hmm if the Ancients are the British Commonwealth, thats an interesting idea- it would depend on how anglophobic Gene Roddenberry is.
wouldnt the Commonwealth acutually be almost similar to the UFP.
Ministry of Space, or Briiiiiits iiiiin Spaaaaace!
- Thread starter Mr.Bluenote
- Start date
hmm if the Ancients are the British Commonwealth, thats an interesting idea- it would depend on how anglophobic Gene Roddenberry is.
wouldnt the Commonwealth acutually be almost similar to the UFP.
Well, I think it's also depend a lot on how the Media company, and the public mood to determined the atmosphere in the series. As the U.S. in TTL will be a lot more conservative and patriotic than OTL, The UFP could resemble more of the Fed/Union. Not to mention that I think that a lot of American will see the Commonwealth is just the British Empire in disguise, or just still be the British Empire outright with just some reducing in size and reform of Imperial structure.
Back to British culture, could we see a British counterpart of Star Trek besdie Dan dare and rocketeers? Personally, I can see not only a lot of Sci-fi genre spring up about in Britian, but also historical one too. The tales about the 'Good, old, glorious day of the old Queens' The Virgin Elizabeth and Queen Victoria times in glorified mood will be quite popular, I think.
Again, I think that with America so much involved in many military operations, the mood in America might favor more of the war heroes, pratiotic stories rather than Sci-fi and British nonsense of rockets and space going.
Back to British culture, could we see a British counterpart of Star Trek besdie Dan dare and rocketeers? Personally, I can see not only a lot of Sci-fi genre spring up about in Britian, but also historical one too. The tales about the 'Good, old, glorious day of the old Queens' The Virgin Elizabeth and Queen Victoria times in glorified mood will be quite popular, I think.
Again, I think that with America so much involved in many military operations, the mood in America might favor more of the war heroes, pratiotic stories rather than Sci-fi and British nonsense of rockets and space going.
A British counterpart to star trek would be interesting, or maybe they use Doctor Who.
Holy Crap what will Star Wars represent TTL
I wonder what the effects on British industry being rebuilt and thriving (i assume for the most part) will have on countries like Japan the US Germany and South Korea etc esp if Britain ITTL is world leader in various things like computers,cars planes ships semi conducters, high tech etc etc- would that correspond to poorer Japan etc or would they still rise as competitors.
Holy Crap what will Star Wars represent TTL
I wonder what the effects on British industry being rebuilt and thriving (i assume for the most part) will have on countries like Japan the US Germany and South Korea etc esp if Britain ITTL is world leader in various things like computers,cars planes ships semi conducters, high tech etc etc- would that correspond to poorer Japan etc or would they still rise as competitors.
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In my opinion, a thriving Britian and Commonwealth will be another important market and economic engine of the global economic system. Wheter the 'fortress commonwealth' in economic term will be build or not, it will be a major market, not for just the inter-commonwealth trade, but also for another country. There will still be the need for French wine, American film or rice from Asia.
As mr.B said before, Japan and Korea will profit immensely supplying U.S. in Chinese War. This is China, and any war wage on her soil will be HUGH, which mean lots of foods, bases and other supplies for the troops involved. India too, in my opnion, will profit from this war. Not to mention that after the war, the democratic part of China will need a lot of food, goods and investment. If anything, Japan and Korea might end up richer.
While Britian will be a leader in technology, I think that some country could compete with her in some field later. Japan have a lot of potential in automobile and electronic industry even before the war, so, we may still see Japanese car and electronics.( I just can't leave PS2, really)
Well, Star Wars as a portray of the cold war will be a fun one. But, I thought that it was some kind of no portrayal? but the guys in imperial force dress like a Nazi one.
May the Force of the Queen be with you!!
alas, another of my muse/rant
As mr.B said before, Japan and Korea will profit immensely supplying U.S. in Chinese War. This is China, and any war wage on her soil will be HUGH, which mean lots of foods, bases and other supplies for the troops involved. India too, in my opnion, will profit from this war. Not to mention that after the war, the democratic part of China will need a lot of food, goods and investment. If anything, Japan and Korea might end up richer.
While Britian will be a leader in technology, I think that some country could compete with her in some field later. Japan have a lot of potential in automobile and electronic industry even before the war, so, we may still see Japanese car and electronics.( I just can't leave PS2, really)
Well, Star Wars as a portray of the cold war will be a fun one. But, I thought
that it was some kind of no portrayal? but the guys in imperial force dress like a Nazi one. May the Force of the Queen be with you!!
alas, another of my muse/rant
might Northern Ireland go better in TTL. the main problem i think at first was Protestants monopolizing the best jobs and vote rigging etc, maybe if the problem is identified or forced to government attention, things might go better esp if the military is more professional - the Derry shootings dont take place etc- many of the Catholics supported the Army til then i think.
investing money in the country wouldnt hurt- maybe as UK gets richer a Marshall Plan for the less developed and poorer parts.
back in NI sending in some of those refugees discussed earlier might provide a balance of sorts between the Protestants and Catholics + they'd probably be pro british.
investing money in the country wouldnt hurt- maybe as UK gets richer a Marshall Plan for the less developed and poorer parts.
back in NI sending in some of those refugees discussed earlier might provide a balance of sorts between the Protestants and Catholics + they'd probably be pro british.
I think its UK aligned.
btw are you really in the British Army in Bosnia- i didnt think we were still there.
if you are, good luck and keep up the good work.
a major competitor in TTL might actually be France- stronger as it appears TTL.
having re-read the bit about US-France relationships and Thomson electronics (French right?) on their 3rd Nuclear Fleet Carrier. A stronger France which incorporates Algeria could be bigger then OTL Germany.
Hope Japan does still rise though, its anime/manga/cartoons are just too cool to miss.
as for the rest of TTL- what might happen with the Indonesian confrontation- the emergency in Malaya and the Kikuyu(i think) rebellion in kenya. hopefully the last one is resolved better.
my god- with British/US relations so bad TTL, just think of all the 'Who won WWII' flame arguments on TTL Internet.
With Israel not coming into existence, i can actually see a good number of american jews blaming the British.
actually a far richer Britain could change British popular culture alot esp since many programmes since 70's like Only Fools and Horses show a shabby declining Britain keeping its chin up.
would be rather interesting to see John Steed and Mrs Peel trying to stop that american agent taking photos of the latest British Rocket though.
With Israel not coming into existence, i can actually see a good number of american jews blaming the British.
actually a far richer Britain could change British popular culture alot esp since many programmes since 70's like Only Fools and Horses show a shabby declining Britain keeping its chin up.
would be rather interesting to see John Steed and Mrs Peel trying to stop that american agent taking photos of the latest British Rocket though.
I would like to see more additions to your work and I wish we could see technical drawings of the Ministry's various spacecraft, spaceliners, and lunar and Martian landing vehicles.
Which Commonwealth nations are mainly involved in the space programme?
I would also assume astronaut pilots would be recruited from the RAF, Fleet Air Arm, RCAF, RAAF, RNZAF, IAF, PAF, SAAF, and other Commonwealth air forces. There would also be civilian mission specialists such as doctors, astronomers, geologists, etc.
Comments?
Which Commonwealth nations are mainly involved in the space programme?
I would also assume astronaut pilots would be recruited from the RAF, Fleet Air Arm, RCAF, RAAF, RNZAF, IAF, PAF, SAAF, and other Commonwealth air forces. There would also be civilian mission specialists such as doctors, astronomers, geologists, etc.
Comments?
Welcome to AH.Com.
Bluenote comes and goes, but he say's he's rewriting this TL, so hopefully he'll be back.
I think at the point he's reached on the TL (late 50's/early 60's, the major Commonwealth nations involved aside from Britain are probably the former white Dominions and maybe India-.
I hope to see more of this chronology/backstory soon and also more technical details on the vehicles and AH RAF aircraft and space vehicles too.
As for commercial spaceflight, I would assume BOAC, Qantas, Air India, Air Canada, and South African Airways would operate Orion-3 type spaceliners in the 1980s and 90s too.
As for commercial spaceflight, I would assume BOAC, Qantas, Air India, Air Canada, and South African Airways would operate Orion-3 type spaceliners in the 1980s and 90s too.
in case this TL's still on- they just found more evidence of water on Mars.
Also theres an interesting thread on Norway joining the Commonwealth after WWII which was apparently being discussed, in this TL with no NATO, a Britain with rocket technology and a gradually stronger economy and a stronger Commonwealth maybe those talks lead to Norway being a member of the British Commonwealth. could be valuable ally for Britain after the split with US- maybe naval bases for keeping track of Soviet subs in area etc.
remember a couple of countries with no or little British connection have applied to join the Commonwealth OTL- Cambodia, Rwanda and Mozambique, I'll assume Cambodia's gonna stay French allied but theres the other two.
I can see a richer and stronger British Commonwealth attracting more interest especially as the TL progresses- theres also the possibilty of the former colonies abandoned at the start returing at some point.
Also theres an interesting thread on Norway joining the Commonwealth after WWII which was apparently being discussed, in this TL with no NATO, a Britain with rocket technology and a gradually stronger economy and a stronger Commonwealth maybe those talks lead to Norway being a member of the British Commonwealth. could be valuable ally for Britain after the split with US- maybe naval bases for keeping track of Soviet subs in area etc.
remember a couple of countries with no or little British connection have applied to join the Commonwealth OTL- Cambodia, Rwanda and Mozambique, I'll assume Cambodia's gonna stay French allied but theres the other two.
I can see a richer and stronger British Commonwealth attracting more interest especially as the TL progresses- theres also the possibilty of the former colonies abandoned at the start returing at some point.
hmm- dunno my first instict would be to say Italy's probably in the US/French camp but Britain could still be a close ally and the UK would have those bases in Malta so possible co-operation.
regarding the Carrier Ark Royal being mothballed when HMS Malta and HMS Queen Elizabeth are commisioned in the late 50's/early 60's, at this point Ark Royal and its sister ship HMS Eagle are only a few years old, so i dont think they'd be mothballed so soon- probably the RN would try and maintain them and HMS Victorious (the only WWII Illustrious Class Carrier to have a real postwar career)- along with the Malta and QE- maybe with 3 in service and 2 in port or refit or whatever- the other Commonwealth countries could foot some of the bill for the military.
at this point the RN also has 4 smaller Centaur Class Carriers for use in smaller conflicts.
at this point the RN also has 4 smaller Centaur Class Carriers for use in smaller conflicts.
obligatory bumping.....
Once the Lib Dems and Labour cotton on to the fact that the Conservative's British values, support for Space program and military, economic freedom etc are more popular with voters, they'd probably start trying to change their image and thinking. think 'New Labour' expect maybe with the Lib Dem's in the 90's or something.
Once the Lib Dems and Labour cotton on to the fact that the Conservative's British values, support for Space program and military, economic freedom etc are more popular with voters, they'd probably start trying to change their image and thinking. think 'New Labour' expect maybe with the Lib Dem's in the 90's or something.
The usual rewrite...
Ministry of Space
What is it that makes a man willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle, such as a Redstone, Atlas, Titan or Saturn rocket, and wait for someone to light the fuse?
- Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 1979.
We’ve all seen news footage of huge multi-stage rockets lifting off from the Kilimanjaro Launch Facility and delta-shaped rocket ships blasting off from the Woomera Space Center or manoeuvring through the endless star specked space. Or marvelled at the capabilities of the newest Oberon Satellites. Or seen the grainy black and white photos of Malcolm Davis and Ceepak Basheer Saheb as they took their first steps on the pock-marked surface of the Moon. As the mission to Mars is planned and next to five billion non-Commonwealth citizens daily walk in the shadow of the Zuckerman and Churchill Space Stations every day, the British Ministry of Space and their Commonwealth equivalents in the Commonwealth Space Agency – the CSA - can look back at nearly 50 years of space flight and untold successes.
Part I
“All right”, the critics said, “let's build the super V2 if we must...but let's have less of this worship of things German. The Germans didn't win the War!” It was a danger signal, a denial of science. The man who builds a swing doesn't plant a tree and wait for it to grow. He selects an established tree and secures his ropes to the stoutest branch!
