John KMy point John, was that the V bomber force came into being when the idea of ballistic missile attack had not been fully realised and was still to cause Whitehall plenty of sleepless nights.
The idea of RAF bombers within the UK launching an effective strike (rather than piecemeal reprisal) by the late 1960s has to be questioned.
As to Skybolt, which I appreciate was a different beast to Blue Steel, it didn’t happen. It is therefore questionable whether it would have got close to its design aims surely?
I agree though that targeting Moscow to get at the leadership was unlikely to be successful. Its not as if the PM was to be ensconced in the Admiralty Citadel by that stage is it?
I think we are off topic are we?
I am not saying V Force was perfect, far from it, merely that the money invested in it was wasted when Skybolt was cancelled. An air launched ballistic missile was a difficult prospect, but typically, the final test launch went perfectly, just as the programme was cancelled.
John KJohn, my tuppence worth off topic. There were 45 Vulcan B1s built that would not have been equipped for Skybolt, and of the 89 Vulcan B2s built only 28 of the last produced had the pylons fitted for Skybolt.(British secret projects) The B1s could not carry Blue Steel either (a modification was possible but never ordered), and only B2 numbers 26-61 were modified for Blue Steel. (and with HTP fuel, apparently a horrible weapon to arm, with just a 100mile range)
None of the Victors built could carry Skybolt, there was a possibility of a Victor development that could but that would have cost money the country didn’t have.
Vulcan phase 6 was proposed in May 1960, heavily modifying the B2, but by the time of Skybolt being cancelled, there had only been a tiny amount of money spent on phase 6.
There were also numerous, almost pie in the sky plans for supersonic victor missile carriers, all of which, with the track record of the time would have cost a huge amount of money. But the fact was Skybolt was killed, because it was not needed once Polaris came on the scene.Vulcan B3 would have taken money to develop, and the RAF plan to have 84 Skybolts in the air on a continuous alert on 28 B2’s and an unknown number of B3’s would have eaten up a vast percentage of the defence budget, and bearing in mind that 14 Vulcans crashed in accidents between the 1950′ and 1970’s would have been quite a terrifying prospect for the public to think they might be flying above their heads 24/7. The V force had 36 dispersal airfields across the UK, all of which would have been destroyed within 4 minutes by soviet IRBMs.
So even hypothetically, had Skybolt arrived, there would only be 28 B2s that could carry it, the B3 was unfunded and was just a proposal at that stage, as was any Victor carrier. The Vulcan is more of a medium ranged aircraft so needs tanker support etc etc, the rest of the V force would be restricted to Blue Steel (35 Vulcans and 21 Victor B1s) and free fall bombs. Fielding Skybolt in numbers would I believe have been vastly more expensive than 4 SSBN’s, seeing as the polaris deal was considered at the time to be the bargain of the century. I don’t think the RN would have benefitted at all, and could have even been starved of funds further.
The V force was impressive, but far more vulnerable than a submarine based solution IMO.
You are making some good points. Nonetheless, with over £200 million sunk into V Force, if Skybolt had proceeded, the V Force would have been retained. The point I am making is that it was the unexpected expenditure of £156 million on four Polaris boats which sunk CVA01. In 1966 the government did not plan to leave East of Suez, they were faced with a shortage of money, and the RAF sold the plan to cover East of Suez with the F111K, a bad plan, but they fell for it. It’s a shame the navy didn’t see the writing on the wall, and accept CVA01 being postponed until after the Polaris boats had been built. As it was, £30 million was spent on Phantomising Ark Royal, and only £5 million would have done it for Eagle as well. Two Phantomised carriers would have kept naval aviation going until 1980 quite easily, but faced with the choice of all or nothing, Denis Healey chose nothing.
John KThis still has nothing to do with US/UK SSBN news but –
The old target set of destroying Soviet nuclear weapon launch sites with multiple air delivered weapons was changed once Polaris came in.
The individual target then became the leader of the Soviet Union – the man (Brezhnev). The whole thing was designed to be clear and personal; if Brezhnev attacked us with nuclear weapons he could not hide he would die. Multiple warheads from our sole SSBN would have defeated their ABMs (and he knew that). That is why we no longer needed a fleet of nuclear armed bombers, however useful they may have been previously.
