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Blue Steel was the result of a Ministry of Supply memorandum from 5 November 1954 that predicted that by 1960 Soviet air defenses would make it prohibitively dangerous for V bombers to attack with nuclear gravity bombs. The answer was for a rocket-powered, supersonic missile capable of carrying a large nuclear (or projected thermonuclear) warhead with a range of at least 50 miles (90 km).
The weapon was developed primarily by Avro, with guidance electronics by Elliots . Its design period was protracted, with various development problems exacerbated by the fact that designers had no way of knowing the actual size or weight of the still-hypothetical warhead.
Blue Steel emerged as a pilotless, winged aircraft roughly the size of the experimental Saunders-Roe SR-53 interceptor, with clipped delta wings and small canardIn aeronautics, canard ( French for duck) is a type of fixed-wing aircraft in which the tailplane is ahead of the main lifting surfaces, rather than behind them as in conventional aircraft. The earliest models, such as the Santos-Dumont 14-bis, were seen foreplanes. It was powered by a two-chamber Stentor Mark 101 rocket engine, burning a combination of hydrogen peroxideProperties General Name Hydrogen peroxide Chemical formula H O Appearance Colourless liquid Physical Formula weight 34. 0 amu Melting point 272. 4 °C) Boiling point 423 K (150 °C) Density 1. 4 ×103 kg/ m3 Solubility miscible Thermochemistry ΔH0 -136 and keroseneKerosene or paraffin is a colorless flammable hydrocarbon liquid. It is obtained from the fractional distillation of petroleum at 150°C and 275°C (the to range). At one time it was widely used in kerosene lamps but it is now mainly used as a fuel for jet. (This was a considerable operational problem, because fueling the missile before launch took nearly a half an hour, and was quite hazardous.) The warhead was a Red SnowRed Snow was a British thermonuclear weapon. Its physics package was apparently similar, if not identical, to that of the American W28 warhead used in the B28 nuclear bomb and AGM-28 Hound Dog missile, with an explosive yield of approximately 1 megaton. one- megatonA megaton (symbol MT or Mt is 1,000,000 tons, i. It is also used as a unit of energy, approximately equivalent to the energy released in the detonation of this amount of TNT. A kiloton is one-thousandth of a megaton approximately equivalent to 1,000 tons device.
On launch the rocket engine's first chamber would power the missile along a predetermined course to the target at around MachMach number Ma is defined as a ratio of speed to the speed of sound in the medium in case. The Mach number is commonly used both with objects travelling at high speed in a fluid, and with high-speed fluid flows inside channels such as nozzles, diffusers o 1.5. Once close to the target, the second chamber of the engine would accelerate the missile to Mach 3. Over the target the engine would cut out and the missile would free-fall before detonating its warhead as as an airburst .
Blue Steel finally entered service in February 1963This is a list of aviation-related events from 1963: Events January January 7 Aeroflot commences direct services between Moscow and Havana February February 14 the Indian Air Force receives its first batch of Soviet fighters, Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21s Marc, although its limitations were already apparent. The short range of the missile meant that the V bombers were still vulnerable to enemy SAMA surface-to-air missile SAM is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft. SAMs can be deployed from fixed installations or mobile launchers. The smallest SAMs are capable of being carried and launched by a single person. Radars. A replacement for Blue Steel, the Mark 2, was planned with increased range and a ramjet engine. but this was cancelled in 1960 due to difficulties in developing Mark 1. The British also sought to acquire the American AGM-48 Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile, and were greatly frustrated when that weapon was cancelled in late 1962.
Blue Steel officially retired 21 December 1969, with Britain's chief nuclear capacity passing to the submarine fleet.