Red Angel was an anti-ship rocket developed for the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were foug ...

. The name was one of the British

rainbow code The Rainbow Codes were a series of code names used to disguise the nature of various British military research projects. They were mainly used by the Ministry of Supply from the end of the Second World War until 1958, when the ministry was brok ...

s. RP-3 ("Three-inch") rockets were used successfully for anti-shipping attacks during World War II. Larger unguided rockets were developed at the end of the war, such as the 'Uncle Tom' to meet Operational Requirement OR.1009. This used six of the three-inch (76 mm)

rocket motor A rocket engine uses stored rocket propellants as the reaction mass for forming a high-speed propulsive jet of fluid, usually high-temperature gas. Rocket engines are reaction engines, producing thrust by ejecting mass rearward, in accordance ...

s in a airframe of diameter. Around 1950 the new ''Sverdlov''-class cruisers caused concern in the Royal Navy, over the fear that the Soviet Navy was expanding into a wide-ranging

blue water navy A blue-water navy is a maritime force capable of operating globally, essentially across the deep waters of open oceans. While definitions of what actually constitutes such a force vary, there is a requirement for the ability to exercise sea con ...

. A new weapon, Red Angel, was developed to meet this threat. This was larger than Uncle Tom and had a warhead intended to attack the deck armour of ''Sverdlovs''. A salvo of six hits was thought to be sufficient to disable a ''Sverdlov''. Red Angel was long and in diameter. Overall weight was with an warhead. Like Uncle Tom it had flip-out rear fins, but Tom's four large fins were replaced by six smaller ones. It was first deployed on the Westland Wyvern turboprop, but had always been earmarked for the new jet naval strike aircraft developed in response to the ''Sverdlov'' threat, the

Blackburn Buccaneer The Blackburn Buccaneer is a British carrier-capable attack aircraft designed in the 1950s for the Royal Navy (RN). Designed and initially produced by Blackburn Aircraft at Brough, it was later officially known as the Hawker Siddeley Buccane ...

. The high-speed Buccaneer was noted for its rotating bomb bay and internal weapons stowage. This could carry four of the Red Angels. Attack targeting from the 3-inch RP onwards had recognised an unusual behaviour: a projectile that entered the water short of the target ship would steer itself upwards on a curving trajectory and travel horizontally. This not only encouraged a more damaging 'wet hit' below the waterline, but it also made targeting easier: the viable target zone on the sea ahead of the target had an apparent height twice that of the hull. All of these unguided rockets suffered from short effective range and Royal Navy policy in OR.1057 was that attacking aircraft should not have to approach closer than . This OR led to weapons that were longer-ranged and guided, such as the late 1940s 'Nozzle' and the later Green Cheese.

References

{{UKColdWarProjects Cold War anti-ship missiles of the United Kingdom Abandoned military projects of the United Kingdom