70th Anniversay of the GW Division of the British Aircraft Corporation

It is often mistakenly thought that Bristol’s aerospace industry was all about its civil and military aircraft, however, it was missiles which saved Filton’s financial fortunes in the post-war era. For the 70th anniversary of the British Aircraft Corporation's Guided Weapons Division’s foundation Brian Blestowe, former design engineer with BAC, wrote about the history of the Division for publication in the Bristol Times dated 30th April 2019.

When the Allies occupied Germany at the end of the Second World War, they discovered the Nazis had made great strides in the design of aerial weapons that were unmanned in flight. The V1 and V2 weapons had been put into mass production and used mainly against the UK, causing the deaths of over 8,000 residents in the London area.

The Allies also found that the Nazis had made considerable progress in the production of unmanned flying weapons intended to destroy attacking aircraft.

Shortly after the end of the war the UK government recognised the threat and decided to organise the aircraft industry and the new defence-orientated electronics industry that had grown up during the war, into businesses capable of undertaking this new and technically-advanced activity.

Seventy years ago, on April 28, 1949, a group of Ministry of Supply officials and representatives of the Bristol Aeroplane Company (BAC) met in secret in a London Thames-side building that would one day become the HQ of MI5. On the agenda was the growing need for a ground-to-air missile capable of intercepting and destroying the USSR’s high-flying nuclear-armed bombers, then posing an increasing threat as the Cold War intensified.

Archibald Russell, later Concorde’s chief designer, is recorded in that meeting’s minutes as saying that his company’s long-term view was that guided weapons should become their main military effort. Little did he know that by the 1960s the success and profitability of the Guided Weapons Division, established after that meeting, would significantly helped to ensure the survival of the civil aircraft industry in Filton.

At that meeting the Bristol company was offered the chance to join with Ferranti, which had the electronics ability, to research into the production of a surface-to-air anti-aircraft guided weapon system, initially for ship protection. BAC gladly accepted and agreed to set up a team of their most able staff. The project would be led by David Farrar (below), a brilliant young engineer who had joined the company early in the war.

When the work began virtually all of it was classified as secret and the various projects were given code names in an attempt to confuse any possible opponents.

The security name for the proposed ground-to-air missile was Red Heathen - subsequently split into Red Duster, which became Bloodhound, and Red Shoes which became Thunderbird, produced by English Electric at Stevenage.

To get a missile system into operation as soon as possible, a staged concept was used, where a relatively basic weapon with limited capabilities would be Stage 1 and with the experience gained on this, a more advanced system would later be developed as Stage 2.

Bristol’s first task was to design and produce a Ram Jet Test Vehicle (RJTV) to flight test a 6-inch diameter ram jet being developed by the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnbrough. The missile achieved supersonic flight under ram jet power in July 1951, just over two years after the start of the project - a remarkable achievement.

Post Script:
David Farrar was recognised for his achievements with Bloodhound by the Bloodhound Missile Preservation Group when we appointed him as our President.

Boeing were approached, and an agreement was reached, for quite a modest amount of money, to assist the engine division in the design of a more advanced engine and to make available their engine test plant to enable it to be operated on the ground in a static state.

A 16-inch diameter prototype engine was produced by the engine division and shipped to the USA and run successfully in May, 1951.

The eventual missile carried a very effective war head, in the case of the Mk.2 with an explosive content of 150 Kgs. of T.N.T. In addition, on the release of the explosive charge the available energy deployed a circle of steel rods with a diameter of 180 feet -this being capable of cutting through the light alloy structure of any aircraft.

Some 700 test Mk.1 missiles were fired at Larkhill on Salisbury Plain , at Aberporth in Wales (a firing shown below) and at Woomera in Australia to examine various aspects of the design.

There was also a very significant amount of ground equipment associated with the system with a firing unit of eight missiles and launchers under the control of the Launch Control Post (LCP) and the Target Illumination Radar (TIR).

Multiple firing units could be deployed on a site, the maximum number on a UK site was 32 missiles - quite an impressive display.

By 1955 the design had been determined and progress had to be made on the start of production equipment. It was decided to set up the missile production facility in Cardiff run by Jack Jefferies, who was remarkably successful, particularly as far as the cost of manufacturing was concerned.

Altogether the Royal Air Force set up eight Mk 1 sites on the East Coast of England between 1958 and 1964 similar to the picture below from 1960. They were basically to provide second-line defence for the V bomber airfields and the Thor ICBMs operated by the USA.

The Filton sales team was particularly successful in the late 1950s in selling a quantity of the Mk 1 Bloodhound missiles to Sweden and Australia. This resulted in a sizeable pre-payment and improved the financial position of BAC.

BAC had been working on Stage Two of the Bloodhound since 1955, planning a ship-launched anti-aircraft missile capable of engaging a high-flying aircraft up to 250 miles away at an altitude of 50,000 feet. The project was given the code name Blue Envoy, but the strategic situation and predicted costs resulted in the MoD cancelling in 1957 and left the Filton Guided Weapons division’s future looking bleak after the completion of the Bloodhound 1 work. However advances in technology, including the invention of transistors, development of continuous wave radar and the digital computer in a small robust form, had been made in the mid-1950s and many of these features were incorporated in the Blue Envoy project.

These improvements could be incorporated into a modified Bloodhound within a short time and so the MoD was persuaded to reconsider their decision. Filton was awarded a development contract for the longer and heavier Bloodhound Mk. 2 that was to become an even greater success than the Mk 1 missile.

For the first stage of flight from its launcher, the missile was powered by four solid fuel rocket boosts, which detached after some four seconds, by which time the ram jets were producing enough power to continue the flight at 1,600 mph.

The ground equipment was subjected to far greater changes which made it possible to make the Mk 2 system road-transportable, which was a requirement for a contract from Sweden and the Royal Air Force also had this capability for some of their equipment.

It was then decided that Filton would no longer produce missiles and that this would become a Stevenage activity and Bristol would in future devote itself to ground equipment design and development.

But work on the Rapier surface-to-air missile, the follow-on project, was the reason the capability to design and manufacture digital computers was developed at Filton, which had a big impact on the success of the Concorde’s air intake control system.

The Aerospace Bristol museum at Filton has on show a Mk 2 operational Missile and Launcher that are now over 50 years old. and represent the UK National Standard. These, as they have spent all their life under cover, are the best examples that exist and will hopefully still be on show on their 100th birthday.

Greville Beale joined BAC from school and ended his career at Filton as Chief Engineer of BAe Dynamics, joined the Guided Weapons Division in 1949.

“The next few years were golden,” he later wrote. “The technology was cutting edge. The pace of the R&D work was electric. I was just 22 and working as part of a team whose average age was about 25. That was a joy. Many of the trials provided spectacular results. I remember a Larkhill trial where the Safety Officer decided to self-destruct the dart just after boost separation. An Aussie stressman called Gordon Jarvis was standing with me on the top of the observation blockhouse when to our horror the back end of the dart broke away into a slow left hand banked turn. It settled into a glide towards us. We both came to in the ditch at the back of the blockhouse, having reacted independently. We had jumped down some ten feet and survived to lunch in the pub later.”

He would later work on other guided weapons at Filton, including Rapier surface-to-air missiles, Swingfire (anti-tank), and naval weapons such as Sea Dart and Sea Wolf.