Out of interest the French SSBNs declared target was the agricultural land of the Soviet Union. Again it was a clear threat, if the Soviets attacked France with nuclear weapons they would eventually starve.
Significantly neither the British or French strategic nuclear weapons were for ‘first strike’.
Back on topic, what do we imagine the next generation of SSBN launched ballistic missiles will be targetted against?
That might work provided the Soviet leadership were in Moscow. The USSR is a big place, and frankly the loss of one city would not really deter the Russians, who had come through worse in WWII.
As to who the new SSBN fleet is meant to deter, that’s the big question isn’t it? It seems to me that we only went for a 4 SSBN force by accident whern Skybolt was cancelled, and since then it has become set in stone as a symbol of British military might, without being subject to searching review.
John KHaving read various accounts of what would have been involved in getting the Vulcans airborne and close enough to the USSR to launch the Blue Steel “bombardment” you talk about, I think that their time had definitely come by the introduction of Polaris.
That is not to say that they were useless, but as a guarantee of deterrence (even with targets more diverse than an ABM defended Moscow) they had ceased to be effective.
Particularly if you take into acocunt the fact that a UK nuclear strike would by its very nature have been reactive and reliant on lots of variables working in our favour to get significant weapons on target.
Now moving on from this aspect of the discussion, if the slide to war was underway, would it really have been the case that just one SSBN would have been at sea?
Skybolt was an air launched ballistic missile, nothing like Blue Steel, which was a cruise missile. The V bombers would not even have had to penetrate Soviet air space to deliver them. With dispersed basing in Britain and at air bases in the Middle East and Far East, the V Force with Skybolt would have remained effective well into the 1980s. Each V bomber would have carried two Skybolts, which had megaton warheads. One V bomber so equipped would have had more destrucive power than the entire Polaris fleet.
John KOver 200 at its peak, but with the retirement of the Valiants due to fatigue, we were no longer able to maintain that number. With the withdrawal of the Victors from the bomber role for the same reason (though they could have been fixed), the number we could field dropped to ca. 100.
The Valiants had been withdrawn from V Force in 1964, and retired soon after due to metal fatigue. A total of 217 Victors and Vulcans were built, at a cost of about £1 million each. This expenditure of £217 million was not meant to provide a deterrent only until 1968. The cancellation of Skybolt meant an extra £156 million had to be found to build the four Polaris boats, quite apart from the cost of the missiles. It is this £156 million, which had not been budgeted for when CVA01 was being planned, which led to the cancellation of the carrier programme.
John KAlthough this has nothing to do with US/UK SSBN news – the cold war target for the UK SSBN’s was not simply Moscow. The target was the Soviet leadership (who just happened to be in Moscow). The threat was immediate and personal from one leadership to another.
The point is that with only one SSBN on patrol, and with Moscow defended by ABMs, Moscow was all that the Polaris force could reasonably target. V Force had over 200 bombers dispersed across Britain, Cyprus and the Far East, each armed with megaton weapons. A Skybolt enabled V Force would have been able to destroy much of the USSR, one Polaris submarine could not.
John KJohn
What I’ve got says V-force deterrent stood up on Valiant with Blue Danube at Wittering in ’54 and stood down on Vulcan with Blue Steel at Scampton in ’69. Truth of it though is that whether its 12yrs or 15 its still a fair period and, regardless of Skybolt, the Valiants would have been phased out anyway and the fatigue issue may still have seen the Victors re-roled. The term you use ‘wasted as regards the deterrent’ is meaningless…the aircraft were either a waste of money or not. More than a decade in a strategic role and two further decades in tactical and support roles suggests a decent return on investment to me.
The savings from the Skybolt program plus the savings from continued investment into the Vulcan to keep it viable offset the ‘4 boatload’ Polaris buy and warhead development. The costs for the R-class were largely pumped into Birkenhead and Barrow. I grew up in Birkenhead so I can tell you categorically that the investment that came from those orders was massively valuable to the local economy and put food on tables. For that ‘cost’ the Polaris system we ended up with was a massively more capable one than Skybolt.
