Category A VERTICAL EMPIRE

There was one feature in which Blue Streak was ahead of its time, and this feature, by a process of tortuous logic, was to provide the means by which its cancellation was achieved.

One of the defining images of the Cold War was that of the missile silo: the sight of a missile erupting from a hole in the ground conjured up images of mushroom clouds, radioactive fall-out, megadeaths. One of the less known facts about missile silos is that much of the initial research on launching missiles from underground was carried out near a small village in Buckinghamshire – Westcott.

The first American missiles to be deployed – Thor, Atlas, Jupiter – were all deployed on surface sites, with the only protection for the missile being protection from the elements – wind and rain. These missiles were also very large and very fragile. A sniper a mile away could put a bullet through the tanks and disable the missile permanently. They would be damaged beyond use by the blast from an atomic explosive even though it might have been miles away. In the jargon of the day, they were hopelessly vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike. Later versions of the Atlas missiles were kept in hardened shelters – hardened in this context meaning strengthened against attack – although they still had to be removed from the shelters to be erected, fuelled and fired.

The slightly later Titan I missile was housed in a ‘lift and fire’ silo: the missile was prepared for firing in an underground tube, then lifted to the surface for the moment of firing. This reduced the window of vulnerability to a few minutes, but the vulnerability still existed. The only way to make sure the missile could not be destroyed before launching would be the ‘fire in the hole’ method.

The Minuteman solid fuel missiles that America was in the process of deploying were far more robust than the relatively fragile liquid fuelled rockets. They also had a much greater initial acceleration, meaning they would clear the silo quicker, and so providing a hole in the ground for them was relatively straightforward. Blue Streak, on the other hand, would take several seconds to clear the silo, and there were two major problems to be investigated. The first
was whether the acoustic energy produced from the rocket motors would be sufficient to damage the thin tank walls, the second was the problem of gas flow. How could the exhaust gases (and Blue Streak burned nearly half a ton of fuel a second) be deflected away from the rocket? And what of the gas flow within the tube? Would the missile be pulled towards the wall of the tube?

The problem of vulnerability to pre­emptive attack had been recognised from the outset, and reference was made in the original requirement to ‘underground launch sites’ without being specific about detail. Initial ideas were very vague, until a proper research programme was started at RPE Westcott. Initial ideas centred around some sort of ‘U’ tube arrangement, with the missile in one arm of the U. To study the dynamics of the gas flow, a 1/60th scale model of the rocket was used, together with jets of high pressure nitrogen gas to represent the rocket exhaust (it is not surprising that the men who worked on this part of the project lost most of their hearing). Perspex models of various configurations were made, with small woollen tufts to show the air flow.1

The next step was considerably more expensive. A 1/6th scale model U tube was to be built, complete with an acoustic lining, real rocket motors placed inside, and fired. Microphones would measure sound levels. Rather than excavate

DEFLECTOR BOX

EXHAUST DUCT

SR1CK WALL

SIMULATING

GROUND PLANE.

INSTRUMENTATION CABLES

PROPELLANT SUPPLY PIPES

Figure 46. 1/6th scale model of the proposed underground launcher.

a deep hole, the U tube was built horizontally, on the ground, with a brick wall to simulate the ground plane, as shown in the drawing above. Octagonal concrete sections were built and fitted together, some of which can be seen at Westcott today, although, slightly surprisingly, there is no trace of the model silo itself.

The 1/6th scale missile could then be moved up and down and its Gamma motors fired. Various other effects could be investigated at the same time – for example, the effect of the rocket efflux on the concrete at the bend of the U tube. Low temperature concrete was preferred since it merely tended to melt; high temperature concrete fragmented, and the fragments were swept along the tube, gathering more as they moved along. Reading between the lines, some of the test runs could be somewhat alarming, as this excerpt from a report shows:

As was expected, the erosion caused directly by the impingement of the jets was small, but small particles removed from the surface were accelerated by the gas stream, and scoured the curved deflector plate downstream of the point of impingement. The effect was cumulative and persisted in the region of high gas speeds and where the deflector was concave towards the jets… Pieces weighing two ounces or more were picked up about 50 yards from the launcher exit.2

But these were not the only problems. What was the effect of a one megaton explosion half a mile away? What effect would the shock wave have on the launcher and the missile, not to mention the personnel inside? The effect of ‘radio flash’ (now known as ElectroMagnetic Pulse or EMP) was unknown, as were the effects of neutron irradiation. Furthermore, the launcher had to accommodate the launch crew for a period of up to 24 hours after hostilities began. They would need living quarters inside the launcher itself.

There were turf wars from the outset. The Ministry of Works, part of the Ministry of Supply, would normally deal with constructional matters such as these, but the Air Staff wanted to handle it themselves. Aggrieved, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Works appealed to the Treasury to adjudicate. Emolliently, the Treasury wrote back to say that yes, the Ministry of Works had a very good case, but they had decided to leave it to the Air Ministry since it was they who would have to use the end product. So who would the Air Staff appoint to build the launchers? De Havilland were not popular with the Ministry of

Supply, who found them difficult to deal with. In addition, de Havilland was in bad odour as a consequence of their over-spending (the Treasury at one time was considering sending in the accountants Cooper Brothers, predecessors to today’s management consultants).

A minute in October 1957 said of de Havilland: ‘It should be clear that design of underground sites is in no way the responsibility of this firm, which is already showing itself incapable of carrying the load that has been put on it.’3 On the other hand, there were not many alternatives, and, in the end, the firm was given the job in lieu of anyone else. The evolution of the design can be seen in the various documents still in the National Archives, but the final version was given an airing in a presentation at de Havilland’s offices in Charterhouse Square, London4.

The full specification can be seen in Appendix A, but Figure 50 makes the layout fairly clear. The final design is indeed impressive, as the architect’s drawing shows (Figure 51). The figures of the men inside the launcher give some feeling for the scale of the launcher.

Starting at ground level, the emplacement is surrounded by a built-up bank, and the access road can be seen top right. The missile would have been brought on a transporter, then lowered into the missile shaft. The silo is drawn with the lid open, and the launch and efflux ducts can be seen. On the left is the entrance, with its airtight and blast proof doors.

The cylinder is divided into two: one half houses the missile and the shafts, the other houses equipment and the living quarters.

The missile itself is held on a platform attached to the walls by springs or hydraulic cylinders, so that the relatively fragile missile would be insulated from the shock of nearby explosions. There are access platforms around the missile; the warhead would almost certainly be stored separately and would have to be fitted before launch. Around the walls of the shaft is an acoustic lining, product of the research at Westcott.

At the bottom of the launcher is the liquid oxygen tank and the kerosene tanks. Fuelling the missile in the confines of the launcher might well have been a rather hazardous procedure! This was one of the advantages of storable propellants.

