Blue Streak missile/rocket



The de Havilland Propellers Blue Streak was a British medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM), and later the first stage of the Europa satellite launch vehicle. Blue Streak was cancelled without entering full production.

Europa was tested at Woomera Test Range, Australia, and later at the Kourou Launch Site in in French Guiana. Following launch failures, the ELDO project was cancelled in 1972 and development of Blue Streak was halted.

Subcontractors included the Sperry Gyroscope Company who produced the missile guidance system whilst the nuclear warhead was designed by the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.

From the early days of the Polaris program, American senators and naval officers suggested that the United Kingdom might use Polaris. In 1957 Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke and First Sea Lord Louis Mountbatten began corresponding on the project. After the cancellations of the Blue Streak and Skybolt missiles in the 1960s, under the 1962 Nassau Agreement that emerged from meetings between Harold Macmillan and John F. Kennedy, the United States would supply Britain with Polaris missiles, launch tubes, ReBs, and the fire-control systems. Britain would make its own warheads and initially proposed to build five ballistic missile submarines, later reduced to four by the incoming Labour government of Harold Wilson, with 16 missiles to be carried on each boat. The Polaris Sales Agreement was signed on April 6, 1963.