The 6555th
Aeronautical
Board
The Aeronautical Board was jointly staffed by the Army Air Forces and the
Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. The three officers at the March 7th meeting were
Major General Hugh J. Knerr, and Major General H. W. McClellan and Brigadier
General William L. Richardson. General Richardson eventually became the
first Air Force commander of the Long Range Proving Ground Division (LRPGD)
and its successor, the Air Force Missile Test Center (AFMTC).
Other missile
programs also disappeared
In December 1946, the guided missile budget for fiscal year (FY) 1947 was
reduced from $29 million to approximately $13 million. Eleven missile projects
were
eliminated, and five more were terminated in May 1947. By the summer of 1947,
only the left-overs of the Air Force's Consolidated-Vultee long-range ballistic
missile project and eight other missile programs remained. They included
two identifiable ballistic missile efforts (e.g., the Navy's Viking project
and the Army's
Redstone), but, apart from rocket motor research, the Air Force's missile
projects centered on airborne tactical missiles and air-breathing winged
missiles like the
MATADOR.
White Sands Proving
Ground
White Sands was a 125-mile-long range set up in 1945 in a high valley north
of El Paso, just across the Texas-New Mexico state line. Though the range
was
only 41 miles wide on the average, it was adequate for WAC-Corporal and V-2
launches. Following the arrival of V-2 components in the summer of 1945,
the
Army (with the indispensable support of German rocket scientists who had
worked on the V-2 at Peenemunde) began launching V-2s from White Sands in
early
1946.
Project CROSSROADS
This effort involved directing remote-controlled B-17 drone aircraft into
radioactive areas to collect air samples shortly after an atomic test.
VB-6 FELIX,
VB-3 RAZON, and VB-13 TARZON
The FELIX was an air-to-surface guided bomb equipped with a heat-seeking
guidance system. The RAZON and TARZON were 1,000-pound and
12,000-pound high-explosive bombs whose tail assemblies were modified to
allow a bombardier to radio-control their trajectories (within certain limits)
following the bombs' release from an aircraft.
1st Experimental
Guided Missiles Group
550th Guided Missiles
Wing
Colonel John R. Kilgore, who had been in command of the 1st Group since 13
August 1947, relinquished his command upon his unit's deactivation. Colonel
Thomas J. Gent, Jr. assumed command of the 550th Guided Missiles Wing on
the date the unit was activated.
detachments
The detachment at Point Mugu was formally redesignated the Headquarters,
550th Guided Missiles Wing Detachment on 21 July 1949, but the Holloman
detachment was not formally redesignated until 15 November 1949. This was
apparently a clerical oversight, since the Holloman detachment had been in
place
at Alamogordo, New Mexico before the 550th Guided Missiles Wing was activated.
Air Research and
Development Command
On behalf of the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Dr.
von Karman had asked Dr. Louis N. Ridenour in 1949 to chair a committee to
study Air Force research and development activities. The Ridenour Committee
submitted its report in September 1949, and this report recommended the
creation of a research and development command in addition to a position
on the Air Staff for a Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development.
Major
General Orval A. Anderson also directed an Air University study on the subject
in 1949, and it echoed the Ridenour report, but in stronger terms: research
and
development ought to be removed from Air Materiel Command and vested in a
single agency for research and development.
weapon systems
The term "weapon system" became part of Wright-Patterson's vocabulary at
least several years before the creation of ARDC. Major General Harry J. Sands,
Jr.
recalled using the "systems approach" for missile development and procurement
in the Pilotless Aircraft Branch in the late 1940s. A weapon system was formally
described as "an instrument of combat...together with all related equipment
both airborne and ground based, the skills necessary to operate the equipment,
and
the supporting facilities and services required to enable the instrument
of combat to be a single unit of striking power in its operational environment."
The systems
approach considered all the elements of a weapon system when requirements
were set down on paper.
Air Materiel Command's
job
As Deputy Chief of Staff for Materiel, Lieutenant General Orval R. Cook was
given responsibility (within the Air Staff) for overall supervision of Air
Force R&D
in September 1953. In an effort to improve weapon systems management in ARDC
and Air Materiel Command, General Cook formed an advisory group to
investigate the concept of "cradle to grave" procurement (i.e., detailed
planning for research, development, testing, producing, maintaining, repairing
and --
ultimately -- disposing of a weapon system). A key feature of this concept
was the "fly before you buy" approach, which insured that an initial production
run of
aircraft or missiles would be thoroughly tested and declared operationally
suitable before the Air Force committed itself to full-scale production and
deployment
of a weapon system.