Note that the whole launcher is surrounded with a % inch mild steel liner – this, in conjunction with the lid, should act as a gigantic Faraday cage. This was to protect the launcher from EMP which might otherwise destroy all the electrical and electronic equipment inside. Looking at the thickness of the walls, building these launchers would have had a considerable impact on Britain’s production of concrete!

A description of the prototype launcher, code named K11, says:

Basically, the emplacement consists of a hollow re-inforced concrete cylinder, 66 feet internal diameter, extending downwards from ground level to a depth of 134 feet and divided internally into two main sections by a vertical concrete wall. One section houses a U-shaped tube, whose arms are separated by a concrete wall and are, respectively, the missile shaft and its efflux duct. The surface apertures of this U-tube are covered by a lid that can move horizontally on guide tracks. The other main section within the cylinder is divided into seven compartments, each with concrete floor and ceiling, for the various storage, operating, technical and domestic functions.

The internal diameter (66 feet) of the concrete cylinder is determined solely by what is to be accommodated. Protection against [a 1 megaton explosion at Vi mile distance] is given by the lid and by the re-inforced concrete roof walls and foundations. The wall thickness will depend on the geological characteristics of the surrounding rock and may well be of the order of 6 feet. The depth of 134 feet is arrived at primarily to give sufficient clearance below the missile (itself 79 feet long) to allow for de-fuelling and re-fuelling the missile into and from the liquid oxygen and kerosene storage tanks located on the 7th floor.

The 400 ton steel lid could be opened in 17 seconds, and high pressure hoses would sweep it clear of debris first. Two firms, John Brown (SEND) [Special Engineering & Nuclear Developments], and Whessoe Ltd of Darlington, were commissioned to produce designs. Whessoe’s report is dated March 1960, so that it is obvious that the design of the lid had not been finalised by the time of the cancellation. This, combined with the problems of finding a site for K11, meant that the schedule must have been slipping seriously. To have produced a fully working prototype by 1963 or 1964 on this basis looks difficult to achieve.

Brown’s lid was 56 ft by 36 ft, weighing 600 tons. Both were hollow, although with strong internal bracing, and in Brown’s case, 5 ft thick. The Whessoe lid used 3 inch thick steel plate top and bottom. The lids were to be capped with 6 inches of concrete. The rails on which the lid was to run were also of steel, in Brown’s case 7 inches square in cross section, and for Whessoe, ‘12 inch overall width by 5% inch rail width’.

John Brown’s submission noted that

the front edge will have an angled profile to act as a plough in the event of it being necessary to clear any rubble which may accumulate on the track. The two 36’ sides will house pairs of four-wheeled bogies, and a continuous rack will run down the outside of these faces, engaging on a pair of pinions.. .5

When considering the electrical drive mechanism, it was noted that the requirement stated:

A cover weighing 600 tons has to be moved from the open to the closed position in 17 seconds and fine positioned to within half an inch within a few seconds of the end of this period. Alternatively, it has to be opened without fine positioning in 17 seconds. The time allowed for lifting the jacks is 5 seconds so that 12 seconds remain for the operation.6

Provision was also made for keeping the lid free from debris, although the ground shock the silo was predicted to receive would be considerable. There are references in a de Havilland paper to ‘Ground shock… in a vertical direction, an instantaneous step velocity of 2*4 ft/sec is induced, which decays at a uniform rate to zero in one second… in a horizontal direction, an instantaneous velocity of % ft/sec is induced which decays at a uniform rate to zero in one second’, whereas Whessoe notes that there are ‘Acceleration forces on Ancillary Equipment equivalent to accelerations of 2g’7. In addition, the rails would be exposed to heat from the fireball. The question this raises is whether the rails buckle under these loads and hence jam the wheels. A silo whose lid cannot be opened would not have been much use!

Other aspects of the design were to cause concern: the various effects created by a nuclear explosion nearby. Whilst the silo might survive the blast, there were concerns as to the effects of EMP and of high energy neutrons. The RAE Lethality Committee set to work to investigate these effects.

One effect, of course, is the thermal radiation or heating. Being underground, the launcher was relatively immune from this, although the lid and the rails would be exposed. This was not thought to be a significant problem. The high temperatures and energetic radiation produced by nuclear explosions also produce large amounts of ionised matter that is present immediately after the explosion. Under the right conditions, intense currents and electromagnetic fields can be produced, generically called EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse), that are felt at long distances. Living organisms are impervious to these effects, but they can temporarily or permanently disable electrical and electronic equipment. Ionised gases can also block short wavelength radio and radar signals (fireball blackout) for extended periods.

The occurrence of EMP is strongly dependent on the altitude of burst. It can be significant for surface or low altitude bursts (below 4,000 m); it is very significant for high altitude bursts (above 30,000 m); but it is not significant for altitudes between these extremes.

This was the reason for the steel liner to the silo: it would act as a Faraday cage, whereby the strong magnetic and electrical fields pass through the liner without affecting anything inside. For this to be effective, the cage must have no openings through which energy could leak. Studies were carried out on the consequences of such details as pipework into and out of the silo, and what effect they might have.

The main radiation hazard came from high energy neutrons, which would not only affect the warhead but also the crew inside the silo. One of the purposes of the lid was to act as a neutron absorber (the water within the concrete would help).

In addition, the equipment in the silo might be protected against ground shock, but the crew themselves could be seriously injured. There was even a proposal to keep a spare crew suspended in hammocks ready to take over. The missile itself would be suspended on hydraulic cylinders to act as dampers against the ground shock.

The work done at Westcott can be said to have validated the concept of the launcher (it was estimated at the time of cancellation that the Westcott work had cost £1.8 million). It is also of interest that the British design studies preceded any undertaken in the US, and Colonel Leonhardt, deputy commander for Installations, Ballistic Missile Installations, visited the UK to evaluate the design for the underground launcher. Dr Barry Ricketson of RPE travelled to America in 1959, as the minutes of a meeting noted: ‘… Dr Ricketson was at present in the United States giving the Americans the knowledge he had acquired in his studies of the problems of launching ballistic missiles from underground.’8

A similar research programme, which seems closely based on Westcott’s work, was carried out in the US, where again a 1/6th scale model was tested. The Titan II silo design that resulted can be seen to have a family resemblance to the Blue Streak launcher (although similar problems lead to similar solutions). The last Titan silo was not taken out of commission until 1987, which tends to argue against any obsolescence of the UK design.

Within the silo, there would be a crew of three officers and five men per shift, and the crucial point of the OR for the launcher was that:

… the emplacement must be self-contained for an emergency period of four days (covering three days before an attack is expected and one day afterwards).

