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I have finally acquired a copy of Skybolt: At Arm's Length and it lives up to the high expectations I had for it. Nicholas does a wonderful job of describing the interplay between the various departments and services in the UK, such as the Navy and RAF and the RAF and the MoA. His extensive archive research and willingness to reproduce large sections original documents tells the story in a compelling and evidenced fashion that is all-to-often rare in British Aerospace history writing. The linking of this political and policy narrative to actual weapons concepts and their proposed operational use completes the package. For those more interested in prospective hardware there is plenty of narrative and images of proposed weapons systems in the context O.1182 and the stopgaps that were proposed after the cancellation of Skybolt, I particularly enjoyed the 1960 RAE concepts for cruise missiles sized to fit the TSR-2 bomb bay - using identical (and in hindsight prescient/brilliant) logic to the BAC ballistic missile proposal inspired by the same customer request.As a final observation, Skybolt has reinforced my sense that the combined Blue Streak system, with its decoys and hardened silos, really was a belt and braces approach to providing a deterrent whereas the Skybolt saga was an extreme reaction to the cost of that abandoned programme in that it sought to leverage the sunk cost of the V-Force and US R&D funds.
I have finally acquired a copy of Skybolt: At Arm's Length and it lives up to the high expectations I had for it. Nicholas does a wonderful job of describing the interplay between the various departments and services in the UK, such as the Navy and RAF and the RAF and the MoA. His extensive archive research and willingness to reproduce large sections original documents tells the story in a compelling and evidenced fashion that is all-to-often rare in British Aerospace history writing. The linking of this political and policy narrative to actual weapons concepts and their proposed operational use completes the package. For those more interested in prospective hardware there is plenty of narrative and images of proposed weapons systems in the context O.1182 and the stopgaps that were proposed after the cancellation of Skybolt, I particularly enjoyed the 1960 RAE concepts for cruise missiles sized to fit the TSR-2 bomb bay - using identical (and in hindsight prescient/brilliant) logic to the BAC ballistic missile proposal inspired by the same customer request.
As a final observation, Skybolt has reinforced my sense that the combined Blue Streak system, with its decoys and hardened silos, really was a belt and braces approach to providing a deterrent whereas the Skybolt saga was an extreme reaction to the cost of that abandoned programme in that it sought to leverage the sunk cost of the V-Force and US R&D funds.