The decision not to build CVA-01 was due significantly to the pullback from EoS and the costs of that program plus all the ancillaries that went with it. Had Polaris not been built CVA-01 still gets scrapped. The F-111K thing was spurious, though a good carrot to dangle to rally RAF support for the anti-carrier lobby. No, realistic, number of F-111K’s could replace the multiple roles a carrier air group could on EoS station so anyone suggesting that the F-111’s had a significant part of the CVA-01 demise is missing the point.
Entertaining as all of this is its moving us away from the core issue though. If you believe you are the keeper of the conspiracy theorist knowledge and know better thats fine I’m happy to leave it there.
Whilst Polaris expenditure provided jobs in shipyards, I would point out that building 3 new carriers would have done the same or more. As I have said, the point of defence expenditure, which is a cost to the government, is to defend Britain, not to provide jobs, though that is an ancillary benefit.
As to Polaris being more powerful than Skybolt, I doubt it. The RAF had 200 V bombers, based in the UK, Cyprus and Singapore, each capable of carrying megaton range weapons, two in the case of Skybolt. Polaris with 4 boats meant one on patrol at any one time, armed with 48 warheads in the kiloton range. Polaris represented a decline of strike power of over 90%, and it is for that reason that the submarine based deterrent was tasked with destroying Moscow, that was all it could really do reliably. The V Force could have taken out most of the USSR.
As to quitting East of Suez, that decision was made in 1968, two years after CVA01 was cancelled. I agree the government was grasping at straws to believe that the F111K fleet could replace carrier aviation East of Suez, nonetheless that was the plan. In 1966 the government wanted to renew the deterrent and maintain the East of Suez commitment. Given the £2 billion cap on defence expenditure, CVA01 was sacrificed, that’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a sad fact.
John KComplete nonsense I’m afraid. The V-force provided 15yrs of deterrence and went on to serve in other roles after Polaris took over. The funding for Skybolt, its subsequent upkeep, and the money that would have gone on keeping the bombers viable into the 80’s was simply redirected into the R-class boats. The additional costs, for the submarines, was money spent in our economy and was nowhere near the magnitude of what you are trying to make it out to be. Polaris did not come at the expense of CVA-01.
I am afraid you are wrong. Without Skybolt, Bomber Command was obsolete as a deterrent force. The fact that Vulcans were reassigned to NATO, and Victors converted to tankers, does not negate this fact. The V Force provided the deterrent only for about 12 years to 1968, after that the huge amount spent on developing and building those bombers was wasted as regards the deterrent. Skybolt would have kept the V Force current into the 80s, instead £156 million had to be found to build the four R class, plus the money for over 100 Polaris missiles.
The decision not to build CVA01 was not taken because the government suddenly decided aircraft carriers were useless, or even because the East of Suez commitment was being abandoned. It was because the defence budget was being kept at £2 billion, and there was not the money to fund projects such as F111K, Polaris and CVA01. The RAF convinced the government that air power East of Suez could be provided by the F111Ks, and the government seized on that to save money on building CVA01. It’s really as simple as that. If the RAF could have kept the V Force as the deterrent with Skybolt, there would have been money for CVA01, but it was not to be.
John KSee Annex C – http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-129-101-c-97.pdf
So, instead of a sum estimated up to as high as £115mn in 1967 £’s going straight into the US economy in return for 144 Skybolt missiles, we spent £160mn roughly building the R class bombers at Lairds in Birkenhead and at Barrow. Clearly we needed to cancel CVA-01 after that kind of financial blow to the budget.
You’ve been told how this works John there is no separate ‘Navy budget’….there are allocations from the core budget. The ‘£20bn’ tasked to Successor SSBN will come out of this and will mean projects for all three services will be pushed to the right or otherwise amended on a case-by-case basis so we arent going to see T26 cancelled so we can get Trident!!!.
Also, once AGAIN, that money is going back into the manufacturing sector of our economy so we will see all the indirect benefits from investing in our own industry. Not least the direct taxation revenue from the yard itself and the, speculated, 20000 jobs it supports in the wider local community for the duration of the build!.
