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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 1809.PDF
FLIGHT, 6 December 1957 Missiles 1957 . . . (U.S.A.—continued) be said about it. A specification appears be-neath the drawing and a full history of its development was published on p. 904 of our1956 review. From the top downwards, Corporal com-prises: a pointed nose carrying a kiloton war- head; a package containing radar/Dopplerguidance; a polygonal section housing 2,350 lb/sq in air tanks; large tanks of redfuming nitric acid and xylidine; and a fixed Ryan-built rocket chamber, together withcruciform fins, controls and small vanes in the rocket jet. Prime contractors for this weaponare Firestone, for the airframe, and Gilfillan (assisted by Motorola) for the guidance. Thebasic design-work was undertaken by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of CalTech. Exten-sive details of the complete weapon system, including notes on ground equipment, firingdrill, performance and operational history, were published in our 1956 review. Dart Although appreciably larger, and farmore expensive, than the French S.S.10/11 and British Vickers 891 weapons, the U.S.Army's Dart is designed for a similar function : delivery with pin-point accuracy of a warheadcapable of knocking out the heaviest tank known. The basic development of theSSM-A-23 system was handled by the Army Ordnance District, Los Angeles; RedstoneArsenal; and the Aerophysics Development Corporation (of Santa Barbara, Cal., a sub-sidiary of Curtiss-Wright). Within the body are a large, shaped chargeand a smokeless, solid-propellant rocket sus- tainer motor by Grand Central Aircraft. Theweapon is fired from a zero-length launcher, usually mounted on an M59 truck, and itsoperator guides the weapon by keeping it, or sodium flares fixed to it, aligned with the target.This he does with the aid of an optical tracking system by the H. A. Wagner Co., which is con-nected to the launcher by a cable. Although no details have been released, it seems probablethat the motor has a high-thrust initial portion to provide requisite acceleration at launching.The initial guidance is simple gravity-correc- tion by gyros (it was no easy task to find a suit-able non-electric gyro), presumably operating the hinged trailing edges of the wing cruciform.In-flight guidance is probably effected by means of small spoilers at the wing-tips, since thesteady speed is almost sonic. Dart has many times demonstrated veryaccurate guidance, going through, or very close to, the bull on 6ft cloth targets at ranges wellover a mile. Production is being undertaken by the Utica-Bend Corpn., a subsidiary ofStudebaker-Packard (and so also of Curtiss- Wright). The first production contract, placedin August 1956, amounted to $16,565,000, and inventory deliveries are now being made to theArmy. Stanford Research Institute have a $97,000 assignment to analyse Dart productionand formulate budget control for the system. Late in October the Aerophysics DevelopmentCorporation received a $403,036 contract for further Dart development. Goose Also known as Bull Goose (or BlueGoose), this name refers to a U.S. Air Force family of peculiar character. Bearing theweapon system designation WS-123A, the missile itself is SM-73 and the prime contractoris the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corpora- tion who have expended their facility at Hagers-town to undertake this work. The designation SM-73 (strategic missile)suggests that the missile portion of the system takes off from the ground, although it has beensuggested that it is carried aloft by a B-58 or similar aircraft. The airframe is of an aircraft-type configuration and its function is purely diversionary; in particular, it is designed to actas a decoy for surface-to-air missiles, and to this end carries a radar transponder of thecorner-reflector type. The basic SM-73 is reported to be manu-factured largely of resin-bonded dielectric material. For ground launching, a Thiokolsolid boost motor is provided and cruise pro- pulsion takes the form of a single Fairchild J83turbojet of about 2,200 lb thrust, which is stated to give a cruise Mach number of about 1.25 (acurious figure, which must result in poor speci- fic range). Fairchild radio-command guidance is reported to be matched with a Kollsmanflight-control system so that—presumably— the vehicle can be steered from the ground orfrom a parent aircraft. No details of the con- figuration have been revealed, but the span hasbeen given as about 13ft and the length vari- ously as 20ft and 30ft. Maximum operatingaltitude has been placed as high as 100,000ft, which seems excessive in view of the nature ofits powerplant. One of the few things which can be deducedwith assurance is that the range must be well over 500 miles, otherwise the "SM" designa-tion would not be applicable. One report states that the Goose family "includes paralleldevelopment of the Duck missile"; the latter weapon, although reported to be an air-to-airmissile and described in that section of this issue, is also described as a surface-to-surfacedevice; our American contemporary Missiles and Rockets, says of Goose and Duck "whileessential elements . . . are similar, airframes are different in size and some aerodynamic charac-teristics." Altogether Fairchild seem to have a curious series of offspring in the