- Ivan Southall, Woomera, 1962.
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories!
- Arthur C. Clarke.
The British Interplanetary Society (BIS) formed in Liverpool in 1933, and, due to a peculiar British law - the Explosives Act of 1875 - prohibiting the building of rockets by private individuals, concentrated on theoretical work in astronautics and thus broaden an awareness of the need for space exploration and rocketry. Although the Explosives Act severely restricted rocketry research, certain government sponsored tests were allowed nonetheless. These included amongst others research into anti-aircraft rockets, long-range rockets – very early missiles -, air-to-air rockets and assisted take-off rockets by the Research Department at Woolwich Arsenal in the mid-30’s. Tests which later led to the development of smokeless cordite amongst other things.
Even with the legal bonds placed on them, the BIS had nonetheless done remarkably well - especially if one considers the little or no funding they received before the War and the fact that their advocacy of using rockets to explore space made many views them as cranks. Still, BIS brought together a brilliant group of visionaries. Among the best known were Arthur C. Clarke and the popular sci-fi writer, John Wyndham. The group also included Val Cleaver, an engineer who would play a leading role in the Blue Streak Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) project and other similar projects. In 1937 a feasibility study of a Lunar landing mission began. With it, the BIS hoped to prove that such missions were possible.
Unable to raise the funds needed to build large pieces of hardware in the 1930s, the BIS focussed on tackling the theoretical problems of space travel. However, after the first V2-missile attacks on Britain, some members of the BIS gained prominence. Not for their, at the time, somewhat loony space ideas, but for their knowledge of rockets and ballistics.
The BIS-experts got an unexpected friend in RAF’s in-house technical expert, the ingenious South African, Solly Zuckerman. Zuckerman, even though he never publicly admitted it, saw the possibilities in space travel and exploration at an early stage.
The possibility of launching atomic weapons at the Soviets would by far be the main British incentive for building rockets in the early 50’s. But many who worked on the military weapons saw their initial efforts to build a weapon as part of an unspoken long-term mission to get into and ultimately explore the far reaches of space. To generalise, the technology needed to move an atomic warhead over intercontinental distances is very similar to that which is required to place a satellite in orbit. The military necessities and civilian dreams seemed in many ways contra dictionary, but one man’s Herculean effort brought German and British know-how, weapons of war and the unspoken dreams of an entire generation together in what was to become the British Ministry of Space. As we all know, that man was Solly Zuckerman.
Some time in late 1944, Zuckerman arranged for a meeting between some members of BIS, himself – naturally -, Prime Minister Churchill, Henry Tizard, the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Field Marshal Alanbrooke, the head the Imperial General Staff, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, and Frank Whittle, the man behind the British jetfighter programme. At the start of the meeting, Tizard was very direct in his dismissal of rockets, missiles and other little boy’s toys. It was his firm impression that the Germans were getting increasingly desperate and thus sought refuge in the idea of war winning fantasy weapons. In Tizard’ opinion, the British should concentrate their somewhat meagre resources on real weapons – tanks, planes, ships. Portal, however, noted that the Royal Air Force was unable to stop the V2’s in flight and that they on impact killed British citizens and destroyed property, which, in Portal’s book, meant that they were very real weapons and thus a very relevant threat. BIS-member Val Cleaver noted en passant that not only could rockets be made to transport bombs as the Germans did it, they could also take you into space. In space the possibilities were infinite. At the meeting Cleaver is said to have sketched out the very first spy satellite. At some point Whittle too pitched in with ideas and visions regarding advanced jet and rocket planes. Alanbrooke, an avid birdwatcher and on occasion military visionary, and the ever adventurous Prime Minister seemed to warm to the idea of a concentrated British effort toward designing and building functioning rockets. Strangely enough the thought of space seemed to warm the otherwise rather stern Chief Scientific Adviser to the idea. Later Sir Henry Tizard would lead the Tizard Commission on Unexplained Aerial Phenomenons with great zeal.
The RAF’s Department of Rocketry was thus born with a stroke of the PM’s mighty pen and was subsequently placed under Zuckerman’s direct supervision. After the war the DoR took a leading role in pressing the case for space exploration and research, both in Britain and in the Commonwealth, and got moved from RAF to the Ministry of Aviation and eventually emerged in its own right as the Ministry of Space.
Part II
How posterity will laugh at us, one way or other! If half a dozen break their necks, and balloonism is exploded, we shall be called fools for having imagined it could be brought to use: if it should be turned to account, we shall be ridiculed for having doubted!
- Horace Walpole, in a letter to Horace Mann, 1785.
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination!
- Bertrand Russell.
The Allied invasion finally got underway in the summer of 1944 and the Germans began to fall back towards the Reich itself under heavy Allied air, and land, pressure. As the Germans retreated, it became more than obvious that the War was about to be won. The Allies and the Soviet Union thus began to play political games to ensure their influence and dominance in the post-war world – some would, and rightly so, claim that this kind of intrigue had been the norm for the entire war.
Having an energetic and highly intelligent man like Solly Zuckerman leading the DoR fuelled Churchill’s always quite active imagination to a point were Hastings Ismay, his personal chief of staff and unofficial minder, laconically said; “Winnie talks about nothing but space planes and rockets these days!” That was of course not quite true, but the British PM seemed to have seen the wider implications of space exploration and control, and succumbed to what was to become known as the fabled British Space Fewer. Churchill is often quoted as saying to Field marshal Alanbrooke: “He who controls the high ground is destined to win any given battle. And space, dear Alan, is the ultimate high ground!”
Politically the situation was worsening for Britain, and by default its Empire. The United States of America seemed oblivious to the threat posed by Stalin’s Soviet Russia and the immense and unruly Red Army – the news from the occupied Poland and Prussia made tough men blanch. The French under DeGaulle were already making all kinds of trouble as had they actually won the war by themselves. On top of this, the Soviets seemed hell-bent on taking all they could both in Eastern Europe and Asia. Time and time again the US and British diplomats and senior military commanders found themselves arguing opposite views, as the United States were keen to bring in the USSR in the war against the Empire of Japan, and the British not quite as keen. Likewise did the US State Department very much doubt the tales of horror leaking out of Soviet occupied Eastern Europe.
Churchill did not have the same excellent personal relationship with new President of the USA, Harry S Truman, as he once had with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the more anti-British forces within the US administration had begun to manifest their new found strength without the savvy and rather pro-British FDR, and the war, to keep them in check. So much so, that at the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, a near split occurred between the British and the US as the latter sided with the Soviet Union in matters regarding amongst other things Poland. Seen in retrospect one can hardly blame the American President for his very diplomatic - or somewhat spineless if seen from the British point of view – behaviour as it seemed that Churchill and Stalin were about to launch into a highly personal and malign feud. Churchill’s (in)famous words “You dare speak of honour, Sir, when 20,000 brave Poles lie dead from gunshots to the back of their heads?” will forever be remembered by Poles and Britons alike.
One of the crucial effects of abovementioned split, was that information and data from the joint atomic bomb-programme being either withheld or edited by the Americans often leaving the British in the dark. Not surprisingly, the British politicians and senior officers began to feel isolated and alone. Under Churchill’s guidance the British government began to plan for the post-war period; a time where the Empire and Commonwealth might have to stand alone in an increasingly hostile world. It was decided that the Commonwealth should be strengthened, so a conference on a proposed more integrated and united Commonwealth should be arranged some time directly after the end of hostilities. The conference was to be held in Canada – it appears that Churchill had already foreseen the need for more equality between the Commonwealth nations – and would be recorded as one of the deciding moments in British and human history.
Furthermore, Britain and its Imperial Allies needed to be prepared to defend themselves in this brave new world. With this in mind, Churchill gave his favourite trouble-shooter, Lord Mountbatten – who was already involved in gathering intelligence on German wonder weapons via the 30th Assault Unit -, an absolute crucial task: track down the German scientists involved in the German atomic and rocket programmes, and get them to Britain as soon as humanly possible. Seize all relevant material as well, with all means available (The continued progress of the Red Army without question provoked Churchill’s wording and feeling of utmost urgency, not to mention his new personal hatred for Stalin and disdain for Truman). Mountbatten sat to the task with great vigour. Men like Fleming, Knight, Wheeler and the Sterling-brothers will forever be names remembered fondly by the British Ministry of Space, Commonwealth Space Agency and space enthusiasts in the Commonwealth for their participation in Operation Backfire.
While both the US and the Soviets scrambled to gain as much knowledge and as many German experts as they could, men like von Braun (and most of his V-team), Lippisch, Walter, Hahn, Tank and Heisenberg were taken to Britain in either after the war or near its end. It is rumoured, but still classified, that 30AU-personelle reinforced by SAS-commandoes under David Sterling actually engaged the Soviets in several fire fights at the time, and later clashed with the American Operation Paperclips and Alsos teams. Even if the stories are only that, stories, they do tell us how seriously the British took the matter, and just how far they were willing to go. What is known, however, is that several Luftwaffe test facilities near the Russo-German front were bombed by the RAF at the end of the war. A major raid on Dresden was among others cancelled and the bombers diverted to other “more important targets” to paraphrase Charles Portal, Marshal of the Royal Air Force. Some eight special sorties were also flown against targets in Berlin. The only logical reason for this step would be to prevent German technology to fall into Soviet hands.
The German missile assembly centre at Nordhausen in the Harz Mountains of central Germany was captured by an operation under Mountbatten’s personal supervision, as were several other key facilities such as Haigerloch in Baden-Württemberg, in the final days of the War. As British Paras were dropped near Nordhausen’s giant Mittelwerk facility, 30AU and SAS-commandos and a plethora of SOE-operatives infiltrated deep into Germany in order to reach various branches of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute. Where the Paras successfully reached the giant facility mere hours in advance of the Americans, both the Commandos and SOE-operatives suffered numerous setbacks, but nonetheless captured both key personnel and material. Nordhausen ultimately ended up in the Soviet sector, but not until the British Backfire-teams had stripped the place of all that was not bolted down, much to the chagrin of the Americans who were forced to stand by and watch as lorry after lorry carried tonnes of material away at a frantic pace. The much famed American general George Patton is noted for calling the British “a bunch of Limey pirates” as he was forced to watch the trucks roll off.
Nearly all of the very large number of German scientists appropriated by Britain in Operation Backfire was sent to the Department of Rocketry’s Propulsion Study Centre at Westcott near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. The German scientists were from a variety of different backgrounds, not all of them had any specific relation to the V-team who had developed the V2-missile at Peenemünde, but were deemed useful nonetheless and put to work for their new masters. Among them were Dr. Eugen Sänger, Dr. Alexander Lippisch, Konrad Zuse and Dr. Irene Brandt. As DoR originally was an integrated part of the RAF and therefore under military control, the German scientists were at first considered POW’s and were kept in a prison-like environment with barbed wire fences and armed guards. Soon, however, it became obvious that the Germans were no threat, as the Germans self-ironically referred to themselves as PoP’s – Prisoners of Peace –, nor were they uncooperative. Despite some initial apprehension, the barbed wire and armed guards therefore soon focused more on potential intruders and general security than keeping an eye on the resident Germans.
For a while Mountbatten’s merry men in the 30AU served as extra security, bodyguards and minders in relation with the Westcott facility and the PoP’s, but soon went on to serve as special operatives for the military and civilian intelligence services and various black units. Very few of the talented men mustered out at the end of the war, and those who did usually ended up in defence related industries. The 30th Assault Unit and their contribution to rebuilding Britain would become legendary and their actions would form a modus operandi within the intelligence community where industrial espionage and outright techno theft would be prime concerns and goals for its operatives and agents.
