Authors: Richard Tongue
The Air Force position was that the Army did not have the intuitive grasp of aerial strategy that allowed them to employ it as it should be employed, and that their focus was limited to only a fraction of the potential of air power; to be fair, there are numerous examples of this type of failure of imagination in the Second World War.
A factor that complicated proceedings still further was the aforementioned atomic bomb. It had dramatically ended the war against Japan in a matter of days, without a costly invasion that would have cost the lives of millions on both sides. It had public appeal and support, at a level that could only be dreamed of today by the nuclear weapon advocates. It was the 'sexy' new technology that was attracting both funding and support, and each of the three services wanted to have their piece of the pie.
In the 1940s, the only method of delivering a nuclear bomb – other than by handcart – was by bomber, and a squadron trained for the delivery of such weapons operated out of the quiet and innocuous town of Roswell, New Mexico. The other services were determined to have their own methods of deployment; the Navy was planning the construction of aircraft carriers large enough to operate the heavy bombers required to carry the nuclear weapons of the era, and the Army, well – the Army was planning to mount
its
nuclear weapons on missiles.
The Navy didn't get its carriers; these behemoths were cancelled as construction was beginning on the first model, but all three services would retain elements of the nuclear mission. The Air Force, broadly speaking, would have their primary focus on strategic deployment, while the Navy and Army would be more interested in battlefield deployment of their weapons. (It would not be for another decade that the Navy would become a part of the strategic nuclear arsenal with the development and deployment of the ballistic missile submarine.)
In terms of the Army deployment of nuclear weapons, the Air Force was not finished. With some justification they suggested that a missile flying into the upper atmosphere – or even into space itself – was hardly a 'battlefield' weapon, and weapons like this were on the drawing board. The Army countered with the concept that these should be considered along the lines of artillery, as they had no manned component and were operated from fixed sites.
At this early stage, years before any development had begun, before the consideration of a long-range Army missile went into the planning stage, the Army can be said to have lost the 'space race'; the Air Force won the day, and would begin the design and development of missiles for the long-range strategic mission in the form of the Atlas missile. The Army would content itself with shorter-ranged battlefield devices instead. The only long-range missile that they would continue with would be the Redstone, a tactical missile that had originated in concept in 1946.
The Redstone originated as a design need for a long-range tactical missile, following a doctrine prevalent at the time known as the 'deep battlefield' concept; the idea being that vastly increased mobility meant that in the future, battlefields would be measured with depths of dozens of miles, ranging across wide swathes of territory; this had increasingly been the case in the latter days of the Second World War.
By 1951, the design specifications called for a missile possessing a range of five hundred miles, which could be deployed under battlefield conditions; in this they were following the design philosophies of the V2. The weight of the warhead grew to a substantial 6,900 pounds, which at the time was feared to have serious implications for the potential range with the engines available. (In context, the 200-mile range V2 carried a warhead of 2,200 pounds.) The first model was to be launched in 1953, with development coming to an end in the following year.
Contracts were signed on the wide range of required components, and the work began. Chrysler became the lead contractor for the project, beginning a long association with long-range Army missiles. North American Aviation, the company that would eventually build the capsules to send men to the Moon, was also involved.
Ultimately, although the large payload weight and other performance requirements were essentially attained, the range was, as feared, significantly compromised; two hundred miles was eventually obtained by modified variants. However, deployment proceeded almost on schedule, and the U.S. Army had its medium-range missile. A new project would be required if a missile of the designed ranges was to be obtained, and preliminary design work began.
The Army retained the leading missile development team, arguably the leaders in the world at that time – Von Braun and his group, now operating out of Huntsville, Alabama, at the Army's Redstone Arsenal. With the nuclear 'mission' now denied them, the idea of working on other projects opened up, and in 1954, the idea of Project Orbiter was floated. It had become apparent that the Army
had the potential to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth
using equipment that was then available – the new Redstone missile
.
A joint Army-Navy project was mooted to work on just such a goal, and the timing was excellent – planning for the forthcoming International Geophysical Year was entering advanced stages, and it had already been suggested that a key component could be the launch of a satellite for the purposes of scientific investigation. By the end of the year, the Office of Naval Research had begun to issue contracts to further investigate this concept, and a multidisciplinary team was working on the principles involved.
There was, however, a rival. As the V-2 rockets began to run out, the desirability of maintaining a capability for upper-atmospheric research had become increasingly apparent, and the result was Project Viking, which created a new launcher designed solely for research; by the end of the program, the team was setting new altitude records, and the potential for further development was obvious. This team was also interested in the launch of a satellite, and there had been much discussion of such a concept. By 1955, both the Air Force and the Naval Research Laboratory – which had developed Viking – were themselves making proposals for satellites. Ultimately, it came down to a choice between the Army's Project Orbiter, and the NRL's Project Vanguard.
Project Orbiter had the advantage that it could be developed relatively quickly, from 'off-the-shelf' components that were proven to have a high reliability. Little development work would be required, and it would not even greatly slow the progress of necessary defence work; the Air Force had primary responsibility for long-range ballistic missiles, rather than the Army.
