of crew skidding around on the tarmac after the balls were dumped after arming the weapon were not unheard of, but probably legend.
> "Somewhat interesting factoid (so I am told - be interested to see a real source), ball bearings were packed into the RAF nuclear weapons to prevent horrible accidents if the aircraft crashed"
My imagination couldn't conceive of a logic behind this (nor could GPT-4, which told me you were talking nonsense), so in case anyone else comes across this and has the same curiosity:
Apparently "the ball bearings were introduced to increase the density of the core, preventing it from being compressed into a critical shape by an accident such as a plane crash", with the balls being removed as part of the arming the weapon ready to be dropped.
edit: And also there's "Aircraft engines must not be run with Violet Club loaded on the aircraft with the safety device [of steel balls] in place. The engines must not be started until the weapon is prepared for an actual operational sortie [to prevent the steel balls vibrating like a bag of jellybeans]." which does have a couple of apparent sources cited, though not clickable ones that are easy to look up. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Club#Controversy
Oh, good to know.
Back when I played the most prized ones were steel ball bearings, which the NCO engineers filched them from the RAF Vulcan bombers. Us flight officers kids didn't get access to this stuff.
Somewhat interesting factoid (so I am told - be interested to see a real source), ball bearings were packed into the RAF nuclear weapons to prevent horrible accidents if the aircraft crashed (which quite a few did) - tales of crew skidding around on the tarmac after the balls were dumped after arming the weapon were not unheard of, but probably legend.