Cover for Thor: Divine Deception Planning for Cold War Missiles

Abstract

In the late 1950s, as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) replaced bombers, the development of Soviet ICBMs prompted fears of strategic vulnerability in the West. The Eisenhower administration's decision to deploy Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) on the territory of NATO allies sought to redress the perceived vulnerability until American ICBMs were ready. British deception planners considered how to enhance the threat posed by the IRBMs. An outline plan codenamed ‘Celestial’ was intended to persuade the Soviets that the otherwise vulnerable missiles could not be readily neutralised. This article explores this deception and how such planning also sought to convey accurate information alongside disinformation. It also suggests that deception planners appear to have given little heed to the potentially counterproductive consequences of such an operation.

Key Words:

• Nuclear Strategy
• Deterrence
• Deception
• Intelligence

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their appreciation to Dr Stephen Twigge and the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on drafts of the article.

Notes

¹Psychological warfare was defined in Whitehall as ‘The planned use of psychological measures, including information, propaganda and others, designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitude and behaviour of enemy, neutral or friendly groups in support of current policy in time of war or emergency’. [Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives]: DEFE [Records of the Ministry of Defence] 28/184, COS (53) 126, ‘Planning for Psychological Warfare: Organisation for Psychological Warfare in Overseas Commands’, 3 March 1956, para. 8. This was amended to specify the inclusion of military operations. ‘Psy-war’ was distinct from deception. In March 1956 the then chair of the Interdepartmental Working Party on Psychological Warfare characterised ‘psy-war’ as ‘the use of a “weapon system” aimed at minds and morale rather than bodies’ while deception could be described as an ‘advanced technique of the ruse de guerre which is designed to save our effort (physical or psychological) and waste the enemy's so that we may concentrate at his weakened point’. DEFE 28/184, OP (3/16)/12/3/56, Draft ‘Tentative Outline for a Defence Secret Service’, Nigel Willmott, 12 March 1956.

²See Michael H. Armacost, The Politics of Weapons Innovation: The Thor-Jupiter Controversy (New York: Columbia UP 1969). For a comprehensive and authoritative account of the Jupiter deployments see Philip Nash, The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters 1957–1963 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of N. Carolina Press 1997).

³For discussion of the development of nuclear relationship see Ian Clark, Nuclear Diplomacy and the Special Relationship: Britain's Deterrent and America, 1957–1962 (Oxford: OUP 1994); Jan Melissen, The Struggle for Nuclear Partnership: Britain, the United States and the Making of an Ambiguous Alliance 1952–1959 (Groningen, Neth.: Styx Publications 1993); Stephen Twigge and Len Scott, Planning Armageddon: Britain, United States and the Command of Nuclear Forces, 1945–1964 (Amsterdam: Routledge 2000); idem, ‘The Other Other Missiles of October: The Thor IRBMs and the Cuban Missile Crisis’, electronic Journal of International History (Spring 2000),<www.history.ac.uk/resources/e-journal-international-history/twigge-paper>, last accessed 10 Sept. 2009.

⁴William Burr, ‘Consultation is Presidential Business: Secret Understandings on the Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1950–1974’, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 159, 1 July 2005, <www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB159/index.htm>, last accessed 10 Sept 2009.

⁵For details of the provision of US nuclear bombs to the RAF, see Twigge and Scott, Planning Armageddon, 100–2, 109–15, 144n, 323–5.

⁶Ibid., 111–15, 125–6, 141–2n.

⁷For discussion of the development and legacy of the MDA, see Jennifer Mackby and Paul Cornish (eds), US-UK Nuclear Cooperation after 50 Years (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies 2008).

⁸For details of the Thor negotiations, see Clark, Nuclear Diplomacy, Chapter 1; Humphrey Wynn, RAF Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Forces: Their Origins, Roles and Deployment 1946–1969 (London: HMSO 1994), 280–97; Ian Clark and David Angell, ‘Britain, the United States and the Control of Nuclear Weapons: The Diplomacy of the Thor Deployment 1956–58’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 2/3 (Nov. 1991), 153–77; Jan Melissen, ‘The Thor Saga: Anglo-American Nuclear Relations, US IRBM Development and Deployment in Britain, 1955–1959’, Journal of Strategic Studies 15/2 (June 1992), 172–207; idem, Struggle for Nuclear Partnership.

⁹[US National Archives, College Park, Maryland], RG 59, ‘Political and Military Considerations Bearing on Turkish and Italian IRBMs’, Rusk to Kennedy, 9 Nov. 1962. Box 226.

¹⁰Twigge and Scott, Planning Armageddon, 112–14.

¹¹Nash, Other Missiles, 82.

¹²Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford UP 1991), 135.

¹³John Simpson and Jennifer Mackby, ‘The Nuclear Special Relationship: A Historical Chronology’, in Mackby and Cornish, US-UK Nuclear Cooperation, 10.

¹⁴Nash, Other Missiles, 3.

¹⁵The functions of the DFP were to: (i) maintain within the Joint Planning Organisation a deception Planning Team, responsible, under the joint direction of the DFP and the Directors of Plans for preparing deception plans in support of military strategy in peace and war; (ii) organise and co-ordinate as necessary the implementation of deception plans after approval by the Chiefs of Staff; (iii) ensure, in consultation with the Directors of Plans, that the policy for the Visual Inter-Service Training and Research Establishment was coordinated with overall deception policy and strategic plans; (iv) prepare plans, covering all theatres, for the expansion in war of the deception organisation; (v) maintain a list of officers and civilians previously trained in, or considered suitable for, deception work; (vi) organise training of officers and civilians appointed to deception duties; (vii) maintain the library on deception; (viii) safeguard the security of all deception. National Archive Catalogue DEFE 28 Series Details.