Had Project Orbiter been approved, a Redstone booster would have been used as the primary launch vehicle, with a cluster of solid-fuel Loki boosters used as an upper stage to propel a five-pound satellite into orbit at an altitude of two hundred miles. It was believed that this satellite could be tracked optically, rendering radio location needless; such a small satellite could not have returned much data, and could be compared with Sputnik 1, which was principally a technology demonstrator rather than a scientific tool. It would certainly serve to provide the United States with a 'first', but very little more than that.
Project Vanguard was the more ambitious program. It required the development of a new launcher, as well as the satellite to be carried into space, but had the advantage of promising a greater scientific payback for the IGY than Project Orbiter was likely to return; it was a more sophisticated program. Another key advantage was that such a project would be entirely civilian in nature, and could be used as a tool to demonstrate the peaceful intentions of the United States in the new frontier. Though undoubtedly the nature of the programs was a major factor, the civilian nature of Project Vanguard would prove the decisive factor in its selection over Project Orbiter.
This was not merely for reasons of propaganda, but for far deeper reasons than that. The need for covert reconnaissance of the Soviet Union was increasing as the Cold War chilled; the CIA was completing the final development of the U-2 spy plane as the Orbiter/Vanguard decision was in progress, and flights would soon begin over the Soviet Union and its allies. It was recognised, however, that ultimately this would simply be a stopgap which would close as anti-aircraft technology improved, and that something more advanced would be necessary. That something could be a satellite.
Consideration of the uses of a satellite for reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering purposes had been ongoing for some years, and much of the data on this field is classified or simply lost. Eisenhower's position on the matter is known, however – fundamentally, he
wanted
this technology, and had been convinced of its potential usefulness. The danger was the response from both the Soviet Union and the rest of the world; it is hard to argue with the theoretical concept that this could be considered a blatant violation of airspace. What was needed was some form of agreement that territoriality ended at the atmosphere, or a 'cover story' that would suggest that the work being conduct in space was scientific, open, and shared with other nations – at least at first.
Conspiracy theorists might suggest that the President
wanted
to be beaten in this race to give him an excuse to proceed with other programs, but this seems unlikely. Now-declassified CIA documents make it fairly clear that Soviet prowess in the missile field was being underestimated;
though they were making no secret of their plans to place a satellite into space themselves for the IGY, few in the West believed that they were really capable of such an achievement. It is far more likely that Eisenhower simply wanted to promote the idea that space was a civilian field, rather than a military one, and use
that
precedent to later orbit vehicles over the entire Earth with impunity.
Project Orbiter died at that time. Had it been given the full go-ahead, it is highly likely that it would have succeeded in placing its tiny satellite into space for the IGY, possibly even before it. Follow-up satellites may have been larger, but they would have had to use either further modifications to the Redstone, or more likely larger missiles altogether, which would have required a complete redesign. It is far more likely that the satellite launch would have been a one-off spectacular, and one where the Soviet Union would almost certainly have loudly protested the violations of its territory. Little scientific data would have been obtained, and paradoxically it could have considerably slowed the pace of American space efforts.
While the Project Orbiter saga was developing, Army Ordinance began to become involved in another project, one that would prove the foundation of its efforts in space throughout its involvement in that arena. The Army had elected to coordinate its missile development into one agency, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), under the command of Major-General John Medaris. He had been an advocate of the development of guided missiles by the Army during his term as Chief of the Industrial Division of the Ordinance Corps; his interest was founded on the idea that unlike projects such as new personal sidearms, guided missile projects could be 'sold' to the Department of the Defence; this was an era when cutting-edge projects were attractive.
An opportunity was arising for the development of such a missile. The Air Force had, for some time, been working on its Atlas ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) project; this was showing some promise, but was not thought likely to become operational
before 1959-60. It was already evident that this missile would not totally satisfy the strategic requirements envisaged, and work was already beginning on a successor missile, the Titan.
This left a capability gap, and a committee working under Dr. James Killian suggested that a top priority should be the development of a stopgap IRBM (Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile), with a range on the order of 1,500 miles. Such a weapon would
not
be able to reach its targets from the continental United States, but it would be suitable for deployment in NATO countries such as Britain, Italy and Turkey, and would have the range to strike the Soviet Union from these targets. (It was assumed that NATO members would accede to the request to site nuclear missiles on their soil that would remain under the control of the United States – in the event, considerable diplomatic problems ensued when the time came to actually
deploy
these weapons.)
Naturally, the Air Force considered that it should develop the IRBM, and came up with a project to develop a missile known as Thor. There were concerns, however; it was already suggested that the Air Force was somewhat overstretched with the Atlas and Titan projects; the Army, with its recently formed ABMA and considerable missile experience, was in a good position to suggest a rival project, which was to be known as Jupiter – based on its successful Redstone missile. The Army was suggesting that this weapon could be deployed for battlefield use – the Air Force, quite reasonably, suggested that while it technically
could
be employed for such use, a missile with that range would be best employed in the strategic role – an Air Force mission.
At this stage the Navy entered the picture. They had a role for a medium-range missile of the manner envisaged, but did not themselves have any capacity for the development of such a weapon. They
could
throw their support behind the Army project, with the understanding that the missile would be developed to suit their needs as well as those of the Army. On this basis, the peculiar arrangement occurred that the United States Army – in the shape of the newly-created ABMA – was tasked to create a missile that would be primarily for
naval
use, as well as a backup to the Thor missile, the development of which was approved. It was hoped that this could be operational on the battlefield by 1960.