At the end of the 40’s the German scientists were more or less integrated in the British society. Quite a few of them would eventually retire to Rhodesia, Australia, the Federation of South Africa and New Zealand. The Germans were, however, not the only brand new Britons. Amongst the many emigrants to the various parts of the Commonwealth were also quite a few Cossacks, White Russians, Croats, Czechs and Poles. That the British protected and shielded said people were seen in Moscow as a direct insult, which perhaps was why the British authorities did it. At the time, Eden strongly disagreed, but after having visited one of the Cossack internment camps in Austria, he came down firmly on Churchill’s side and used all his influence to secure the many East European anti-Communist refugees new homes around the globe.
Furthermore men like Keynes, Bevin – the powerful Minister of Labour and National Service - and Gaitskell along with a series of bright young men were tasked with securing the rebuilding of not only Britain itself, but its entire economy, industrial sector and infrastructure. Their efforts would eventually turn into yet another well remembered Churchill-project, the National Foundation for Unity and Restructuring or simply NFUR (often jokingly called Nephew). Many of NFUR’s initiatives would eventually lead to the much fabled British Modern Model State – a more acceptable term than Welfare State - and was in many aspects based on the 1942 Beveridge Report in which Lord William Beveridge outlined how to combat the five 'Giant Evils' of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness, and at the same time increase the competitiveness of British industry and create more healthier, wealthier, more motivated and thus productive workers. Needless to say, Lord William Beveridge’s ideas appealed immensely to the Churchillite Social Conservatives.
Part III
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong!
- Arthur C. Clarke.
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them!
- Isaac Asimov.
In the years after the War, both the Soviet Union and the United States put a significant effort into creating a strategic air force as part of their expansion of, and increasingly reliance upon, their atomic arsenal. But because of the highly successful British Backfire-operations and their pre-war research, the British took another route altogether. The British focused on long-range missiles for military purposes instead. RAF foresaw a day were bombers couldn’t get through – having seen the effect of a first rate air defence on their own bombers during the air war over Germany and taking note of the new series of interceptors proposed by the Whittle-Lippisch-Tank team - and backed the DoR’s programmes, but still build several types of heavy bombers, among them the Victors, Vindicators and Vulcans, albeit rather few in numbers. With a firm eye on its own interceptor programme, RAF insisted on arming the bombers with heavy AGLT (Mark IV through VIII) RADAR-aimed canon even if it was seen as somewhat of backstep in bomber development.
The British post-war bombers all owed a lot to the German scientists as a single glance could tell anyone with just the slightest knowledge of aeronautics and history. The V-bombers obvious grace, Delta shapes and flying wing-design, not to mention the rocket assisted take-offs, did much to endear them to both their crews and the public. The fact that they were engineering marvels and easy to fly – especially after the integration of Automatic Computing Engines - made them into scientific successes as well, and only the first in a long unbroken series.
As Greece erupted in civil war and American Marines had to intervene, politicians and military officials in both Moscow and Washington alike began speaking of a Cold War and increased funding for their air forces even further. The continued civil war in China didn’t help much either, as both the USSR and USA funnelled support and material en masse into the maelstrom. Ironically, Britain made quite a tidy profit from supplying and supporting the American effort in Europe in the late 40’s, just as Japan and Korea would profit immensely from the US involvement in China.
Furthermore the British withdrawal from continental Europe finally completed put further pressure on the US Army as it strove to manage the occupation of Germany. Not surprisingly, the rearmament of France was stepped up and in the late 40’s nearly 20% of all servicemen serving in the occupation forces in Europe were French.
In London, the newly re-elected Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was pleased indeed. Not only had he disentangle Britain from the mess of her former and quite honourless Allies – much to the applause and joy of Poles, Czechs and anti-Communistic White Russians -, he was about to remake Britain’s military as an advanced machine of destruction armed with the newest weaponry; missiles, rockets, atomic weapons and the like. They might be expensive, but the missiles and the associated technology would give the British military and industrial sector an edge for centuries to come, Churchill was sure of that. Slowly, a technology and missile gap began to develop. Eventually, the Soviets and Americans would catch on to the idea, but it would take some time and the British would use their lead to good effect.
In late 1945, a committee was convened under Solly Zuckerman, who, at Churchill’s request recently had taken over as the government's Chief Scientific Advisor as well as acting as the daily leader of the Department of Rocketry, was asked to examine the possibilities of not only producing independent British atomic weapons, but to place them in missiles. The Zuckerman Committee clearly stated that with present day technology it was indeed possible – well, it would take a lot of clever engineering, but still within the realm of the possible - and even advantageous to do so. The true problem at the time was the rather unreliable and inaccurate guidance systems (to be placed in missiles, the atomic devices themselves – often know as the warheads - had to be downscaled, and thus needed to be more accurate to do sufficient damage). Zuckerman recognized this and recruited a handful of young mathematicians from the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park.
One of these mathematicians was Alan Turing. Earlier Turing had proposed an Automatic
Computing Engine, which Zuckerman thought could be of help in matters related to ballistics. The guidance system necessary to make atomic armed missiles accurate enough to be effective weapons was thus on its way to be developed. Zuckerman might have been overly optimistic in his statement about the feasibility of atomic tipped missiles, but he did not, as Sir Henry before him, deem it outright impossible. The Automatic Computing Engine, or ACE, would be an indispensable tool in the time to come. As a direct consequence of the Zuckerman Committee’s work, the British efforts were from now on both focused and determined. The ACE would find many other uses, amongst other things as pilot’s aides in the V-series of bombers, but also as a useful tool for the National Foundation for Unity and Restructuring.
After the Commonwealth Conference in Canada in early ´46, a scientific exchange programme had been established between, what Churchill in private referred to as, the core nations. Several economic and military agreements were also signed and the Commonwealth emerged stronger than ever. The Britons still felt like they were a world-spanning power. So did most of the Commonwealth nations apparently, as they saw that the British still wielded considerable military power and were a world leader in advanced technology. Advanced technology used among other things to make advanced weaponry. Weaponry the British made readily available for their allies in the Commonwealth. The core nations soon began to buy their way into Britain’s various projects with men, resources, bases and/or money.
Undoubtedly Wernher von Braun and his fellow German scientists would have liked to go to the USA, but they soon settled in under British protection and, likewise undoubtedly, in somewhat more modest surroundings than had they gone to America. However, now von Braun could do what he always dreamed of doing; building rockets. The DoR was military, no doubt about that, but many of the British scientists, working with the Germans and on the various British projects, still had the civilian dream of going into space.
Said dreams got a boost on the 5th of May, 1947, as Eric Brown in the Miles M.55 smashed through the sound barrier with impressive ease. The M.55 was basically a (seriously) redesigned rocket-driven version of the M.52. During the War, the Air Ministry and Ministry of Supply had tasked the Miles Aircraft Company and the father of British jets, Frank Whittle, to build a supersonic airplane. After some trouble and the subsequent input of captured German scientists, the project underwent serious redesigns. Originally, it was intended that the planes would be driven by a jet engine with an affixed afterburner (the afterburner would later be standard on all British military jets, including the Sea Vixens of the Royal Navy). Now, with the assistance of Alexander Lippisch and Kurt Tank, the Miles Aircraft Company and Frank Whittle came up with a long nosed, cola-bottle shaped aircraft with swept-wings and an all-moving tailplane. The Miles M.55 was part of the British governments new interceptor programme, but its public appearance would serve to remind the world that Britain was the worlds leading nation when it came to aviation, and help boost the demand for British planes around the world. The M.55 would evolve into the expensive, but highly effective Miles M.66 Manticore and De Havilland Anastasia rocket interceptors. The M.55 was also to be the first in a long string of record breaking British aircrafts.
The close cooperation between British and German scientists led indirectly to a boom in turbojet engine research and development. Most war-time British engine designs were of the fairly simple, but bulky centrifugal-flow type, whereas the Germans were fond of the more advanced and aerodynamic axial-flow kind. In the later 40’s a series of slim and highly advanced – especially from a metallurgical view point – engines with a pressure ratio nearly 20:1 saw light. Researchers soon began to dabble in making ever more powerful turbo fanned engines pressure ratio of some 40:1 if not higher. In early 1949, Rolls Royce tested its first turbofan jet engine, the Valiant – nearly bankrupting the company in the process due to exorbital development costs -, and revolutionized the industry. Soon new fast, more fuel efficient, quieter engines with more manageable exhaust temperatures found their way into a new generation of RAF warplanes.
After several cancellations due to the War, the XIIIth Olympic Games were finally held in London in 1948. Nearly six years of warfare had left its mark on Britain and many feared that the British would be unable to hold the XIIIth Games. Lucky the successful policies of the Churchill Cabinet had helped turn things around. Still, the 1948 London Olympics became known as the Austerity Games. The event itself nonetheless gave British morale and self-worth a boost
Together with Val Cleaver and Arthur C. Clarke, von Braun orchestrated the much acclaimed International Congress on Astronautics in London in the summer of 1951 at which PM Churchill himself spoke. This led to an increase in public interest and to more sophisticated ideas of how space travel and exploration could be brought about. The British economy had naturally been seriously damaged by the War and, even with Churchill at the helm, the government refused to spend large sums of hard earned and much needed money on such idealistic notions as space flight for the sake of space travel alone. Therefore the main focus remained on developing military missiles for the time being. However, the idea of space exploration became a very popular theme, aided by entertainment features like the comic-strip space-hero Dan Dare – the forerunner of the immensely popular Animatics wave of the future -, and the rocket-plane riding Commonwealth fighter-aces of the Missile Musketeers. The influence of matters related to space would be heavily felt in British popular culture from then on and even help create of vast billion pound-marked for a special Indian-British sort of cartoon style – the aforementioned Animatics. Generally speaking, the idea of space gave many people in poverty stricken Britain hope of a better tomorrow and a belief in themselves and Britain. Something that was shamelessly exploited by the Ministry of Information in amongst other things the Our Future Is Bright-campaign.
Ministry of Space
What is it that makes a man willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle, such as a Redstone, Atlas, Titan or Saturn rocket, and wait for someone to light the fuse?
- Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 1979.
We’ve all seen news footage of huge multi-stage rockets lifting off from the Kilimanjaro Launch Facility and delta-shaped rocket ships blasting off from the Woomera Space Center or manoeuvring through the endless star specked space. Or marvelled at the capabilities of the newest Oberon Satellites. Or seen the grainy black and white photos of Malcolm Davis and Ceepak Basheer Saheb as they took their first steps on the pock-marked surface of the Moon. As the mission to Mars is planned and next to five billion non-Commonwealth citizens daily walk in the shadow of the Zuckerman and Churchill Space Stations every day, the British Ministry of Space and their Commonwealth equivalents in the Commonwealth Space Agency – the CSA - can look back at nearly 50 years of space flight and untold successes.
Part I
“All right”, the critics said, “let's build the super V2 if we must...but let's have less of this worship of things German. The Germans didn't win the War!” It was a danger signal, a denial of science. The man who builds a swing doesn't plant a tree and wait for it to grow. He selects an established tree and secures his ropes to the stoutest branch!
- Ivan Southall, Woomera, 1962.
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories!
- Arthur C. Clarke.
The British Interplanetary Society (BIS) formed in Liverpool in 1933, and, due to a peculiar British law - the Explosives Act of 1875 - prohibiting the building of rockets by private individuals, concentrated on theoretical work in astronautics and thus broaden an awareness of the need for space exploration and rocketry. Although the Explosives Act severely restricted rocketry research, certain government sponsored tests were allowed nonetheless. These included amongst others research into anti-aircraft rockets, long-range rockets – very early missiles -, air-to-air rockets and assisted take-off rockets by the Research Department at Woolwich Arsenal in the mid-30’s. Tests which later led to the development of smokeless cordite amongst other things.
Even with the legal bonds placed on them, the BIS had nonetheless done remarkably well - especially if one considers the little or no funding they received before the War and the fact that their advocacy of using rockets to explore space made many views them as cranks. Still, BIS brought together a brilliant group of visionaries. Among the best known were Arthur C. Clarke and the popular sci-fi writer, John Wyndham. The group also included Val Cleaver, an engineer who would play a leading role in the Blue Streak Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) project and other similar projects. In 1937 a feasibility study of a Lunar landing mission began. With it, the BIS hoped to prove that such missions were possible.
