Cruise Missiles | Missile Launcher | Greenham Common | TV Eye | 1983

Whilst protesters were concentrating on Greenham , weapons were (at that time) able to moved freely in about out of RAF Welford just down the M4. Road , air and rail were all available and the US had control of approximately 50% of the considerable site. In some ways Greenham was a convenient and clever distraction.

The second lorry carries the neccessary items in an emergency to make about 30,000 cups of tea.

Brilliant video. I was a wee lad in 1983, and we all thought and feared the world we were in back then. At least we knew who the proposed enemy was. My God, it's nothing compared to the horrors and fears of this modern world. I miss the Cold War. Somehow, felt much safer back then! Thanks for posting this :)

The Cruise launcher convoys might have practiced dispersing into woodland hides, but in wartime they'd have deployed to warehouses on industrial estates, large farm buildings or old aircraft hangers etc. CND really didn't have a clue.

Those eye brows!!!

Was in C flt in 89 till deactivation in 90. Fun times hangin at the Wagons and Horses, lol... It was actually a pretty sweet assignment. The CND chicks were always entertaining when our convoy would deploy for training 😅

love this video!! Is it me or it there lots of bits cut out?

I was at Salisbury College of Art when Greenham Common was at its busiest. I remember going out there to photograph the the Cruise Missile convoy going out on exercise.

Stand To Lima! Let's go! RAF Greenham-Common (and all the space between, and on Salisbury Plain) 86-90. Loved my time there! This is a riot to watch...never knew this documentary existed.

Some fairly big holes in the analysis provided here on this missile system. The members assigned that all potential military targets would have been struck by Soviet nukes at once.

Did they do one on the SS-20? The soviets had a mobile, difficult-to-locate theater ballistic missile.

I was number 2 on the list to go over to Europe. I worked on the Minuteman III missiles. But I never did get to go, they were being phased out.

Since it’s Thames, perhaps the fake cruise missile lorries could be speeded up with Benny Hill music? That would confuse the Russians.

lovely crusaders,im guessin they are civvy spec as they even had detroits in them and normal headlights.

The paint scheme on the convoy isn't as flat/matte as I would expect. I should think this would make the potential launch sites pre-sighted by enemy satellites, that is, to rule-out reflective surfaces that had been there all along (lakes, galvanized roofs, etc) so that anything reflective that hadn't been there before, would become a potential target. Maybe the chemical makeup of the paint is to prevent other means of identification instead, such as infrared? Maybe it can't have a totally matte finish for the sake of weather protection. I don't know.

Are they ready that slow?

Casper Weinberger is said to have dismissed this weapon system as useless. His reasoning was that a Soviet saboteur with a hunting rifle could place a single shot to the missile tube penetrating the cruise missile's fuel cell thus rendering the entire unit out of action. Weinberger claimed the only reason the GLCMs were made were to be simple pawns to trade something we wished the Soviets to remove from their arsenal.

Exact specifications eh? lol

The serial vehicles looked different.

@17:56 the ginger moustached "peace nick" says retaliate first? How can you retaliate first? Retaliation is a response in kind to something that has happened