Green Cheese was a British-made

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...

-guided anti-ship tactical

nuclear warhead A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...

missile project of the 1950s. Green Cheese arose as part of the ' ''Sverdlov'' crisis', when the Royal Navy were concerned over the appearance of a new Soviet heavy cruiser class. It was a longer-ranged and guided replacement for the unguided Red Angel, which had required an approach by the attacker too close to be considered survivable. It was developed by

Fairey Aviation The Fairey Aviation Company Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer of the first half of the 20th century based in Hayes in Middlesex and Heaton Chapel and RAF Ringway in Cheshire. Notable for the design of a number of important military a ...

to be used by the

Fairey Gannet The Fairey Gannet is a carrier-borne aircraft that was designed and produced by the British aircraft manufacturer the Fairey Aviation Company. It was developed for the Royal Navy, being the first fixed-wing aircraft to combine both the search an ...

shipborne anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and was originally called Fairey Project 7. However, the missile's 3,800 lb (1720 kg) weight proved to be too heavy for the Gannet, and would have required modifications to the Gannet's bomb bay to expose the missiles' seeker heads to the target before launch. The missile project continued, since the Blackburn Buccaneer naval strike aircraft had a rotating bomb bay which was ideally suited to the task. The project was cancelled in 1956 due in part to cost over-runs, at which point it had a reached a stage called Cockburn Cheese (after the British military scientist Dr.

Robert Cockburn Robert Cockburn (died 1526) was a 16th-century Scottish diplomat and cleric. Robert Cockburn was the third son of William Cockburn of Skirling and Cessford, and Marion, daughter of Lord Crichton of Sanquhar. Cockburn was a university grad ...

), and was replaced with the

Green Flash The green flash and green ray are meteorological optical phenomena that sometimes occur transiently around the moment of sunset or sunrise. When the conditions are right, a distinct green spot is briefly visible above the Sun's upper limb; ...

project. This too was cancelled and the idea of a tactical nuclear-tipped guided missile for anti-shipping use was given up in favour of a simple " lobbed" tactical nuclear bomb, the WE.177A. The name was randomly generated as one of the UK's

Rainbow Codes The Rainbow Codes were a series of code names used to disguise the nature of various British military research projects. They were mainly used by the Ministry of Supply from the end of the Second World War until 1958, when the ministry was bro ...

References

Cold War anti-ship missiles of the United Kingdom Nuclear air-to-surface missiles Abandoned military projects of the United Kingdom {{missile-stub