life
ISLAND HISTORY
Above: A rocket being loaded into the gantry at Highdown.
Blast off at The Needles
By James Kerr
A
few decades ago, the Island
took on a remarkable secret
role – Britain's answer to
Cape Canaveral. A huge and complex
rocket-testing facility that helped put the
UK at the forefront of rocket science and
ahead of the USA and Soviet Union in the
space race was based right here on the Isle
of Wight.
Between the mid-1950s and early 1970s,
Britain’s missile development and space
rocket programme based its operations in
the west of the Island at Highdown, near
the site of the Needles Old Battery. The
site offered a secret and secure location
for rocket research to take place, complete
with underground accommodation for
scientists and other key workers, and in
1955 it was leased from the Ministry of
War.
46
In the same year, a boat and aircraft
design company in Cowes, Saunders-Roe,
was commissioned to develop the missiles.
The Needles headland was quickly
transformed into a complex of specialized
buildings constructed over the New
Battery. The old magazines were converted
into a series of underground control and
instrument rooms, with additional stores,
laboratory, office and workshop space in
the rest of the complex.
At the height of the Cold War in
the early 1960s, some 200 scientists
were engaged in testing rockets at the
Highdown site. During the top-secret
operations, missile components
manufactured in Cowes were assembled
into 60-foot long Black Knight rockets in
the facility’s workshops. These were towed
down a road along the cliff top above
Scratchells Bay to one of two 80-foot high
test gantries.
Although the local population was
warned of the firings, part of the Downs
were closed to the public as the work was
top secret. A former trial engineer recalls,
"We were up with the Americans and the
Russians in developing rocket technology.
We got some terrific results. But we were
never allowed to breathe a word of what
we were working on. I couldn't even tell
my wife."
Following the successful static tests at
the Highdown headland, the rockets were
shipped to a launch site in Australia. In
1958, just 3 years after the programme
began, the first Black Knight rocket was
launched into the atmosphere. More than
20 were launched into orbit altogether,
to a range of up to 500 miles above the
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