The Highest Hurdle

The Nuremburg raid showed how an effective air defence system could function under ideal conditions. German Nachtjagdgruppen tore into the bomber stream on the outward leg of the raid, with 82 aircraft lost before the target was even reached. Nuremberg suffered minimal damage, with many of the bombers having bombed the city of Schweinfurt. Bomber Command had suffered its greatest loss of the war.

Ten years later Bomber Command was preparing for the arrival of the V-bomber force, with the Vulcan due to come into service in mid 1960. The Air Staff, many of whom had been involved in Bomber Command's wartime operations, became increasingly concerned about the V-bomber's ability to survive in Soviet airspace. Intelligence estimates advised that the Soviet air defence system was improving rapidly and would continue to do so for the forseeable future. The Vulcan, destined to become the mainstay of Bomber Command and the succeeding Strike Command, depended on altitude and speed to perform its mission. The specification for the Vulcan, written in the late 1940s, hailed from an era when the anti-aircraft gun and the interceptor were the sole means of defence. This reliance on speed and altitude was only valid until Soviet fighters and missiles improved in quality and quantitiy. Anti-aircraft guns and fighters could be countered by flying higher and in the late Forties, this was the technique of choice. Unlike the Strategic Air Command's B-47 and later B-52 aircraft, none of the V-bombers possessed defensive armament, nor was there a long range escort fighter in the F-101 Voodoo mould, in the offing in the UK. The prospect of a repetition of Nuremberg must have weighed heavily on their minds. Papers in the Public Record Office at Kew, West London describe the magnitude of the possible loss.

Three solutions were proposed. The first was to provide a stand-off weapon for the V-bombers, the second, boosting the over target altitude with an auxiliary rocket, while the third was to replace the V-bombers with a high speed bomber and reconnaissance aircraft.

The stand-off weapon, the Blue Steel missile, entered operational service in February 1963, providing stand-off capability for Strike Command until 1970. The second was tested by the fitting a Napier Double Scorpion rocket motor in the bomb bay of an English Electric Canberra. While this was successful in the case of the Canberra, which set a World Altitude record of 70310ft (21427m) in 1957, fitting such a device to a Vulcan proved rather more difficult. In fact it wasn't attempted due to the ultimate solution, the change in the Vulcan's role to low level penetration.

The third solution is still shrouded in controversy and debate to this day. It involved a completely new project to replace the V-force in its entirety with a new aircraft. That solution was Operational Requirement 330.

Invitations to tender for OR.330 were issued to A.V. Roe, Vickers, Handley Page, English Electric and Shorts in 1954. All responded with designs to produce a high speed reconnaissance aircraft capable of cruising at Mach 2.5. This requirement, later modified to include a bomber role, became RB.156D, outlined an aircraft to replace the V-bombers in the 1960s. The Vulcan replacement, for want of a better description, was to be capable of Mach 3, carry a crew of three, a reconnaissance suite including Side Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR) and nuclear weapons.

Perhaps the original fears of another Nuremberg, of a trail of burnt-out Vulcans across the Soviet Union, still weighed heavily on the minds of the military strategists at Bomber Command. A further requirement was drawn up in the shape of OR.336, a major reassessment of the RAF's bomber requirement, to produce a bomber aircraft capable of penetrating Soviet airspace at speeds in excess of Mach 5. This was the first mention of a hypersonic aircraft by the RAF's planners.