The Resolution of Polaris

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The apparent trend toward separate, European natm¹ nuclear weapon systems caused much unhappiness in ¹ U. S. administration. In an attempt to divert France fr°^nl its independent course, the United States had even tenta tively offered to sell France nuclear-powered submarine⁵ of the most advanced U. S. class. Partly because of R>^c ’ over’s determined opposition and the power of his polh> cal allies on the Hill, the offer was withdrawn. In ^an-^v' event, President Charles de Gaulle insisted that France, too, would create its own national nuclear force.

From the beginning of his term as Secretary of Defend in 1961, Robert S. McNamara stressed the need f°^{r a} sound planning-programming-budgeting system to m^a0 age the enormous complexities of national defense. A key

It was appropriate that the British submarine that fired this Polaris missile at Cape Canav­eral in February 1968 was HMS Resolution. For, from the shaky beginnings of the U. S.- U. K. Polaris program in the early 1960s, it had taken resolution—on both sides of the Atlantic—to successfully resolve this political “sticky wicket.”

The U. S.-U. K. Polaris program had its roots in the offer that the United States made in early 1960 to sell Polaris missiles to its European allies. These medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) would provide NATO with a counter to Soviet nuclear blackmail. There were no takers.

In August that same year, Robert Bowie, previously the head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, sug­gested a bolder plan. He proposed a NATO multilateral force (MLF) of Polaris-armed submarines, which would be manned by mixed, international crews, be established. Nothing came of this plan either. But in May 1961, the new President, John F. Kennedy, incorporated it into a U. S. commitment to NATO for five Polaris submarines. The mixed manning idea was startling to conventional military thinking in all nations, especially in its applica­tion to nuclear-powered submarines where intimate, har­monious personnel relations and instant, correct action are essential.

In the United States, there was a particularly formidable roadblock to the concept in the person of Rear Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. By 1962, the submarine MLF was abandoned, and a surface ship version was substituted in planning. Cruising the high seas on a random pattern within range of potential targets, the surface MLF would be directly under NATO command and would supplement the U. S. and British national deterrent forces. The ships were to be built in Europe, but the missiles and complex subsystems would be furnished by the United States.

By this time, the United States and the Soviet Union were each embarked on massive programs for nuclei weapons delivery systems, and Britain had its own more modest one under way. However, the British program was in trouble.

The British Government had decided in 1957 to develop and maintain an effective nuclear deterrent. To this end,^!t undertook the development of an airborne missile—B*^ue Steel—which was to be the armament for Vulcan, Victor, and Valiant bombers in their deterrent role. Difficulties with the missile led to the decision to develop a surface-t°' surface ballistic missile—Blue Streak—and a suitable nuclear warhead. However, faced by the realities of devel­opment and deployment costs, an unfavorable geography situation, and attendant political and psychological fa^c' tors, Britain abandoned Blue Streak in 1960 in favor of the U. S. Skybolt missile. This was to be a nuclear-arrne missile with a 1,000-mile range. It would be launche from high-speed bombers at standoff range from groun targets. It was to be in production by 1964 and woul extend the life of Britain’s bomber force.

As part of the quid pro quo for Skybolt, the Unite States received basing rights at Holy Loch, Scotland, f°^r U. S. submarines. The British received the U. S. prorni^se that they could purchase Polaris missiles for their subma rines if they so chose.

By the fall of 1962, however, the United States ha expended $500 million on Skybolt and had only a length­ening series of test failures to show for it. The days o Skybolt were clearly numbered.

element in this trinity was the formalized application of “systems analysis” to the problems of choosing strategies and their related weapon systems. Perhaps no other tech­nique became so emotional, so divisive between military officers and their civilian colleagues in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as did this one. The practitioners of the art of weapon systems analysis defended it as being “quantified common sense,” but the military community in general condemned it as “downgrading the military,” and substituting computers for military judgment and op­erational experience.

