Edwin Flavell (RAF officer)

Squadron Leader Edwin James George "Ted" Flavell AFC (25 April 1922 – 24 February 2014) was the pilot of the No.

49 Squadron RAF Vickers Valiant bomber which dropped Britain's first live atomic bomb (Blue Danube) during Operation Buffalo at Maralinga, South Australia, on 11 October 1956.

Unlike his father and brother Jim (1924–2008) following careers in the British Army, Ted was keen on joining the Royal Air Force and went to RAF Halton as an aircraft mechanic apprentice in 1937.

[3] When Ted Flavell returned to England after the outbreak of World War II, he flew Armstrong Whitworth Whitley, Albemarle, Short Stirling and Handley Page Halifax aircraft.

[3] He flew many secret missions over Europe and Scandinavia, inserting agents and dropping supplies in occupied territories.

On 11 October 1956, the squadron's Vickers Valiant B.1 WZ366, piloted by Flavell, became the first British aircraft to drop a live atomic bomb.

[6] The air drop was the most difficult test, as the worst-case scenario involved the radar fuses failing and the bomb detonating on impact with the ground, which would result in severe fallout.

A mushroom cloud rising over Maralinga on 11 October 1956 after a Vickers Valiant piloted by Ted Flavell carried out the first British air drop of an atomic bomb.
Ted's father, Brigadier Edwin Flavell , during the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945