This is the pivotal issue for the silo concept: early warnings, launch times and the rest were irrelevant. Indeed, although much had been made of the fact it would have been impossible to launch Blue Streak between the time that an incoming attack was detected and the time when it arrived, this misses the point entirely. The UK would never have launched ‘on warning’. There were no facilities for doing so. A man carrying the codes for a nuclear attack follows around the US President throughout his time in office, but in the UK there has never been such provision. There would have been very many times when the Prime Minister would have been inaccessible, such as when he was in his car on the way to Chequers, for example, and authority to launch would not have been delegated to the military.

The point of Blue Streak was to act as a deterrent, so that if the UK were attacked with atomic weapons, it would have the ability to retaliate for a period of up to at least 24 hours after the initial attack, although there is no reason why this period could not be longer. The UK might not then be a functioning society any more apart from this one vital aspect – its ability to strike back at its attacker. That was the point of deterrence. But would the launchers in fact be capable of this? Some thought so, when the effect and accuracy of Russian missiles was being discussed. Thus, in a Ministry of Defence memo in June 1958:

This does not mean that a potential enemy attack with weapons achieving a c. e.p. of Vi mile would invalidate Blue Streak as a weapon. With a c. e.p. of Vi mile, one MT weapon delivered at each site would have a 50% probability of neutralizing a site. [This was an estimate based on the silo design and the known effects of nuclear explosions.] Thus to achieve an acceptable probability of destroying our retaliatory capability, a much higher ratio than one attack per site would be required; for example, more than 3 attacks per site would be required for a 90% probability and, if the reliability of the attacking weapons system is, say, 70% then more than 4 launchings against each target would be required. Alternatively, to give a 90% probability of putting a Blue Streak site out of action with 1MT delivered, a c. e.p. of

V mile would be required and again additional launches would be needed to offset the inevitable less-than-100% reliability. [c. e.p. is circular error probability; the chance of 50% of missiles arriving within this radius.]

A paper prepared in 1959 gives some idea of the projected costs:

The Ministry of Supply estimate that the total R&D cost of a below-ground Blue Streak would be £160-£200M, broken down as follows:

Underground Deployment

100 sites at £2M per site £200M

100 missiles at £0.5M per missile £ 50M

10 years operating costs at £0.125M per missile per year £125M

R&D £160-£200M

Warheads £100M

Total £635-675M

Even with only 60 missiles deployed, which would have been the probable final total, these are impressive sums for 1959. But they were only estimates, based on no hard data, and the history of such projects made it very clear to everyone except the Ministry of Supply that all such estimates were usually wild underestimates. The Treasury, of course, was more cautious: in January 1958 it gave authority to start work on Australian facilities. However, it went on ominously, ‘commitments on the part of the launchers related to “below ground” aspect are to be kept to a bare minimum and no work should begin on the “below ground” part of the launchers themselves.’9

Air Vice Marshall Kyle, Assistant Chief of Air Staff (OR), had to write to the Treasury:

At our meeting on Monday, 21st April [1958], in the Ministry of Defence, the requirement for underground launching for Blue Streak was queried and I confirmed then that this was the firm intention of the Air Council. From the attached note you will see that this has been made plain for well over a year and that the need for underground siting was envisaged in the original O. R. for the missile.10

Similarly, the Ministry of Supply argued that the idea of underground siting had been outlined in the 1958 Defence White Paper. The Treasury dismissed this by saying: ‘… the Treasury would never accept that a unilateral statement in a Defence White Paper committed the Government to any particular policy.’ One does wonder then what the point of a Defence White Paper was. The idea that a Defence White Paper would be published without having been cleared by the Prime Minister is more than a little absurd.

In Australia, a U tube launcher was to be built in the side of a ravine to avoid unnecessary excavations. A similar idea was pursued at Spadeadam, where English Heritage has recently investigated the site:

A letter from the Ministry of Supply to the Treasury shows that plans were well- advanced for the construction of an underground ground launcher at Spadeadam by September 1958. Trial bore holes had been drilled during the summer and permission was sought to begin the construction of a full size silo at a cost of £690,000, plus a 15 per cent agency fee. Owing to the proximity of the bedrock to the surface and the great expense (and time) that would be incurred excavating a hole 150 feet deep, it was planned to dig a 30 feet hole through the overburden down to the bedrock. The base of the silo would be placed in the hole while the remainder of the structure would be above ground. It was also proposed to place the missile silo hole close to the Greymare Hill Missile Test Area so that advantage could be taken of its technical infrastructure.

A contemporary air photograph taken in August 1961 confirms that work had begun on the silo. It shows an excavation with disturbed ground to its north and traces of heavy vehicle tracks leading westwards back towards the southern end of the Greymare Hill complex. Following the cancellation in April 1960, all major civil engineering work was halted, proving that this work had taken place prior to that date. Subsequent to the abandonment of the project, the silo trials area was covered by a dense coniferous plantation, effectively hiding the site from view for over forty years.11

In the UK, a full engineering prototype launcher was to be built, but finding a site for K11 and indeed for the rest of the silos was not easy. In June 1957 a list of 92 possible sites had been prepared, but only by looking at a map for disused Ministry of Defence properties. In a stroke of lateral thinking, more than 40 roadstone quarries were looked at for suitability: after all, there was already a hole there, and roadstone was good and hard. Geologically, the silos had to be sited in hard rock or other fairly rigid material such as chalk. By October 1958, there was talk of Duxford for the site of K11, with alternatives at Odiham, Waterbeach and Stradishall. By January 1959, Castle Camp, Ridgewell, Sudbury, Raydon and Lasham had made their way onto the list12.

Although there was talk of building clusters of six silos at a time, the sites had to be well separated by distance of several miles, so that one site would not be affected by attacks on other sites. But in February 1959, there was a change in policy: ‘the first sites should be in the South of England, North of the Thames’, and twelve disused airfields had been surveyed by March. These were Castle Camps in Cambridgeshire, Ridgewell in Essex, Tibenham and Hardwick in Norfolk, and Eye, Beccles, Sudbury, Metfield, Raydon, Bungay, Halesworth, and Horeham, all in Suffolk.

A problem emerged at Duxford, however: discovery of the water table 40 ft down and the resultant flow of water rendered it unsuitable13. Another site had to be chosen, and Upavon and Netheravon in Wiltshire were then earmarked for the job.

But now the Home Office intervened: they wanted the sites well away from any evacuation areas, and on the East Coast, so that fallout would be carried away by the prevailing winds. Upavon was dropped from the list of sites as a result. The 1959 election then intervened, holding up the progress, and after the election the emphasis changed: now the RAE was sent up to Yorkshire and Durham to look at the likes of Acklington and Eshott as locations for the K11 site. Similarly, the VCAS favoured Ouston or Morpeth.