Jonsey:
Yes, I’m afraid it was a huge financial blow, I don’t see why you are arguing the point. The Skybolt purchase was meant to allow the V Force to continue to provide the deterrent into the 70s and 80s. The bombers had already been bought and paid for, the cancellation of Skybolt effectively meant that they were a waste of money. Not only did Britain then have to build the four “R” class (at a cost which escalated from £60 million to £156 million), but also buy the Polaris missiles. Obviously, these were bought from the USA, the money went into their economy.
As for your last point about economics, I’m afraid you are wrong, and badly so. Defence spending is a cost, it does not provide economic benefit. If it did, the USSR would have been the richest country in the world. The Trident jobs and all their associated costs represent money diverted by way of taxation from productive uses. Defence spending is necessary, at times vital, but it is not in itself a source of economic benefit to society. If it were, the government might just as well build 8 Trident boats, to make us twice as well off as we would have been with just the 4. I hope you can see the fallacy of your argument.
John KNo evidence in public record office or anywhere else for that matter. Anything you heard from a Royal navy officer down the pub has to be treated with laughter!
I have spent too much time explaining the evidence to be bothered any further.
You believe your fantasies if you want I’m done.
You brought up the question of the RAF “moving” Australia, I pointed out it was meant to have been Gan. If that has upset you so much, I can only apologise.
John KYes it shows how little you have done, the RAF moving Australia or the Island of Gan is a myth. There is no evidence of it in the public records office of such event happening. That you believe this silly myth that has spread across the aviation blogosphere is rather unedifying.
So if there is no memo saying Polaris was the reason for CVA01 cancellation and a huge body of evidence stating otherwise we have to believe your hunch? Stroll on! Polaris came out of central budgeting not what was allocated to the navy.
Look I’m wasting my breath, I tried to be respectful of a different opinion all you are clearly interested in is finding a sacrificial lamb to bring up fleet numbers and are making up all sorts of tosh to back your idea.
If you listen to Royal Navy officers involved, the RAF did move Gan on the maps used, the RAF of course deny it. My point is that it was Gan which is said to have been moved, not Australia, which would be ridiculous.
Please feel free to cite any of your huge body of evidence that Polaris did not end up costing CVA01 any time you like. I would point out that “central budgeting” is not the magic money tree you seem to think it is. If the Secretary of State was trying to keep defence spending under £2 billion, it does not matter what folder the money comes out of, once it’s gone, it’s gone. Frankly, I am only surprised that you don’t think this is the case, but if you have any evidence to the contrary I would be interested to see it, I like to keep an open mind.
John KYes I am John K because unlike you I have actually done some research. There is no evidence that the five fleet carriers were lost due to Polaris. CVA-01 would of cost about £100million pounds according to the treasury whilst one Resolution class submarine cost £40million pounds. Each Polaris missile cost £350 thousand pounds at the time. Total cost of the deterrent was approximately £350 million at 1960’s prices.
A like for like replacement for five carriers is £500million plus and that is not counting the type 82 Escorts or the airgroups (forgot those didn’t you;)).
CVA01 was a victim of a cost squeeze certainly and the RAF didn’t help albeit the rumours of the RAF moving Australia are not true and the MOD worked on the principle the Navy would get both CVA01 and TSR2/F-111. Cancellation of both types contry to popular belief was not directly connected. Cancelling one wouldn’t of saved the other.
Yes anything less then CASD is worthless as it is about the guarantee of retaliation not the system itself as Jonesy pointed out. No other system has the capability to do that.
I think Invincible and her sisters were worth it I don’t see why you bring that up?
Replacing Trident is idealogical for the current government, their advisor’s in the MOD will push CASD with Trident successor. The current Labour party have made no sign of changing that if they win the next election.
Sorry I have said I respect your opinion but I think you are into point scoring hence your rather shrill reply. Best leave it be.
There is no need to get snarky, you are not the only person who can read up on a subject.