Fortifying the case of the systems analysts as they ap­plied their “rational economic analysis” to Skybolt and its place in U. S. nuclear weapons strategy was the continu­ing success being demonstrated by both the land-based Minuteman missile and the sea-based Polaris. It was small comfort to the Air Force that when Skybolt was found wanting in the analysis of its capabilities and costs and was cancelled, so too was the Navy’s plan to install Po­laris missiles in the nuclear-powered surface cruiser USS Long Beach (CGN-9).

As the United States and Britain inched toward some form of cooperative undertaking which would substitute Polaris for Skybolt, there was not great enthusiasm in the Navy Department. The U. S. Polaris program was pro­ceeding under forced draft to meet its demanding sched­ule. The administration emphasized its determination to close the much publicized, real or imagined, “missile gap,” and Polaris was a key element in that plan.

By December 1962, the United States had completed only ten nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). Thirty-one more had to be delivered by Decem­ber 1966. All the while, the new, complex Polaris A-3 missile was under development. A foreign program would bring security risks as well as a heavy additional manage­ment burden. In addition, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral George W. Anderson, had grave reservations that whatever progress had been made toward acceptance of an MLF NATO nuclear force as a substitute for individual national forces could be all but wiped out by a bilateral U. S.-U. K. program.

The cancellation of Skybolt caused a major political storm in England. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had regarded Skybolt as a mark of Britain’s “special relation­ship” with the United States. The abrupt, unilateral can­cellation of Skybolt set off a major uproar in Parliament and the press, which led to the meeting between President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan in Nassau, Baha­mas, in December 1962. It was here that the Prime Minis­ter cashed the bargaining chips he had obtained from Pres­ident Dwight D. Eisenhower almost two years earlier.

The Nassau Pact called for creation of an international nuclear force and invited France to join as a partner. Four | principal points were made:

b ► The United States would sell Britain Polaris A-3 mis- f siles in place of the abandoned Skybolt. Britain would | provide its own warheads, as well as design and build its I own nuclear-powered submarine-launching platforms.

I ► Britain agreed that the resulting system would become 1 part of a NATO nuclear deterrent force to be targeted by

Side-by-side, sailors of the West German, V. S., and Italian navies handle line on board the guided-missile destroyer USS Claude V. Ricketts (DDG-5), the namesake of the man behind the multilateral force. Also participating in the force were sailors from the Dutch, Greek, Turkish, and Royal navies.

NATO authority. However, Britain retained the cav^eat that supreme national interest could justify other use.

• The United States agreed to match this British contribu­tion to NATO by “at least equal U. S. forces.”
• The United States offered to sell France Polaris missil®^s under the same conditions to which Britain had agreed-

At this time, France had already set off its own ‘ ^nU' clear device,” thus it was not inconceivable that France could provide its own warheads on a compatible schedule-

Furthermore, it was proceeding with the design of its own nuclear submarines. In spite of the offer, de Gaulle per­sisted in his policy of independent action, and by 1969, France completed Le Redoutable, the first of its five SSBNs.

The Conservative government in the United Kingdom moved quickly to follow up on the terms of the Nassau Pact. It invited a U. S. team to visit London in January 1963 to confer with British authorities about the negotia­tions that would be required to hammer out the Polaris sales agreement itself. The team was composed of W. W. Rostow, Chairman of the Policy Planning Council, State Department; Paul Nitze, Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs); Henry Owen of the State Department; and myself, Director Special Projects, Office of the Secretary of the Navy.

In the typically American, impetuous style of foreign affairs negotiations popularized by John Foster Dulles, following a full normal workday, we left Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, D.C., the evening before the important conference. We flew overnight in one of the presidential jets. Dinner was excellent, but I felt out of place among my brilliant, articulate colleagues. I listened raptly to a wide-ranging discussion of world affairs marked by Rostow’s instant prescriptions, which seemed to me overly self-assured.