Goose familywhich was reported in July to be in prelimin- ary production. In a recent list of publishedcontracts WS-123A was named as a weapon system for which the J. C. Harper Construc-tion Company were to build "complex 21 and support items." Honest John Although not guided, thistactical army support weapon is otherwise characteristic of the overall missile family. Itis a large-calibre rocket, mounted and fired from an elevating ramp carried by a vehicleand deployed up to forward battlefield areas. The weapon is aimed in artillery fashion andthereafter follows a free-flight trajectory. Propulsion is provided by a solid sustainerwith a 2,000-lb (weight) cast charge by the Hercules Powder Company. For stability theweapon is spun at launching by four small tangential rockets behind the warhead, the spinbeing maintained by the canted fins. Many thousands of rounds have been delivered fromDouglas Aircraft and Emerson Electric, Alco fabricating the bodies from steel sheet. Witha 1,500-lb warhead, maximum range is achieved at an elevation of 50 deg, reaching atrajectory peak of 30,000ft in 41 sec and a strike at 30,000 yd in 87 sec. Training coursesare simple, and the weapon is likely to be employed by the NATO countries and Japan. Jupiter This IRBM (intermediate-rangeballistic missile) has been, and still is, the focal point of one of the greatest politicalstorms ever to afflict the development of any weapon. It is the product of the Army Ballis-tic Missile Agency at Redstone Arsenal, under a design team led by the renowned Dr.Wernher von Braun (creator of the A-4, or "V-2" weapon), who is A.B.M.A's. director ofdevelopment operations. It is a natural and logical outcome of the arsenal's successfuldevelopment of the earlier Redstone. In November 1955 came the famous—orinfamous—memorandum by Charles Wilson, then Defense Secretary, on the roles andmissions of the Army and Air Force. This document laid down that the responsibility forall land-based weapons with a range greater than "about 200 miles" should be vested in theAir Force. Although the Army were allowed to make limited feasability studies intosystems beyond the 200-mile limit, the memorandum orphaned Jupiter completely,and decreed that, even if it were perfected, the Army would not be permitted to operateit. This may have been a blunder of the first magnitude. What certainly was an unforgiv-able decision was that which placed in the Air Force's hands responsibility for the financ-ing and development of all long-range wea- pons. When the appropriations for Fiscal Year1958 were reviewed the U.S.A.F. made no provision for Jupiter, thus somewhat pre-judg-ing the issue. But it is advisable first to des- cribe the missile itself. Like its hastily developed competitor Thor,Jupiter is a single-stage weapon, powered by a gimbal-mounted Rocketdyne S-3 motor, ofsome 150,000/160,000 lb thrust in current versions; combustion pressure is held constantby a Servomechanisms controller. Unlike the Air Force weapon it has a relatively conven-tional airframe, of constant diameter, topped by a quite different type of nose-cone anddevoid of fins. It follows that all stability and guidance is effected by pivoting of the S-3 899 Douglas Nike Ajax SAM-A-7 (Left, above) Surface-to-air. Solid boost motor, liquid sustainer. Overall length, 34ft 10in; length without boost, 19ft 9in; body diameter, 12in; foreplane span, 24in; wing span, 63in; firing weight, without boost, about 1,100 Ib (300 Ib warhead); burn-out speed, Mach 2.28; slant range, 10 to 25 miles. Douglas Nike Hercules Surface-to-air. Quadruple solid boost motors, solid sustainer motor. Overall length, with boost, 41ft 6in; length of basic missile, 27ft; span, 74in; maximum body diameter, 25in; firing weight of missile without boost, approximately 5,000 Ib; burn-out speed, about Mach 3.3; maximum slant range, of the order of 68 to 75 miles. chamber. For many years Sperry have beenimproving the air-bearing gyros of the German A-4 missile, and gyros with air bear-ings are used in the inertial platform of the Jupiter guidance, which is by the Ford Instru-ment Co., a Sperry-Rand subsidiary. As a backstop a radio-inertial system has beenevolved, and the chief electronics sub-contrac- tor is Motorola (Western Electronics Division).The J.P.L. CalTech team have also contributed much to the Jupiter system, all these con-tractors having gained great experience with Corporal and /or Redstone. In contrast to the U.S.A.F., who hurriedthrough the evolution of Thor on a maximum- risk basis, the Army have developed Jupiterwith extreme care, proceeding cautiously from one stage to the next. The earlier Redstoneweapon has been very widely used as a test vehicle, and as many as possible of its actualcomponents have been carried across to Jupi- ter wherever this could be done without im-pairing the latter's performance. Recently Dr. von Braun stated that this meant that "a greatnumber of components" of Jupiter were "therefore tested and proven." First vehicle to bear the name Jupiter was aspecially instrumented species of Redstone designated Jupiter A. Several of these werefired from Patrick A.F.B. during 1956, and the later examples incorporated actual com-ponents or portions of the final Jupiter. Six Jupiter A vehicles were given an increase inrange to 800 miles. Concurrent with the firing
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