I
have for a long time been interested in the UK Space and Rocket program
of the 1950s & 60s. The success of this Rocket program was largely
down to the people who worked on it. Despite constant Government
interference and a considerable lack of funds, the Rocket people managed
to produce 2 very successful rockets,
The Black Knight and Black Arrow.
To
assemble and test each rocket before shipment to the Australian launch
site at Woomera, a local test site was required. The Needles Headland
offered a secure site with suitable underground accomodation. In 1955
the Highdown site was leased from the Ministry of War.
Under the
instruction of architect John A. Strubbe, construction began in April
1956. The Needles Headland was transformed looking now like something
out of Quatermass or James Bond. A complex of specialised buildings was
constructed over the New Battery and underground control control and
instrumentation rooms were converted from the old magazines. There 2,200
square feet of control rooms and underground stores, 4,260 square feet
of laboratories and offices and 3.080 square feet of workshops and
smaller machine shops. The dining rooms catered for 80 people at a time.
In all there was space enough for 240 people, a number reached in the
early 1960's.
In the early stages serious consideration was given
to accommodating Blue Streak at the site. This would have meant digging
silos deep into the hillside - impractical but not impossible.
The
10 metre long Black Knight rockets were assembled in the workshops.
Then they were towed down the newly built road along the cliff top above
Scratchell's Bay to one of the two 60 foot high test gantries. The
rockets were erected inside the steel and aluminium towers by men
dressed in protective suits with glass fronted helmets operating one and
a half ton mobile cranes.
During a test firing all activities
followed a strict time sequence, with the operation of the rocket
controlled automatically by a Sequencer unit. At any point the process
could be aborted by the press of a button from several monitoring
positions, most of which were underground. In addition to manual
observations taken from the secure Blockhouse, an array of camera, tape
recorders and specialised devices automatically logged data from several
hundred instrumentation sensors placed within the engine and other
rocket systems.
With the missile successfully tested, a team of
engineers accompanied it to the launch site. In all, 23 single and
two-stage Black Knights were launched, between September 1958 and
November 1965.
The success of Black Knight suggested the need for
Britain to develop a capacity to launch satellites, and in 1965 the
Highdown team started work on Black Arrow, an 18 ton, 13 metre, three
stage rocket designed to put a 300 kilogram satellite into a circular
near-Earth orbit.
Five Black Arrows were built and four launched
into space, the first in 1968. The project reached its zenith on the
28th October 1971 with the launch of the first, and only, all-British
satellite put into space by a British rocket. The experimental
satellite, designated Prospero in space, achieved a near perfect orbit
and carried out short term data collection on micrometeorites and space
erosion.
The concrete bones of the Highdown rocket site are one
of the few reminders of the successful, if short-lived, British space
programme of the latter half of the 20th Century. The last Black Arrow
now resides at the British National Science Museum. Another reminder is
Prospero, which will continue to orbit the Earth until at least the year
2200.
In 2012 I finally managed to pay the Highdown Rocket Site a visit. I have
to admit I was very excited about finally visiting this place, and must
say I was not disappointed. The former control rooms of the site now
house the exhibition space, which is small, but very informative with
lots of old black and white photos of men dressed in lab coats sitting
at banks of equipment. It all looks and feels very much like something
out of an old Quatermass
film. At times you can almost feel the excitement and enthusiasm that
these scientists must have had, knowing that they were working (on a
very tight budget) on what could be the UK's own independent space
program. Alas it was not to be and after one successful Satellite launch
(Prospero) the UK
Rocket/Space program was shut down, and the Highdown Test Site was
dismantled and all but forgotten. Then in 2003 volunteers and the
National Trust started to clear the site. It was finally opened to the
public in 2004, but is definitely an on going process of restoration.
Its a bit of a drive to the Highdown site, but its only £4
to park for the day at the Needles car park. Then its a bimble along the
cliff path to the Needles Battery.
The only mistake I made that day was to go into the Needles park, which
is pretty dire and grim (over priced fast food and very dodgy coffee)
Inside observation block house
The full story of Highdown and the Rocket Men can be watched on YouTube
