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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0227.PDF
fLIGHT International, 14 February 1963 THAT WAS SKYBOLT, THAT WAS 217 By Frank Beswick IK his first of two speeches in the two-day defence debate the Prime Minister iooked up from his notes and said with emphasis, "Nothing is ever permanent in the defence field." This observation was Dot challenged. What was seriously con tested was the merit of a democratic system which enables one Minister, even the first among equals, flying off to the Bahamas, changing the basis of our defence policy and effectively transferring some £400m of national expenditure from one sector of industry to another. All, as one Member put it, "on one balmy afternoon." There must be some better way of man aging our affairs. Several Members, on both sides of the House, referred again to the proposal put forward by some of us in the past, of an all-party committee to which facts could be given on a confidential basis, which could question Ministers and officials concerned and which could report back to the whole House. In the two days of speeches about the relative merits of different weapons, hard facts about such things as hitting power were found as rarely as pearls in a box of Colchester oysters. The Prime Minister said it was childish to suppose that the US Administration had cancelled Skybolt just to spite Britain. The US had spent 350m dollars on existing development and there would be heavy cancellation charges. In addition to financial and political interests there was an industrial interest—on the part of the aircraft industry generally, and the Douglas Corporation [sic] and itssubsidiarymanufac- turers in particular. So there was a fairly formidable lobby in favour of Sky- bolt. Anybody with experience, said Mr Macmillan, would know how difficult it sometimes was to resist these pressures. The Prime Minister went on to tell of bis 1960 journey to Camp David when, with President Eisenhower, he had dis- :ussed the choice of Skybolt or Polaris to succeed the fixed rocket [Blue Streak] which they had decided to abandon. Nei- her the Polaris nor Skybolt systems was then perfected and both were complicated and costly. "I was greatly influenced," said Mr Macmillan, "by the fact that we in Britain already had a bomber force, with all that implies in morale, men and material. The V-bombers were being con structed and large orders had been placed. I reached the view that if the Americans would sell us the Skybolt missile ... it would get us through a long period of years with the least disturbance." Well, that was Skybolt, that was. Mr John Hall tried, at question time before the debate, to find out how seriously projects for a deterrent weapons system of wholly British manufacture had been considered, and what was the estimated cost in money and manpower. The Minister of Defence told him that consideration was given to this possibility, but the factors of time and diversion of effort from other parts of the programme made the Americar offer more advantageous. As to costs—he said, when pressed—he would rather deal with the matter at greater length in the debate. But in the debate no estimate was given, save that the Prime Minister said that "those who think we should make our own rockets might stop a moment and consider" that Polaris had cost in development up to the end of 1962 about two billion dollars. Independence questioned In fact, in the debate no Government supporter claimed that Britain should make her own weapon, and all agreed that the Prime Minister had been right to turn down President Kennedy's proposal that we should "go on with the development of Skybolt ourselves." More surprising from the Government benches were the impressive speeches which questioned the assumption that we should now seek an independent nuclear deterrent. Sir Alex ander Spearman could not see that it would give us greater influence with the United States if we unimportantly duplicated what they were doing instead of usefully com plementing it. The US, he said, were spending more than £5,000m on the nuclear deterrent alone, whilst we were currently spending £170m. His view was that it was impracticable for us to spend thousands of millions and wasteful to spend hundreds of millions. Mr Brian Harrison said it was "almost humbug" to say that we had an independent nuclear deterrent and that the Bahamas agreement made us more, not less, dependent upon the USA. Mr John Hall said he found himself "in the unenviable position of agreeing with practically everything the Opposition had said." The Opposition case was that since the scrapping of Blue Streak the independent nuclear status had for us become a costly pretence; that when the time came to handle the hardware, Polaris would prove as illusory as Skybolt; that in any case the Bahamas agreement left us dependent upon American know-how; and that the money spent upon this complicated pretence would yield much better value in terms of up-to- date, mobile, conventional defence. As for the argument that we needed our own deterrent to give cover for some independent conventional operation, that (said Mr Gor don Walker) was based upon mistrust of the United States; yet to get Polaris wea pons and maintain them and carry out the strategy, we had to have absolute confidence in the United States. The Bahamas agreement left many questions to be answered. Sir Arthur Harvey wanted to know about the British personnel in California—"several hundreds with wives and children, who expected a tour of two-and-a-half years, and have bought cars and furniture on hire purchase." No answer was given on that, though Sir Arthur was certain they would "be taken care of." And what precisely happens to Bomber Command with the offer to assign part or whole to NATO? Mr Thorneycroft said it was our suggestion to strengthen the alliance by assigning in this way V-bombers, "up to the whole force and, indeed, better the whole force." We should be free to use them ourselves and they would remain in Bomber Command. We should work closely in the targeting of operations with Strategic Air Command, though in what way this differs from present arrangements was not made clear. Much discussion was to take place, said the Defence Minister, and he did not wish to prejudge that. And what happens now to the aircraft industry? Ex-Minister Mr Watkinson said that Blue Steel, ECM and "certain other things" would keep the V-bombers valid for four or five years. Then there was the TSR2. Was that, with the SST, calculated to maintain the present level of activity in the industry? Or had the calculation not been attempted? Was this not a moment when we might think again about what we could do in space research and develop ment? Something with a civil applica tion? THE DAM-BUSTING WEAPON (continued) The external diameter of the discs was very slightly smaller than the internal diameter of the circular tracks at the ends of the weapon, and rotation was imparted by means of a V.S.G. hydraulic motor and belt drive to one of the discs. The motor was started about ten minutes before arrival at the target and rotation controlled at 500 r.p.m. The calliper arms were held inwards against stops (to prevent actual clamping of 'he cylinder), by a straining system retained by a bomb-slip. On the release of 'Ws the arms were forced outwards by powerful springs, thus leaving the spinning weapon unsupported. Correct release height was gauged by the pilot with the aid of two spotlights mounted fore and aft on the fuselage and pointing downwards at such an angle that, as he approached the surface, the two spots came together when the underside of his aircraft was at the required height of 60ft. It so happened that both the Moehne and the Eder dams had been designed with two ornamental towers. The correct distance for release, 400-450yd from the target, was judged with the aid of a simple triang ular sight, using the known distance between the towers for a base. This distance was critical, first to ensure that the height of the bounces would diminish to a dimension less than the freeboard of the dam (a matter of only a few feet when the lake was full) and secondly to ensure that the impact with the dam should not be so great as to detonate or unduly damage the weapon. It was found during trials that it was difficult to dive the Lancaster at such a low altitude beyond a speed of 240-250 m.p.h. and the range was determined by this limiting value.
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