Land Rovers That Fire Missiles
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LAND ROVERS THAT FIRE MISSILES Clive Elliott describes how the humble Land Rover can have the audacity to destroy tanks and even aircraft! The Land Rover represents a very cost-effective military vehicle and its appeal lies in the ability to be modified into a wide range of roles. This can be as a delivery vehicle for troops and equipment or as a platform for installations such as radios and weapons. These installations range from the weaponry just being bolted down to a more thoughtful design for a fighting machine. In the early stages of weapon development it is more likely to take the form of an improvisation that can be used to demonstrate a weapons system. Many of the missile systems fitted to Land Rovers were really adaptations of man-portable weapons, most of what follows is about British weapons including some information that has not been published before. Although this is meant to be about Land Rovers, it is as much about the story of British guided weapons. HESH & HEAT Warheads HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) warheads work by the warhead squashing into a “cow pat” and on detonation the shock wave blows large scabs of metal from the tank itself to cause devastation within. HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) warheads produce a jet of liquid copper, which burns a narrow hole through the armour to cause a pressure wave inside the tank that can kill the crew and detonate explosives. Alternative and more descriptive titles are “shaped” or “hollow charge” warheads, the hollow part refers to the conically shaped copper lined cavity in the warhead that is surrounded by the explosive. ORANGE WILLIAM & MALKARA Orange William Malkara On the face of it Orange William and Malkara were very similar Anti-Tank Guided Weapons (ATGWs) developed independently for deployment principally in the Middle East. This is why Orange William was cancelled in 1958 as the proposed launcher was too heavy and the final straw was that there was no alternative to the infra-red command link that was unworkable. In fact very little of that is true! The development of these missiles was intertwined technically, politically, strategically and financially but they were different in many ways. To understand how they were related will also give an insight into how these misunderstandings occurred and how the Land Rover narrowly missed being perhaps the most lethal tank destroyer of the time! Although both missiles used a HESH warhead, a two-stage solid fuel rocket motor and were physically similar, the most significant difference was the range. The original Malkara range was 2,000 yds and Orange William was to be 6,000 yds. To achieve this great distance the controller for Orange William could be up to 4,000 yds away from the launcher i.e. much closer to the target than the launcher. With Malkara the controller was with the launcher so the range was limited by his ability to see the target from the launch vehicle and needless to say by the weight of the command wire that the missile could carry. These factors had a bearing on where and how these missiles might be deployed, with Orange William being regarded as the superior weapon. For either system it was assumed that the launch vehicle would be a tank of some form and this at some stage might be constrained by a river. But the controller for Orange William, being independent of the launcher, could cross the river and proceed to acquire a target. His guidance equipment weighing 100 lb or so might be simply carried or installed in something like a Ferret. In 1951 the Australian Government established a project for the development of the Malkara ATGW. In 1952 the UK drew up the requirement Project J, a wire-guided ATGW with a HESH warhead. Within in a year or so Project J and Malkara would become one of the same. In 1953 the UK proposed a multi-purpose GW that was both anti-tank and anti-aircraft. It was to be under visual control and commanded by a radio link. The impracticalities of this were separated out by the anti- aircraft project being given to Shorts Bros & Harland to develop as Green Light, a test vehicle that became Seacat. The anti-tank element being given to Fairey Aviation Co. to proceed as Project 6 with a team which had largely worked on Blue Sky, an air to air missile that became Fireflash. In 1954 the specification for Project 6 was drawn up under the code name of Orange William. At this stage the command link for Orange William was not IR but by an X-band crystal video receiver. The biggest headache for the designers was the requirement for a minimum launcher-controller separation of 900 yds. Having radioed the command to launch the missile, the operator was in the unenviable position of guiding the missile towards himself by tracking it in a rear view mirror. Having passed, maybe as close as 25 ft to him, he then was required to change the course by guiding it onto the target by observing the flight directly through binoculars. The physiological state of the operator and the effect on his skills was not considered as it was felt the chance of him actually being hit by a rogue missile was “extremely remote”. Fairey felt they could adequately cope with 1,000 yds launcher-controller separation but 900 yds would require a very sharp turn that could not be achieved solely by aerodynamics and assistance was required from rocket jets. Much research was expended in developing the arrangement and construction of jets to facilitate this tight turn and the rocket motor to power it, mindful of the difficulties encountered in Malkara with the stability of the blast pipes and venturii in what was a more straight forward system. The two-stage solid fuel motor was code named Woodpecker and was based around the Stork motor used in Blue Sky. Two-stage means one part of it provides the thrust to get it launched and the sustainer to keep it flying. It was important that the motor was smokeless particularly now that an IR command link was to be used as this was a quicker solution than developing a radio link immune to counter measures. Experience of smoke problems with Malkara were taken into consideration. It was intended that Malkara was to be launched from a modified Centurion FV4010 weighing up to some 50 tons. For development purposes two trailers were modified with mild steel cabs to accommodate the launch and guidance facility. These trailers were to be modified to also cater for Orange William although it was by no means certain how missiles of either type might be accommodated on a tank, particularly obtaining sufficient launch depression if the tank was parked up a slope. These launchers were to have two missiles on launching arms and carry six spare Malkara missiles or four Orange William missiles. The Treasury was not prepared to fund development of a launch vehicle until the missile for it had been developed. This is why many of the proposed launch vehicles were to cater for both missile systems and the later progress meetings were jointly to consider the progress of the two missile projects. The War Office suggested six Comet tanks be modified to accept either missile system. Under half the weight of the FV4010 Centurion, at about 18 tons it was considered air transportable for special operations. Twenty rounds were to be carried with an extraordinary rate of fire of four rounds per minute. This was clearly unrealistic as there was no way a controller could be guiding a missile every fifteen seconds. Even by February 1957 the War Office still felt unable to raise a requirement for a launcher until some experience had been gained with the Comets. Yet if all went to plan Orange William would be available in 1961 but with no launcher given that the time estimated to develop one was 5 to 7 years and Orange William was due to go into service in 1962. The main requirements of the missile and launcher were to destroy the heaviest AFV an enemy was likely to produce and to do this across a major water obstacle. This is why the launcher to controller separation was so great to allow the controller to get near to the target. Depending on the type of operation the controller’s vehicle could be a light vehicle or a normal tank although it should still be able to engage its gun in battle but if all else failed the launch vehicle itself should have the capability to fire and control a missile. Unlike Malkara that relied principally on thermionic valves, Orange William was designed around germanium transistors. However there were two types of silicon transistor were ideally suited to the project but they were only being manufactured on a small scale in USA. No forecasts of the number required could be given nor any clear idea of when they would be available in sufficient quantities. Not least of the design worries was the concern that the missile warhead of 35 lb HE may not have sufficient kinetic energy to kill a tank. The specification drawn up two years earlier was on the basis that 35 lb HE in a 183 mm shell was lethal wherever it hit a tank. These concerns were well founded as later on in 1957 test rounds with HESH warheads were a “complete failure” when fired at a Centurion tank. Thoughts turned to using a HEAT warhead instead but the reduction in weight from a 60 lb warhead (of which 35 lb HE) would mean an increase in missile length of about a foot, something that was not acceptable for the FVRDE design of any launcher.