Bircham Newton in Norfolk was also a strong contender, and the RAF went to investigate its geological suitability, as this memo from Wing Commander Wood indicates:

I had a long talk with the Station Commander Bircham Newton (Group Captain Walford) during my visit yesterday. He was rather upset about some of the unavoidable mess (mostly vehicle tracks) which the Soil Survey Team have made on the airfield as he is trying to have the whole place look spotless for a visit by C. A.S. [Chief of the Air Staff] on 16th October [1959] – I undertook to see that everything was tidied up. The Group Captain also asked for guidance should he be asked about the holes on the airfield which will still be evident.. .14

Once the deliberations of the BND(SG) began to leak out, progress became even slower. A memo from the Ministry of Aviation to the Ministry of Works in January 1960 contains the paragraph:

We are still not in a position to give you instructions to proceed on procurement for K.11 pending the completion of the current Defence review. There has been considerable correspondence at Ministerial level and it has been agreed that until the Defence review has been completed no new major commitments can be entered into on the Blue Streak project. Certainly K.11 is a ‘major new commitment’.

One thing was certain: by the time of cancellation no site had been fixed upon, no excavation had been started, the design was not complete and the chances of K11 being operational by 1964 were looking increasingly remote. [5]

3 TNA: PRO AVIA 92/18. Design of firing sites for ballistic missiles : policy.

4 TNA: PRO DEFE 7/2247. Development of Blue Streak.

5 TNA: PRO AIR 2/11115. Underground launcher: protective cover; design study.

6 Ibid.

7 TNA: PRO AIR 2/11131. Underground launcher: protective cover; design study.

8 TNA: PRO AVIA 92/19. Design of firing sites for ballistic missiles: policy.

9 TNA: PRO AVIA 92/18. Design of firing sites for ballistic missiles: policy.

DEFE 7/2245. Development of Blue Streak.

1 Cockcroft, W. (2006). ‘The Spadeadam Blue Streak Underground Launcher Facility U1’ Prospero 3 pp. 7-14.

12 TNA: PRO AIR 2 14701. Blue Streak: selection of sites.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

Of the 22 Black Knight launches, two were proving flights and one was for ELDO, testing the range instrumentation. The remaining 19 were all for re-entry experiments. Initially, these were to test out the design of the re-entry, but soon they broadened out into a more general study of re-entry phenomena.

The first two flights were the proving flights; it was the third launch, BK04, which was the first to carry a separating re-entry head. This had thermocouples on the head to measure the temperatures at re-entry, the data being radioed back to the ground. Later re-entry vehicles would have a tape recorder to store the data – which was another good reason to ensure that the re-entry head was found after the flight. The data showed that the peak heating was similar to that predicted, and thus the design was now proved experimentally. There were other issues which could be explored in later flights.

After the early flights had verified the re-entry body design, the direction of the programme began to shift. Defence against ballistic missile attack seemed almost impossible, but there was now an opportunity to investigate whether such a defence might be possible. There was also another objective – to discover how best to make Britain’s missiles safe from an anti-ballistic missile defence.

The first few flights had shown some interesting phenomena. Firstly, that the exhaust plume from an ascending rocket gave a very strong radar response.1 There was the possibility of using this to detect enemy launches, although this would mean some form of over-the-horizon radar. Secondly, that the re-entry vehicle gave a very weak radar response – what today would be called ‘stealthy’. This tied in with work being done at RAE by the mathematician Grant Dawson, who was studying the radar response of the V bombers.

Ballistic missile defences have been divided into exo-atmospheric and endo – atmospheric – or, to put it more simply, intercepting the re-entry vehicle outside the atmosphere or once it had re-entered. In order to intercept the vehicle, it first had to be tracked. Radar was the only way of tracking the vehicle outside the atmosphere – and, as mentioned, the re-entry vehicle shape had a low radar cross section – particularly viewed from head on. It was also relatively easy to hide the re-entry vehicle within a host of decoys which gave similar radar responses.

Interception within the atmosphere has to be done within a very short space of time – certainly less than a minute. Again, one problem is how to discriminate between the re-entry vehicle and decoys. Thus further flights were planned, using optical instruments to observe the re-entry. These were the ‘Gaslight’ series of experiments. The results were sufficiently promising to lead on to a further set of experiments, Dazzle, with American participation. For these flights, the range at Woomera would be much more heavily instrumented.

Roy Dommett, who was involved in the Dazzle experiments, describes them thus:

The DAZZLE programme was sold to the Governments on the basis of exploiting the Blue Streak technology of a low radar observable profile, which was then an advanced concept for the west.

Chosen was the simple conical GW20 shape for which the UK already had derived an extensive experimental aerodynamic data base. The intention was to observe the re-entries of bodies with heat shields made in simple, reasonably well understood materials. Our agreed choices were fused silica, copper, PTFE (Teflon) and loaded durestos (an asbestos-phenolic composite).

For comparison there were to be two reference copper spheres flown. Their manufacture proved surprisingly difficult. The copper shapes were turned to shape by hand held tools in a workshop behind a garage in North London by men wearing armoured vests, and then had to be kept spotlessly clean to avoid sodium contamination. The PTFE was moulded from powder in large sections under pressure, which bulked down about 30% more than expected. ICI, the supplier, was very helpful as no one had ever made such big pieces before, and its final profile varied noticeably with the room temperature. Being PTFE, it was very difficult to machine. The silica glass sections were made in rough by a glass blowing firm in the north near Newcastle using sand moulds, and we had change from £100. The crud had to be machined off with diamond tools in F1E workshop at RAE where we discovered that glass stress relieved itself hours after it was touched. It could only be assembled by having layers of asbestos felt mat between every glass-glass and glass – metal interface.

The conical copper bodies were expected to fail at some point during re-entry by softening and distortion of the nose, but up to that time they would be clean and the observables would be entirely due to the interactions with the atmosphere unaffected by contamination from ablation products. It was thought that the PTFE would massively sublime at a much lower surface temperature than the silica and the products probably suppressing the flow observables, and that the durestos would ablate messily, enhancing them.

He also has this to say about the sabot system described in the previous chapter:

To be absolutely sure of the quality of the data, it was decided that the re-entry experiments should be pushed into the atmosphere ahead of the upper boost stage using a sabot that was firmly restrained by a lanyard to the upper boost stage, so that the experiment should have been several thousands of feet ahead of it during re­entry. The sabot was driven by four Imp solid propellent motors. In vacuum the plumes spread enormously, and the section of the tether near the sabot had to be in steel. Playing out the tether could exceed the critical speed for the undrawn nylon rope, chosen to avoid elastic bouncing around, and a very careful packing technique had to be found. Finally the rope still broke in flight quite early, despite extensive ground based testing, then it was eventually realised that nylon type plastics have “attached water molecules” which boil off in vacuum, cooling the rope and making it brittle. We also found it near impossible to get the re-entry vehicles to come in without a coning motion of the order of 20 degrees generated by the separation disturbances.