With the time difference on our rapid, eastward flight, we had barely turned in for the night when we were up to shave and breakfast before landing at Heathrow. Met by alert, smartly groomed British and U. S. officials, we were whisked to a plenary session with the senior British officials concerned in the program. Following this discus­sion of general principles under the chairmanship of Sec­retary of Defence Peter Thomeycroft, our group divided to confer separately with those involved in our specific fields. In my case, this meant the Admiralty.

At the Admiralty was a remarkable officer, Vice Admi­ral Michael Le Fanu, Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy. Unorthodox and brilliant, his ready wit and demo­cratic spirit endeared him to seamen and officers alike. I felt instant rapport with this engaging free spirit who was at the same time a hardworking realist fully aware of the march of technology.

At the instigation of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Le Fanu had been designated, in 1960, to prepare a report on the best way to organize a Polaris program in the Royal Navy. Although his report lay dormant while the wheels of international politics turned slowly, it led to his accom­panying the Prime Minister and Secretary of Defence to the Nassau meeting. Following much the plan that Le Fanu had outlined, it was during his term as First Sea Lord that Britain’s Polaris force became operational.

As had been the case with the U. S. Navy, the Royal Navy was undergoing the trauma of finding and pleading its place in the post-World War II defense picture. There was great similarity in the problems faced by both nations. These were a result of worldwide military commitments, soaring costs for increasingly complex equipment, a need for ever-more highly trained personnel, and defense bud­gets that grew more stringent as social programs de­manded more and more of the gross national product.

In Britain, the interservice rivalry was particularly in­tense. Each military arm competed for funds considered essential to implement its role in the national defense. Especially was this true with respect to the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy. Each feared that, within the total defense budgets planned, there would be funded ei­ther the Royal Air Force’s new fighter-bomber or the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier, but not both. Each con­sidered those particular weapon systems essential to its own survival as an independent, front-line service.

This issue simmered until the issuance of The First La­bour Defence White Paper of February 1965, but it was not resolved until a year later when the decision was made not to build the carrier. Consequently, there was much ferment within the Royal Navy at the time of our visit. British naval aviators, like U. S. ones, considered that the survival of the Royal Navy as an effective fighting force was dependent upon the continuing availability of up-to- date strike carriers. So sincerely and strongly did they be­lieve this that they were ready to subordinate and give little more than lip service to other naval missions such as antisubmarine warfare and amphibious warfare.

The prospect of introducing yet another complex, costly weapon system—Polaris—into the Royal Navy at this juncture found the navy divided on the issue. The Royal Navy voiced the same fears the U. S. Navy did in 1956 and 1957: fears that the heavy commitment of funds and skilled personnel to Polaris would unduly weaken the tra­ditional balanced-force concept of the Navy.

However, with the Skybolt fiasco to be overcome and the decision made to persist in building a national nuclear deterrent, the Conservative government pressed on with the Polaris program. Shortly after our London visit, Brit­ain sent a team of military and civil servants to negotiate the Polaris sales agreement. Meanwhile, Admiral Ander­son emphasized that in any arrangements we made, there must be no interference with the U. S. Polaris program.

James M. Mackay, a towering, taciturn Scot, was chief negotiator for Britain. Rear Admiral William C. Mott, Judge Advocate General of the Navy, acted for the United States. Each was supported by necessary technical ex­perts. Accompanying the British team as advisers were Sir Solly Zuckerman, Chief Scientist, Ministry of Defence; Admiral Varyl Begg, Second Sea Lord; and Rear Admiral Hugh Sterling Mackenzie (later Vice Admiral). Admiral Mackenzie was my opposite number in this undertaking, and he was my friend.

Called Rufus, or the Red Mackenzie, to distinguish him from another noted Royal Navy submariner, A. J. (the Black) Mackenzie, Rufus had compiled a brilliant war rec­ord in command of HMS Thrasher in the Mediterranean. He, like myself, was a seagoing “operator” beached for duties in the equally rigorous but even more measurable arena of management. I thought that the British, with their flair for the niceties of language and protocol, had chosen for him a much better title than that I had. He was Chief Polaris Executive, Ministry of Defence.

