The Rocket Propulsion Establishment at Westcott, Buckinghamshire on the site of the former

RAF Westcott RAF Westcott is a former Royal Air Force station located near Westcott in Buckinghamshire, England. The site fully opened in September 1942 and was the base of No.11 Operational Training Unit (OTU) flying the Vickers Wellington medium bomber ...

has made a number of notable contributions in the field of rocket propulsion, including input on the rocket design for the Blue Streak missile and the propulsion systems on Chevaline. It was also known as the Guided Projectiles Establishment and PERME Westcott (Propellants, Explosives and Rocket Motor Establishment, Westcott). For many years this establishment was regarded as so secret that it was not marked on

Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was ...

maps, although it was present, from necessity, on maps for the use of pilots.

History

The establishment was set up in April 1946 under the

Ministry of Supply The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. A separate ministry, however, was responsible for air ...

. In the initial years a team of German scientists worked at the site, and examples of German weapons were on-site for study. These included the

V-1 flying bomb The V-1 flying bomb (german: Vergeltungswaffe 1 "Vengeance Weapon 1") was an early cruise missile. Its official Reich Aviation Ministry () designation was Fi 103. It was also known to the Allies as the buzz bomb or doodlebug and in Germany ...

; V-2;

Feuerlilie Feuerlilie (English: fire lily) was the code name of a German anti-aircraft missile, which was developed in 1940 and was shelved because of problems with the controller and the drive section at the end of January 1945 in favour of other projec ...

F-55 subsonic missile;

Messerschmitt Me 163B The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet is a rocket-powered interceptor aircraft primarily designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt. It is the only operational rocket-powered fighter aircraft in history as well as th ...

rocket-propelled interceptor; Rheintochter-1 anti-aircraft missile; Ruhrstahl X-4 air-to-air wire-controlled missile; Enzian E-1 3,150-lb missile;

Henschel Hs 298 __NOTOC__ The Henschel Hs 298 was a 1940s German rocket-powered air-to-air missile designed by Professor Herbert Wagner of Henschel. Design and development The Hs 298 was designed specifically to attack Allied bomber aircraft and was the first ...

anti-aircraft missile; Hs 293 anti-shipping weapon; and Schmetterling and Wasserfall anti-aircraft missiles. Until the mid 1990s, Westcott undertook the design and development of rocket motors, and was responsible for most of the rocket motors used in British guided missiles and research vehicles. The design of these complete missile systems was undertaken by the

Royal Aircraft Establishment The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), before finally losing its identity in me ...

at its facilities in Farnborough and Bedford. In 1984 the Rocket Propulsion Establishment came under the control of the

Royal Ordnance Factories Royal Ordnance Factories (ROFs) was the collective name of the UK government's munitions factories during and after the Second World War. Until privatisation, in 1987, they were the responsibility of the Ministry of Supply, and later the Minis ...

, and in 1987 control passed to the private sector when

British Aerospace British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. Formed in 1977, in 1999 it purchased Marconi ...

took over Royal Ordnance.

Projects

Example British rocket and missile programmes with RPE involvement follow, many of which were eventually abandoned: *

Black Arrow Black Arrow, officially capitalised BLACK ARROW, was a British satellite carrier rocket. Developed during the 1960s, it was used for four launches between 1969 and 1971, all launched from the Woomera Prohibited Area in Australia. Its final fl ...

– Waxwing third-stage motor *

Black Knight The black knight is a literary stock character who masks his identity and that of his liege by not displaying heraldry. Black knights are usually portrayed as villainous figures who use this anonymity for misdeeds. They are often contrasted wit ...

Jaguar The jaguar (''Panthera onca'') is a large cat species and the only living member of the genus ''Panthera'' native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the largest cat species in the Americas and the thi ...

– first-, second- and third-stage motors *

Skylark ''Alauda'' is a genus of larks found across much of Europe, Asia and in the mountains of north Africa, and one of the species (the Raso lark) endemic to the islet of Raso in the Cape Verde Islands. Further, at least two additional species are ...

* Sea Slug missile – for naval use

Present day

Much of the site is now Westcott Venture Park, a business park for light industry. Businesses include a division of Norwegian company

Nammo Nammo, short for Nordic Ammunition Company, is a Norwegian/Finnish aerospace and defence group specialized in production of ammunition, rocket engines and space applications. The company has subsidiaries in Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switze ...

, which continues design and manufacture of the

LEROS Leros ( el, Λέρος) is a Greek island and municipality in the Dodecanese in the southern Aegean Sea. It lies (171 nautical miles) from Athens's port of Piraeus, from which it can be reached by an 9-hour ferry ride or by a 45-minute flight f ...

rocket engines, developed by Royal Ordnance; Airborne Engineering Ltd whose capabilities include rocket system design and testing; and Reaction Engines Ltd who began construction on a rocket test facility to develop their

SABRE A sabre (French: �sabʁ or saber in American English) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the early modern and Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such as the ...

rocket engine concept in 2017. In 2016, the UK Government announced plans to develop a National Propulsion Test Facility at the site. In 2013,

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

designated the surviving test-stands and control rooms as Grade II* or Grade II

listed buildings In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ire ...

References

{{authority control 1946 establishments in England Aylesbury Vale Military research establishments of the United Kingdom Research institutes in Buckinghamshire Rocket engine manufacturers of the United Kingdom Rocketry Space programme of the United Kingdom Grade II* listed buildings in Buckinghamshire Grade II listed buildings in Buckinghamshire