Site of Second World War guided missile development Site, The Naze (EHER 21460)

This is the site where the first British attempts to develop a guided missile took place in 1944. The site comprised a high lattice tower, a launching ramp, a ‘spinning pit’ which housed a centrifuge, and a vast vertical grid of latticework measuring 30 feet high and 60 feet wide. Numerous test missiles were launched from this site, and their trajectories photographed and mapped against the lattice grid as engineers perfected their understanding of the rockets’ trajectories. The installations at this site enabled the first launch of a radar-guided anti-aircraft missile of British design which was a very significant development in British warfare during the Second World War.

Towards the latter part of World War Two, an area to the north of the Naze became the site of one of the first attempts to develop a British guided missile. Craftsmen of the Army states, 'One of the outstanding achievements of the AA Command Research Establishment was the development of the first guided missile designed to fly up a radar beam. The device called Brakemine, which was revolutionary in many ways was developed by Major Hugh Sedgefield, who had outlined his ideas to his Chief in early 1941. Drawing work started in 1944. The first trial round was fired in September of the same year – at a time when beam radar, on which the whole concept depended, was only four and a half years old. The first successful round was fired towards the end of 1945'. <1> 'Doodlebugs - The Story of the Brightlingsea Built Air scene Museum Replica and the Original VI's museum' gives a finely-detailed record of the work at the site under the chapter heading 'The Walton-on-the-Naze Guided Missile Story'. Written by one of the serving personnel, Lindsay Williams, it is invaluable reading. On the layout of the site he writes, 'Just to the right of the farm buildings at the end of the Naze road, there was a mysterious complex of large wooden and Nissen buildings, a high latticed tower, a circular mound of earth some thirty feet in diameter, a launching ramp and a huge vertical grid about thirty feet high and sixty feet wide'. <2> The circular mound surrounded a “spinning pit", effectively a centrifuge to test the efficacy of radio valves at high rates of acceleration. The launching ramp was an anchored-down 3.7-inch gun with its barrel removed. The ramp was mounted on the gun chassis so that it could be turned in any direction to launch the missile. The missiles themselves were 11 feet long and 18 inches in diameter. The vertical grid was a criss-cross latticework of wires giving 6-inch squares with lights at the intersections, some 7,200 in all. With each launch being filmed through the grid, the radar-guided path of the missile could be analysed. An aerial photograph taken in July 1946 shows the huts, the “spinning pit”, possibly three 3.7-inch gun bases, the radio aerial and what appear to be four concrete bases perhaps for supporting the masts which held the grid upright. <3> <6> Derick Collison, serving with the Royal Artillery Survey Regiment, was sent to Walton in 1946. He confirms much of the above. He and his colleagues “operated the cameras, sent exposed film to Kodak for processing and then, on return, using a microscope, examined each frame and recorded horizontal and vertical movements of the rocket. This then enabled the boffins to perfect the rockets’ trajectories”. He states that soon after 1946 the test site was relocated to Woomera in Australia. <4> <5> Lindsay Williams states that “….the Walton Experimental Establishment moved to Aberporth in West Wales”. No date is given. The site was visited in March 2012. No remains of buildings or bases were found but some of the site is now covered with thick gorse and there may be remains beneath this, although this appears unlikely. An entry in Wikipedia, headed “Brakemine”, states "Brakemine was an early surface-to-air missile (SAM) development project carried out in the United Kingdom during World War II. Brakemine used a beam riding guidance system developed at A.C. Cossor, while REME designed the testbed airframes. Trial launches were carried out between 1944 and 1945, and the effort wound down as the war ended. Although Brakemine would never be used in its original form, its use of the "twist-and-steer" guidance method would later be used on the much more capable Bristol Bloodhound. A single Brakemine survives in the REME Museum. Brakemine was the result of two independently developed versions of the beam riding guidance system concept. In 1942, Captain Sedgfield of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) wrote a technical paper on the concept. In 1943, L. H. Bedford, director of research at A.C. Cossor, independently developed the same idea while on a long train ride. The filing of two similar concepts led to a conference at the headquarters of Anti-Aircraft Command, attended by Sir Frederick Pile and Brigadier J.A.E. Burls, Chief Mechanical Engineer of AA Command (and inventor of the Pile Platform). A follow-up meeting started planning for a number of committees to study development of the concept, but worried that this would lead to lengthy delays, Burls decided to allow Cossor a free hand to develop the guidance system while (now) Major Sedgfield would handle rocket development at the AA Command's workshops at Park Royal. Development began in February 1944. The Brakemine missile developed as a simple cylindrical airframe with an ogive nosecone, small elliptical wings mounted near the centre of gravity, and four small fins at the rear. The missile was powered by eight solid rockets taken from the existing Unrotated Projectile anti-aircraft rocket (also used on the RP-3). Later models used six rockets. Its flight was controlled using the "twist-and-steer" method where the main wings would first rotate in opposite directions to rotate in the direction of the manoeuvre, and then in the same direction to provide lift and change its course. A launcher consisting of a rail mounted to an QF 3.7 inch AA gun traversal mechanism was built at Walton-on-the-Naze and test firings started in September 1944. This pre-dates the Fairey Stooge, and is the first launch of an anti-aircraft missile of British design. Early tests resulted in numerous failures, but as the missiles fell into the ocean they could be retrieved for study and the flaws corrected. As the missile aerodynamics improved and the failure rate dropped, further launches were fit with the guidance system, although they were not turned on. A total of 20 of these early designs were built and flown, shots 11 through 20 with the guidance system installed. At this point an improved missile body was introduced, and launches of the fully operational system took place. This was guided using the Radar, A.A. No. 3 Mk. 7 "Blue Cedar", a version of the A.A. No. 3 with a lock-on function. A proximity fuse was ready for use, but a warhead was never tested. When the war in Europe ended in the midst of testing, the Army lost interest in the project. It was, at this time, the best-developed missile system in Britain. Further development was taken up by the Ministry of Supply (MoS), who also took over development of the competing Stooge. The MoS moved the project to their rocket testing facilities at RAF Aberporth in Wales, but no further launches took place. The dozen existing Stooge test airframes were fired from Aberporth before that program also ended. Further development on both projects ended in favour of the much more powerful English Electric Thunderbird, which had little in common with either project. Brakemine would have one lasting influence on British missile development, however. The MoS was interested in a much more capable design with altitude performance to 40,000 feet (12,000 m) and selected Brakemine's twist-and-steer manoeuvring system as the basis for this greatly improved LOPGAP design developed, ironically, by Fairy. Over time these early developments culminated in the Bristol Bloodhound, which competed with the Thunderbird. The surviving Brakemine missile at the REME museum is about 8 feet long, 2 feet in diameter. Two wide-chord elliptical wings are mounted on either side just below the centre of the missile. Much smaller rectangular fins are at the extreme rear of the airframe. The launcher consisted of a bridgework placed on the gun mounting, with two rails on top of the bridgework. The missile fuselage rode in the gap between the rails, with the rockets wrapped around the fuselage and falling away after launch." <7>