Tunnock's Tea Cakes pass RAF fit-to-fly test after being banned for 60 years
Tunnock's Tea Cakes have been deemed fit to fly by the RAF after they were banned from flights 60 years ago.
The Scottish snack was a favourite of airmen to help stave off hunger while flying nuclear bombers on long training missions at the height of the Cold War.
However, they were added to the RAF's no-fly list in the 1960s after some tea cakes were said to have exploded in a cockpit.
The story goes that during a training mission in 1965, a captain and student pilot forgot they had placed unwrapped tea cakes above their instrument panels.
When the captain pulled an emergency depressurising switch, the tea cakes blew up, causing pieces of chocolate and marshmallow to hit the windscreen, flight controls and the men's uniforms.
The RAF Centre of Aerospace Medicine in Henlow, Bedfordshire, has now conducted tests to determine if the tea cakes really do explode at altitude.
The chocolate-covered biscuits with a marshmallow filling were lifted to 8,000ft, climbing at 4,000ft per minute, inside an altitude chamber normally used for training new jet pilots.
The tea cakes were rapidly decompressed to 25,000ft in three seconds to see if they would explode.
In the test, while the marshmallow in the tea cakes did escape from the chocolate casing, they did not appear to explode and cause a risk to in-flight safety.
Furthermore, when the tea cakes were frozen before being placed in the chamber, their hardened shells were more resilient to cracking at altitude.
The experiment was filmed for the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), which provides news and entertainment for military personnel and their families.
Dr Oliver Bird, a medical officer instructor at the RAF Centre of Aerospace Medicine, oversaw the tea cake tests and said he saw no reason why they couldn't be taken on flights.
He recommended freezing the tea cakes as it will make their chocolate shells more robust and cause them to merely crack during decompression.
He said: 'I think the best advice is that the snacks are kept frozen and in their foil wrappings until pilots are ready to consume them.'
Hannah King, a producer and director who filmed the tests for BFBS News, said: 'This was a critical piece of scientific testing. I'm just glad the RAF medics at the Centre of Aerospace Medicine stepped up and answered the question that everyone's been wondering for so many years.
'It may be that the original tea cakes really did explode in a much more dangerous fashion. Perhaps the recipe has changed – who knows?
'But people ought to spread the word – it's safe to fly with tea cakes.'
Tunnock's founded the business in 1890 as a bakery shop in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, and it now employs more than 600 people in the town and exports to more than 30 countries, including Saudi Arabia and Australia.
The family firm is led by Sir Boyd Tunnock, 92, who created the Tunnock's Tea Cake in 1956 using marshmallow on a biscuit base coated in chocolate.
The sweet treats have become so popular that giant dancing tea cakes featured in the opening ceremony of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and scientists launched a tea cake into space in 2017, attached to a weather balloon which reached an altitude of 121,414ft.
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