It’s not a fair to compare the timescale of Blue Streak with that of Thor. The basic concept of the US IRBM programmes was that they could adapt ICBM technology to quickly produce a shorter-range weapon. While the Thor team could take advantage of existing hardware – for example, Thor’s rocket engine was derivative of the Atlas booster engine – the Blue Streak team and their subcontractors had to develop their own solutions and manufacturing processes.
A more valid comparison would be with Atlas, and needs to compare the time that both projects took from the point where the customer finally decided what was wanted to the point where flight trials started.
In the case of Blue Streak, as late as 1956 the RAF was not sure what it wanted, and was still dithering between single and twin-engined concepts.
The first vehicle due to fly was on its way to Australia when the programme was cancelled in 1960, so presumably would have flown later that year. So the time between the start of real work and the planned launch date would have been about four and a half years.
On Atlas, the basic configuration was settled by the start of 1955. The A model flew in the summer of 1957, but had only boost motors – development of the sustainer engine was still under way. The first Atlas B with booster and sustainer engines did not fly until the summer of 1958. So the time from the concept being finalised to the first flight of fully-representative hardware was three and a half years.
So why did Blue Streak take a year longer?
One reason was it did not enjoy US-style crash-programme funding and resources.
Nor did it have US levels of engineering manpower. Bill Gunston once stated that in the 1950s, Boeing had more engineers than the entire UK aircraft industry. So Blue streak had to take its place among a huge number of competing UK aerospace projects.
Another little-known fact was that UK was in some cases taking a more sophisticated design approach. The US could afford to develop interim hardware to get missiles flying as soon as possible, then fund a more sophisticated replacement, (Atlas was to see operational service in D, E and F variants) but the UK lacked the money, manpower and industrial capacity for such an approach. The Blue Streak team had to design something close to the definitive hardware at a time when technology was moving fast and transistors were replacing valves (vacuum tubes).
Being only a little bit behind Atlas in timescale meant that they could take advantage of later electronic technology. Some old Blue Streak engineers recall how they were shocked by the bulk and weight of some Atlas subsystems, while visiting Convair engineers were surprised by the technological level of some Blue Streak subsystems.
The statement in Hill’s A Vertical Empire that ““RR share the view with everybody else (that DH) can be extremely difficult and unsatisfactory” would cause high blood pressure in many old DH staffers, who took the view that Rolls Royce seemed to see airframes as little more than mere accessories to be bolted onto their precious engines, and that the task of technical liaison with RR required the patience of a saint.
