RAF Spadeadam was home to the Blue Streak missile programme (the missiles were tested in Woomera Australia)I think construction began on one silo at RAF Spadeadam before they decided to ditch Blue Streak as a nuclear detterant, was the silo ever completed? are there any photos of it? what would the silo have looked like (as in blueprints, if available don't know if still secret)?
I'm as proud a Brit as anyone, but I'm afraid the Germans were way ahead of anyone when it came to missile silos. One of the most (in)famous is La Coupole (The Dome) in northern France. An underground complex of factories, fueling depots and 'silos' connected by (standard gauge, no less) railways it was built to store, fuel and lunch around 50 A4 (V2) rockets a day against London and the invasion ports. It's also believed that it was designed to be capable of launching the proposed A10 rocket which, had the Germans ever finished building, would have been fired on New York. This makes it arguably the first ICBM silo complex in the world, and certainly one with a better claim to the title than anything us Brits built. However, just to show I'm not short on Jingoistic pride..... In 1943 the USAAF were given the mission of destroying La Coupole. Despite valiantly attacking the site multiple times (on occasion with over 500 bombers) over a 2 month period (March to May 1943) and dropping 4,000 tons of bombs they failed to cause any appreciable damage and declared the site impenetrable to air attack. Consequently in June the job was passed to 617 squadron of the RAF (The Dambusters). 3 attacks were aborted due to bad weather, but on in late July using 'just' 12 Tallboy (12,000lb) bombs, 16 Lancasters of 617 caused so much damage that the site was abandoned forever. Cheers
