The Cold War: A MILITARY History (26 page)

Britain developed its own nuclear weapons to overcome the ban on information from the USA, and it was therefore somewhat contradictory that one of the consequences of that development was that the USA then felt able to release both information and weapons to the UK. Thus, in a programme known as ‘Project E’, the USA supplied a number of nuclear weapons to meet the air force’s requirements until such time as sufficient British ‘megaton weapons’ were available; these US weapons reached the UK air force in October 1958 and remained operational until 1962. The
weapons
were stored on British air bases, but, by US law, had to protected and maintained by US air-force personnel, and could be transferred to British custody only on direct orders from the US president. The British found that the US custodial arrangements created many complications, especially as the survivability of the V-bombers required them to be deployed rapidly to dispersal airfields in the face of an imminent threat – a factor which the inflexible US custodial and release procedures were not designed to cope with. There was therefore considerable relief when the British-made weapons became operational, enabling the remaining ‘Project E’ weapons for the V-force to be returned to the USA. (US weapons for British aircraft assigned to SACEUR remained until 1968, however.)

The British aimed to field a force of 144 V-bombers in the ‘Medium Bomber Force’, and, in a move which even today causes surprise, they developed four, radically different, designs, of which three actually entered service. During the early years the mainstay of this force was the Vickers Valiant, of which nine squadrons were formed between 1955 and 1957. The Valiant was superseded in Bomber Command by Avro Vulcans and Handley-Page Victors, although the Valiant continued in service as a bomber assigned to SACEUR, and as a strategic reconnaissance and tanker aircraft.

Having worked hard to get the V-force into service, the British then had to work as hard to keep it up to date. The aircraft were designed to meet a requirement for dropping gravity bombs from a high level, out of range of a defender’s anti-aircraft artillery; they were thus optimized for cruising and bombing at 12,000 m. The rapid development of Soviet missile defences, however, made it clear that such high-flying aircraft were extremely vulnerable, and the V-bombers had to be re-roled to a low-level approach, which, because of the resulting increased fuel consumption, had the immediate effect of restricting their radius of action, in turn reducing the number of potential targets. It also increased the loads on the airframes, as was discovered when Valiants were found to be suffering from metal fatigue, which led to the abrupt grounding of the entire fleet in December 1984 and its early retirement a month later.

Meanwhile the front line was maintained by the Vulcans and Victors. The delta-winged Vulcan became operational in March 1957, armed with Blue Danube, with twelve aircraft converted for a short time (1958–9) to carry the ‘interim megaton weapon’ (Violet Club). All Vulcans then carried Yellow Sun or Red Beard nuclear gravity bombs, until, finally, thirty-three were converted to take the Blue Steel stand-off weapon. The Victor, which featured a ‘crescent’ wing, entered service in 1958, and, like Vulcan, carried first Blue Danube and later Yellow Sun or Red Beard (but not Violet Club). Then, too, twenty-three were converted to take Blue Steel.

Blue Steel, which entered service in 1962, represented a different way to solve the problem of countering the enemy air defences. Carrying a 1 MT
warhead
and flying at Mach 2, it was originally designed for high-level delivery, at which it had a range of 280 km, but when converted to the low-level role this was reduced to 35–42 km.

Several attempts were made to extend the effectiveness of the V-force, the main one being purchase of the US air force’s proposed Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile. This was intended for launch from Vulcans, and would have had a range of 1,760 km if launched from 12,000 m and of 460 km if launched from 300 m. The missiles would have been fitted with British nuclear warheads, but, to the intense embarrassment of the British, the project was abruptly terminated by the USA in December 1962. In the end, the vaunted V-force was replaced by the British navy’s Polaris submarines on 30 June 1969.

When the British air-force nuclear deterrent became operational there was an obvious need for co-ordination with the Americans, so the British held discussions with the US Strategic Air Command (not, significantly, with the Joint Service Targeting Staff). At the initial meetings in 1957 it was discovered that every British target was also covered by the SAC’s list, and, in addition, that both air forces had ‘doubled up’ their intended strikes, to ensure success.
²
This was resolved by a combined plan in which the British were allocated 106 targets, including sixty-nine cities of governmental or military significance, seventeen Soviet air-force airfields with nuclear roles, and twenty elements of the Soviet air-defence system. Full tactical co-ordination was achieved by joint planning of routes, timing and ECM tactics.

