The Bow and Arrow Versus the Atom Bomb: Air Defence in Scotland 1945-1955

Abstract

This article proposes that the development of Britain’s air defence system in the 1950s should be viewed concurrently with that of her nuclear deterrent. Faced with a new threat from the Soviet Union in the late 1940s, Britain began engineering a new generation of anti-aircraft weapons. Using Scotland as a case study, the strategic relationship between air defence and nuclear deterrence will be explored in the British transition from a defensive to an offensive stance, and orientation toward American nuclear technologies in the late 1950s.