At the end of World War II, the two global superpowers of the world, the United States
and the Soviet Union, scrambled to kidnap, bribe, rob and naturalise hundreds of former
Nazi rocket scientists and engineers.
These researchers would be taken back to the homeland and forced to work for the space
programme of their new respective countries, pioneering space travel and eventually putting
people into space, landing men on the moon, creating space stations, and laying the groundwork
for all of modern space travel.
But it wasn’t just the Reds and the Blues who stole German rocket technology.
There was a third superpower in her twilight years with an interest in taking the scientific
spoils of war home, in a last-ditch attempt to expand her crumbling Empire to the dawning
frontier of space.
This is the time Great Britain went to space, and then immediately gave up.
[Ethereal music]
During the war, the Germans had invented some rather good medium range missile technology
called V2 rockets, which could be launched from Northern Germany and land in London to
kill people.
While the allied air powers needed to send manned aircraft to bomb German cities, all
the Germans needed to do was fire off a few rockets from the relative safety of a small
rocket base in Lower Saxony.
This is a very powerful weapon and after the war it was clear by the crumbling relationship
between the East and the West that somebody had to liberate this technology for use in
the upcoming Cold War to get the upper hand.
Most of these bases were in the British sector of a divided Germany but there was absolutely
no way the Soviets or Americans would allow one tiny island complete control over all
the rocket science in the world.
So by the time British occupation troops made it to these rocket bases, most of the documents
relating to rocket technology had already been looted by the Americans.
The scientists too had already been bought out by the other powers, with the top scientists
like Werner Von Braun opting to surrender to the United States because he hated the
French, was scared of the Russians, and didn’t think the British could afford him.
Genuine quote by the way.
But the British soon came to realise that even if they couldn’t get the people who
designed the rockets, the next best thing would be to kidnap those who operated the
rockets.
Ironically, those who fired the rockets at Britain were now wanted to be employed by
Britain, hence the name Operation Backfire.
Prisoner of War camps were furiously searched for anyone who had any knowledge of how to
operate a V2 rocket.
Meanwhile, 2,000 Canadian engineers had been employed to completely repair the missile
silos and soon enough German technicians had been found to fire three test rockets so that
British scientists could make notes and dissect how the machines worked.
Clearly, this is not the most efficient way to research rockets.
Great Britain naturally didn’t have the same amount of money or intelligence that
the USA or the Soviets had, especially since they had a lot more important things on their
mind than faffing about with space toys.
But what they did have an advantage in was some of the only information available on
a chemical called High Test Peroxide, which is a very explosive chemical formula, making
it very useful when developing...medium range nuclear missiles.
[SUDDEN EXPLOSION]
As the Cold War got colder, Britain looked for new ways in staying relevant on the world
stage.
One of these things was an independent nuclear arsenal, and using the Peroxide formula, they
were able to develop a missile programme.
The resulting Blue Steel and Blue Streak missiles could travel at speeds of nearly 4,000 kilometres
per hour and were capable of nuking the Soviets before anyone could shoot them down.
They were extremely reliable, having never failed a test mission, and could even go into
space despite it was never designed to do that.
Using High Test Peroxide was decades ahead of its time, with the Americans and Soviets
not realising it’s potential well into the 1980s.
It was at this point that British scientists realised they’d gotten quite carried away.
They’d developed such good missile technology but it was really expensive and really impractical.
The Government was looking at simply buying American missiles save on cost anyway so what
was the point of all this?
Britain had just accidentally invented a rather powerful but rather useless rocket.
It was time to pivot away from the military use and towards the scientific use.
[Upbeat Electronic Music]
British scientists soon came to realise that these small and powerful rockets, if launched
at the right time at the right angle with a few modifications, could theoretically get
into orbit.
And if they could put something into orbit, they could soon put a man, and a crew and
anything really, and finally compete with the Russians and the Americans.
But of course, this would be costly.
The Treasury did not like rockets, they were expensive and rarely worked and had no real
benefit to the people the government was elected to serve.
The government gave the space programme the funds for five rockets and two satellites.
It wasn’t much but the scientists were determined to make it work.
The rural Australian village of Woomera was selected as the launch site because the Australians
still liked us at this point.
Woomera is in the middle of nowhere and close to the equator, making it easier to put into
orbit, and launching from the British Isles had the remote chance of crashing into an
oil rig or France or something.
The rockets would use that good old High Test Peroxide.
So starting in June 1969, as the Americans were preparing to put men on the moon, the
British were only just getting started.
It would be called the Black Arrow programme.
[Electronic music plays]
With patchy results and very little to show for itself, in July 1971, the Ministry of
Trade and Industry announced the UK Space programme was to be cancelled with immediate
effect, even though there were still two rockets and one satellite left to launch.
But the fourth rocket and final satellite were already on-route to Australia.
"Surely," the scientists argued, "it would be easier to let us launch the rockets rather
than turning all those ships around to bring them back to the UK to be destroyed?
" “…..[sigh] Fiiiiiine.
But one more.
One more rocket launch.
That’s all you get.”
And so, on the 28th of October 1971, the engineers readied their final rocket for launch.
The satellite inside was named Prospero, after the Shakespeare character who was a wizard
forced to give up magic forever.
It launched in the early afternoon and everything went well to begin with.
It launched fine, the second stage went fine, it got into orbit, nice, nice, then the third
stage yes...and then there was a thunk as Prospero became stuck into the rocket.
If it didn’t free itself it would stay inside the Black Arrow and crash back into the atmosphere
and there was nothing the people on the ground could do.
Communications went dead.
[Satellite beeping]
[Music: Vera Lynn - Land of Hope and Glory]
It had worked.
Somehow, Prospero had made it into space and was broadcasting its sound back to earth.
A tiny piece of a dying Empire, one last expansion, one last corner in which the sun must set.
The reality is less dramatic.
The launch didn’t cause a u-turn, didn’t change the government’s mind, and upon return
to the home islands, most of the scientists were promptly out of a job.
There was little fanfare or celebration, the public were too occupied with the more exciting
Apollo Missions by the United States.
The very next day, all operations of the UK rocket programme were shut down and never
used again; command centers and construction hubs were turned into RAF bases while the
remaining rocket was shoved in an obscure corner of the London Science Museum.
But let it be remembered that for a grand total of one day, the United Kingdom was a
space faring nation.
It is part of an exclusive club of countries who know how to put things into orbit and
keep them there, but part of an even more exclusive club of countries that have given
up the ability.
Prospero is still in orbit.
It stopped broadcasting a signal in 2004, and any attempts to revive it have been futile.
But it’s still up there, the only evidence of a once mighty Empire’s attempt to reach
the next frontier of mankind.
[God Save The King plays distantly]