FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0640.PDF
656 FLIGHT, 16 May 1958 Defense A CONDUCTED TOUR OF U.S. AIR POWER PART TWO: THE M 1SS1 LE- M1N DED ARMY THIS is the second dispatch (the first appeared in our issue of May 2)from a correspondent who is a member of the party to which the U.S. Armed Services have given special facilities for inspecting their newestequipment and methods. In the previous article he described the journey from England in a C-118 of MATS (Military Air TranspoitService) and a visit to the Pentagon for briefing. Here he makes long flights to see missile trials and training at two Army bases. THIS time a V.I.P. Convair VC-131 of MATS' special com-munications squadron at Boiling Air Force Base, Washing-ton, flew up to Wilmington, Delaware, to take us over the length and breadth of the States. The particular aircraft was oneoriginally ordered by Lufthansa, then bought by the U.S.A.F. when the Germans decided they didn't want it. Furnished tonormal airline standards, it made a comfortable transport for the long hauls we were to do. First stop was Lincoln A.F.B., Nebraska. This is a S.A.C. base,littered with B-47s. I counted 40 as we taxied in from the 13,00Qft runway; refuelling was one which had landed just before us—after a non-stop flight from Greenham Common, Berkshire. But we were not yet to be given the opportunity of inspectinga S.A.C. base. The State Department and the Air Force had decided that we must first see some more Americana—this timethe sort of town rarely visited by Britons. Lincoln is a typical mid-Western agricultural centre, State capitalof Nebraska, and a thoroughly pleasant city. Even the Warden of the State Penitentiary, inviting us to lunch, put himself out to seethat we enjoyed it. If you are a "trusty" in an American gaol you can expect better food and accommodation than the British Armyprovides for its soldiers. Lunch was in the trusties' cafeteria, a convict band played while we ate, and two tables from me sat aman who had been awarded a sentence of 85 years (but, as the prison magazine pointed out, the term had been reduced to 35years because of his good behaviour). In the evening to see another typically American activity—a"pageant" to select Miss Nebraska of 1958. (My personal choice was Miss Lincoln, a pretty 19-year-old university student, but shewas pipped at the post. This made me annoyed with the judges —one of whom was the Air Force Base commander.) But thishappy dilly-dallying soon ended; and the Convair, turning on to the runway a good third of the way down its length, took off forEl Paso, Texas. This was where the real work started—the United States Army took as over to show how it trains its "missile men." We had our orders: reveille at 0600, and none of this nonsenseabout coffee-breaks. I had to work hard to become a member of the Ancient and Honorable Order of the Oozlefinch—somethingfamiliar about that name—<>f the A.A. and G.M. (not General Motors) Centre of Fort Bliss. The oozlefinch, a fabulous bird,is the mascot of the American gunners. Fort Bliss trains thousands of men each year in the techniqueof maintaining and firing Nike Ajax and Nike Hercules. It shares a desert range—of a mere 4,000 square miles—with the White "But the Nike Hercules demonstration was even more exciting . . . the towering missile was fired almost vertically." By a Special Correspondent Sands Proving Ground, and the Air Force's Holloman MissileDevelopment Center. WSPG is responsible for research and development, troop trials of the actual hardware and acceptancetests. Maj-Gen. W. E. Laidlaw greeted us when we drove the fiftymiles from Fort Bliss to WSPG. And he took us out in person to see a Corporal fired. This was the first time any European visitors,othsr than highly-security-cleared soldiers and government offi- cials, had been given this privilege. We sat on a stand a goodhalf-mile away from the launching site and were briefed by a donnish gunner on what we were to see. But this Corporal was feeling out of sorts, and after half-an-hourwe were told that firing had been postponed because of "a tech- nicality"—we were not told what. So, since this was the Armyand we must stick to schedule, we were rushed off to another site to see a Nike Hercules fired. Half-way there, however, a messageto a radio car announced that Corporal was again fighting fit and there were five minutes to go to the final count-down. By then we were five miles away. We piled out of our buses,scrambled up on to another stand (White Sands is littered with them) and waited. Even at that considerable distance it was impres-sive to see the tall rocket blast almost vertically upward with a great tongue of flame behind it. Then it was gone, leaving onlya white vapour trail to show the first part of its trajectory. The range is a hundred miles long (with 1,000 miles of roads and 400observation posts) and on this occasion Corporal travelled a good two-thirds of that distance. I was told that our first Royal Artillery regiment to get theCorporal arrives at WSPG in September for range training. British Army technicians who have already been to WSPG were "greatguys, fine soldiers and swell to work with." But the Nike Hercules demonstration was even more exciting.At present the Army has a firing programme of twenty rounds for acceptance trials. The firing we were to see was the fourth roundof the series. From Holloman, half-way up and to the east of the range, a converted T-33 drone had become airborne, controlledby two mother ships, one on each side of the range. Hercules, we were told, will be in the hands of operational troopsby June; and the troops will like it much better than they do old Nike Ajax. For, apart from having at least three times the rangeand twice the ceiling of Ajax, it uses solid fuel. Only the other week a man was badly burned on the neck and back by a spurtof nitric acid from one of the older weapons. It is to be deployed in Europe as soon as possible. At least twoNATO nations will have it before the U.S. Army in Europe con- verts from Ajax to Hercules for the protection of its installations.Hercules, like Ajax, uses command guidance—a system which the American Army decided to adopt right at the outset of its surface-to-air missile programme. It is planned to have mixed batteries of Ajax and Hercules, for Ajax can be tied in with the more sophis-ticated, yet simplified, radar system developed for the later missile. Hercules was ready when we reached the firing point to sit onyet another stand, and the drone was flying up and down the range ready to come in. Said the captain who conducted the briefing:"We've shot down every target offered to us." The towering missile was fired almost vertically. After 2\ secondsit was supersonic, the four-barrel booster carrying on upward after separation. In front of each site is a "booster impact zone" whichhas to be clearly defined, for the boosts come down with something of a wallop. With only a training warhead, Hercules scored a bull. A milliondollars' worth of missile and aircraft blew up in a distant burst of smoke and flame.So back to Fort Bliss, a shower, dinner in the officers' club and a reluctant turn-down of an offer to be escorted round the flesh-pots of Juarez, just across the Rio Grande on the Mexican side. For reveille was again at 0600, and we had to do a trip to thenorthernmost tip of the range. This was to Red Canyon, where operational troops from Nikesites everywhere come for their annual firing practice. A venerable C-47 carried us from El Paso International to a small concretestrip in the middle of the desert at Oscura, fifteen miles away from the canyon. For a full 50 minutes we flew under VFR at 2,000ftalong the eastern border of the range, passing over Holloman on the way. (At Holloman, you will remember, the Air Force medicosdo such unpleasant things as supersonic sled rides and trips in highly claustrophobic gondolas slung from balloons. They alsotest Maces and Matadors there; but the base was not on our schedule, and the Dakota flew sedately by.) We were not the only guests at the isolated firing camp at RedCanyon. We were to see rounds fired by a battery from a site in (Concluded at foot of opposite page)
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
