Setback for UK’s nuclear ambitions as missile fails to find target

The UK’s nuclear defence programme was undergoing major development when The Post went to press on January 15, 1961.

Despite becoming only the third world power to obtain nuclear weapons in 1952, the delivery method at the time, V-bombers, was seen as increasingly vulnerable to attack.

The government was also concerned that the UK could be left to fight an enemy on its own, as had

happened after the First World War, so set about creating a new weapons programme. Codenamed Polaris, the programme would lead to the first submarine-launched nuclear missile, but it was not without its problems.

“Polaris missile swerves off course,” reported The Post. “It was destroyed by the range safety officer only a minute after it was launched from a nuclear submarine lying below the surface of the Atlantic off

Cape Canaveral, Florida. This was the second time in three days that a Polaris fired from the same submarine, the Robert E Lee, had been destroyed deliberately after going offcourse. After it had been exploded, fiery fragments fell back into the Atlantic.”

The Polaris missile programme, based at the Clyde Naval Base, went into service in 1968 and continued until 1996, being replaced by the current Trident system.