Thor sites protected.

[GreenKnight121]

Originally Posted by ORAC

Quote:
the Thor presence in the UK lasted ony about 4 years - when there was an effective counter, they were withdrawn.
Depending on who you believe they were retired as part of the agreement with the USSR to pull their missiles out of Cuba - which is why they put them there into Cuba in response.

The Other Other Missiles of October: The Thor IRBMs and the Cuban Missile Crisis

It was the Jupiter missile sites in Turkey that had the Soviets upset - and they were removed immediately after the Soviet missiles were pulled out of Cuba.

Your own link downplays any relation of the Thor missiles to the crisis, and specifically notes that they were NOT retired as a result of the crisis!

Conclusion
55. The most dangerous crisis of the Cold War arose when the USSR deployed M/IRBMs within range of the USA. One factor in that deployment was Soviet irritation at the US IRBMs in Turkey. We do not yet know how the Soviets viewed the threat from the Thors. From the Soviet perspective, the missile threat was in the context of thousands of Amercian nuclear weapons targeted on the USSR, many from European bases. Yet, the Thors did not emerge as an irritant in British-Soviet or East-West relations. Nor, during the Cuban missile crisis, did the Soviets attempt, publicly or privately, to link the Thors to the Soviet MRBMs in Cuba. The Thor deployment amply demonstrates that Cold War and nuclear confrontations cannot be understood in military terms alone.


56. Yet the operational aspects of missile deployment were important during the missile crisis. President Kennedy was anxious about the command and control of the Jupiters in Turkey and Italy, and the US leadership was exercised, both publicly and privately, over the operational arrangements for the Soviet MRBMs in Cuba. The Americans behaved as though they believed Soviet operational readiness was an indicator of Soviet willingness to use the missiles. Yet the threat posed to Washington from Cuba was no different from the threat posed to Moscow from England. The Thors were at a high state of readiness and could have been fired in less than 15 minutes. The comparison with Soviet missiles is intriguing and underlines how Amercian perception of Soviet military capabilities frequently neglected how things were on the other side of the hill.


57. It is perhaps an irony that the operational readiness of the British Strategic Missile Force was in inverse proportion to its political significance. The proximity of the Jupiters to Soviet territory clearly influenced Soviet (and American) perceptions.


58. It is now clear that when Khrushchev publicly demanded the withdrawal of American nuclear forces from Turkey in return for Soviet withdrawal from Cuba, Kennedy secretly undertook to withdraw the missiles from Turkey (and Italy). Linkage between the Thors and the missiles in Cuban was considered by the British government. For Macmillan it was a basis for possible independent action to break the diplomatic deadlock. For the Foreign Office, anxious not to undermine American diplomacy or appear to be 'chickening out', the Thors could be calibrated with American diplomacy. In the event Kennedy demurred at Macmillan's offer to immobilise the British IRBMs. And although we do no yet know sufficient about Soviet military calculations, it seems reasonable to conclude that during the missile crisis, the Thors were very much a dog that did not bark in the night.

To repeat the article's conclusion: it seems reasonable to conclude that during the missile crisis, the Thors were very much a dog that did not bark in the night.