Unable to raise the funds needed to build large pieces of hardware in the 1930s, the BIS focussed on tackling the theoretical problems of space travel. However, after the first V2-missile attacks on Britain, some members of the BIS gained prominence. Not for their, at the time, somewhat loony space ideas, but for their knowledge of rockets and ballistics.
The BIS-experts got an unexpected friend in RAF’s in-house technical expert, the ingenious South African, Solly Zuckerman. Zuckerman, even though he never publicly admitted it, saw the possibilities in space travel and exploration at an early stage.
The possibility of launching atomic weapons at the Soviets would by far be the main British incentive for building rockets in the early 50’s. But many who worked on the military weapons saw their initial efforts to build a weapon as part of an unspoken long-term mission to get into and ultimately explore the far reaches of space. To generalise, the technology needed to move an atomic warhead over intercontinental distances is very similar to that which is required to place a satellite in orbit. The military necessities and civilian dreams seemed in many ways contra dictionary, but one man’s Herculean effort brought German and British know-how, weapons of war and the unspoken dreams of an entire generation together in what was to become the British Ministry of Space. As we all know, that man was Solly Zuckerman.
Some time in late 1944, Zuckerman arranged for a meeting between some members of BIS, himself – naturally -, Prime Minister Churchill, Henry Tizard, the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Field Marshal Alanbrooke, the head the Imperial General Staff, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, and Frank Whittle, the man behind the British jetfighter programme. At the start of the meeting, Tizard was very direct in his dismissal of rockets, missiles and other little boy’s toys. It was his firm impression that the Germans were getting increasingly desperate and thus sought refuge in the idea of war winning fantasy weapons. In Tizard’ opinion, the British should concentrate their somewhat meagre resources on real weapons – tanks, planes, ships. Portal, however, noted that the Royal Air Force was unable to stop the V2’s in flight and that they on impact killed British citizens and destroyed property, which, in Portal’s book, meant that they were very real weapons and thus a very relevant threat. BIS-member Val Cleaver noted en passant that not only could rockets be made to transport bombs as the Germans did it, they could also take you into space. In space the possibilities were infinite. At the meeting Cleaver is said to have sketched out the very first spy satellite. At some point Whittle too pitched in with ideas and visions regarding advanced jet and rocket planes. Alanbrooke, an avid birdwatcher and on occasion military visionary, and the ever adventurous Prime Minister seemed to warm to the idea of a concentrated British effort toward designing and building functioning rockets. Strangely enough the thought of space seemed to warm the otherwise rather stern Chief Scientific Adviser to the idea. Later Sir Henry Tizard would lead the Tizard Commission on Unexplained Aerial Phenomenons with great zeal.
The RAF’s Department of Rocketry was thus born with a stroke of the PM’s mighty pen and was subsequently placed under Zuckerman’s direct supervision. After the war the DoR took a leading role in pressing the case for space exploration and research, both in Britain and in the Commonwealth, and got moved from RAF to the Ministry of Aviation and eventually emerged in its own right as the Ministry of Space.
Part II
How posterity will laugh at us, one way or other! If half a dozen break their necks, and balloonism is exploded, we shall be called fools for having imagined it could be brought to use: if it should be turned to account, we shall be ridiculed for having doubted!
- Horace Walpole, in a letter to Horace Mann, 1785.
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination!
- Bertrand Russell.
The Allied invasion finally got underway in the summer of 1944 and the Germans began to fall back towards the Reich itself under heavy Allied air, and land, pressure. As the Germans retreated, it became more than obvious that the War was about to be won. The Allies and the Soviet Union thus began to play political games to ensure their influence and dominance in the post-war world – some would, and rightly so, claim that this kind of intrigue had been the norm for the entire war.
Having an energetic and highly intelligent man like Solly Zuckerman leading the DoR fuelled Churchill’s always quite active imagination to a point were Hastings Ismay, his personal chief of staff and unofficial minder, laconically said; “Winnie talks about nothing but space planes and rockets these days!” That was of course not quite true, but the British PM seemed to have seen the wider implications of space exploration and control, and succumbed to what was to become known as the fabled British Space Fewer. Churchill is often quoted as saying to Field marshal Alanbrooke: “He who controls the high ground is destined to win any given battle. And space, dear Alan, is the ultimate high ground!”
Politically the situation was worsening for Britain, and by default its Empire. The United States of America seemed oblivious to the threat posed by Stalin’s Soviet Russia and the immense and unruly Red Army – the news from the occupied Poland and Prussia made tough men blanch. The French under DeGaulle were already making all kinds of trouble as had they actually won the war by themselves. On top of this, the Soviets seemed hell-bent on taking all they could both in Eastern Europe and Asia. Time and time again the US and British diplomats and senior military commanders found themselves arguing opposite views, as the United States were keen to bring in the USSR in the war against the Empire of Japan, and the British not quite as keen. Likewise did the US State Department very much doubt the tales of horror leaking out of Soviet occupied Eastern Europe.
Churchill did not have the same excellent personal relationship with new President of the USA, Harry S Truman, as he once had with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the more anti-British forces within the US administration had begun to manifest their new found strength without the savvy and rather pro-British FDR, and the war, to keep them in check. So much so, that at the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, a near split occurred between the British and the US as the latter sided with the Soviet Union in matters regarding amongst other things Poland. Seen in retrospect one can hardly blame the American President for his very diplomatic - or somewhat spineless if seen from the British point of view – behaviour as it seemed that Churchill and Stalin were about to launch into a highly personal and malign feud. Churchill’s (in)famous words “You dare speak of honour, Sir, when 20,000 brave Poles lie dead from gunshots to the back of their heads?” will forever be remembered by Poles and Britons alike.
One of the crucial effects of abovementioned split, was that information and data from the joint atomic bomb-programme being either withheld or edited by the Americans often leaving the British in the dark. Not surprisingly, the British politicians and senior officers began to feel isolated and alone. Under Churchill’s guidance the British government began to plan for the post-war period; a time where the Empire and Commonwealth might have to stand alone in an increasingly hostile world. It was decided that the Commonwealth should be strengthened, so a conference on a proposed more integrated and united Commonwealth should be arranged some time directly after the end of hostilities. The conference was to be held in Canada – it appears that Churchill had already foreseen the need for more equality between the Commonwealth nations – and would be recorded as one of the deciding moments in British and human history.
Furthermore, Britain and its Imperial Allies needed to be prepared to defend themselves in this brave new world. With this in mind, Churchill gave his favourite trouble-shooter, Lord Mountbatten – who was already involved in gathering intelligence on German wonder weapons via the 30th Assault Unit -, an absolute crucial task: track down the German scientists involved in the German atomic and rocket programmes, and get them to Britain as soon as humanly possible. Seize all relevant material as well, with all means available (The continued progress of the Red Army without question provoked Churchill’s wording and feeling of utmost urgency, not to mention his new personal hatred for Stalin and disdain for Truman). Mountbatten sat to the task with great vigour. Men like Fleming, Knight, Wheeler and the Sterling-brothers will forever be names remembered fondly by the British Ministry of Space, Commonwealth Space Agency and space enthusiasts in the Commonwealth for their participation in Operation Backfire.
While both the US and the Soviets scrambled to gain as much knowledge and as many German experts as they could, men like von Braun (and most of his V-team), Lippisch, Walter, Hahn, Tank and Heisenberg were taken to Britain in either after the war or near its end. It is rumoured, but still classified, that 30AU-personelle reinforced by SAS-commandoes under David Sterling actually engaged the Soviets in several fire fights at the time, and later clashed with the American Operation Paperclips and Alsos teams. Even if the stories are only that, stories, they do tell us how seriously the British took the matter, and just how far they were willing to go. What is known, however, is that several Luftwaffe test facilities near the Russo-German front were bombed by the RAF at the end of the war. A major raid on Dresden was among others cancelled and the bombers diverted to other “more important targets” to paraphrase Charles Portal, Marshal of the Royal Air Force. Some eight special sorties were also flown against targets in Berlin. The only logical reason for this step would be to prevent German technology to fall into Soviet hands.
The German missile assembly centre at Nordhausen in the Harz Mountains of central Germany was captured by an operation under Mountbatten’s personal supervision, as were several other key facilities such as Haigerloch in Baden-Württemberg, in the final days of the War. As British Paras were dropped near Nordhausen’s giant Mittelwerk facility, 30AU and SAS-commandos and a plethora of SOE-operatives infiltrated deep into Germany in order to reach various branches of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute. Where the Paras successfully reached the giant facility mere hours in advance of the Americans, both the Commandos and SOE-operatives suffered numerous setbacks, but nonetheless captured both key personnel and material. Nordhausen ultimately ended up in the Soviet sector, but not until the British Backfire-teams had stripped the place of all that was not bolted down, much to the chagrin of the Americans who were forced to stand by and watch as lorry after lorry carried tonnes of material away at a frantic pace. The much famed American general George Patton is noted for calling the British “a bunch of Limey pirates” as he was forced to watch the trucks roll off.
Nearly all of the very large number of German scientists appropriated by Britain in Operation Backfire was sent to the Department of Rocketry’s Propulsion Study Centre at Westcott near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. The German scientists were from a variety of different backgrounds, not all of them had any specific relation to the V-team who had developed the V2-missile at Peenemünde, but were deemed useful nonetheless and put to work for their new masters. Among them were Dr. Eugen Sänger, Dr. Alexander Lippisch, Konrad Zuse and Dr. Irene Brandt. As DoR originally was an integrated part of the RAF and therefore under military control, the German scientists were at first considered POW’s and were kept in a prison-like environment with barbed wire fences and armed guards. Soon, however, it became obvious that the Germans were no threat, as the Germans self-ironically referred to themselves as PoP’s – Prisoners of Peace –, nor were they uncooperative. Despite some initial apprehension, the barbed wire and armed guards therefore soon focused more on potential intruders and general security than keeping an eye on the resident Germans.
For a while Mountbatten’s merry men in the 30AU served as extra security, bodyguards and minders in relation with the Westcott facility and the PoP’s, but soon went on to serve as special operatives for the military and civilian intelligence services and various black units. Very few of the talented men mustered out at the end of the war, and those who did usually ended up in defence related industries. The 30th Assault Unit and their contribution to rebuilding Britain would become legendary and their actions would form a modus operandi within the intelligence community where industrial espionage and outright techno theft would be prime concerns and goals for its operatives and agents.
At the end of the 40’s the German scientists were more or less integrated in the British society. Quite a few of them would eventually retire to Rhodesia, Australia, the Federation of South Africa and New Zealand. The Germans were, however, not the only brand new Britons. Amongst the many emigrants to the various parts of the Commonwealth were also quite a few Cossacks, White Russians, Croats, Czechs and Poles. That the British protected and shielded said people were seen in Moscow as a direct insult, which perhaps was why the British authorities did it. At the time, Eden strongly disagreed, but after having visited one of the Cossack internment camps in Austria, he came down firmly on Churchill’s side and used all his influence to secure the many East European anti-Communist refugees new homes around the globe.
Furthermore men like Keynes, Bevin – the powerful Minister of Labour and National Service - and Gaitskell along with a series of bright young men were tasked with securing the rebuilding of not only Britain itself, but its entire economy, industrial sector and infrastructure. Their efforts would eventually turn into yet another well remembered Churchill-project, the National Foundation for Unity and Restructuring or simply NFUR (often jokingly called Nephew). Many of NFUR’s initiatives would eventually lead to the much fabled British Modern Model State – a more acceptable term than Welfare State - and was in many aspects based on the 1942 Beveridge Report in which Lord William Beveridge outlined how to combat the five 'Giant Evils' of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness, and at the same time increase the competitiveness of British industry and create more healthier, wealthier, more motivated and thus productive workers. Needless to say, Lord William Beveridge’s ideas appealed immensely to the Churchillite Social Conservatives.
Part III
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong!
- Arthur C. Clarke.
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them!
- Isaac Asimov.