If you are looking for a memo saying “CVA01 will be cancelled to pay for Polaris” you won’t find it. But you have to look at the politics of the time. Denis Healey was trying to keep the defence budget under £2 billion, and maintain the deterrent and East of Suez commitments. The cancellation of Skybolt meant the huge investment in V bombers was now effectively wasted, and money had to be found for Polaris, an unexpected new cost factor. The biggest cost on the horizon for the navy was CVA01, so it was sacrificed, the RAF having sold the idea that 50 new F111Ks could provide sufficient air power East of Suez.
You mention the cost of five new carriers, in fact I doubt more than three would ever have been built, the figure of five was merely arrived at because the RN had five fleet carriers in the early 60s. In reality, HMS Centaur was already out of service by 1965, and Ark Royal was not going to be modernised. New carriers were going to replace Victorious, Hermes and Eagle in the 70s. It is true that only one out of eight Type 82 destroyers was built, but then again 14 Type 42s were eventually built, to cover the fleet’s lack of air cover after the demise of the carriers. As to the air groups, the RAF ended up with the Phantoms and Buccaneers which would have flown off the new carriers. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the defence budget was as stretched in 1966 as it is now, and the cost of Polaris had to be borne by the cancellation of other programmes, and the most damaging one to the Royal Navy was CVA01 and the fleet carrier force.
By the way, the RAF didn’t move Australia on the map, I think most people would have noticed that. They moved the island of Gan, to give the impression that F111Ks flying from the air base there could reach Australia if need be, though in fact they could not. It’s amazing what you find out if you do a bit of research.
John KWell sorry John K, as far as I am concerned you are wrong on many levels from thinking that Polaris cost the navy the strike carriers to thinking there isn’t any threat post cold war.
There is and CASD with submarine based ballistic missiles IS cutting our coat according to our cloth. Any other solution is not worth it or waaaaay to expensive!
You are right this is a waste of time…
Time will see but if we keep a nuclear capability it will be CASD with ballistic missiles I assure you.
Are you seriously saying that Polaris did not cost the navy CVA01? If Skybolt had gone ahead, Bomber Command would have continued, and CVA01 would have been built. Without Skybolt, the investment in 200+ V bombers suddenly became redundant, and money had to be found to build 5 SSBNs (soon reduced by Labour to 4). If you think that CVA01 was not the victim of that cost squeeze you are wrong.
As to your comment that any sort of nuclear weapon capability short of SSBNS + CASD is worthless, truly I despair. The idea that any potential enemy the UK might face in the post Cold War world would be blase about, for the sake of argument, a UK with 100 nuclear armed cruise missiles just leaves me speechless. That is the sort of mindset which would, and did, call the Invincible class worthless because they were not fleet carriers. They were not, but they were what we could afford, and did a good job, right up until the point the politicians cut them, as they cut everything, and will, I suspect, cut Trident, whether you like it or not.
John KAgain I point you to my earlier comment, it is not about being able to flatten Moscow. It is about having the ability to respond to any country that attempts to coerce the UK with Nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. CASD with ballistic missiles is a strategic second strike capability, going to cruise missiles is a tactical capability. Useful if you want to stop an army that is flooding through a choke point but not very useful to flatten somewhere globally at short notice.
To guarantee a second strike capability with cruise missiles would mean we would have to buy huge numbers of them and then build huge numbers of bombers or submarines to launch them. If we go for submarines we would probably need 50+ to patrol globally with their cruise missile load. We would need new Cruise missiles as well considering none meet the range requirements we need. Now whilst making 50+ submarines would be good for Barrow it would be eye wateringly expensive and take a long time as there is no way they could quickly service that kind of contract. Then how do we crew them? Add to that a contract to develop new as of yet un-designed cruise missiles and all of a sudden four ballistic missile subs and Trident look very cheap.
Did you read anything of what I said? Pull out East of Suez was the reason for the fleet draw down not Polaris. Polaris was funded out of central government coffers. In respect of CVA01 the navy asked for more then what the treasury was prepared to pay and the F-111K deal was a sop to keep the voters happy when they cancelled TSR2.
Yes you are perfectly allowed to disagree, I respect that but don’t get upset if the majority disagree with you.
With regard to East of Suez etc, I never said Polaris cost us the majority of the surface fleet, I said it cost us our new strike carriers, and that is the case. We pulled out East of Suez due to economic failure, and you have to face the fact that economics determine defence capability, It is no good to say that money for Polaris or Trident does not come out of the Navy Vote, ultimately the government will only spend what it can afford, whatever title you put on it.