After the initial meeting in the State Department, 16 additional negotiating sessions were held in the Special Projects Office.

Discussions started on the basis of a British program of five SSBNs, each carrying 16 missiles. As our own opera­tional experience was reviewed, this was scaled down to four subs. Allowing for necessary training, upkeep, and overhaul time, this was the minimum force that could pro­vide a meaningful national deterrent. Britain would build its own submarines and nuclear propulsion systems, as well as the warhead for the missiles. We would sell them the missiles and all necessary associated equipment and services. Two of the submarines would be built by the Vickers Shipbuilding Group, Barrow-in-Furness, and two by Cammel-Laird Shipbuilders at Birkenhead.

From the start of negotiations, it was clear that Britain wanted a full role in the future research and development aspects of Polaris. The British knew we would improve and update Polaris with time. In addition, the more delib­erate schedule of the British program would permit some refinements that our own very tight schedule could not accommodate. It was this factor, and the natural desire to get the most for their considerable investment, that caused Sir Solly to insist that the words “close consultation” be incorporated in certain areas of the agreement. For our part, we were apprehensive about getting too involved with the British and agreed only to “coordination” in the research and development area.

Another sensitive issue was the security of information about our nuclear submarine program. The British had no experience with the operation of nuclear submarines. They were nearing completion of their first nuclear-powered at­tack submarine (SSN), had a second under construction, and had authorized a third. Their negotiators sought au­thority to obtain information and equipment that were more closely related to our nuclear submarines than to the Polaris missile system. They argued that it was the sense of the Nassau Pact that a Polaris sales agreement would include all necessary authority for establishing a fully op­erational British SSBN force, and that such information was a part of the total package. We did not need Rick- over’s furious opposition to this point to stand firm. The final agreement stated: “This Agreement does not, how­ever, authorize the sale of, or transmittal of information concerning, the nuclear propulsion plants of United States submarines.”

The pricing arrangement was very fair. The missiles, equipment, related services, and use of certain facilities were provided on the basis of cost to the United States, except there was a five percent surcharge on hardware to cover cost of research and development. Both sides under­stood that we were not simply selling hardware. We were entering a collaborative effort between allies, wherein the United States would make available to Britain the exper­tise and support of a very large, highly developed, and very expensive organization.

On 6 April 1963, the Polaris sales agreement was signed in Washington by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and by British Ambassador David Ormsby Gore.

Rufus Mackenzie and I were promptly designated as joint project officers to carry out the agreement, and we moved quickly. In April, we set up a British liaison office in my headquarters with Captain Peter G. LaNiece, Royal Navy, in charge. By May, we had promulgated the Polaris technical arrangement, which would govern implementa­tion of the sales agreement. In June, we opened our Spe­cial Projects United Kingdom office in London with Cap­tain Phil A. Rollings, U. S. Navy, in charge. Next, we organized a Joint Steering Task Group, which would meet quarterly, alternating between Washington and London.

Part of the urgency of the British program was a result of the waning political fortune of Prime Minister Macmil­lan’s Conservative Party. In the next few months, he would have to call a general election, and the polls were already giving Flarold Wilson’s Labour Party an edge. The Conservatives wanted to confirm their defense program and establish the Polaris project so firmly that Wilson would be unable to carry out his flat statement, “We will re-negotiate the Nassau Pact.”

The deputy leader and vice chairman of the Labour Party at this time was George Brown. With his special interest in defense matters, he was expected to be either Foreign Minister or Defence Minister in a Labour govern­ment. Always outspoken, in 1960, he had declared that the Conservatives were wrong in committing Britain to the U. S. Skybolt missile, a statement vindicated by the events of 1962. Now, in 1963, he said that if his party gained power, all efforts to maintain an independent n^u' clear-armed force would be abandoned. With his quick wit, he had said after the Nassau Pact that Britain had received a “slap in the face in Paris, the order of the boot in Brussels, and a kick in the Bahamas.”

