The Empire Strikes Out - Canada's Defence & The Commonwealth Space Program - Part 2 by Robert Godwin

From The Space Library

Contents 1 A Commonwealth Space Program/Cancelling the Arrow 2 A Government Not Interested in Space 3 Sounding Rockets and the Black Brant 4 The Velvet Glove 5 Footnotes

A Commonwealth Space Program/Cancelling the Arrow

On January 12th 1959 Phil Lapp and the members-in-council of the CAS sent a brief to Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker urging him to support Canada’s involvement in a Commonwealth Space Program. In part the brief said, "Canadian participation in the program would be of great value toward sponsoring and maintaining in this country a nucleus of scientists and engineers proficient in the vital space research frontier, and at the same time permit this country to take its rightful place in the astronautical field."

The brief then went on to urge the government of Canada to send up to four scientists to London to attend the already-planned Commonwealth space summit. The response from Diefenbaker was swift and essentially said that he was deferring to his Defence Minister; Victoria Cross winner, General George Pearkes. On February 6th Pearkes replied that the government was not in a position to be sending either participants or observers from the CAS or from any other organisation to either the symposium or the IAC in London.^[1]

Surprisingly the Defence Minister showed no interest in sending anyone to learn the latest information about missiles, which was, of course, what everyone would be discussing at IAC. This was all the more remarkable considering what happened two weeks later. On February 20th the Government of Canada withdrew their support for the CF-105 Avro Arrow fighter interceptor program, in favour of missiles; specifically the Boeing Bomarc-B medium range surface-to-air nuclear missile.

A Government Not Interested in Space

The day before replying to the CAS Pearkes had been in a secret cabinet meeting at which his own Chief of Air Staff had told him that in his opinion, regardless of the geopolitical state at that moment, Canada would still need 100 to 115 top-notch interceptors with which to defend itself.^[2] But at the exact moment when Pearkes was discarding his fighters and committing Canada to missiles he seems to have chosen to disregard the potential importance of missiles for space research.

The Chairman of the CAS Publications Committee John Simpson could barely contain his indignation at Pearkes’ response:

"(Astronautics) is so closely related to the principal element of contemporary military philosophy, a philosophy to which Canada has recently been committed, that the major contributors to the free world's missile development programs are, almost without exception, active in astronautics.

"It is barely possible that Canada cannot afford to attend this Commonwealth round-table, but it is certain that she cannot afford not to."^[3]

Pearkes commitment to missile interceptors became even more apparent in the days ahead.

Sounding Rockets and the Black Brant

The so-called sounding rocket would come to full fruition under the cover of the International Geophysical Year, ostensibly for peaceful scientific research, but it was also an extremely useful tool for investigating atmospheric conditions and other problems associated with bringing nuclear warheads back from space. In 1955 a larger vehicle named Black Knight, which could actually carry a dummy warhead, was initiated at the Royal Aircraft Establishment with Saunders Roe as the contractor. It used experimental liquid fuel engines made by Armstrong Siddeley Ltd.

Britain, France, Canada, the USA and many other countries quickly developed sounding rocket technology. Britain first began work on a large solid-fuel rocket for this purpose in 1954 at the Rocket Propulsion Establishment (RPE) at Westcott in England. Work was also underway there on Blue Streak and data from a high altitude sounding rocket would be extremely useful to the designers of the warhead for the LRBM. A team at RPE worked from 1954-1956 creating what would become the Raven solid-fuel rocket motor. The Raven would first launch Britain's most successful sounding rocket, the Skylark, on February 13th 1957.

