It was 65 feet long, 8 feet in diameter and weighed 105,000 pounds. At about 6:30 p.m., an airman conducting maintenance on a USAF Titan-II missile at Little … It was designed to deliver a payload 1,500 miles (2400 kilometers), a range that allowed a U.K.-based missile to hit Moscow. Douglas Aircraft was the prime aircraft contractor. Thor Missile Thor was the free world's first operational intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM). A FORMER RAF officer has described how an accident with a nuclear missile could have devastated much of Lincoln-shire and contaminated hundreds of square miles with radioactive materials.
Thor Missile at RAF Cosford (Image: Peter Evans) When brought to readiness, they could be fired within 15 minutes and would climb at supersonic … After several failures, Thor made its first successful flight on Sept. 20, 1957. On 17 August 1962, at an undisclosed RAF base somewhere in England, two retrorockets on a Thor missile suddenly fired while it was undergoing a routine check. Thor, named after the Norse god of thunder, provided nuclear deterrence before intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) were ready.