The Blackburn Buccaneer was designed as a long-range carrier-based attack aircraft. It entered RAF service in July 1962, and retired in 1992, during which time it remained one of the fastest low-level aircraft. The Buccanner featured many novel and inovative design features; a variable incidence tail-plane, area ruled fuselage, rotating internal bomb-bay and wing boundary-Layer control. In addition to conventional ordnance, in 1965 the Buccaneer was type-approved for nuclear weapons delivery i.e. the Red Beard and WE177 bombs. All nuclear weapons were carried internally.