Blue Streak: 1

Pt 1 of 5: Origins and requirement

Minister of Defence Duncan Sandys at the co-pilot’s controls of a Handley Page Victor bomber at RAF Cottesmore, June 1959
(photo copyright Imperial War Museum T1071/approved non-commercial use)

Over the next three weeks I’m going to look at the vexed question of a delivery system for the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent, which caused furious controversy from the mid 1950s to the end of 1962.  First the British land-based ballistic missile Blue Streak was the great hope of the future; then the American air-launched ballistic missile Skybolt; and finally the American submarine-launched ballistic missile Polaris.  It’s a dramatic story with, I think, military, technical and political implications that are still interesting today.

Let’s start with Blue Streak.  In August 1955, just days after the first squadron of nuclear-capable RAF medium jet bombers had formed at RAF Wittering in July, the Air Ministry issued operational requirement number OR.1139 for a 2000-mile medium-range ballistic missile with a megaton nuclear warhead, and Blue Streak was the project to meet this requirement.  The Air Ministry recognised that, by about 1965, its brand-new bombers would face daunting Soviet anti-aircraft defences if called upon to attack, but it couldn’t bear to contemplate replacing them with missiles.  Instead the missile was to be “complementary to the bomber force” (1).   

In fact serious work had been underway on the ballistic missile for at least two years, and the lead contractor, De Havilland, had already been selected.  Minister of Supply Duncan Sandys, responsible for defence procurement in Winston Churchill’s government from 1951-54, had a personal interest in strategic missiles, having worked during the second world war on countering the German V-1 and V-2 weapons used against London.  Sandys had reached an agreement with US Defense Secretary Charles Wilson in 1954 to share ballistic missile research.  Britain’s Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough and Rocket Propulsion Establishment at Westcott, and firms including De Havilland and Rolls-Royce, were leaders in liquid-fuelled rocket technology. 

At the start of 1957, after a period in charge of housing and local government, Sandys became Minister of Defence.  Prime Minister Harold Macmillan wanted Sandys, a strong character, to take defence by the throat.  The story goes that, in line with this instruction, at one point Sandys literally came to blows with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer.  The 1957 Defence White Paper, which Sandys pushed through in short order, is mostly remembered for its stark vision of nuclear deterrence and the future of the UK’s politically important aircraft industry:

The time has now come to revise not merely the size, but the whole character of the defence plan … scientific advances must fundamentally alter the whole basis of military planning …

It must be frankly recognised that there is at present no means of providing adequate protection for the people of this country against the consequences of an attack with nuclear weapons … This makes it more than ever clear that the overriding consideration in all military planning must be to prevent war rather than to prepare for it … A central feature of the defence plan is the maintenance of an effective deterrent.  High priority will therefore continue to be given to the development of British nuclear weapons …

the government have decided not to go on with the development of a supersonic manned bomber … the RAF are unlikely to have a requirement for fighter aircraft of types more advanced than the supersonic P.1, and work on such projects will stop (2).

The White Paper is hotly debated even now, although the abolition of peacetime conscription in the UK, which was arguably its main objective, gets less attention from historians (3).

For a Defence Minister with a close interest in ballistic missiles, doubts about the future of manned aircraft, and a policy founded on nuclear deterrence, Blue Streak was the perfect weapons programme.  Tomorrow, I’ll take a look at the technology of Blue Streak in a bit more detail. 

Footnotes

(1) Requirement quoted in Humphrey Wynn, RAF strategic nuclear deterrent forces: their origins, roles and deployment 1946-69 (HMSO 1994), p. 374.

(2) Defence: outline of future policy, Cmnd. 124, April 1957.

(3) Martin Navias, ‘Terminating conscription?  The British National Service controversy 1955-56’, Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989), pp. 195-208.