UK Thor missile sites

Thor and Bloodhound sites just up the road from me at Breighton.

http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/pgm-17-thor-missile-launch-site-breighton/view/?service=1

Stateside pads were experimental sites, flight test. Ditto Jupiter. All operational rounds were in (Thor, UK; Jupiter, Italy/Turkey). Range 1,500nm.

Plus the operational nuclear tipped ASAT Thors based on Johnston Island.

On average at any given time there would be 64 useable Thors in the UK; one on each pad, plus a spare held at each Wing HQ. Transporting a missile from Wing HQ to a dispersed site took a day, add another day or so to mate it to the launch mount, program the RV and mate it to the missile, do the post-installation checks etc. Not a speedy reload by any means.

Great info….thanks for sharing!!

Some useful information and links in this recent thread as well http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=120015&highlight=Thor 😉

Funnily enough I was at the Metheringham airfield visitors centre last night for a cracking talk by an x-vulcan chap – there is a small display there regarding Thor’s based nearby at Coleby Grange back in the day.

These may help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Emily#RAF_Strategic_Missile_.28SM.29_stations_and_squadrons

http://www.airfieldinformationexchange.org/community/showthread.php?270-Coleby-Grange

Cheers

Does anyone know where they were located?

thor

thankyou for the responses most interesting, thanks again

Stateside pads were experimental sites, flight test. Ditto Jupiter. All operational rounds were in (Thor, UK; Jupiter, Italy/Turkey). Range 1,500nm.

Excluding the regular rocket launch pads at Cape Canaveral, the US dedicated Thor pads were structurally basically the same as the UK ones.

It was found that the blast deflectors on the launch mounts had to be replaced after three launches, and some cabling and equipment would be damaged each time, but the simplest reason is that if the UK pads had actually had to be used there probably wouldn’t be a pad left to reload after the incoming strike…

On average at any given time there would be 64 useable Thors in the UK; one on each pad, plus a spare held at each Wing HQ. Transporting a missile from Wing HQ to a dispersed site took a day, add another day or so to mate it to the launch mount, program the RV and mate it to the missile, do the post-installation checks etc. Not a speedy reload by any means. 😉

All the best,
PB

Quite. MAD was the doctrine then, so the next wave of weapons would have been flint axes and arrowheads.

Moggy

I would imagine that the planning went along the lines of twenty minutes after launching, the only thing left alive would have been a few cockroaches.

Not much point in worrying about firing a second load.