For the British, however, there was a separate consideration, in that the V-force was an ‘independent deterrent’: its purpose was to be used not only in allied operations with US and NATO forces, but also, as a last resort, in national plans. As a result, once the co-ordinated plan with SAC had been devised, a second national targeting plan was prepared which listed ‘131 Soviet cities whose population exceeded 100,000; from these 131 cities, ninety-eight were chosen which lay within about 3,000 km of the UK and they were graded in order of priority according to population, administrative importance, economic importance and transportation’.
³
This British national list became operational in November 1957, and was updated in June 1958.

Land-Based Missiles

The British also started to develop an IRBM. Designated Blue Streak, this was a liquid-fuelled ballistic missile, with a range of 2,800 km – the same as that required of the V-bombers – and a 3 MT warhead. Blue Streak was designed to be emplaced in an underground silo, but raised to the surface for fuelling (which took twenty minutes) and launch. The project was started in 1955 but was abruptly cancelled in 1960, just before the (successful) first flight.

Sixty US-owned Thor IRBMs were deployed by the British air force between 1958 and 1963, each armed with a 1 MT warhead. These missiles
were
treated as part of the V-force, and their targeting was controlled by the Bomber Command Operations Centre, although since the warheads were supplied and controlled by the USA it is to be presumed that their targeting was fully integrated with US plans. Further, like the ‘Project E’ weapons supplied for use by the V-bombers, they were not available for UK national strike plans.

Submarines
^fn2

When President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan met in Bermuda in December 1962, one of the subjects discussed was the replacement of the US Skybolt missile, which had just been cancelled by the USA. Prime Minister Macmillan managed to persuade the president to allow the British to participate in the Polaris programme. Since the British navy had traditionally worked very closely with that of USA, the programme went remarkably smoothly, being completed on schedule, with HMS
Resolution
, the first British SSBN, concluding its first patrol in June 1968. The submarine was created by inserting a sixteen-missile plug into a Valiant-class attack-submarine design, while the Polaris A-3 missiles were designed and built in the USA but had British warheads and re-entry vehicles. The number of missiles was set at sixteen simply in order to ensure maximum commonality with the US Lafayette design.

The British originally planned to build five Resolution-class SSBNs, but, although the Labour government which took power after the 1964 general election decided to continue the programme, it reduced the overall numbers to four boats. With one boat always in refit, one working-up and one in port, the British could only guarantee to have one submarine at sea at a time, with two for some of the time; the average was 1.44.

The general British philosophy of counter-value strikes was carried over from the bomber era to the submarines. The general principles were spelled out by the British admiral Sir Ian Easton in discussing the British purchase of the Trident SLBM system:

The nuclear destruction of a number – say, some dozen – of Soviet cities with a population of over 100,000 would be a traumatic blow to the Soviet Union. Among these cities might be Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov, Gorky and Stalingrad. The enormous loss of population and industry, the disruption of services critical to the life of the country, and the likely destruction of a proportion of the central bureaucracy of a centrally-organized state, could be expected to markedly weaken the vitality of the nation and the will of its people, and, perhaps, of its armies.
⁴

The original British SLBM was the Polaris A–3, whose British ‘front end’ carried three 200 kT MRVs. These were all aimed around the same target,
with
a spread between impact points of some 16 km. When the advent of Soviet ABM defences around Moscow using the Galosh missile called the effectiveness of the MRVs into question, the USA offered to supply Poseidon, whose MIRVs were designed to outwit such defences. The British, however, opted for a programme of their own, Project Chevaline, which was based in outline on a US programme called Antelope. In Chevaline, the two warheads and a large number of penetration aids were mounted on a manoeuvrable penetration-aid carrier which deployed the various elements of its payload on separate trajectories, all of which were aimed at the same target, and was designed so that, having dispensed its payload, it then appeared to be and acted like a warhead itself. There were two warheads and three dummy warheads, all of which were enclosed in metallic balloons, with, to confuse the defences even further, a number of empty balloons as well. As the balloons entered the atmosphere they burned away, and the six objects then began a series of planned manoeuvres designed to mislead enemy ABM defences, before all impacting in the same general area. Thus, in effect, Chevaline depended upon disguising the warheads as dummies during the space phase, and disguising dummies as warheads during re-entry. Submarines began patrols with Chevaline in 1982.