During his visit to Washington in June 1963,1, with the approval of my superiors, invited Brown to come to my office where we could give him a status report on the British program. I found the ex-trade union official an ordinary-looking, middle-class Englishman, affable and loquacious, a straightforward and likable man. His only uncertainty about the Labour Party’s assumption of power regarded the date of the national election.

What Brown wanted to learn from me was how certain 1 was that the Polaris A-3 would be a successful missile- The Conservatives then in power and bearing responsible ity had already done their best to get assurance on that score, and I so advised Mr. Brown. However, my techni­cal director, Captain Levering Smith, presented a more convincing case. He reviewed the performance of each o our A-3 experimental flight tests to date, 16 in all. I think Brown was convinced, as we were, that A-3 would indeed be a success, and the specter of another Skybolt fiasco was dispelled.

A more subtle question George Brown posed concerne communications requirements. I believe he, like many other Britons, was suspicious that there was some magic** “black box,” which was essential to make the comman link work, and which the wily Yankees might withhold-

For my part, I was reassured that the Labourites were pragmatic enough to know that they would have to evalu­ate their Polaris program in the context of the situation existing when they took control. The dollars, or pounds sterling, obligated, the related employment levels, the in-

ternational climate, and the national mood would all have a bearing on the political decision that would have to be made in spite of Harold Wilson’s statement about renego­tiating the Nassau Pact.

During our meeting, I asked George Brown his views on the MLF, a concept still very much alive in NATO. He replied that he was not as antagonistic to this idea as was most of the Labour Party. Nevertheless, I got the impres­sion that he wanted no part of it and was quite sure that if the British persisted in their submarine Polaris program, we would never succeed in winning British support for the MLF. The MLF weakened the case for their own expen­sive, submarine nuclear deterrent force and complicated their personnel and training problems.

etts. I arranged for Brown to meet with him for more sub­stantive discussions.

Much to my chagrin, I learned the next day that Brown did not keep the appointment, and he did not even make the usual transparent diplomatic excuse. I wondered whether he had received instructions from London, and whether the expanding sex-security scandal then linking British cabinet officials with Christine Keeler and other call girls was a factor. She had shared her favors not only with British cabinet officers but with a military attache from the Soviet Union. It could fairly be said that Chris­tine had proved that a mixed-manned force was a working proposition.

The function of our Joint Steering Task Group was to

My own role in the MLF project, a concept controver­sial within the U. S. Navy, was simply to furnish technical feasibility, cost, and schedule data. Other offices of the State and Navy departments and senior operational com­mands grappled with the complex problems of finance, manning, command and control, and logistics that such a revolutionary international maritime force evoked. The official U. S. military spokesman for the MLF was the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Claude V. Rick-

keep abreast of progress and to ensure that the respective national efforts being carried on as far apart as Sunnyvale, California (where the U. S. Polaris missiles were being built) and Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire (where British nuclear-powered submarines were being built) would in­deed dovetail. The first of my team’s visits to Britain was ^ln September 1963 and included a day in the ancient town °f Bath where the Royal Navy’s Ship Design Division was located. The competence and enthusiasm of the design team were impressive. Although they followed generally the same submarine design as our own, they incorporated some innovations and improvements made possible by the uiore deliberate schedule they could follow. Their boats had six torpedo tubes; ours had four. Their boats also had modified living spaces. The most apparent outward differ­ence was location of the diving hydroplanes (bow planes) >n the conventional position on the bow rather than ele­vated on the sail.

Dependent as it was on shipyard facilities and previous Practice, their shipbuilding procedure was somewhat dif­ferent from ours. It included some ingenious time- and cost-saving techniques. In the U. S. program, we were, right from the start, working under the constant tyranny of °ur schedule. First, our goal was to get the earliest deploy­ment of the sea-based deterrent with the A-l missile. Next, it was to reach a building rate of one Polaris subma­rine per month, an astounding peacetime effort. In the British program, the strategic urgency did not exist, but the internal political situation, the national spotlight on the Program, and the direct cost consequences of schedule slippage made close adherence to the mutually agreed schedule very important.

