Project E and all that
We saw last week that the first British Blue Danube atomic bomb was delivered to RAF Wittering at the end of 1953, but that Vickers Valiant aircraft able to carry the bomb didn’t enter squadron service until 1955. However, it was already clear that once Vickers and later Avro and Handley Page were in full production, deliveries of V-bombers would start to run well ahead of bombs. To avoid the embarrassment of introducing high-performance atomic bombers without bombs, Britain turned to the United States.
The Eisenhower administration in the US had already decided to base its defence policy upon “massive retaliation” in the event of war – using nuclear weapons both at the strategic level, against the sources of Soviet state power, and in Europe as part of a “forward defence” of the NATO countries. In the autumn of 1954 NATO’s Military Committee adopted a new strategy along these lines, known by its reference number MC 48 (1). At the same time West Germany was admitted to NATO and made a commitment not to develop nuclear weapons of its own (2).
Nuclear sharing in NATO depended – and continues to depend today – upon US nuclear weapons made available to the NATO allies under “dual-key” control. In reality, to begin with, this meant that US warheads were stored in Europe under exclusive US control and would be released for use, in wartime, following a joint political decision. Later an American and an allied officer would each hold a physical key, and both keys would be needed to arm the weapon – in other words, both the US and the allied country would have a veto. Thus the West Germans, in particular, could not launch a nuclear attack on their own. For most NATO countries, the nuclear weapons concerned were “tactical” (never a precisely defined term, but generally meaning of short range and low yield and suitable in some sense for use on the “battlefield”). For Britain only, “dual-key” weapons were also made available for a time for strategic use against the Soviet Union.
This was the political and military background to a detailed planning meeting in London over two days in August 1956 between visiting US Air Force officers and the British Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Dermot Boyle. With British atomic bombers now in service in some numbers, Boyle wanted to know how links between the two air forces might be made even closer. Agreement was reached, and confirmed over the following months at political level, both to coordinate the nuclear strike plans of Strategic Air Command and the embryonic British force, and to make US nuclear weapons available in war to the RAF on “dual-key” terms in an arrangement that became known as “Project E”.
Specifically, not only would US Mk.7 atomic bombs be provided for the RAF’s Canberra bombers assigned to NATO, but also larger Mk.5 bombs would equip some of the V-bombers. A detailed memorandum of understanding followed in 1957 and Project E became operational in October 1958, the “special” bomb stores at RAF Marham, Waddington and Honington having meanwhile been modified to take Mk.5 weapons. British weapons became available in increasing numbers over the next few years, and US weapons for strategic use by the V-bombers were withdrawn by 1962 (3). At RAF Marham, however, some Valiants remained assigned to NATO with Project E weapons, now megaton Mk.28 bombs, until 1965; and in West Germany, RAF units with Canberras and other aircraft continued to use Project E weapons for many more years.
US/UK strategic nuclear cooperation also extended to Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles, 60 of which were based in the UK and operated by the RAF between 1959 and 1963. Again this arrangement dated back to contacts made on service-to-service channels during 1956 and political agreements in 1957/8. The UK stood to gain valuable operational experience with ballistic missiles ahead of the deployment of Britain’s own Blue Streak, even though Thor, unlike the more advanced Blue Streak, would be surface not silo-launched. The US, for its part, would acquire a base for missiles which otherwise lacked the range to hit the Soviet Union. Both countries would benefit from restoring their political alliance after the disastrous Suez crisis.
Thor missiles were therefore deployed at four groups of airfields in the east of England. In October 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, 59 out of 60 missiles were apparently at fifteen minutes’ readiness to fire. RAF crews operated Thor, and RAF roundels were painted on the missiles, as in the picture above. US custodial units, however, looked after the warheads and, in line with the “dual-key” arrangement, two separate physical keys were required to launch. By 1963, Britain had abandoned its own plans for ground-launched ballistic missiles and the US had many more weapons available with intercontinental range. Thor was therefore withdrawn and Britain’s strategic nuclear arsenal was once again under sole British operational control.
Footnotes
(1) MC48 is available online here.
(2) Protocol to the Brussels Treaty, 22 Oct 1954, Foreign Relations of the United States 1952-4, Vol. 5 Pt. 2, pp. 1441-56, online here.
(3) For Project E see Humphrey Wynn, RAF strategic nuclear deterrent forces: their origins, roles and deployment 1946-69: a documentary history (HMSO 1994), ch. 16.
Suggested reading
The interesting story of Britain’s Thor missiles is told best in two books by John Boyes: Project Emily: Thor IRBM and the RAF (Tempus 2008) and Thor ballistic missile: the United States and the United Kingdom in partnership (Fonthill 2015).
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