British Missiles

[pyro-manic]

That's a fantastic find, Weaver - many thanks!

[John1964]

One of the land based versions of Sea Wolf was called Wolverine - I've never seen much detail on it, but it was meant to have active homing fitted into a lengthened nose cone and have a flechet (metal shards) warhead and was intended for use against short range balisitic missiles; the SS20 at the time.

If anyone had anymore details, such as launching arrangement, I would be very interested.

Regards.

[Mossie]

Getting much bigger, there was Blue Streak.  It was originally designed as a Medium Range Ballistic Missile to enter service in the 60's & would have meant Britain would have a nuclear missile that was independent of the United States.  It was cancelled in the usual political mess of the period, although it was slated to be developed into a satellite launcher, using the Black Prince (a larger development of Black Knight) second stage.  It did eventually become the first stage for the European ELDO project & was the only reliable part of it, so never got into orbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Streak_(missile)
http://www.spaceuk.org/bstreak/bstreak.htm



One of the main criticisms of Blue Streak was that being stationed on the surface, it was vulnerable to being taken out in a first strike.  There were plans to build silos to hold them, but the cost would have been enormous.  In the end the RAF operated the Douglas Thor, although this itself was subject to the same vulnerabilities & retired only four years later.  The slack was taken up by Blue Steel, then the Polaris fleet.

Plans for the K.11 Silo:
http://www.spaceuk.org/bstreak/bs/k11.html