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.