Trials Results

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I think both Contractor staff and RAF personnel had a great time visiting and living in Australia. Many stayed here - some came back later!

But what about the work we did? What was achieved during the missile trials? We should not forget that we were developing a nuclear tipped cruise missile - U.K's primary deterrent for a few years in the 1960s. I'm sure that all of us have been overwhelmingly relieved that the missiles were never used "in anger". And as far as I know - a nuclear weapon was never exploded at the end of a Blue Steel flight. But the intention to use them if necessary during the cold war was always there.....

Recently, a file of papers have turned up which were reports from Elliot’s staff in Australia back to 'Head office', with copies to many defence department staff. These reports give brief details of some 274 flights made by all 3 V-Bomber types during the trials. I have no doubt that there were many more flights  (Aircraft equipment tests etc. and there are some gaps in the data). But the 274 flights that were covered reveal some interesting statistics.

Probably one of the most interesting statistics is that there were a total of 122 flights where there was the intention to launch, and these resulted in 73 pre-launch aborts and 49 actual launches. Each missile cost over £1 million, so they were not launched unless everyone was satisfied that there was a likelihood of success {:-))

And how many of the launches could be regarded as completely successful?  That is that they reached the target within the specified margin of error. My assessment from the data is 25 launches or 51%. It seems like a high failure rate, but the rate of problems gradually decreased as the trials progressed. There were constant changes to the hardware and to the profiles of what was expected operationally.

A couple more statistics might be of interest. The 274 flights were divided into Valiants (various aircraft W numbers) = 147 flights, Vulcan (XH539) = 69, and Victor (XL161) = 58. The Valiants were often used for 'Carry-over' flights which tested many missile components (particularly the Inertial navigation and other systems). I presume the components were mounted in the bomb bay. But the Valiants also did carry over flights with live missiles and launched at least 13 rounds in Australia.

These days I doubt if a project would survive after such failure rates, but I think we have to realise that it was an immensely complex project for the time. The Aircraft were state of the art and continuously evolving. They used many electronics systems using Valve (Vacuum Tubes for our USA friends) technology!. Many of the systems were electro/mechanical - analogue computers. The missile itself was the same - ahead of the 'state of the art' in many areas, particularly the Inertial Navigator which must have been close to the first in the world. Even the IN system used some Valves! Finally the ground  Range systems (Woomera Range E) were also complicated with many devices spread out over several hundred KM (The range was greatly extended for the Blue Steel trials). All of these systems had to work together or a Launch flight would be aborted prior to launch. But the U.K. had few options at the time if they wanted some sort of deterrent.

In the Table below,
Launch Ht: H=High Level (48,000 to 56,000 ft). L=Low level (Below 1,000 ft)
Launch Flight: A=Intention to Launch but aborted before release. Blank=No intention to launch or no round carried 

The spreadsheet is shown below - if you would like - you can download it HERE and do your own statistics.

So there we have it - I feel it was quite an acheivement - certainly a very busy 42 Months.

Cheers - John Saxon. 29 Oct 2011 revised 2 May 2012, and 1 Mar 2014