I repeat the point that government is quite happy to support projects right until the moment the rug is pulled from under them: Skybolt, TSR2, CVA01, F111K, Nimrod MRA4, the list is endless. Do not be surprised if Trident joins that list.
You seem to think that Britain is still a great power, and it is not. We do not face an existential threat from a nuclear armed state, and have not since the fall of the USSR. I would support the retention of a nuclear weapon capability by the UK, but again say that we must cut our coat according to our cloth. A key task of any navy is to maintain the freedom of the seas for lawful commerce. We have so few ships we cannot even do this in the Caribbean or Indian Ocean, yet you would, it seems, prefer to see huge sums spent on a weapon system designed for a very different world. I would urge you to think about it, but I suspect I would be wasting my time.
John KYou have to be rather careful with those 1968 figures John K, reduction in fleet numbers is not down to the introduction of Polaris.
Firstly the carriers fixed wing and helicopter came out of the huge World War 2 build program. A build program so big that we even sold a number of carriers off at bargain basement prices to anybody who was interested. After that many of the cruisers, destroyers and frigates can their history back to the WW2 procurement program.
Then look at the geopolitics of the time, actually the 1968 date you chose is rather a prophetic date for British defence policy and procurement strategy. Does “East of Suez” mean anything to you? If not I suggest some serious reading as you will find many of your arguments are rather sunk by that term. Up to that date the UK still had an Eastern empire beyond Europe, a significant fleet was needed from surface ships to all those diesel SSK to protect it! In 1968 Harold Wilson announced the UK would pull out of its bases in South East Asia and the Indian Ocean. Add to that all the countries that we had been granting independence, so sustaining a massive increasingly elderly fleet was nonsensical! The draw down of British presence East of Suez is the main reason for the fleet reduction (as well as other services) to concentrate on a European theatre of operations not Polaris.
“East of Suez” and the Suez crisis is also the main reason why the UK decided to maintain an independent second strike capability. During the Suez crisis Russia threatened to go nuclear against Britain and France. America wasn’t interested in helping and actually told us to stop as well. We were coerced into a climb down by two super powers. Gaining an independent second strike capability ensured that no country could coerce us like that again. It is not as many incorrectly think about maintaining a cold war capability to glass Moscow! It is about ensuring no country that has gained nuclear, chemical or biological weapons could coerce us as we have the unstoppable ability to retaliate globally at short notice with extreme force.
Every study made by the MOD and UK government over the decades since Polaris was adopted have concluded that CASD with submarine based ballistic missiles is the cheapest minimum second strike capability we can have. Its a case of don’t shoot the messenger because he is saying things you don’t like!
I respect that you think it is overkill and a financial drain on our defences, personally I think it is a worthwhile investment but we can beg to differ. But please respect that I am only telling you what has been concluded by people far smarter then me! I think you want to have a debate about complete draw down of deterrence, I respect that but all I am telling you is if we do want to keep them CASD with submarine based ballistic missiles was the cheapest solution.
Thank you for your comments.
The reason I chose 1968 is because that is the year the Polaris force took over the deterrent role from Bomber Command.
I am of course aware that that is also the year the Wilson government decided to pull out from East of Suez, and that decision is instructive here, because it was taken almost overnight in response to economic problems, to whit the devaluation of Sterling against the Dollar. We left East of Suez because we could not afford to stay, not because we wanted to. The same may well be true of Trident, the government will stay committed to it right up until the time they reverse policy on a sixpence.
As it was, Polaris did cost the navy CVA01, fleet carriers East of Suez were meant to be replaced by 50 F111Ks, again, a policy which was in place right until it was abruptly cancelled. We need to think again if we need nuclear weapons, and if so, what for. It seems to me we have got into a mindset that nuclear weapons = 4 SSBNS +CASD, and anyone who thinks otherwise, is, in the words of this group’s resident psychologist “pathological”. If the purpose of a discussion forum is to have a place where everyone agrees with each other, then I can’t really see the point, can you?
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