One of the companies involved in developing Skylark was the Bristol Aeroplane Company.^[4] The Skylark was essentially a 17 inch diameter, 17 foot-long tube, a nose cone for a payload, some fins and the Raven rocket engine. In August 1955 Lionel Dickinson who had been a supervisor working on solid rocket fuels at Westcott became one of the flood of scientists to emigrate to Canada; right in the middle of the development of Skylark.^[5]

When the Canadian government announced their own plans to get into the sounding rocket business in 1956 the obvious home for such a project was the Canadian Armament Research & Development Establishment (CARDE) in Valcartier Quebec, where the Canadian-designed, and built, Velvet Glove air-to-air missile had been developed and which had highly sophisticated facilities for creating explosives and rocket propellants. Dickinson had been snapped up by CARDE not long after arriving in Canada.^[6] In April 1958 Brigadier Waldock, chief superintendant of CARDE, publicly announced plans to build a high altitude rocket using an advanced fuel developed by Dickinson which would later be called Cardeplex.^[7] He said that the fuel was to power defensive missiles which must be able to leave the ground extremely quickly if they were to stand any chance of intercepting an enemy missile or bomber.^[8] Cardeplex was a combination of a polyurethane composite mixed with a perchlorate oxidizer. It could be loaded in such a way that it would adhere to the inner walls of the rocket and burn evenly from the inside-out. This made it possible to make the walls of the rocket thinner and lighter.

The first iteration of this Canadian rocket was named the Propulsion Test Vehicle or PTV. CARDE had acquired some Skylarks from the Bristol Aeroplane Company in England. Bristol modified the Raven's fore and aft compartments to accommodate CARDE's requirements, they then manufactured the engine casing and the fin assembly. Bristol Aero-Industries of Winnipeg built the nosecones. The resulting British/Canadian hybrid would become known as the Black Brant.^[9]

The Velvet Glove

Later CARDE turned to Canadair in Montreal to assist with aerodynamic heating analysis and preliminary structural design work for the more advanced and powerful Black Brant II.^[10] Canadair and CARDE had done extensive work together on the Velvet Glove missile which was to have been used by the CF-100 and CF-105 fighters. Velvet Glove had been cancelled by the St Laurent government and replaced by the Douglas Sparrow II. This cancellation had been at the request of the RCAF who wanted the "best" armaments available for their proposed new interceptor, despite the fact that the Sparrow II was still only in early development. The cost of developing Sparrow II to work with the Canadian fire control system was going to be considerably more expensive than the Hughes Falcon missile system which was A.V. Roe's preference to replace Velvet Glove. Avro protested the change but to no avail. Sparrow II was going to bring business to Canadair and the cost was dismissed at the time. By 1956 Douglas abandoned any hope of making the missile work and dropped out of the program. In September 1958 the Diefenbaker government agreed to allow Avro to replace the Sparrow with the Hughes Falcon missile, saving a considerable sum of money and bringing down the overall cost of the CF-105 program. However, the loss of jobs in the Canadian missile and electronics industry caused by this cancellation began a brain drain of experts to other countries. Since both Velvet Glove and Sparrow II had been cancelled Canadair was keen to stop these losses and so was on the lookout for a new missile program. The experience learned by Canadair during the two air-to-air projects made them the ideal candidate to help CARDE create a larger rocket.^[11]

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Footnotes

1. ^  ^{Proceedings of the CAS Vol 1 No 1 Feb 1959}
2. ^  ^{Minutes of Cabinet Defence Committee Feb 5th 1959}
3. ^  ^{Proceedings of the CAS Vol 1 No 1 Feb 1959}
4. ^  ^{The Skylark Rocket by Matthew Godwin - 2007 Beauchesne}
5. ^  ^Ancestry.com
6. ^  ^{The Long Road to Stockholm – Peter Mansfield Oxford 2013}
7. ^  ^{Composite Propellant Development (CARDE) L.A. Dickinson 1958}
8. ^  ^{Globe and Mail Apr 18 1958}
9. ^  ^{Aerodynamic Characteristics, Preflight Calculations And Flight Test Results Of Carde's Black Brant I (CARDE) Clark and Delisle}
10. ^  ^{Flight March 10 1961}
11. ^  ^{Space Technology and Industry #3 1965 CASI}