General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Owd Codger

Actually it was the Skybolt missile which caused the problems, Skybolt was an air launched nuclear tipped missile, which would have been launched from the British V bomber fleet, it was jointly being developed by Britain and America, but they couldn't get it to work, then the Americans decided that the future of nuclear deterrence would be from submarine launched ICBM's, so the Americans cancelled Skybolt, and decided to press on with the Polaris submarine ICBM system, which left Britain in a quandary, Britain could carry on alone with Skybolt, or develop a British submarine based ICBM system, the problem was delivering the nuclear warhead to the target, Skybolt and a ICBM delivery system were extremely expensive to develop, and the Americans did not like sharing their technology, mind you if they did share any information with Britain, it immediately ended up in Soviet hands, because of the spies there were in Britain, those lefty Cambridge University spies.

So Britain decided to follow America and go for a submarine launched ICBM system, and they asked the Americans if we could by the Polaris missile from them, we would build the submarines ourselves along with the nuclear warheads, we just wanted the American rockets, so the Americans said yes, but only if they could have a nuclear submarine base in the UK, and agreeing to that would cause the Britsh government of the day political problems, because of the anti-nuclear lobby, in Britain such as CND etc, but the British government agreed, and the Americans got the Holy Loch nuclear submarine base in Scotland and we got the American Polaris missile system