Two stage. Launched 6 November 1964 at 23:15. Apogee 391 miles.

The launch was successful with the first stage performance exceeding expectations. Problems arose with the Imp motors and the sabot: the head was fired at an angle meaning that re-entry did not occur where predicted. The lanyard broke before the sabot had been significantly retarded, which meant it followed close behind the head. In addition, the clutch on the tape recorder inside the head began to stick and the tape ran erratically. No useful data was obtained from it.

Writing alternative histories is a fruitless pastime: after all, why not go and write proper fiction? On the other hand, it can be interesting to speculate what might have happened. [16]

The follow-on series of re-entry experiments after Dazzle, named Crusade, were cancelled in favour of developing Black Arrow. Let us postulate an alternative: Crusade goes ahead, and at the same time, the Black Knight launcher is developed. The 54-inch Black Knight would have been in production, as would have been the Kestrel. Waxwing development would not have been that much more expensive. One of the reasons for the cost of Black Arrow was not its development, but the cost of building one vehicle every 18 months or so – the production teams were proceeding at not more than ‘tick over’. In addition, setting up the vehicle at the range at Woomera took around a month – which meant that for a further 17 months the range would have to be mothballed. The launch teams would have to be found alternative employment during those months – you cannot build a new team from scratch every time. If the range had been in use, fitting in an extra launch or two does not cost that much.

So the Crusade experiments carry on until 1968 or 1970. Does that mean that the Black Knight programme would have stopped there? Not necessarily. As part of the development of the Chevaline programme (improvements to the Polaris missile), a series of launches were carried out between 1975 and 1979 on a vehicle called Falstaff, which used the large solid fuel Stonechat motor (tested in 1969) – although Black Knight would have done the job admirably.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it does seem that RAE might have been better off proceeding with the 54-inch Black Knight and basing a launcher on it. It would have had Crusade, Black Knight instead of Falstaff for the Chevaline testing, and a satellite launcher as good as or better than Black Arrow. But it was not to be.

• If the Government had cancelled Blue Streak completely in 1960. Black Knight still goes ahead as part of the re-entry experiments, and we get a better Black Arrow because there is more money available – it is not being spent on ELDO. On the other hand, would the money have been spent on Black Arrow?

• If the proposed launcher had remained an Anglo-French project, on the lines of Concorde. The British would have had to go along with the French whether they liked it or not, and the vehicle would probably have been a good deal more reliable than Europa. Whether or not the resultant launcher would have been worth the effort is another matter. [17] convictions. Backing out of ELDO might have cost money and brought opprobrium down on British heads, but staying in and dragging their heels cost nearly as much money and was just as alienating. ELDO B might have had the prospect of being yet another money pit, but at least it was a project with some future, unlike ELDO A.

• If the proposal for the version of Europa III with four RZ 2 motors had gone ahead. It could well have been the success that Ariane was, but it would still have been unlikely that it would have changed the Government’s attitude to launchers!

But none of these did actually happen. [18]

The RAE at Farnborough, Hampshire, provided the guiding hand behind most of these projects. Together with the Rocket Propulsion Department (RPD), later the Rocket Propulsion Establishment (RPE), based at Westcott, Buckinghamshire, RAE carried out all the preliminary research for the ballistic missile, and also initiated and oversaw the Black Knight programme. It was also responsible for all the further studies that culminated in Black Arrow.

RAE was a large and wide spread organisation in the 1950s and 1960s; the Guided Weapons (GW) Department was responsible for all the early work on Blue Streak and Black Knight. In January 1962 Space Department was created, taking over much of the work of the GW Department. Space Department was responsible for a good deal of the UK’s work with ELDO, for the later re-entry experiments, Skylark, Black Arrow, and the technology satellites Prospero and Miranda.

In 1988 the RAE was renamed the Royal Aerospace Establishment, and in 1991 the RAE was merged into the Defence Research Agency (DRA). In 1995 the DRA and other Ministry of Defence organisations were merged to form the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA). In 2001 DERA was part – privatised, resulting in two separate organisations, the state-owned Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), and the privatised company QinetiQ.

A pressure-fed liquid oxygen/petrol rocket motor was first tested in Britain as early as 1941. It could provide a thrust of 2,000 lb and was intended as an assisted take-off device. The motor was also used in the early LOP/GAP and the later RTV-1. Hydrocarbons have a high flame temperature and cooling proved to be a problem – the solution was found by changing from petrol to a water – methanol mixture as in Snarler. This led to a prejudice against the combination that persisted through the early 1950s.

In the early 1950s, RPE began taking an interest in larger rocket motors, and a design for a liquid oxygen/liquid ammonia motor was drawn up, notable mainly for its spherical combustion chamber2. Discussions were held with ICI at Teeside concerning the availability and supply of liquid ammonia, but visits to America by members of the technical staff at Westcott re-awakened their interest in kerosene as a fuel. The idea of lox/kerosene motors moved back up the agenda, and the ammonia design was dropped. These new designs were named Delta, following the Alpha/Beta/Gamma sequence.

Delta 3 is the most interesting in that it would have been the starting point for a ballistic missile. Indeed, reasonably detailed sketches were made for a design of such a missile.3

Once Rolls Royce had licenced the North American S3 design and developed it into the RZ 2, there was little point in continuing with the work on the larger Delta chambers, and work on them ceased in 1957. Firings of the smaller Delta 5 and 7 continued until 1966.

All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics.

– Sir Sydney Camm

Politics obviously play a very important role in a project such as Blue Streak. It was competing for resources, or to put it another way, for money, with not only other defence projects, but with Government spending as a whole. The Government was the customer, and it was the Government that would have to decide whether it was value for money. On the other hand, the Government is not one single entity; it is a mixture of departments all with their own agenda, and their own axes to grind. These agenda would often come into conflict, and that is what the story of the cancellation of Blue Streak illustrates.

The political decision by the UK to become a nuclear power in the late 1940s implied two interlinked technical policies: the development of the nuclear device itself, and the development of a credible means of delivery. Credible in this context can imply a variety of different concepts.

Primarily, the threat of the nuclear deterrent has to be credible to the opposition, and as far as the UK was concerned, this meant Russia. Secondly, the deterrent has to be credible to the armed services that have to deploy it, and also politically credible to the UK electorate. Thirdly, in the UK context, it had to be credible to the US, since the UK deterrent was perceived by the Government as essentially an adjunct to the US deterrent, and also since the UK wished to have some influence over US nuclear policy. This was not possible unless the UK had her own nuclear weapons. The 1957 Defence White Paper described the U. K deterrent thus:

The free world is today mainly dependent for its protection upon the nuclear capacity of the United States. While Britain cannot by comparison make more than a modest contribution, there is a wide measure of agreement that she must possess an appreciable element of nuclear deterrent power of her own.

