“We aimed for the Pacific … and missed”
On the 18th January 1963, RAE engineers launch the twelfth Blue Streak missile from Woomera.
Unlike the highly publicised success of “Ariel” the previous month, no details of this Top Secret flight are reported. A 75% scale model of the proposed Black Anvil re-entry vehicle is mounted on top of the second stage and will be boosted close to orbital velocity. It will fly east, barely above the atmosphere before falling towards a target point near Christmas Island. Ribbon parachutes will slow the RV to allow it to splashdown intact after a flight of around 4,800 miles. It is designed to float until picked up by a nearby recovery ship.
The flight is effectively Britain’s first test of an ICBM, albeit a design that is never intended to enter service.
Launch vehicle performance appears normal and controllers heave a sigh of relief when the Black Knight second stage separates and ignites as planned. Before launch there had been a series of problems with the timing circuits that trigger these events. Radar tracking shows that altitude at second stage shutdown is slightly higher than expected. Other than this, all seems normal and at T+8m 22s, the RV is ejected from the top of the rocket as planned.
A few minutes later, having arced halfway across the Pacific, a tracking station on Christmas Island scans for and acquires the RV, which is fitted with a transponder to help the radar lock on to it. Almost immediately, it is clear that the RV is higher - about 50 miles higher - than expected and is not descending into the atmosphere. There is concern that the Top Secret design is in orbit; this RV is more advanced than anything in service in either Britain or the US. If it is, it could land almost anywhere. The flightpath would ultimately take it over some decidedly unfriendly nations, who would no doubt be happy to pass it along to Moscow.
Although the booster was equipped with a range destruct system, the RV is not; no one imagined that one might be needed. Radar tracking is maintained for a few minutes before the lock is lost in radio clutter as it nears the horizon.
The tracking data is analysed with the greatest urgency and it becomes clear that the RV will not complete an orbit due to its low altitude. It seems likely that it will have already re-entered, somewhere over the Eastern Pacific. After an assurance that the RV will sink after a day at most, no search is attempted; no-one knows exactly where to look and the risk of the Top Secret RV design being recovered by a Soviet ship is considered non-existent.
Post flight investigation suggests that the simple "point and shoot" guidance system on the upper stage pitched down less than had been programmed. In addition, the engines produced a higher thrust at lower efficiency than expected, resulting in a lighter, faster accelerating stage.
The resulting burnout velocity was about 11m/s too high, and more significantly at a slight angle of climb, not the planned dive back into the atmosphere.
More thorough analysis of the radar data is radioed back to the UK, where a computer model of the drag forces suggests that the RV might have flown further than was first thought. Assuming it survived re-entry, the impact point is later estimated to be somewhere in the American Midwest.
Uncertain as to whether to “ask the Americans if we could have our rocket back”, test managers pass the matter up the chain of command, where it enters the mire of international diplomacy. Events in the real world move much faster.
On the edge of a field outside of Colt, Arkansas, farmer Merve Collins finds “some sort of bomb, all burned up”. His brother, on leave from the Navy, takes one look at it and knows enough to contact the nearby Air Force base and ask them to come get whatever has fallen off one their planes.
After a near-farcical sequence of interference by the local Sheriff, not one but two broken down pickup trucks and a night landing on an improvised airstrip, Pentagon officials final get to see the mysterious object and conclude “it isn’t ours”. What it is, however, is the remains of a highly advanced missile re-entry vehicle.
It took a while for anyone to connect the fact that Britain had conducted a missile test on the far side of the world on the day before it was found. It is a shock to realise that this makes it the longest flight yet made by a ballistic missile; impact was 9,742 miles from Woomera. [Although unknown at that time, it still holds the record for the greatest miss in history, at 4,932 miles, a distance greater than the range from the launch site to the intended target].
No one event changes the course of history, but with the benefit of hindsight, F-12 certainly gave it a nudge. Not for the first (or the last) time, analysts engaged in the preparation of a briefing for the US administration connected the dots and came to completely the wrong conclusions.
The supposedly new British missile codenamed “Black Anvil” was nothing more than an upgraded “Blue Streak” with an upper stage. Obviously, this combination will be able to achieve long range, but it still makes for a weak deterrent. It would be a missile no better than America’s first ICBM “Atlas”, early versions of which will be taken out of service within a couple of years. Recent comments by various British officials would seem to support this conclusion. Given Britain’s limited resources, it would make sense for the “improved Blue Star” satellite launcher and the ballistic missile “Black Anvil” to be virtually the same vehicle. With this as their only home-grown option, the British will undoubtedly accept America’s JDF proposal, although perhaps they hope to trade their program in return for a better deal.
[In one way the analysts were right, “improved Blue Star” and “Black Anvil” were the same rocket, just not the one they were thinking of.]
Armed with the knowledge that the British had only a weak hand to play, the US delegation heads for the Bahamas. They were confident that, in the end, their JDF proposal would succeed in bringing all Western nuclear weapons back where they belonged - under US control.
The entire incident would be hushed up. Merve Collins was paid $122 by the Air Force as compensation for the hole in his field, and no-one said anything more about it.
The story finally came out in 2003; how, three months after the Cuban crisis, an experimental British ICBM hit the United States.
