The Fairey Aviation Stooge was a command guided surface-to-air missile (SAM) development project carried out in the United Kingdom starting in World War II. Development dates to a British Army request from 1944, but the work was taken over by the Royal Navy as a potential counter to the Kamikaze threat. Development was not complete when the war ended, but the Ministry of Supply funded further development and numerous test launches into 1947, assisting in the development of more advanced successor missiles. Development During World War II a number of efforts were started to develop surface-to-air missiles as it was generally considered that flak was of little use against bombers of ever-increasing performance. While the Germans developed a number of systems in an attempt to deter Allied bombing, the overwhelming air superiority held by the Allies meant that the prospect of developing similar weapons was largely ignored as unnecessary. This changed when the Kamikaze threat spread in the later half of 1944. This led to the British Stooge and Brakemine efforts, and the US Navy's SAM-N-2 Lark. The British Army had already ordered early studies on these weapons. According to a common account of its development, possibly apocryphal, Fairey was asked to carry out some basic research on these plans by a Royal Navy request, but instead presented a revised design of some depth. The Ministry of Supply (MoS) signed a contract for development of the system in 1944. The ending of the war in August 1945 led to a lower level of urgency, but the MoS continued funding as a development project. Description The Stooge was essentially a small subsonic aircraft with straight wings and a conventional tail layout. The missile looked substantially similar to the V-1, shrunken down and with the engine removed from the top. The missile fuselage was long and in diameter, with a main wingspan of , and a tail span of . Ready for launch, it weighed . The rear part of the fuselage was taken up by four air-to-ground "Swallow" solid fuel rockets. The thrust and burning time could be controlled by varying the size of a venturi nozzle. At the missile reached speeds of , but was normally tested at a thrust level of which gave a much slower cruising speed. For launch, four rocket motors (from the RP-3 "3-inch" rocket weapon) were strapped in pairs to either side of the fuselage,