A bomb without a delivery system is of little use. In the early 1950s, the intended means of delivery was by a free fall bomb dropped from jet aircraft (the

V bombers, which were the Valiant, the Vulcan, and the Victor), which were to be further augmented with Blue Steel. However, technological advances meant that many other means of delivery became possible as the decade advanced.

Principal among these was the ballistic missile, which, above all, seemed to have one overriding advantage. This lay in its apparent invulnerability: once the vehicle was safely launched, it would be extremely difficult to intercept. But there were various ways in which ballistic missiles could be deployed, and as the various possibilities unfolded, each new system appeared to offer advantages over its predecessors. Thus it was possible to begin development of one system only to find half way through that another system was becoming feasible, and which threatened to supersede its predecessor. Technological advances during the 1950s were such that a new system could appear within a year or two of development having begun on an earlier system.

This was a particular problem for UK policy makers, those in the Cabinet and the Defence Ministry. For whatever reasons, development times in the UK were far greater than their US counterparts. UK policy makers were put into a position where they had to take a decision on a system which might take ten years to develop, with an expected service life of perhaps another ten years. Thus they had to look 20 years into the future, and with little hard intelligence as to the capabilities of the Soviet Union. Much of this intelligence was based on erroneous assessments of the industrial capacity and technological achievements of the USSR. The launch of Sputnik in particular led the West to think that the USSR was in many areas technically superior. In fact, the missile that launched Sputnik, the R7, was far too big and clumsy to be deployed operationally. However, Soviet nuclear forces from the late 1960s onwards would be a formidable challenge to a country such as the UK.

Political and Service tensions developed as a result of the development of potential rivals to Blue Streak. Proponents of one system often deliberately misused technical information to cast doubt upon another, and a good deal of the policy making was deliberately partisan. In other words, lobbying for a particular system was heavily influenced by particular Service departments who wished to control the means of delivery themselves and whose budget would benefit accordingly. There were also other Service factions who wanted as little money as possible to be spent on nuclear weapons, to free up the Defence budget for conventional weapons. Most of this is as true now as it was then!

The Operational Requirement for Blue Streak had called for a missile that could carry a megaton warhead over a distance of 2,000 nautical miles. The weight of the warhead then available meant that a relatively large missile had to be designed, and in retrospect, this was a mistake. Given the long development time for the missile, it might have been reasonable to assume that warhead design might have made significant advances in the interim. Indeed, at the time the design was ‘frozen’, Britain had not yet developed a fusion weapon. However, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

The use of a cryogenic fuel for Blue Streak was also a potential limitation on its deployment as the missile could not be kept in a ‘ready to fire’ state indefinitely. However, in this context it should be noted that exactly the same constraints were to apply to contemporary Russian and American designs such as the R7, Atlas and Thor. Furthermore the structure of this type of missile was relatively fragile, and extremely vulnerable if deployed on the surface. Hence the intention at the outset was to site the missile in ‘underground launchers’, as already described.

Compared with the US, development times for UK projects were very much longer. By the time of cancellation, Blue Streak had been under development for around 57 months with the first flight still some months away. The Thor missile, albeit smaller but of the same technological sophistication, was 13 months from inception to first launch. There are various reasons for this.

The first is that the Americans had much more prior experience than the UK: American missile development had proceeded almost uninterrupted since the war, whereas efforts in the UK had been much smaller scale and directed mainly at small defensive missiles.

A second reason was the means of procurement. In the US, specific teams were set up with considerable executive powers and, by comparison with the UK, almost unlimited finance. In the UK, the procurement ministry was the Ministry of Supply (later to become the Ministry of Aviation). A reading of the Ministry papers shows that the executive powers of the Ministry with regard to the industry carrying out the work were very much less.

Furthermore responsibility for the project was very much divided. The Ministry of Supply was the procurement Ministry. The Air Ministry would deploy the missile when it went into service. The Air Ministry, however, came under the control of the Ministry of Defence, who also then became involved. Finally, the RAE was to be the technical overseers of the project. Hence representatives of all these organisations, together with representatives from the firms, might all have been present at the various progress meetings. Such cumbersome bureaucracy cannot have helped the progress of the project. For example, an official in the Ministry of Defence wrote about the building of the facilities at Spadeadam:

I think the Minister of Supply ought to be shaken. It is up to him to warn us as soon as there is any administrative or financial difficulty to his not getting on as fast as he could with the project.[6]

The sending of memoranda back and forward (in the days before email!) from one Ministry to another must have been another time waster.

A third brake on the project was the Treasury, who took a much closer interest in Blue Streak than seems to be the case with many other defence projects. Thus in a minute to the Minister of Defence: ‘During most of 1956 we were defending the very existence of Blue Streak against savage attacks by the Treasury.’2 Such comments occur frequently in the Ministry of Defence files. By comparison, US resources were incomparably greater, and American engineers could afford to launch missile after missile until the design was a success. The UK did not have this luxury.

However, the feature of Blue Streak that was to prove the most controversial was the means of deployment in ‘underground launchers’. These launchers evolved gradually from relatively simple ideas into what today would be termed missile silos, although the term was not then in contemporary British use. The design of these launchers would give almost as many technical problems as the missile itself, and their size and complexity would have created considerable construction problems for the UK

But Blue Streak was running into other financial difficulties, apart from the cost of the ‘underground launchers’. In a sense, the Treasury’s anxiety was justified, since the costs seemed to be open-ended. The Ministry of Supply seemed to be unable to make any realistic cost estimates, and the time was fast approaching when firm decisions as to silos and their location would have to be taken. In addition, even the Home Office was becoming concerned since their location affected civil defence decisions. The sheer size and scale of the silos was only just becoming evident: a site would occupy around three acres, and would have to be a considerable distance from any habitation. (One potential site at Bircham Newton was ruled out on the grounds that it was too close to the Queen’s residence at Sandringham!) Stopping any such major project in its tracks is extremely difficult; very good reasons had to be found. There would be considerable political implications to cancelling such a major project.

Alternatives to Blue Streak did begin to emerge soon after development had begun. These were the Polaris submarine launched missile, and an air-launched missile code named WS138A, later to be known as Skybolt.

Polaris was a system developed by the US Navy. It used solid propellant motors, and the early versions had limited range and payload. However, a decision had been taken by the US Navy that since warheads would become much lighter as their design improved, the range/payload problem would be much less pressing by the time of deployment (warhead design in the US was considerably in advance of that in the UK).

