- Kennedy, Gregory P.
The Rockets and Missiles of White Sands Proving Ground, 1945–1958.
Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History, 2009.
ISBN 978-0-7643-3251-7.
-
Southern New Mexico has been a centre of American
rocketry from its origin to the present day. After being chased
out of Massachusetts due to his inventions' proclivity for
making ear-shattering detonations and starting fires, Robert
Goddard moved his liquid fuel rocket research to a site near
Roswell, New Mexico in 1930 and continued to launch increasingly
advanced rockets from that site until 1943, when he left to
do war work for the Navy. Faced with the need for a range to test
the missiles developed during World War II, in February 1945
the U.S. Army acquired a site stretching 100 miles north
from the Texas-New Mexico border near El Paso
and 41 miles east-west at the widest point, designated
the “White Sands Proving Ground”: taking its name
from the gypsum sands found in the region, also
home to the
White
Sands National Monument.
Although established before the end of the war to test U.S. missiles,
the first large rockets launched at the site were captured German
V-2s (December 2002), with the first
launched (unsuccessfully) in April 1946. Over the next six years, around
seventy V-2s lifted off from White Sands, using the V-2's massive (for
the time) one ton payload capacity to carry a wide variety of
scientific instruments into the upper atmosphere and the edge of
space. In the
Bumper
project, the V-2 was used as the
booster for the world's first two stage liquid rocket, with its
WAC Corporal
second stage attaining an altitude of 248 miles:
higher than some satellites orbit today (it did not, of course, attain anything
near orbital velocity, and quickly fell back to Earth).
Simultaneously with launches of the V-2, U.S. rocketeers arrived at White
Sands to test their designs—almost every U.S. missile of the 1940s
and 1950s made its first flight there. These included research
rockets such as
Viking and
Aerobee
(first launched
in 1948, it remained in service until 1985 with a total of
1037 launched); the
Corporal,
Sergeant,
and Redstone
ballistic missiles;
Loki,
Nike,
Hawk
anti-aircraft missiles; and a variety of tactical missiles including
the unguided (!) nuclear-tipped
Honest John.
White Sands in the forties and fifties was truly the Wild West of
rocketry. Even by the standards of
fighter aircraft development
in the epoch, this was by guess and by gosh engineering in its purest
incarnation. Consider Viking 8, which broke loose
from the launch pad during a static test when hold-down fittings
failed, and was allowed to fly to 20,000 feet to see what would happen
(p. 97). Or Viking 10, whose engine exploded
on the launch pad and then threatened a massive explosion because
leaking fuel was causing the tankage to crumple as it left a vacuum.
An intrepid rocketeer was sent out of the blockhouse with a carbine to
shoot a hole in the top of the fuel tank and allow air to enter
(p. 100)—problem solved! (The rocket was rebuilt and later
flew successfully.) Then there was the time they ran out of 90%
hydrogen peroxide and were told the first Viking launch
would have to be delayed for two weeks until a new shipment could
arrive by rail. Can't have that! So two engineers drove a drum of
the highly volatile and corrosive substance in the back of a station
wagon from Buffalo, New York to White Sands to meet the launch deadline
(p. 79). In the Nike program, people worried about
whether its aniline fuel would be sufficiently available under
tactical conditions, so they tried using gasoline as fuel
instead—BOOM! Nope, guess not (p. 132).
With all this “innovation” going on, they needed
a suitable place from which to observe it, so the pyramid-shaped
blockhouse had reinforced concrete walls ten feet thick with a roof
27 feet thick at the peak. This was designed to withstand a direct
impact from a V-2 falling from an altitude of 100 miles. “Once
the rockets are up, who cares
where
they come down?”
And the pace of rockets going up was absolutely frenetic, almost
inconceivable by the standards of today's hangar queens and
launch pad prima donnas (some years ago, a booster which sat on the
pad for more than a year was nicknamed the “civil servant”:
it won't work and you can't fire it). By contrast, a single
development program, the Loki
anti-aircraft missile, conducted a total of 2282 launches at
White Sands in 1953 and 1954 (p. 115)—that's an average of more
than three a day, counting weekends and holidays!
The book concludes in 1958 when White Sands Proving Ground became
White Sands Missile Range (scary
pop-up at this link),
which remains a centre of rocket development and testing to this
day. With the advent of NASA and massively funded, long-term
military procurement programs, much of the cut, try, and run like
Hell days of rocketry came to a close; this book covers that
period which, if not a golden age, was a heck of a lot of fun for
engineers who enjoy making loud noises and punching holes in
the sky.
The book is gorgeous, printed on glossy paper, with hundreds of
illustrations. I noted no typographical or factual errors.
A complete list of all U.S. V-2, WAC Corporal, and Viking
launches is given in appendices at the end.
May 2010 