In addition to the front end, the main Polaris missile was the subject of several refurbishment programmes. Most noteworthy was the replacement of the engines, which was carried out by the manufacturer in the United States, although the technology was by then so dated that the company had to re-employ retired workers, since the skills required were no longer available.

The Resolution-class submarines were designed to last for twenty years (i.e. 1968–89), but this was subsequently extended to twenty-five years and later to thirty years. In the event this was not achieved, and towards the end of their lives they were showing distinct signs of age, with reports of cracking in the coolant circuits, while
Resolution
’s final refit lasted five years – two years longer than had been taken to build it in the first place. Fortunately for the UK, these problems occurred at the end of the Cold War. The Polaris force served until past the end of the Cold War, being replaced by a force of four new submarines armed with Trident II (D-4) missiles in the 1990s.

FRANCE

Bombers
^fn3

Like those of other countries, the first French atomic weapons were carried by a bomber, in this case the Mirage IVA. This was created by scaling up the
very
successful Mirage III fighter, adding an extra seat for a navigator/systems officer, and replacing the single engine by two more powerful ones. The first prototype flew in June 1959 and the complete system became operational in 1964, the twenty-four-hour nuclear alert actually starting on 1 October 1964. In its original form, Mirage IVA was a supersonic, high-level bomber carrying the AN 11 gravity bomb, but from 1967 onwards it was converted to the low-level role, using an AN 22 retarded bomb.
^fn4

The original deployment consisted of thirty-six front-line aircraft, together with an integral force of Boeing KC-135F tankers which were located at nine widely separated bases, but in 1976 this was changed to thirty-two aircraft at six bases, with the KC-135Fs concentrated rather than dispersed. The number of Mirage IVAs gradually reduced, until the last squadron was disbanded in 1988.

Meanwhile, the Mirage IVP (P =
Pénétration
) entered service in 1986, at the same time as updated tankers (now designated KC-135FR) were being received. Eighteen Mirage IVAs were reworked to Mirage IVP standard, with improved navigation and electronic equipment to enable them to operate the ASMP (
Air–Sol Moyenne Portée
), a Mach 2.5 missile with a range of 300 km and a single 300 kT thermonuclear warhead, which was intended for stand-off attacks against heavily defended targets such as airfields and command-and-control centres. The Mirage IVP served through the end of the Cold War, until 1997.

The unrefuelled range of the Mirage IVA/P was insufficient for it to attack targets in the Soviet Union and return to airbases in France, and so the plan was for it to be refuelled over the Baltic or the North Sea, increasing the range from 2,500 km to some 3,800 km. This had two consequences. First, while the ability of the Mirage IVA/P to scramble was excellent, the critical factor was actually how long it took the heavily laden and much slower KC-135F/FR tankers to get to the first refuelling point. Second, the two aircraft were acutely vulnerable while they were refuelling, which limited how closely they could approach Warsaw Pact-dominated airspace. Nevertheless, at least some of the force should have got through to attack targets as far east as Moscow, although how many might have returned was open to question.

Land-Based Missiles

In establishing its strategic forces, France determined that they should parallel, in concept if not in size, those of the USA and the Soviet Union by consisting of a triad of land-, sea- and air-based systems. Thus, work began in the 1960s on a
Sol–Sol Balistique Stratégique
(surface-to-surface ballistic
strategic
missile – SSBS) system. Originally it was intended to deploy fifty-four missiles, but this was reduced first to twenty-seven and then to the eighteen which were actually deployed. Each missile was located in a hardened silo, with at least 3 km between silos, on the Plateau d’Albion in Haute-Provence in south-east France, which was selected for the nature of its soil, its sparse population and its height (some 1,000 m), which enhanced the missiles’ range. Each nine-missile site had its own command post (each of which could also launch the missiles at the other site). In Condition Blue all missiles could be launched within five minutes of the order being issued, while in Condition Red this was reduced to one minute.