Britain’s first nuclear submarine was HMS Dreadnought, made possible once the US Navy had provided a design for a lightweight reactor. Since then there had been close co-operation between the two services, and Admiral Arleigh Burke, in charge of the programme in the US, was eager for the Royal Navy to acquire the Polaris system.

The problem was that Polaris was not particularly attractive to Whitehall. It would mean building quite a number of nuclear submarines (certainly more than the five, later reduced to four, planned after the Nassau agreement) and buying the missiles from America – providing America was prepared to sell them. Such an arrangement did not appear to be cheaper than Blue Streak, it would have taken just as long to get the submarines into service, it would mean spending valuable dollars on the missiles, and it would also appear to reduce Britain’s independence as a nuclear power. Certain factions in the Admiralty had rather different views.

The Navy felt it had come out of the cuts in defence resulting from the 1957 Sandys’ White Paper relatively lightly. But the deterrent and Blue Streak in particular was resented as it was felt that too much of the defence budget was being diverted towards it; money that could be used for new ships. However, attitudes began to change when the First Sea Lord, Mountbatten, was told of Polaris by Arleigh Burke, the originator of the system in the US. Mountbatten and Burke were old friends, and a rather clandestine correspondence began between them. Soon the correspondence became more official. Burke was a formidable proponent for the system: he invented rather poorly scanning clerihews for the system along the lines of ‘move deterrents out to sea/where the real estate is free/and where they are/far away from me’3 to hammer the point that a submarine on patrol does not need fixed bases, and where it can remain undetected and thus invulnerable. A faction within the Navy took up Polaris with enthusiasm during 1958, but realised that the big obstacle was Blue Streak. The UK could not afford yet another nuclear delivery system. Accordingly a campaign began with the Admiralty, as an internal memo shows. I

I share your views that what we are most immediately concerned about is so to reduce the deterrent that we can maintain adequate conventional forces. I believe however that a decision to go for Polaris would give a large enough saving to guarantee the conventional forces we need. Further expenditure on Polaris would I think be less than future expense on Blue Streak plus fighter defence of the deterrent.

If I am right that we can get an immediate saving by taking the decision now, I feel that we should present the economic advantages of Polaris rather more strongly. Such a presentation would it appears fall on fertile ground.

Further papers indicate similar lobbying. In a note on a possible European IRBM from the First Sea Lord in February 1959, he comments:

Nevertheless, mainly thanks to the Treasury, it was possible to secure a chance to refer this point to Ministers on the grounds that, in the highly unlikely event of our NATO partners taking up the offer, HMG would be committed to the completion of Blue Streak with all that entails.

Later on in the note, commenting with reference to solid fuel motors, he says ‘… unless we can effectively answer them, the chances of upsetting BLUE STREAK may be considerably weakened.’

The Admiralty became even more excited when they discovered (and misinterpreted) a scheme for a UK ABM system: ‘You would hardly believe it, but since sending you my note this afternoon we have unearthed further information which really does put BLUE STREAK out of court.’

The language used goes well beyond the simple evaluation of the merits of rival systems: it becomes distinctly partisan.

The Navy’s efforts had not gone unnoticed by the Air Ministry either, as the following note in June 1958 from the Secretary of State for Air to Sandys shows:

The general conclusion that I come to is that the matter is of such fundamental importance and so complex that it might be more helpful to you if the Chiefs of Staff were asked to examine the requirement in all its aspects, strategical, tactical and technical, in the light of… the First Lord’s paper, and then to put forward a considered military opinion to you.

Mountbatten, then First Sea Lord, was pushing hard for some form of report too, as a note to Sir Frederick Brundrett shows:

. we are all most anxious to see that the Powell enquiry is dealt with on the right lines, to be quite sure that it will lead to the right answer. This is a Defence question first and foremost, although it may have all sorts of secondary interests. We none of us can believe that Powell and two outside scientists can possibly arrive at the right answers if they have no Service views on the requirements represented at the Committee.

For this reason, we are all convinced that we must have adequate representation on the Committee from each of the Services; and that is why we decided that the three Vice Chiefs should sit on it.4

[‘Powell’ refers to Sir Richard Powell, then Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, and a key figure in the story of the cancellation.]

This is a letter full of ambiguity: what is the ‘right answer’? Presumably, to Mountbatten, this meant Polaris. And it is interesting that Mountbatten is pressing for Service representation on the committee.

Accordingly, Sandys minuted Powell in December 1958:

The Chiefs of Staff have no doubt been considering for some time the respective advantage and disadvantages from the British stand-point of basing our nuclear deterrent underground or under the sea.

I think we ought to have a discussion of this matter at an early meeting of the Defence Board. I should, therefore, be glad if you would let me have a summary of the views of the Chiefs of Staff as soon as you can after Christmas.

Powell submitted a reply to Sandys outlining the form he felt such an inquiry should take, and suggested its terms of reference as being: ‘To consider how the British-controlled contribution to the nuclear deterrent can most effectively be maintained in the future, and to make recommendations.’

But then he had to push Sandys for further action:

In a minute of 23rd March I submitted proposals for setting up a study into the future of the British deterrent… you agreed that this should be set in action but subsequently asked me to do nothing, in order to avoid casting doubt on the future of BLUE STREAK.

The Chiefs of Staff and Sir Norman Brook [the Cabinet Secretary] have recently asked me about this study. Both felt that it ought to go on, since the future of the deterrent is bound to come up again after an election, if not sooner. I think they are right, and should like to have your authority to proceed.

In any event, a note from Sandys’ office to Powell shows that his hand was being forced:

The Minister discussed with you this afternoon the proposed Study Group on the British deterrent. He felt that we had only recently reached our conclusions on the need and form of the British contribution to the nuclear deterrent. Little further information would be available, and in his view, the time was not yet ripe for a further study of this problem. He asked that if this matter was raised in your coming meeting at Chequers, you should say that he was considering setting up a Study Group, and you should leave this matter open. You agreed to discuss this further with the Minister after discussing it with Sir F. Brundrett and after your visit to Chequers.

But an internal Admiralty note written to the First Lord (the Earl of Selkirk) by the First Sea Lord (Admiral Sir Charles Lambe) in May 1959 gives another perspective:

My predecessor also turned over to me the fact that the Minister of Defence had agreed to a team under the Chairmanship of Sir Richard Powell, to examine the pros and cons of three possible methods of providing the future British contribution to the Deterrent, namely Manned Aircraft, Ballistic Missiles (BLUE STREAK) and POLARIS. Though this had been agreed by the Minister, I understand that, just before he left for New Zealand, he ordered this investigation to be suspended, giving as his reason the fact that ‘he did not wish the validity of BLUE STREAK to be questioned’ …

As I see it, the present Minister of Defence [Sandys] will do all in his power to prevent any alternative to Blue Streak from even being considered. I am also certain that the new Chief of the Defence Staff [Mountbatten], when he takes office, will do everything in his power to see that the merits of Polaris are brought to the attention of HM Government. Domestically, I am certain that we in the Admiralty need a much clearer picture than we have at present of the probable repercussions of the Polaris programme on the rest of the Navy before we start any official pro Polaris propaganda. Indeed, I doubt it is right for the Navy to undertake any such propaganda at all. I believe we would be in a far stronger position if we were (at any rate, apparently) pushed into the POLARIS project rather than have to push it ourselves.5

Note: these are listed in the order in which they were fired, not the vehicle number.