In the years after the War, both the Soviet Union and the United States put a significant effort into creating a strategic air force as part of their expansion of, and increasingly reliance upon, their atomic arsenal. But because of the highly successful British Backfire-operations and their pre-war research, the British took another route altogether. The British focused on long-range missiles for military purposes instead. RAF foresaw a day were bombers couldn’t get through – having seen the effect of a first rate air defence on their own bombers during the air war over Germany and taking note of the new series of interceptors proposed by the Whittle-Lippisch-Tank team - and backed the DoR’s programmes, but still build several types of heavy bombers, among them the Victors, Vindicators and Vulcans, albeit rather few in numbers. With a firm eye on its own interceptor programme, RAF insisted on arming the bombers with heavy AGLT (Mark IV through VIII) RADAR-aimed canon even if it was seen as somewhat of backstep in bomber development.
The British post-war bombers all owed a lot to the German scientists as a single glance could tell anyone with just the slightest knowledge of aeronautics and history. The V-bombers obvious grace, Delta shapes and flying wing-design, not to mention the rocket assisted take-offs, did much to endear them to both their crews and the public. The fact that they were engineering marvels and easy to fly – especially after the integration of Automatic Computing Engines - made them into scientific successes as well, and only the first in a long unbroken series.
As Greece erupted in civil war and American Marines had to intervene, politicians and military officials in both Moscow and Washington alike began speaking of a Cold War and increased funding for their air forces even further. The continued civil war in China didn’t help much either, as both the USSR and USA funnelled support and material en masse into the maelstrom. Ironically, Britain made quite a tidy profit from supplying and supporting the American effort in Europe in the late 40’s, just as Japan and Korea would profit immensely from the US involvement in China.
Furthermore the British withdrawal from continental Europe finally completed put further pressure on the US Army as it strove to manage the occupation of Germany. Not surprisingly, the rearmament of France was stepped up and in the late 40’s nearly 20% of all servicemen serving in the occupation forces in Europe were French.
In London, the newly re-elected Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was pleased indeed. Not only had he disentangle Britain from the mess of her former and quite honourless Allies – much to the applause and joy of Poles, Czechs and anti-Communistic White Russians -, he was about to remake Britain’s military as an advanced machine of destruction armed with the newest weaponry; missiles, rockets, atomic weapons and the like. They might be expensive, but the missiles and the associated technology would give the British military and industrial sector an edge for centuries to come, Churchill was sure of that. Slowly, a technology and missile gap began to develop. Eventually, the Soviets and Americans would catch on to the idea, but it would take some time and the British would use their lead to good effect.
In late 1945, a committee was convened under Solly Zuckerman, who, at Churchill’s request recently had taken over as the government's Chief Scientific Advisor as well as acting as the daily leader of the Department of Rocketry, was asked to examine the possibilities of not only producing independent British atomic weapons, but to place them in missiles. The Zuckerman Committee clearly stated that with present day technology it was indeed possible – well, it would take a lot of clever engineering, but still within the realm of the possible - and even advantageous to do so. The true problem at the time was the rather unreliable and inaccurate guidance systems (to be placed in missiles, the atomic devices themselves – often know as the warheads - had to be downscaled, and thus needed to be more accurate to do sufficient damage). Zuckerman recognized this and recruited a handful of young mathematicians from the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park.
One of these mathematicians was Alan Turing. Earlier Turing had proposed an Automatic
Computing Engine, which Zuckerman thought could be of help in matters related to ballistics. The guidance system necessary to make atomic armed missiles accurate enough to be effective weapons was thus on its way to be developed. Zuckerman might have been overly optimistic in his statement about the feasibility of atomic tipped missiles, but he did not, as Sir Henry before him, deem it outright impossible. The Automatic Computing Engine, or ACE, would be an indispensable tool in the time to come. As a direct consequence of the Zuckerman Committee’s work, the British efforts were from now on both focused and determined. The ACE would find many other uses, amongst other things as pilot’s aides in the V-series of bombers, but also as a useful tool for the National Foundation for Unity and Restructuring.
After the Commonwealth Conference in Canada in early ´46, a scientific exchange programme had been established between, what Churchill in private referred to as, the core nations. Several economic and military agreements were also signed and the Commonwealth emerged stronger than ever. The Britons still felt like they were a world-spanning power. So did most of the Commonwealth nations apparently, as they saw that the British still wielded considerable military power and were a world leader in advanced technology. Advanced technology used among other things to make advanced weaponry. Weaponry the British made readily available for their allies in the Commonwealth. The core nations soon began to buy their way into Britain’s various projects with men, resources, bases and/or money.
Undoubtedly Wernher von Braun and his fellow German scientists would have liked to go to the USA, but they soon settled in under British protection and, likewise undoubtedly, in somewhat more modest surroundings than had they gone to America. However, now von Braun could do what he always dreamed of doing; building rockets. The DoR was military, no doubt about that, but many of the British scientists, working with the Germans and on the various British projects, still had the civilian dream of going into space.
Said dreams got a boost on the 5th of May, 1947, as Eric Brown in the Miles M.55 smashed through the sound barrier with impressive ease. The M.55 was basically a (seriously) redesigned rocket-driven version of the M.52. During the War, the Air Ministry and Ministry of Supply had tasked the Miles Aircraft Company and the father of British jets, Frank Whittle, to build a supersonic airplane. After some trouble and the subsequent input of captured German scientists, the project underwent serious redesigns. Originally, it was intended that the planes would be driven by a jet engine with an affixed afterburner (the afterburner would later be standard on all British military jets, including the Sea Vixens of the Royal Navy). Now, with the assistance of Alexander Lippisch and Kurt Tank, the Miles Aircraft Company and Frank Whittle came up with a long nosed, cola-bottle shaped aircraft with swept-wings and an all-moving tailplane. The Miles M.55 was part of the British governments new interceptor programme, but its public appearance would serve to remind the world that Britain was the worlds leading nation when it came to aviation, and help boost the demand for British planes around the world. The M.55 would evolve into the expensive, but highly effective Miles M.66 Manticore and De Havilland Anastasia rocket interceptors. The M.55 was also to be the first in a long string of record breaking British aircrafts.
The close cooperation between British and German scientists led indirectly to a boom in turbojet engine research and development. Most war-time British engine designs were of the fairly simple, but bulky centrifugal-flow type, whereas the Germans were fond of the more advanced and aerodynamic axial-flow kind. In the later 40’s a series of slim and highly advanced – especially from a metallurgical view point – engines with a pressure ratio nearly 20:1 saw light. Researchers soon began to dabble in making ever more powerful turbo fanned engines pressure ratio of some 40:1 if not higher. In early 1949, Rolls Royce tested its first turbofan jet engine, the Valiant – nearly bankrupting the company in the process due to exorbital development costs -, and revolutionized the industry. Soon new fast, more fuel efficient, quieter engines with more manageable exhaust temperatures found their way into a new generation of RAF warplanes.
After several cancellations due to the War, the XIIIth Olympic Games were finally held in London in 1948. Nearly six years of warfare had left its mark on Britain and many feared that the British would be unable to hold the XIIIth Games. Lucky the successful policies of the Churchill Cabinet had helped turn things around. Still, the 1948 London Olympics became known as the Austerity Games. The event itself nonetheless gave British morale and self-worth a boost
Together with Val Cleaver and Arthur C. Clarke, von Braun orchestrated the much acclaimed International Congress on Astronautics in London in the summer of 1951 at which PM Churchill himself spoke. This led to an increase in public interest and to more sophisticated ideas of how space travel and exploration could be brought about. The British economy had naturally been seriously damaged by the War and, even with Churchill at the helm, the government refused to spend large sums of hard earned and much needed money on such idealistic notions as space flight for the sake of space travel alone. Therefore the main focus remained on developing military missiles for the time being. However, the idea of space exploration became a very popular theme, aided by entertainment features like the comic-strip space-hero Dan Dare – the forerunner of the immensely popular Animatics wave of the future -, and the rocket-plane riding Commonwealth fighter-aces of the Missile Musketeers. The influence of matters related to space would be heavily felt in British popular culture from then on and even help create of vast billion pound-marked for a special Indian-British sort of cartoon style – the aforementioned Animatics. Generally speaking, the idea of space gave many people in poverty stricken Britain hope of a better tomorrow and a belief in themselves and Britain. Something that was shamelessly exploited by the Ministry of Information in amongst other things the Our Future Is Bright-campaign.
Part IV
Money was no object. They had not realised - few had - that Britain was bankrupt!
- Ivan Southall, Woomera, 1962.
If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life!
- Gus Grissom.
While war and fear of war dominated much of the world, life in Britain, the Empire and Commonwealth slowly began to return to normal. As the National Foundation for Unity and Restructuring - NFUR – began to make its presence felt, the rationing of most everyday things like for tea, eggs, sugar and dairy products were lifted. Nor were coal rationed for long, but various forms of fuel would be under some form of rationing for the rest the 40’s. By blatant manipulation, subterfuge, reuse of Lloyd George’s National Insurance Act and just good management of resources, the NFUR ever so slowly brought the British economy out of its decline. The hard-line stand – meaning no money for the US if Britain itself did not get paid (just another nail in the US-British coffin, but at the time few Brits really cared) what it was found to be owed by France, the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia and numerous other wartime allies - of Churchill and later Atlee in regards to wartime loans and such like provided the necessary breathing space for Britain’s almost ruined economy to recover. As a gesture of total defiance, the British even presented the USA with a bill for technical assistance during the War. Something that hurt the Americans pride deeply as the Bell Aircraft Company – Miles Aircraft Company’s competitor - had been forced to ask for British help in breaking the sound barrier after loosing their 5th plane in an unexplained midair accident just before breaking the sound barrier. Said plea fell on deaf ears, though.
With more money in their pockets the British had the means to create a consumer based economy that eventually would lay the foundation for the modern British economy and fuel the Economic Miracle of the Commonwealth. The fact that the NFUR did much to improve the housing situation as well did much to endear Churchill’s Social Conservative policies to the general public, that and his Basic Healthcare Programme under the Our Future is Bright-programme. As a side note, the massive rebuilding programme sponsored by the National Foundation for Unity and Restructuring also brought new materials and architecture to Britain – the spread of the prefabricated bungalow to the British Isles are a prime example. For most of the 50’s Functionalism was the dominant trend in Architecture and design, and was quite ironically spearheaded by the French-sounding Charles-Edouard Jeanneret. In the early 50’s, after the International Congress on Astronautics in London and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1952, many a Briton and Commonwealth citizen alike talked about a Golden Second Elizabethan Age.
“We must lose the Empire in order to preserve it. But it must be a different Empire, an Empire where we in the brotherhood that is the British Commonwealth of Nations shall stand by each other in joy as well as sorrow! We must share all burdens and rewards equally for only as brothers can we survive and thrive in this new world, where an Iron Curtain has descended upon Eastern Europe and a Fortress of Ignorance arisen in the Americas. The eyes of the world now look to us, the Commonwealth of Nations to create a better future. As part of that dream we must look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond!” It is with those words at the International Congress on Astronautics in 1951, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill inspired not only the Britons, but subjects of the Commonwealth Nations all over the world. He challenged them to reach beyond Earth and seek their joint fortunes out in unsailed territory. Most people of course knew that he was referring to space, so with this speech Churchill had given birth to the very impressive British Space Programme.
Unfortunately Churchill would never live to see the first man, a Briton, naturally, in space, nor the launch of the first man-made satellite. One tragic June morning in 1952, PM Churchill died of cardiac-arrest. Doctors believed the heart-attack to be stress-related. Being Prime Minster in a troubled time had been too much for the elderly statesman. But Churchill’s much bemourned death, that truly grieved a billion people – his funeral was quite spectacular as hundreds of former East European refugees marched past his coffin, often in colourful and exotic uniforms and many an emotional speech were given (Cossack-General Andrei Shkuro’s among the most touching) - and made a quite few sigh in relief, would not be in vain. Together with his now famous speech at the International Congress on Astronautics, Churchill’s death galvanized the various Nations of the Commonwealth Nation’s resolve and inspired generation of young men and women to reach for space and unity.