In Britain, responsibility for the development and pro­curement of aircraft, missiles, and nuclear weapons for the British armed forces lay in the Ministry of Aviation (MOA). However, because of the intimate connection be­tween submarine design and the Polaris missile, the Royal Navy worked directly with our own in procurement of the missile. The MOA remained responsible for the nuclear Warhead.

The head of the MOA at this time was Julian Amery, son-in-law of Prime Minister Macmillan. I had first met Amery in March 1960 when I was in Cyprus with my flagship, the USS Newport News (CA-148). We were both guests of Governor Sir Hugh Foot at a luncheon in Gov­ernment House, Nicosia. Amery, then Under Secretary of the Colonial Office, was negotiating terms of the treaty by which Cyprus was to become an independent nation and member of the Commonwealth.

In 1964, Amery visited the Special Projects Office and some of our field activities to obtain firsthand information on the progress of the A-3 missile. He had a reputation for Being, if not actively anti-American, at least greatly suspi-

1967, tent-covered guests at the commissioning of the Resolution witnessed not only the addition of another sub­marine to the Royal Navy’s fleet, but also the successful ^end of three-and-a-half years of collaboration between the V- S. and Royal navies.

cious of U. S. economic imperialism. We did our best to assure him that the deal our heads of government had made was mutually beneficial.

At a dinner party in the Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, with Cyprus once again tom by bloody fighting between Greeks and Turks, we reminisced about the negotiation period in 1960 and compared notes about our evaluation of His Beatitude, the Archbishop Makarios.

In the course of the pleasant evening, Amery said that he had first aspired to be an officer of the Royal Navy.

“When I was eleven I put my name down for Dart­mouth. I wanted to be a sailor. Then my father took me to the House of Commons to meet Lloyd George. The Prime Minister asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. With great pride I told him I wanted to be in the Navy. He said, ‘Humph, if it’s piracy you want, pikes and cutlasses, blood on the decks, and walking the plank, this is the place for you!”

And so the challenge of politics replaced the lure of the sea in young Amery.

In October 1964, the Labour Party won the General Election as predicted, and Harold Wilson succeeded Mac­millan as Prime Minister. Foreign Minister in the new cabinet was my erstwhile visitor, George Brown. With a majority of only four seats in the Parliament, it would clearly be difficult for the Labour Party to implement some of its campaign pledges, including that to renegoti­ate the Nassau Pact. A sobering fact was that, in addition to economic disruptions in Britain, costs to cancel Polaris contracts already entered into with the United States to­taled $52 million. By 1 January 1965, this figure would be $80 million. Not surprisingly, the program was continued.

During my semiannual visits to London, I not only called on the senior U. S. naval authority, Commander in Chief, U. S. Naval Forces, Europe, to keep him informed of progress, but I also called on the senior British officials, civil and military, involved in the international program.

The First Lord of the Admiralty, counterpart to the U. S. Secretary of the Navy, was always near the top of my list. With the change of parties in power and the re­structuring of the Defence Department, the First Lord be­came Minister of State for Navy. In quick succession, I had the pleasure of calling on Lord Carrington, Lord Jelli- coe, Christopher Mayhew, Joyce Cary, and David Owen as they followed each other in that historic office. My visits to the first three were especially memorable.

Comparatively, I was but a junior rear admiral, but I was invariably received courteously, and there would be a noticeable warming as the visit proceeded. Each of the three, in fact, told me the same anecdote on my first meet­ing with him.

In the office of the First Lord stood a handsome cabinet of dark, polished wood. At some time during our conver­sation, each of these distinguished public servants would say, “Admiral, do you see that cabinet? Do you notice that crack in the lower right-hand panel? Well, a predeces­sor of mine did that. He kicked it in a fit of rage when he couldn’t get the admirals to do what he wanted.”