¹⁶Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: British, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray 2001), 504.

¹⁷The primary concerns of the DFP were Counter Subversion, Psychological Operations, Community Relations and Deception. DFP became responsible to the Chief of Defence Staff for policy and coordination within Whitehall of all matters pertaining to psychological operations in support of the Armed Forces. The Joint Planning Committee (of which the Director Forward Plans was a member) and the Chiefs of Staffs Committee initiated deception action, the military aspects of which were followed through by DFP who was the Ministry of Defence link with the other agencies. DFP considered themselves as a ‘ginger group’, and where they saw opportunities which could be exploited to advantage (other than by purely military means) to call attention to them as appropriate. National Archive Catalogue DEFE 28 Series Details.

¹⁸For a Cold War deception vignette see Stephen Twigge and Len Scott, ‘Strategic Defence by Deception’, Intelligence and National Security 16/2 (Summer 2001), 152–7. For discussion of special operations designed to destabilise Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe see Aldrich, Hidden Hand.

¹⁹See the seminal official history, Michael Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 5 Strategic Deception (London: HMSO 1990). For an authoritative analysis of the development of British deception planning before 1945, see John Ferris, ‘FORTITUDE in Context: British Military Deception in Two World Wars’, in Richard K. Betts and Thomas G. Mahnken, Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Michael Handel (London: Routledge 2008[2003]), 117–65.

²⁰Yevgeny Ivanov (with G. Sokolov), The Naked Spy (London: Blake 1992), 147.

²¹Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (London: W.W. Norton 2006), 143–4.

²²DEFE 11/217, H.N.H. Wild to Secretary, Chiefs of Staff Committee, 4 March 1958.

²³DEFE 11/217, COS 1632/23/10/57, ‘The IRBM Programme – An Analysis of Deception Possibilities’ attached to D.J.P. Lee, ‘The Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile Programme’, 23 Oct. 1957. The paper forwarded by the Secretary of the Chiefs of Staff Committee is neither signed nor dated. The paper suggested 120 Thors would be deployed. The eventual number was 60.

²⁴DEFE 11/217, DFP/1/6/2, J.A. Drew to the Secretary, Chiefs of Staff Committee, Oct. 1957.

²⁵Howard, British Intelligence, 171, 177. According to Aldrich, he was a wartime member of the Security Service (MI5), Hidden Hand, 504.

²⁶DEFE 11/217, DFP/1/6/2, Drew to the Secretary, Chiefs of Staff Committee, Oct. 1957.

²⁷DEFE 11/217, ‘IRBM Programme’, 23 Oct. 1957.

²⁸Ibid.

²⁹Steven Zaloga, The Kremlin's Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia's Strategic Nuclear Forces 1945–2000 (London: Smithsonian Institution Press 2002), 58–9, 77, 87.

³⁰DEFE 11/217, ‘IRBM Programme’, 23 Oct. 1957.

³¹Ibid.

³²Ibid.

³³DEFE 11/217, COS (57) 85th meeting, 31 Oct. 1957.

³⁴DEFE 11/217, DFP 6/17, J.A. Drew to Secretary, Chiefs of Staff Committee, 25 Nov. 1957.

³⁵DEFE 11/217, Chiefs of Staff Committee, H.N.H. Wild to Secretary, 4 March 1958.

³⁶DEFE 11/217, ‘Deception in Support of the United States/United Kingdom IRBM Deployment’, March 1958.

³⁷Twigge and Scott, Planning Armageddon, 109–10.

³⁸DEFE 13/394, MM7/59, 24 Nov. 1959.

³⁹[Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives] AIR [Records of the Royal Air Force] 8/2239, Ward to Harold Watkinson, Minister of Defence, Jan. 1960.

⁴⁰Ibid.

⁴¹AIR 8/2307, AC(61)44, 2 Aug. 1961.

⁴²AIR 8/2307, AC(61)44, ‘The Future of Thor’, Note by VCAS, 2 Aug. 1961.

⁴³Wynn, RAF (Note 8), 348.

⁴⁴AIR 24/2689, Commander-in-Chief's Conference of Group, Station and Squadron Commanders, 14–15 Nov. 1962. It has been suggested the 60th missile was also available.

⁴⁵DEFE 11/217, ‘Deception in Support’, March 1958.

⁴⁶AIR 8/2238, Huddleston to Cross, 11 Aug. 1959. When airborne under positive control the pilots were required to receive a further order before proceeding to their targets.

⁴⁷AIR 8/2307, AC(61)44, ‘The Future of Thor’, Note by VCAS, 2 Aug. 1961.

⁴⁸DEFE 11/217, ‘Deception in Support’, March 1958.

⁴⁹Ibid.

⁵⁰Ferris, ‘FORTITUDE in Context’, 129.

⁵¹Nash, Other Missiles, 6–75.

⁵²Anthony Cave Brown, Bodyguard of Lies (London: Star Books 1977), 389.

⁵³Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble’: Khrushchev, Castro Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis 1958–1964 (London: John Murray 1997), 155–6; Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War, 424.

⁵⁴Clark, Nuclear Diplomacy, 176–89.