Churchill did, however, live to see his Commonwealth of Nations taking off, with the emerging democracy in South Africa, a beginning peace in India and the forming of the Malaysian Confederation between Singapore, Malaya, Sabah (North Borneo), Brunei and Sarawak. Sadly he also oversaw the lowering of the British colours in Transjordan, Palestine, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Cameroun, Sudan, Gambia, Ceylon, Burma, the Gold Coast Togoland and several other places deemed either unfit or simply too impossible to keep in the Commonwealth. Even sadder is the criticism often placed upon Churchill and his cabinet for the decision to withdraw from so much of the Empire in such a fashion – the British “overnight” withdrawal often caused near civil war and genocides in the various locals evacuated. In a few special cases, locals deemed loyal and useful subjects were given time to relocated. In Palestine a purely humanitarian interest made the British evacuate whoever was interested to mostly Rhodesia, but also South Africa and Kenya. Perhaps in an attempt to atone for past sins, the Polish Regiments, and the Don Light Horse – a British Cossack Regiment -, played a vital role in securing a peaceful exit from Palestine and Transjordan
As the Chinese War seemed to keep escalating with American and Soviet troops being deployed in increasing numbers on each side, Britain exploded a Commonwealth developed atomic weapon at the Emu Test Site in Australia. Initially, the British government relied upon the new series of V-bombers from the Royal Air Force to deliver the atomic weapons to their targets, but soon it was realised, as suspected, that these aircraft were too vulnerable to especially the Soviet Union’s impressive air defences based newly developed and deployed surface-to-air missiles and superguns. As seen in China, where the Red Amy Air Force and US Air Force did their best to shot each other out of the skies, the new defensive systems were truly very dangerous. To many British military experts it seemed like the Soviets compensated for their bad fighter designs with excessive ground based air defences. Actually it was the Soviet Union’s domestically designed jet engines that were flawed, not so much the fighter designs themselves. The Soviets only really caught up when the Mikoyan and Gurevich design bureau got their hands on some SAAB engines.
Thus the British drew the conclusion that long range missiles were the answer to the new air defence systems being deployed in ever increasing numbers around the world. The British never forgot that fact, that the RAF with all its might had not been able to stop the German V2 onslaught on London during the War. Meanwhile, the lessons of China hammered home with brutal force, the Americans found that they needed heavier bombers, capable of reaching higher altitudes and carrying bigger payloads. Soon, the Soviet Union’s Red Army Air Force followed their lead. So while in Britain it was found that ballistic missiles would not only be preferable, but absolutely vital to national security in the future, bigger and bigger bombers took to the skies in Soviet Russia and the United States of America.
It might have been due to rising international tension or just too massive a focus on planes and rockets – or even spurred on by the immensely popular books like Wyndham’s series of apocalyptic alien invasion tales -, but during this time RAF and other official institutions got numerous inquiries from both servicemen and civilians regarding unexplained aerial phenomenons. It got to a point where the Cabinet tasked Sir Henry Tizard to lead an independent commission - Commission on Unexplained Aerial Phenomenons – and find out the truth behind all these sightings. Surprisingly, the dour Sir Henry took to the job with great zeal and after nearly 2 years of work concluded, much to his detriment it seemed, that there was no evidence of non-earthly involvement and much of the sightings were actually military panes or some such.
In 1954 the DoR’s Striker guidance system programme under the Ministry of Aviation developed a highly accurate inertial guidance system. In the same period the Americans, and soon after British themselves, tested a new kind of atomic weapon; the fearsome Hydrogen-bomb. The H-bomb, as it simply became known, was of such hitherto unimaginable power that there was less need to use a highly accurate delivery system as needed for the less powerful A-bombs. Missiles were most definitely in and development was pushed further and faster. The Department of Rocketry was soon one of the largest entities in the British Military, soaking up men and resources to a degree that began to worry the British Minister of Defence and quite a few Generals (not to speak of the Admirals, who saw ship after ship laid up).
Needless to say, the Atlee Government was not quite happy with the mounting expenses, an unhappiness that in tandem with the lack of support for the Space Programme would spell the end of the first, last and only post-war Labour government. Nonetheless, Atlee was quite popular - even if seen by many a Briton as soft on the main issues - and served a full term between 1952 and 1956. With the Conservatives, this time led by the capable Churchillite Anthony Eden, back in Downing Street nr. 10, focus was back on missiles, rockets and the ultimate High Ground.
Part V
Flight out of the atmosphere is a simple thing to do and should have been available to the public twenty years ago. Ten years from now, we will have space tourism where you will be able to see the black sky and the curvature of the earth. It will be the most exciting roller coaster ride you can buy!
- Burt Rutan.
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow!
- Robert Goddard.
Things were looking much better for Britain and the Commonwealth in general, but the economy was still recovering after the damage of the War years. While the NFUR in many ways worked wonders, and trade between the Commonwealth Nations rose impressively during the 50’s, money and resources where often quite hard to come by for the various Public Services, Departments and Ministries. In any regards, what was in reality a space programme was immensely popular with the public and had the political backing to match its large public endorsement; Churchill and von Braun by their sheer strength of personality and the highly successful International Congress on Astronautics in London back in ’51 had worked wonders to fuel the public’s imagination. A fact Labour only acknowledge far too late.
The first official step to towards a true space programme had actually been taken as far back as December 1946. A study group of the DoR under the visionaries R. Smith and H. Ross had submitted a design for an adapted space-going German V2-rocket. The adaptation consisted mainly of a pressurised cabin in the nose of the rocket, in place of the usual explosive warhead, which would enable a man to be launched as a passenger on the flight. The cabin was detachable, allowing the astronaut to experience several minutes of weightlessness before it parachuted back to Earth.
Having faced budget cuts and political restrictions under Clement Atlee’s Labour Government, the DoR and its masters in the Ministry of Aviation found it best to beat their own drums, so to say, and rather loudly at that. At the time there were two large projects on the drawing boards of the Department of Rocketry. One was the launch of a small satellite – something few, including the Ministry of Defence and the Admiralty, at the time saw the need for. The other was the launch of a manned rocket. Needless to say the many wannabe Dan Dare’s and rocketeers in the Department went for option two.
Led by Helmut Grottrup – a brilliant ex-pat German scientist and rocket expert - several members of the DoR and in the Ministry of Aviation itself, not to mention key figures in the industry such as Geoffrey Pardoe of the de Havilland Aircraft Company, H. Robinson of future fame and RAF’s new Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, pushed for a manned flight, but not on the basis of the original V2-proposal. Instead planes were being drawn up for a modified version of the new Blue Steak Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile to be launched into space along with a crew of two. Basically, the Blue Streak would serve as a launcher with an almost improvised second stage attached.
Needless to say, Eden, Zuckerman and von Braun was firmly behind the idea, as was many other influential political figures – from both sides of the House; they all saw this as a way to announce to the world that Britain and her Commonwealth allies was to be reckoned with, and on a more earth bound level to get part in the glory. Strangely enough no one at the time ever considered failure an option.
As long range missiles became feasible, the de Havilland Aircraft Company won the contract to produce an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) under the codename Blue Streak, while the Rolls-Royce company gained the contract for development of an engine in cooperation with Department of Rocketry’s Propulsion Study Center. The resulting RZ2 rocket engine would prove to have a better power output and a slightly reduced weight compared to its American rival, the Rocketdyne S3D rocket engine. Many historians and space technology experts today consider it a fact that the RZ2 rocket engine was a reengineered and improved version of the Rocketdyne engine. In August 1956, the first liquid oxygen engines were tested at the Spadeadam Test Site in Cumbria. Soon Blue Streak itself was tested (see Part VI).
In the spring of 1958, the Black Monarch – the codename for the modified Blue Steak - lifted off from newly constructed Woomera-base in Australia - the Australia Government, and to a somewhat lesser degree its public, had from the beginning been one of the British rocket programme’s most stout supporters, and thus it was found to be only fitting that the launch took place in Australia - with astronauts Alan Smith and Roy Radford enclosed in the small capsule on top of the rocket. While the whole world watched Smith and Radford was sent on a suborbital flight and experienced several minutes of weightlessness as the capsule detached from the second stage. Helicopters launched from the deck of the carrier HMS Ark Royal recovered both the capsule and the two unharmed astronauts in the Indian Ocean.
The mere fact, that Britain with the aid its allies in the Commonwealth succeeded in putting together a space programme and launch Man into Space in less than 20 years, speaks volumes of the engineering and scientific successes of said nation. Still, it would be hard to believe Britain capable of such a feat without the Barlow Committee on Scientific Manpower’s groundbreaking work in 1945. The Barlow Rapport was on occasion and mostly in jest called the Zuckerman Bible, but the Committees urgent call for a vast increase in the output of university trained scientists and engineers played a major role in Britain’s conquest of Space in the 50’s. The newly created Royal Colleges of Technology each produced some 500 engineers a year in 1950, and some 1,000 engineers ten years later. Britain had become a nation of engineers. At the end of the Millennium, 442 out of the 659 Members of the House of Commons would list Engineering and Technology as a special interest, and some 33% of knighthoods given in the same year were for services in said fields. The sheer numbers of engineers available in the later 50’s and 60’s provided the base for the great leaps made by the aeronautical, automotive and astronautical as well as nautical industries seen throughout the 60’s and 70’s. Next to astronaut, fighter pilot and fireman – respectively -, engineer was the most popular choice for 10-12 years olds when asked about their future occupation in a 1956 survey in public schools.
The successful flight of the Black Monarch gave birth to the British Ministry of Space as an independent entity in its own. The MoS would become responsible for all space related matters and for interdepartmental policy co-ordination on rocket matters and to establish equivalent organisations throughout the Commonwealth.
Part VI
You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way!
- Will Rogers.
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt.
As British troops now had finished their withdrawal from many of the world’s potential hotspots or left the main burden of providing security to local forces – like the Don Light Horse in Northern Rhodesia, the number of young men called to do time in the National Service (a less warlike synonym for conscription if you will) was scaled down from 12,000 a month to some 3,000. Generally speaking public opinion was behind the idea of National Service as it was clear that the post-war world was not a safe or stable place. As proven by the recently successfully concluded French campaign in Indo-China and the escalating conflict in Algeria, not to mention the Belgian mess in Congo and the Soviet Union’s ham-fisted rampaging in its own backyard or the recently concluded Chinese War and the Manchurian Crisis. National Service also played a vital role in boosting the standing army - even with its decreased commitment to the Empire, there was still roughly 60,000 British troops posted around the world – and to introduce men into the Military who would otherwise not have considered serving. It is quite telling that some 70% of the officer corps in the later 50’s and early 60’s was former National Servicemen.
At the same time the US Army struggling to cope with its many responsibilities finally succeeded in lobbying for recreating both the German Army and the Japanese ditto, respectively the Bundeswehr and the Japanese Self-Defence Force. Along with the rearmament programmes of both of Greece and Italy – both countries being more paranoid anti-communistic rather than pro-American and democratic – this gave the Americans a more secure feeling, as they and their French allies no longer felt quite so exposed and alone in the world, not to mention a massive boost to the US armaments industry as all four countries sought to reequip their Army, Navy and Air Force more or less from scrap.
Along with Elizabeth II’s ascension to the throne and the birth of the British Space Programme another very British tradition was born in the early 50’s as well - Racing.
Once the War had ended in 1945 and the British military gradually scaled back there suddenly were a high number of redundant airfields – not only in Britain itself, but around the world. The now famous Silverstone was one of these left-over airfields. In early 1948, the Royal Automobile Club approached the Air Ministry and was granted the use of Silverstone without much fuss. On October 2nd, 1948, Silverstone’s first racing event took place and was followed be a series of sponsored racing event for the next years. The Formula One Daily Express International Trophy was from the start open for all Commonwealth citizens. The races were immensely popular and spectators flocked to the old airfield.
In 1950 the World Drivers’ Championship was created and the very first World Championship – which naturally was open for all nationalities - took place at Silverstone on May the 13th. It was a significant occasion for motor sport and the event was awarded the title of the European Grand Prix. The event was attended by King George VI, Princess Elizabeth and other members of the upper crust. As Queen, Elizabeth II would return to Silverstone on numerous occasions and seemed to be quite the racing fan. The original races had been dominated by Australians and British, but soon found the Italian drivers to be fierce competitors. After having lost to the Italians for a series of years, former RAF-pilots Brian Trubshaw – an employee of and driver for Bentley – and Ronald Harker – driving for an independent - finally brought the trophy back on British hands in 1958 and 59. The 50’s would establish the intense rivalry between the Italian automobile industry headed by Alfa Romeo and Ferrari and the British ditto headed by Aston Martin and Bentley. Later the Franco-American giants such as Mercedes-Renault, Bugatti and Ford would force their way into the racing elite with a series of spectacular victories in the early 60’s. Trubshaw were by the way knighted in 1969, and made a lord in 1982. Harker died driving one of Morgan’s powerful monocock cars at Brands Hatch in 1961, and was thus indirectly responsible for a lot of the restrictions now placed on the various racing championships.
The late 50’s also brought with it the first new capital ships built in Britain since the end of the War. For almost 15 years the Royal Navy had scaled down and sold off ships, if not simply scrapping them. The habit of selling ships had indirectly led to an arms race in South America where Argentine, Brazil and Chile each viewed the others with great suspicion and thus found it necessary the match any and all steps taken by one of the others. A lot of elderly Royal Navy ships, along with planes, tanks and other surplus military equipment found its way to said countries in the late 40’s and early 50’s before the United States of America put a stop to it – which of course did little to endear the Americans to the British and thus brought with it another low in diplomatic relations.
For some time the two only major capital ships – not counting the handful of heavy cruisers - of the Royal Navy had been the battleship HMS Vanguard and the fleet carrier HMS Ark Royal – the first carrier in the world to fly a flight group of jet planes (Sea Vixens). Both ships were now placed in reserve as the new 47,000 tonnes fleet carriers HMS Malta and HMS Queen Elizabeth I raised their commands with much pomp. The two Malta’s would later in the late 60’s be supplemented by two atomic fleet carriers, HMS King George V and HMS Hood. Big George and Hood were truly monsters and packed a massive punch in form of the largest – some 120 aircraft contra the about 80 or so on the Malta’s - and most advanced air wings ever seen upon the Seven Seas – actually just one of these mammoth ships carried more planes than most air forces. As two further King George V class atomic carries were commissioned and put to sea in the 70’s, HMS Malta and her sister ship were sold to India and South Africa respectively, while HMS Vanguard became a much loved museum ship and Ark Royal were scrapped.
Aside from a new renaissance in shipbuilding both commercial and military, British aviation industry produced a series of new and often ground breaking aircraft in the 50’s and 60’s, the De Havilland Comet, AVRO Midland and Bristol Aeroplane Company Solaris (heir to the famous Brabazon) amongst them. Several of said designs found a military use as well. The earlier Comets were fx. redesigned and became the Royal Navy’s long range multi-purpose Nimrods and the Midlands soldiered on in form of the giant Asteroids.
Naturally the engineering success of the British would not stop with boats, planes and cars. In early 1960, Blue Streak – famed for its role in putting Smith and Radford into space, albeit briefly - became operational as a delivery system for atomic warheads. The criticism of Blue Streak however would in the end lead to the development of submarine-based missiles like the Peregrin. Blue Streak’s underground launch sites were far too vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike and the fuel used gave the missile a long fuelling time. With the Manchurian Crisis in relatively fresh memory, the military planners and their political masters in Whitehall found it prudent to be able to strike hard AND fast if needed be. The first atomic British Ballistic Submarine, HMS Dreadnought, put to sea in late 1962 and Blue Streak was officially replaced by Peregrin Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile system in the summer of 1963 as Britain's atomic deterrent. Submarine-based missiles continue to be the British atomic delivery system to the present day. The dozen Blue Streak underground launch sites, named silos in the US, are to this day used as bomb shelters and emergency control facilities by the RAF.
Atomic power was not only harnessed for military purpose in the 50’s and 60’s, but saw use in a ever growing number of atomic power stations throughout, not only Britain itself, but also the Commonwealth in general.
Money was no object. They had not realised - few had - that Britain was bankrupt!
- Ivan Southall, Woomera, 1962.
If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life!
- Gus Grissom.
While war and fear of war dominated much of the world, life in Britain, the Empire and Commonwealth slowly began to return to normal. As the National Foundation for Unity and Restructuring - NFUR – began to make its presence felt, the rationing of most everyday things like for tea, eggs, sugar and dairy products were lifted. Nor were coal rationed for long, but various forms of fuel would be under some form of rationing for the rest the 40’s. By blatant manipulation, subterfuge, reuse of Lloyd George’s National Insurance Act and just good management of resources, the NFUR ever so slowly brought the British economy out of its decline. The hard-line stand – meaning no money for the US if Britain itself did not get paid (just another nail in the US-British coffin, but at the time few Brits really cared) what it was found to be owed by France, the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia and numerous other wartime allies - of Churchill and later Atlee in regards to wartime loans and such like provided the necessary breathing space for Britain’s almost ruined economy to recover. As a gesture of total defiance, the British even presented the USA with a bill for technical assistance during the War. Something that hurt the Americans pride deeply as the Bell Aircraft Company – Miles Aircraft Company’s competitor - had been forced to ask for British help in breaking the sound barrier after loosing their 5th plane in an unexplained midair accident just before breaking the sound barrier. Said plea fell on deaf ears, though.
With more money in their pockets the British had the means to create a consumer based economy that eventually would lay the foundation for the modern British economy and fuel the Economic Miracle of the Commonwealth. The fact that the NFUR did much to improve the housing situation as well did much to endear Churchill’s Social Conservative policies to the general public, that and his Basic Healthcare Programme under the Our Future is Bright-programme. As a side note, the massive rebuilding programme sponsored by the National Foundation for Unity and Restructuring also brought new materials and architecture to Britain – the spread of the prefabricated bungalow to the British Isles are a prime example. For most of the 50’s Functionalism was the dominant trend in Architecture and design, and was quite ironically spearheaded by the French-sounding Charles-Edouard Jeanneret. In the early 50’s, after the International Congress on Astronautics in London and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1952, many a Briton and Commonwealth citizen alike talked about a Golden Second Elizabethan Age.
“We must lose the Empire in order to preserve it. But it must be a different Empire, an Empire where we in the brotherhood that is the British Commonwealth of Nations shall stand by each other in joy as well as sorrow! We must share all burdens and rewards equally for only as brothers can we survive and thrive in this new world, where an Iron Curtain has descended upon Eastern Europe and a Fortress of Ignorance arisen in the Americas. The eyes of the world now look to us, the Commonwealth of Nations to create a better future. As part of that dream we must look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond!” It is with those words at the International Congress on Astronautics in 1951, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill inspired not only the Britons, but subjects of the Commonwealth Nations all over the world. He challenged them to reach beyond Earth and seek their joint fortunes out in unsailed territory. Most people of course knew that he was referring to space, so with this speech Churchill had given birth to the very impressive British Space Programme.
Unfortunately Churchill would never live to see the first man, a Briton, naturally, in space, nor the launch of the first man-made satellite. One tragic June morning in 1952, PM Churchill died of cardiac-arrest. Doctors believed the heart-attack to be stress-related. Being Prime Minster in a troubled time had been too much for the elderly statesman. But Churchill’s much bemourned death, that truly grieved a billion people – his funeral was quite spectacular as hundreds of former East European refugees marched past his coffin, often in colourful and exotic uniforms and many an emotional speech were given (Cossack-General Andrei Shkuro’s among the most touching) - and made a quite few sigh in relief, would not be in vain. Together with his now famous speech at the International Congress on Astronautics, Churchill’s death galvanized the various Nations of the Commonwealth Nation’s resolve and inspired generation of young men and women to reach for space and unity.
Churchill did, however, live to see his Commonwealth of Nations taking off, with the emerging democracy in South Africa, a beginning peace in India and the forming of the Malaysian Confederation between Singapore, Malaya, Sabah (North Borneo), Brunei and Sarawak. Sadly he also oversaw the lowering of the British colours in Transjordan, Palestine, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Cameroun, Sudan, Gambia, Ceylon, Burma, the Gold Coast Togoland and several other places deemed either unfit or simply too impossible to keep in the Commonwealth. Even sadder is the criticism often placed upon Churchill and his cabinet for the decision to withdraw from so much of the Empire in such a fashion – the British “overnight” withdrawal often caused near civil war and genocides in the various locals evacuated. In a few special cases, locals deemed loyal and useful subjects were given time to relocated. In Palestine a purely humanitarian interest made the British evacuate whoever was interested to mostly Rhodesia, but also South Africa and Kenya. Perhaps in an attempt to atone for past sins, the Polish Regiments, and the Don Light Horse – a British Cossack Regiment -, played a vital role in securing a peaceful exit from Palestine and Transjordan
As the Chinese War seemed to keep escalating with American and Soviet troops being deployed in increasing numbers on each side, Britain exploded a Commonwealth developed atomic weapon at the Emu Test Site in Australia. Initially, the British government relied upon the new series of V-bombers from the Royal Air Force to deliver the atomic weapons to their targets, but soon it was realised, as suspected, that these aircraft were too vulnerable to especially the Soviet Union’s impressive air defences based newly developed and deployed surface-to-air missiles and superguns. As seen in China, where the Red Amy Air Force and US Air Force did their best to shot each other out of the skies, the new defensive systems were truly very dangerous. To many British military experts it seemed like the Soviets compensated for their bad fighter designs with excessive ground based air defences. Actually it was the Soviet Union’s domestically designed jet engines that were flawed, not so much the fighter designs themselves. The Soviets only really caught up when the Mikoyan and Gurevich design bureau got their hands on some SAAB engines.
Thus the British drew the conclusion that long range missiles were the answer to the new air defence systems being deployed in ever increasing numbers around the world. The British never forgot that fact, that the RAF with all its might had not been able to stop the German V2 onslaught on London during the War. Meanwhile, the lessons of China hammered home with brutal force, the Americans found that they needed heavier bombers, capable of reaching higher altitudes and carrying bigger payloads. Soon, the Soviet Union’s Red Army Air Force followed their lead. So while in Britain it was found that ballistic missiles would not only be preferable, but absolutely vital to national security in the future, bigger and bigger bombers took to the skies in Soviet Russia and the United States of America.
It might have been due to rising international tension or just too massive a focus on planes and rockets – or even spurred on by the immensely popular books like Wyndham’s series of apocalyptic alien invasion tales -, but during this time RAF and other official institutions got numerous inquiries from both servicemen and civilians regarding unexplained aerial phenomenons. It got to a point where the Cabinet tasked Sir Henry Tizard to lead an independent commission - Commission on Unexplained Aerial Phenomenons – and find out the truth behind all these sightings. Surprisingly, the dour Sir Henry took to the job with great zeal and after nearly 2 years of work concluded, much to his detriment it seemed, that there was no evidence of non-earthly involvement and much of the sightings were actually military panes or some such.
In 1954 the DoR’s Striker guidance system programme under the Ministry of Aviation developed a highly accurate inertial guidance system. In the same period the Americans, and soon after British themselves, tested a new kind of atomic weapon; the fearsome Hydrogen-bomb. The H-bomb, as it simply became known, was of such hitherto unimaginable power that there was less need to use a highly accurate delivery system as needed for the less powerful A-bombs. Missiles were most definitely in and development was pushed further and faster. The Department of Rocketry was soon one of the largest entities in the British Military, soaking up men and resources to a degree that began to worry the British Minister of Defence and quite a few Generals (not to speak of the Admirals, who saw ship after ship laid up).
Needless to say, the Atlee Government was not quite happy with the mounting expenses, an unhappiness that in tandem with the lack of support for the Space Programme would spell the end of the first, last and only post-war Labour government. Nonetheless, Atlee was quite popular - even if seen by many a Briton as soft on the main issues - and served a full term between 1952 and 1956. With the Conservatives, this time led by the capable Churchillite Anthony Eden, back in Downing Street nr. 10, focus was back on missiles, rockets and the ultimate High Ground.
Part V
Flight out of the atmosphere is a simple thing to do and should have been available to the public twenty years ago. Ten years from now, we will have space tourism where you will be able to see the black sky and the curvature of the earth. It will be the most exciting roller coaster ride you can buy!
- Burt Rutan.
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow!
- Robert Goddard.
Things were looking much better for Britain and the Commonwealth in general, but the economy was still recovering after the damage of the War years. While the NFUR in many ways worked wonders, and trade between the Commonwealth Nations rose impressively during the 50’s, money and resources where often quite hard to come by for the various Public Services, Departments and Ministries. In any regards, what was in reality a space programme was immensely popular with the public and had the political backing to match its large public endorsement; Churchill and von Braun by their sheer strength of personality and the highly successful International Congress on Astronautics in London back in ’51 had worked wonders to fuel the public’s imagination. A fact Labour only acknowledge far too late.
The first official step to towards a true space programme had actually been taken as far back as December 1946. A study group of the DoR under the visionaries R. Smith and H. Ross had submitted a design for an adapted space-going German V2-rocket. The adaptation consisted mainly of a pressurised cabin in the nose of the rocket, in place of the usual explosive warhead, which would enable a man to be launched as a passenger on the flight. The cabin was detachable, allowing the astronaut to experience several minutes of weightlessness before it parachuted back to Earth.
Having faced budget cuts and political restrictions under Clement Atlee’s Labour Government, the DoR and its masters in the Ministry of Aviation found it best to beat their own drums, so to say, and rather loudly at that. At the time there were two large projects on the drawing boards of the Department of Rocketry. One was the launch of a small satellite – something few, including the Ministry of Defence and the Admiralty, at the time saw the need for. The other was the launch of a manned rocket. Needless to say the many wannabe Dan Dare’s and rocketeers in the Department went for option two.
Led by Helmut Grottrup – a brilliant ex-pat German scientist and rocket expert - several members of the DoR and in the Ministry of Aviation itself, not to mention key figures in the industry such as Geoffrey Pardoe of the de Havilland Aircraft Company, H. Robinson of future fame and RAF’s new Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, pushed for a manned flight, but not on the basis of the original V2-proposal. Instead planes were being drawn up for a modified version of the new Blue Steak Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile to be launched into space along with a crew of two. Basically, the Blue Streak would serve as a launcher with an almost improvised second stage attached.
Needless to say, Eden, Zuckerman and von Braun was firmly behind the idea, as was many other influential political figures – from both sides of the House; they all saw this as a way to announce to the world that Britain and her Commonwealth allies was to be reckoned with, and on a more earth bound level to get part in the glory. Strangely enough no one at the time ever considered failure an option.
As long range missiles became feasible, the de Havilland Aircraft Company won the contract to produce an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) under the codename Blue Streak, while the Rolls-Royce company gained the contract for development of an engine in cooperation with Department of Rocketry’s Propulsion Study Center. The resulting RZ2 rocket engine would prove to have a better power output and a slightly reduced weight compared to its American rival, the Rocketdyne S3D rocket engine. Many historians and space technology experts today consider it a fact that the RZ2 rocket engine was a reengineered and improved version of the Rocketdyne engine. In August 1956, the first liquid oxygen engines were tested at the Spadeadam Test Site in Cumbria. Soon Blue Streak itself was tested (see Part VI).
In the spring of 1958, the Black Monarch – the codename for the modified Blue Steak - lifted off from newly constructed Woomera-base in Australia - the Australia Government, and to a somewhat lesser degree its public, had from the beginning been one of the British rocket programme’s most stout supporters, and thus it was found to be only fitting that the launch took place in Australia - with astronauts Alan Smith and Roy Radford enclosed in the small capsule on top of the rocket. While the whole world watched Smith and Radford was sent on a suborbital flight and experienced several minutes of weightlessness as the capsule detached from the second stage. Helicopters launched from the deck of the carrier HMS Ark Royal recovered both the capsule and the two unharmed astronauts in the Indian Ocean.
The mere fact, that Britain with the aid its allies in the Commonwealth succeeded in putting together a space programme and launch Man into Space in less than 20 years, speaks volumes of the engineering and scientific successes of said nation. Still, it would be hard to believe Britain capable of such a feat without the Barlow Committee on Scientific Manpower’s groundbreaking work in 1945. The Barlow Rapport was on occasion and mostly in jest called the Zuckerman Bible, but the Committees urgent call for a vast increase in the output of university trained scientists and engineers played a major role in Britain’s conquest of Space in the 50’s. The newly created Royal Colleges of Technology each produced some 500 engineers a year in 1950, and some 1,000 engineers ten years later. Britain had become a nation of engineers. At the end of the Millennium, 442 out of the 659 Members of the House of Commons would list Engineering and Technology as a special interest, and some 33% of knighthoods given in the same year were for services in said fields. The sheer numbers of engineers available in the later 50’s and 60’s provided the base for the great leaps made by the aeronautical, automotive and astronautical as well as nautical industries seen throughout the 60’s and 70’s. Next to astronaut, fighter pilot and fireman – respectively -, engineer was the most popular choice for 10-12 years olds when asked about their future occupation in a 1956 survey in public schools.
The successful flight of the Black Monarch gave birth to the British Ministry of Space as an independent entity in its own. The MoS would become responsible for all space related matters and for interdepartmental policy co-ordination on rocket matters and to establish equivalent organisations throughout the Commonwealth.
Part VI
You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way!
- Will Rogers.
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt.
As British troops now had finished their withdrawal from many of the world’s potential hotspots or left the main burden of providing security to local forces – like the Don Light Horse in Northern Rhodesia, the number of young men called to do time in the National Service (a less warlike synonym for conscription if you will) was scaled down from 12,000 a month to some 3,000. Generally speaking public opinion was behind the idea of National Service as it was clear that the post-war world was not a safe or stable place. As proven by the recently successfully concluded French campaign in Indo-China and the escalating conflict in Algeria, not to mention the Belgian mess in Congo and the Soviet Union’s ham-fisted rampaging in its own backyard or the recently concluded Chinese War and the Manchurian Crisis. National Service also played a vital role in boosting the standing army - even with its decreased commitment to the Empire, there was still roughly 60,000 British troops posted around the world – and to introduce men into the Military who would otherwise not have considered serving. It is quite telling that some 70% of the officer corps in the later 50’s and early 60’s was former National Servicemen.
At the same time the US Army struggling to cope with its many responsibilities finally succeeded in lobbying for recreating both the German Army and the Japanese ditto, respectively the Bundeswehr and the Japanese Self-Defence Force. Along with the rearmament programmes of both of Greece and Italy – both countries being more paranoid anti-communistic rather than pro-American and democratic – this gave the Americans a more secure feeling, as they and their French allies no longer felt quite so exposed and alone in the world, not to mention a massive boost to the US armaments industry as all four countries sought to reequip their Army, Navy and Air Force more or less from scrap.
Along with Elizabeth II’s ascension to the throne and the birth of the British Space Programme another very British tradition was born in the early 50’s as well - Racing.
Once the War had ended in 1945 and the British military gradually scaled back there suddenly were a high number of redundant airfields – not only in Britain itself, but around the world. The now famous Silverstone was one of these left-over airfields. In early 1948, the Royal Automobile Club approached the Air Ministry and was granted the use of Silverstone without much fuss. On October 2nd, 1948, Silverstone’s first racing event took place and was followed be a series of sponsored racing event for the next years. The Formula One Daily Express International Trophy was from the start open for all Commonwealth citizens. The races were immensely popular and spectators flocked to the old airfield.
In 1950 the World Drivers’ Championship was created and the very first World Championship – which naturally was open for all nationalities - took place at Silverstone on May the 13th. It was a significant occasion for motor sport and the event was awarded the title of the European Grand Prix. The event was attended by King George VI, Princess Elizabeth and other members of the upper crust. As Queen, Elizabeth II would return to Silverstone on numerous occasions and seemed to be quite the racing fan. The original races had been dominated by Australians and British, but soon found the Italian drivers to be fierce competitors. After having lost to the Italians for a series of years, former RAF-pilots Brian Trubshaw – an employee of and driver for Bentley – and Ronald Harker – driving for an independent - finally brought the trophy back on British hands in 1958 and 59. The 50’s would establish the intense rivalry between the Italian automobile industry headed by Alfa Romeo and Ferrari and the British ditto headed by Aston Martin and Bentley. Later the Franco-American giants such as Mercedes-Renault, Bugatti and Ford would force their way into the racing elite with a series of spectacular victories in the early 60’s. Trubshaw were by the way knighted in 1969, and made a lord in 1982. Harker died driving one of Morgan’s powerful monocock cars at Brands Hatch in 1961, and was thus indirectly responsible for a lot of the restrictions now placed on the various racing championships.
The late 50’s also brought with it the first new capital ships built in Britain since the end of the War. For almost 15 years the Royal Navy had scaled down and sold off ships, if not simply scrapping them. The habit of selling ships had indirectly led to an arms race in South America where Argentine, Brazil and Chile each viewed the others with great suspicion and thus found it necessary the match any and all steps taken by one of the others. A lot of elderly Royal Navy ships, along with planes, tanks and other surplus military equipment found its way to said countries in the late 40’s and early 50’s before the United States of America put a stop to it – which of course did little to endear the Americans to the British and thus brought with it another low in diplomatic relations.
For some time the two only major capital ships – not counting the handful of heavy cruisers - of the Royal Navy had been the battleship HMS Vanguard and the fleet carrier HMS Ark Royal – the first carrier in the world to fly a flight group of jet planes (Sea Vixens). Both ships were now placed in reserve as the new 47,000 tonnes fleet carriers HMS Malta and HMS Queen Elizabeth I raised their commands with much pomp. The two Malta’s would later in the late 60’s be supplemented by two atomic fleet carriers, HMS King George V and HMS Hood. Big George and Hood were truly monsters and packed a massive punch in form of the largest – some 120 aircraft contra the about 80 or so on the Malta’s - and most advanced air wings ever seen upon the Seven Seas – actually just one of these mammoth ships carried more planes than most air forces. As two further King George V class atomic carries were commissioned and put to sea in the 70’s, HMS Malta and her sister ship were sold to India and South Africa respectively, while HMS Vanguard became a much loved museum ship and Ark Royal were scrapped.
Aside from a new renaissance in shipbuilding both commercial and military, British aviation industry produced a series of new and often ground breaking aircraft in the 50’s and 60’s, the De Havilland Comet, AVRO Midland and Bristol Aeroplane Company Solaris (heir to the famous Brabazon) amongst them. Several of said designs found a military use as well. The earlier Comets were fx. redesigned and became the Royal Navy’s long range multi-purpose Nimrods and the Midlands soldiered on in form of the giant Asteroids.
Naturally the engineering success of the British would not stop with boats, planes and cars. In early 1960, Blue Streak – famed for its role in putting Smith and Radford into space, albeit briefly - became operational as a delivery system for atomic warheads. The criticism of Blue Streak however would in the end lead to the development of submarine-based missiles like the Peregrin. Blue Streak’s underground launch sites were far too vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike and the fuel used gave the missile a long fuelling time. With the Manchurian Crisis in relatively fresh memory, the military planners and their political masters in Whitehall found it prudent to be able to strike hard AND fast if needed be. The first atomic British Ballistic Submarine, HMS Dreadnought, put to sea in late 1962 and Blue Streak was officially replaced by Peregrin Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile system in the summer of 1963 as Britain's atomic deterrent. Submarine-based missiles continue to be the British atomic delivery system to the present day. The dozen Blue Streak underground launch sites, named silos in the US, are to this day used as bomb shelters and emergency control facilities by the RAF.
Atomic power was not only harnessed for military purpose in the 50’s and 60’s, but saw use in a ever growing number of atomic power stations throughout, not only Britain itself, but also the Commonwealth in general.