BK01

Single stage. Launched 7 September 1958 at 20:03. Apogee 140 miles. No re­entry head.

The preliminary post firing meeting stated that:

… the vehicle appeared to follow the anticipated velocity and acceleration programme until about 132.7 secs from time zero when the motor flame went out. At the same instant, transmission from the body telemetry sender ceased, and there was failure of all information channels on the head sender. some seconds later, a large bright flash was observed which seemed to travel laterally.

The vehicle was recovered in two main portions, one consisting of the engine bay and part of the HTP tank and the other the head, electronics bay and approximately half the kerosene tank.

Fragments of the engine bay, and HTP tank were scattered over a wide area, and the state of the engine bay contents suggested that an explosion had occurred on impact. Extensive burning of cable looms in the lower half of the bay had occurred.2

The vehicle was fitted with a destruct mechanism in case of failure. If the appropriate signal was sent, small explosive charges would blow manganese dioxide powder into the HTP tank. Manganese dioxide is a fine black powder, and a very effective catalyst for the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. Post flight analysis showed that the aerial had picked up a stray signal and had inadvertently triggered the destruct mechanism. This would cause the HTP to explode, destroying the vehicle – hence the bright flash, which was probably the remainder of the kerosene burning in the hot steam and oxygen produced by the decomposition. In all other respects, the vehicle had behaved as designed, and from most points of view, the flight could be called a success.

Two stage. Launched 24 April 1965 at 20:32. Apogee 404.6 miles.

Both the main stage and second stage performance was satisfactory. The re­entry head was a GW 20 shape made from copper. A thicker rope was used to retard the sabot, but again it broke without retarding the sabot significantly. The copper cone disintegrated on re-entry, and the tape recorder was not found until two months after the trial.

It can be argued that the Cold War became a war of resources, and one in which the UK effectively dropped out of at the start of the 1960s. It could be further argued that the collapse of Communism in Russia was also due to the collapse of a command economy directed to large military and technological programmes. However, let us concentrate on the UK.

As already mentioned, most of the projects discussed so far were military in origin, but many were never carried through to completion. This is not unique to the UK; similar cancellations happen in all countries developing new technology. One of the major factors contributing to the cancellation of such projects, not only in the UK but in the US, was the very rapid advance in technology during the 1950s.

In many ways, the major aerospace technologies, with the exception of computing and electronics, had become mature by the mid-1960s. Thus the jet engine, the rocket motor, supersonic aircraft and the rest had been successfully developed by this time. There have obviously been improvements, but they have been incremental rather than breakthroughs into new areas. It is also interesting that up until the 1970s, almost all technological advances came from government and military projects, whereas today the main driving force seems to be business and consumer interests, most notably in electronics and computing. Military spending is no longer the great driver of projects that it once was.

After the cancellation of Blue Streak there was virtually no further military interest in long-range missiles. The UK was left with the legacy of the work done so far on Blue Streak and Black Knight to pursue a rather half-hearted space programme. Considerable muddle in the subsequent policy left the UK disillusioned with space research – or, at least, with launchers – with the inevitable cancellations later in the 1960s.

The question then comes: why, when America, Russia and France were pursuing space exploration with vigour, and why, when countries such as China and India are launching satellites almost as a matter of routine, has the UK shown such little interest both at government level and among the people at large?

A useful German word can be used here: the Zeitgeist, which might be translated as ‘the spirit of the times’, or the outlook characteristic of the period. America and Russia were pursuing their race in space as a way of fighting the Cold War at one remove, in an attempt to show the rest of the world who was technologically the more sophisticated. Britain had no such interest: at the end of the 1950s it was beginning the long retreat from Empire, and at the same time beginning to suffer from the economic and social ills which were to plague the country for the next 30 or 40 years. Another phrase has been used of the government at this time: ‘managing the decline’. A country that feels itself to be in decline does not embark on new, challenging technological challenges.

As mentioned earlier, Macmillan’s initial announcement in Parliament in 1959 was greeted with the response: ‘… is it just an attempt to keep up with the Joneses?’ This was a fairly common attitude, as when Thorneycroft, then Minister of Aviation, was interviewed on television about the proposed Blue Streak launcher and ELDO in 1961. Ministers, when interviewed on television, have to expect difficult questions – but the tone of the questioning is interesting.

Mr. Mackenzie: But couldn’t it be argued that we, in Britain, have after all only a limited number of technologists available, even in any aspect of this area and that we might be better advised to get them off working, for example, in exploration of the problem of supersonic aircraft, or some more obviously commercial operation, rather than this rather exhibitionist activity of rocketeering?

Minister: There’s nothing exhibitionist about the brilliant Rolls Royce and de Havilland engineers who’ve, incidentally, done a great deal more than keep this in mothballs. We’ve just done two fully integrated static firings. The work is going well ahead and the Americans will tell you themselves that the payoff in other forms of industry – in metallurgy, electronics and the rest – have wide application to civil industry as a whole, is very great if we go into it.

Mr. Mackenzie: But are we remotely in this competition? One knows how very far the Russians have gone, and the Americans and one has the awful feeling that this is the kind of feeble rearguard, final action to show the flag.

Minister: Don’t be so depressed, Robert. This is not a rearguard action at all. We are in this for eternity, all of us. It isn’t just the question of doing it with the Atlas or the Blue Streak. We shall be making these rockets: I hope we shall be making them in Europe for a long time ahead, with great advantage to ourselves, to the world and to all the countries, including the smaller ones, that are in it.1

‘Exhibitionist activity of racketeering’, ‘feeble rear guard action’. And another quote from Mackenzie later in the interview: ‘But I don’t understand why, if the Americans are offering a launcher – which is presumably more advanced than the one we have – Blue Streak – why we may as well not write off Blue Streak and use their launcher for whatever purposes we’ve got in mind.’

And Mackenzie was wrong. Blue Streak was actually based on American technology, but it could be argued that in the process of anglicisation that a considerable number of improvements had been made.

Another example of the same frame of mind (and the frame of mind perpetually adopted by the Treasury) can be seen in a note from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, John Boyd Carpenter, in July 1963: