Blue Boar (bomb)
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Vickers Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public in 18 ...
Blue Boar was a family of British air-launched television-guided
glide bomb A glide bomb or stand-off bomb is a standoff weapon with flight control surfaces to give it a flatter, gliding flight path than that of a conventional bomb without such surfaces. This allows it to be released at a distance from the target rat ...
s of the 1950s which was cancelled during development. A key role was as an
anti-shipping missile An anti-ship missile (AShM or ASM) is a guided missile that is designed for use against ships and large boats. Most anti-ship missiles are of the sea-skimming variety, and many use a combination of inertial navigation system, inertial guidan ...
, using its guidance system to attack the moving targets. It would also replace unguided bombs between against point targets, or be equipped with a
nuclear warhead A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...
. A smaller version was also developed for testing. The name is a randomly assigned rainbow code. The goal of the system was to allow the bomb to be guided to of its target after being dropped from a jet bomber flying at altitude. It could manoeuvre at up to 3.5G so that it could quickly be aimed after breaking through cloud cover as low as . Nuclear-armed versions were primarily intended to provide the launching aircraft with some stand-off range and avoid overflying the target, gliding about from the launch point. In this role, guidance using
H2S radar H2S was the first airborne radar system, airborne, Airborne ground surveillance, ground scanning radar system. It was developed for the Royal Air Force's RAF Bomber Command, Bomber Command during World War II to identify targets on the ground f ...
instead of the television camera was considered. Development was cancelled when it proved too large for a newer generation of jet-powered naval strike aircraft while the nuclear stand-off role went to the much longer ranged Blue Steel. The anti-ship role went to a series of weapons, all of which were cancelled, before finally emerging as another television guided weapon, Martel.


Development

The low accuracy of bombing during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
led most air forces to begin experiments with guidance systems. The only fully operational devices were the German ''
Luftwaffe The Luftwaffe () was the aerial warfare, aerial-warfare branch of the before and during World War II. German Empire, Germany's military air arms during World War I, the of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Army and the of the Imperial Ge ...
s
glide bomb A glide bomb or stand-off bomb is a standoff weapon with flight control surfaces to give it a flatter, gliding flight path than that of a conventional bomb without such surfaces. This allows it to be released at a distance from the target rat ...
s, notably
Fritz-X Fritz X was a German guided anti-ship glide bomb used during World War II. Developed alongside the Henschel Hs 293, ''Fritz X'' was one of the first precision guided weapons deployed in combat. ''Fritz X'' was a nickname used both by Allied a ...
which was used against the
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
with some success during 1943. The
USAAF The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...
also introduced similar systems late in the war, which saw limited use in Europe and in the Far East. In 1946, the UK Air Staff published a report on the Control of Bombs which led to a November 1947 development proposal 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 Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...
(RAE). Starting in March 1949, the RAE released a series of technical notes describing such a weapon. A development contract was won by
Vickers Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public in 18 ...
under Operational Requirement 1059.
Barnes Wallis Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979) was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the "Dambusters" raid) to attack ...
began development under the rainbow code name "Blue Boar". Initial design reports suggested a single weapon system could carry between bombs as their payload. It had to be able to manoeuvre at 3 to 3.5G at sea level in order to provide the required accuracy, but also making them extremely difficult to shoot down. For nighttime use, a second bomb on the same guidance channels would follow three seconds behind the first, and ignite a series of flares once reaching altitude, providing illumination for the television camera. An even larger version, Special Blue Boar, could carry up to , as it was noted that a single larger bomb would be easier to guide than several smaller ones. This was intended for carriage on the emerging V-bomber force. There was also consideration given to guiding these bombs with
H2S radar H2S was the first airborne radar system, airborne, Airborne ground surveillance, ground scanning radar system. It was developed for the Royal Air Force's RAF Bomber Command, Bomber Command during World War II to identify targets on the ground f ...
for true blind bombing. The design consisted of a cylindrical midsection carrying four large rectangular wings with control flaps at the end of each wing. The wings were stored within the bomb casing and forced outward on launch using air pressure from a small air bottle. An ogive nose cone carried the
EMI EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...
television camera and fuse, while a small boat-tail rear section contained a stabilized antenna to send television imagery to the launch aircraft and receive commands from it. Using valve-based electronics, most of the midsection of the bomb contained four large electronics boxes, with the warhead in front, just behind the nose section. The
autopilot An autopilot is a system used to control the path of a vehicle without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allow ...
was from Smiths Aviation, and the hydraulics powering the controls were from British Messier. For nuclear-armed versions the warhead would be a modified Blue Danube. The bomb would be dropped well before the aircraft reached the target. It was designed to fall at an angle of about 40 degrees above the horizon, and a
gyroscopic A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rot ...
system was used to produce a "datum" spot in the television signal that represented that desired angle. The television had a square scanning pattern, but only the center was in sharp focus, representing a field of view about 55 degrees wide. On the receiver television, a crosshair was used by the bomb aimer to keep the target aligned with the bomb's line-of-sight. The controls were designed to allow the bomb to be put on target within six seconds of breaking through clouds at 10,000 ft altitude. This was designed to provide a
circular error probable Circular error probable (CEP),Circular Error Probable (CEP), Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center Technical Paper 6, Ver 2, July 1987, p. 1 also circular error probability or circle of equal probability, is a measure of a weapon s ...
of when dropped from 50,000 ft altitude. EMI carried out a number of tests of the television system against the town of
Westbury, Wiltshire Westbury is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in west Wiltshire, England. The town lies below the northwestern edge of Salisbury Plain, about south of Trowbridge and a similar distance north of Warminster. Westbury w ...
as a sample target. This started with normal aerial photography that was optically degraded to what they expected the television signal to look like at night when illuminated by flares. The same images were then recorded from a television monitor. These demonstrated fairly good performance but were subject to multipath distortion. EMI suggested this could be reduced if the system moved from the 300 MHz transmission link to
microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than other radio waves but longer than infrared waves. Its wavelength ranges from about one meter to one millimeter, corresponding to frequency, frequencies between 300&n ...
frequencies, and that the quality of the image would be greatly improved by moving to millimetre wavelengths and using the improved
bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...
to carry the signal from a higher resolution Emitron camera. Much depended on the quality of the camera stabilization and the link from the bomb to the bomber. To test these, the camera system was fit into the nose of ''WM262'', a
Gloster Meteor The Gloster Meteor was the first British jet fighter and the Allies' only jet aircraft to engage in combat operations during the Second World War. The Meteor's development was heavily reliant on its ground-breaking turbojet engines, pioneere ...
NF.11
night fighter A night fighter (later known as all-weather fighter or all-weather interceptor post-Second World War) is a largely historical term for a fighter aircraft, fighter or interceptor aircraft adapted or designed for effective use at night, during pe ...
, replacing the AI Mk. X radar. Vickers test pilot Philip ("Spud") Murphy would dive the aircraft at 40 degrees to simulate the ever-growing image of the target that would be seen by the bomb aimer. Trials were carried out in the UK and Woomera starting in the summer of 1953, where it was dropped from the
Vickers Valiant The Vickers Valiant was a British high-altitude jet bomber designed to carry nuclear weapons, and in the 1950s and 1960s was part of the Royal Air Force's " V bomber" strategic deterrent force. It was developed by Vickers-Armstrongs in respon ...
. The project was cancelled in June 1954, due to it growing too heavy to be carried by naval aircraft in the anti-shipping role while at the same time the Blue Steel missile provided much longer stand-off range in the strategic role and did not require the launch aircraft to remain in the area for guidance. Vickers had spent about £3.1 million on development and had suggested it be continued as it was almost ready for service. The design was later modified for use as the Green Cheese
anti-shipping missile An anti-ship missile (AShM or ASM) is a guided missile that is designed for use against ships and large boats. Most anti-ship missiles are of the sea-skimming variety, and many use a combination of inertial navigation system, inertial guidan ...
. This was essentially a combination of the Blue Boar casing with the
radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...
seeker from the Red Dean air-to-air missile and the
Red Beard is a 1965 Japanese ''jidaigeki'' film co-written, edited, and directed by Akira Kurosawa, in his last collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune. Based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's 1959 short story collection, '' Akahige Shinryōtan'', the film takes p ...
warhead. This also proved too heavy and was ultimately cancelled. Ultimately, the role was filled by the Martel, another television-guided weapon. Only a single example is known to exist today, on display at the
Brooklands Museum Brooklands Museum is a motoring and aviation museum occupying part of the former Brooklands Motor Course in Weybridge, Surrey, England. Formally opened in 1991, the museum is operated by the independent Brooklands Museum Trust Ltd, a private l ...
.


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* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Blue Boar (bomb) Aerial bombs of the United Kingdom Cold War military equipment of the United Kingdom Abandoned military projects of the United Kingdom Guided bombs Rainbow code