3rd Guided
Missiles Squadron, Interceptor
The 3rd Guided Missiles Squadron, Interceptor had been activated on 1 July
1950, apparently replacing the 550th's missile detachment at the Long Range
Proving Ground. A deactivation order (dated 1 August 1950) indicates that
the Detachment, Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron of the 550th Guided
Missiles Wing at the Long Range Proving Ground was not discontinued until
1 August, but histories of the 1st and 3rd Guided Missiles Squadrons and
the 550th
Guided Missiles Wing indicate that Major Joseph H. Hamilton (the detachment
commander) assumed command of the 3rd Guided Missiles Squadron,
Interceptor on either July 1st or July 6th. In any event, the detachment's
people, records and equipment were transferred to the 3rd Guided Missiles
Squadron.
The Squadron's initial muster was 13 officers and 44 airmen and one other
officer and 11 airmen were attached to the Squadron to set up a guided missiles
school for Air Training Command.
Colonel George M.
McNeese
Colonel McNeese frequently assumed command temporarily during Colonel Thomas
J. Gent's trips to the 550th's units at Holloman and Patrick in the summer
of
1950. McNeese finally assumed command in his own right on 23 October 1950.
inactivated the
550th
As the squadrons' numbers suggest, the old 2nd Guided Missiles Squadron stationed
at Holloman became the 4802nd Guided Missile Squadron, and the 3rd
Guided Missiles Squadron, Interceptor became the 4803rd Guided Missile Squadron.
The 550th Maintenance Squadron was also inactivated on December
29th, but the 550th's movement order to Patrick listed only one officer and
one enlisted man from the 550th Maintenance Squadron. It is safe to assume
that the
rest of the 550th Maintenance Squadron's personnel had been transferred to
the 3200th Drone Squadron or some other unit at Eglin before the 550th Guided
Missiles Wing departed for Patrick in December.
Lieutenant Colonel
Henry B. Sayler
Sayler's detachment at Eglin was not mentioned in the Long Range Proving
Ground Division's inactivation order, but it was "established" by the 4800th
as
Detachment "A" Headquarters & Headquarters Squadron, 4800th Guided Missiles
Wing on 30 December 1950. The Wing amended the order on January 26th
and made the detachment "Detachment 1".
LARK
The LARK was developed by the Fairchild Aircraft Company during World War
II as a Navy anti-aircraft missile. With a range of 35 miles and a speed
of 300
knots per hour, the 173-inch long LARK was adopted by the Air Force as a
training vehicle for personnel who would later become involved with Project
BOMARC at Cape Canaveral. The first LARKs fired at Point Mugu required a
450-foot-long ramp, but a zero-length launcher was used with the LARKs fired
at Cape Canaveral. Range support requirements were very modest, even by early
1950s standards.
BUMPER 8 and BUMPER
7
Toward the end of 1946, the Army Ordnance Corps became interested in the
concept of a "step-rocket." It asked the General Electric Company to mount
a
WAC-Corporal missile atop of a German V-2 rocket and launch a series of those
hybrid "Bumper" vehicles at the White Sands Proving Ground. Six BUMPER
missiles were launched at White Sands in 1948 and 1949, and those flights
verified the satisfactory operation of both missile stages and their separation
system.
Two more flights were planned with relatively low, flat trajectories (i.e.,
less than 150,000 feet in altitude), but White Sands was too short to accommodate
them.
The Long Range Proving Ground had the requisite length (250 miles), so BUMPERs
8 and 7 were launched from Cape Canaveral on 24 July and 29 July 1950
respectively. The General Electric Company was responsible for launching
the vehicles, and the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratories (Aberdeen Proving
Ground, Maryland) provided instrumentation support. Among the Army and Air
Force units that supported the BUMPER flights from the Cape, the 550th
Guided Missiles Wing provided several aircraft and crews to monitor the Range
for clearance purposes. The Long Range Proving Ground Division provided
overall coordination and range clearance.
training course
The course covered the LARK's propulsion and guidance systems. The first
graduating class consisted of a dozen Air Training Command personnel who
returned to their parent command to establish a school for guided missile
technicians.
MATADOR
The MATADOR B-61A "pilotless bomber" was just emerging from its developmental
stage in 1951. It was designed as a 650-mile-per-hour winged tactical
missile built to carry a 3000-pound conventional or nuclear warhead a distance
of approximately 500 miles. The MATADOR utilized a solid propellant rocket
bottle as a Rocket Assisted Takeoff (RATO) system to lift itself into the
air from a "roadable" zero-length launcher. After the rocket burned out and
dropped off,
the MATADOR was powered to its target by an Allison J-33 turbojet engine.
Tests in the early 1950s included the development of two different guidance
systems: the MATADOR Automatic Radar Command "MARC" system and the Short
Range Navigation Vehicle "SHANICLE" microwave system. Both
systems required ground stations to control the missile's airborne guidance
hardware. While the early test version of the missile measured 34 feet, 7
inches long
and had a wing span of 23 feet, 4 inches, the production models were 39.6
feet long and measured 28.7 feet from wing-tip to wing-tip.