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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0784.PDF
800 Defense FLIGHT, 13 June 1958 PART 5: TO CAPE CANAVERAL, LANGLEY A.F.B. AND THE NAVY By a Special Correspondent EARLY next morning we were off to Patrick A.F.B. (CapeCanaveral), near Cocoa Beach on the Atlantic coast ofFlorida. Captain Farar—who, watching the Sidewinder demonstration, commented "This takes all the fun out of flying!"—was obviously affected by the Thunderbirds' exhibition, for he decided to show us what he. was pleased to call "an emergencylet-down." Which would have been all very well but for the fact that he forgot to close the door, and from the aisle seat in whichI was sitting I could see the Atlantic spinning round a blurred Florida without being able to do a thing about it. Somebodysuggested he even put his Convair into reverse pitch to achieve the angle of descent he did. But we skimmed into Patrick neatly and gently, despite a gustycross wind, and were soon listening to Maj-Gen. Don Yates, who commands the Air Force Missile Test Center.His briefing on Patrick and the facilities at Cape Canaveral was clear, concise and down to earth. His view of space flight—whichis the bread and butter of the newshounds who lurk around his command—is quite simple: at some not-distant date the U.S. maybe able to put up a conglomeration of rockets which will circle the Moon. Manned space rockets, manned satellites, excursiontrips to Mars—all these are beyond his immediate task. That task is to see that the U.S. Air Force gets the military missiles it needsthoroughly tested and able to work. Then he hustled us into a bus to tour some of the vast base. Not so long ago this piece of scrubland was a haunt of bird-watchers. Now it is surrounded by three security fences and con- tains its own 10,000ft airstrip so that missiles can be brought insecretly from the manufacturing plants. The first curiosity was discovering that Pan American hadapparently gone wholeheartedly into the missile business. From security police to firemen, everybody wore the PanAm badge.And all the way down the 5,000-mile range, tracking stations are operated by technicians from this airline and its sub-contractorR.C.A. Even the ships on station beyond the Bahamas are PanAm vessels. There is a deep-water harbour alongside Canaveral fortankers, freighters and range vessels. Our first call was at the Central Control Building, the nervecentre of the range. Here the PanAm superintendent of range operations co-ordinates a team of communications men, instru-mentation and interference monitors, the range-clearance manager, the Air Force weather forecaster, the aircraft co-ordinator, the AirForce range safety officer and the missile project officer. Before any firing a B-17 takes off to search for ships in theimmediate (a relative term) range area, and the position of all ships is plotted in the control building. A Convair C-131 is the electronicinterference monitor, scanning the dozens of frequencies being used for the test to make sure they are free from interference. Patrick Air Force Base has more than forty aircraft to carry outthis work and to maintain an airlift with the down-range stations. Altogether eleven airfields are involved in the project. From the control building we scurried off to a launching pad.Armed police watched us as we cautiously approached a huge gantry in which nestled an Atlas ICBM. Eleven stories high, thegantry looked like a not-so-miniature Blackpool Tower—com- plete with lift. The huge flame deflector for hot run-ups (withthe missile locked in place) was freshly painted. Nearby was the blockhouse from which crews from the missile contractors watchtheir products' behaviour on static tests and live runs. As we sweltered in the humid Florida atmosphere I wonderedhow this factor affected the missiles and their equipment. A range officer admitted that it was quite a problem, that special apparatushad to be used to keep the missiles in trim. I gathered that de-hydrated air was useful. There are four Atlas pads, each with its own blockhouse. Nearthe Atlas line is being erected the Titan facility, with another four launching pads and the appropriate gantries—even loftier thanthose for Atlas—and blockhouses nearly completed. We waited while a DC-6 took off from the strip which dividesthe range-head in two, then drove in our bus down the wide concrete to the Thor launching pads. The strip is a main highwaywhen not in legitimate use by air traffic. More than a dozen Thors have been fired from Canaveral, mostof them successfully. But just beyond the Thor pads I could see the slender outline of a Vanguard, half hidden by its own gantry.It was standing on the pad where the notorious abortive firing occurred, but when I inspected it there was no sign of damage.Said a Navy man: "We got it all back in order in double-quick time." Earlier, Maj-Gen. Yates had stressed that the real Vanguardlaunching programme had yet to begin. All early and unsuccess- ful firings had been tests. If they went off, then that was fine. A Convair SM-65 Atlas is launched. The small flame-jets are from the vernier motors which give fine control of trajectory and stabilize the missile in roll; the sheet of flame is from surplus fuel from the turbo-pumps. If not, then there wassomething to be learned. And as I potteredaround this nice-look- ing rocket in its gantryI was assured that it was to be the first of theactuallGY programme. From Vanguard toa Redstone pad. Then to a Jupiter site.Thor and Vanguard, Jupiter and Redstone . . . these two com- binations could reach the Moon, said our guides. Exhausted by the enthusiasm of the "missel-men," tired by somuch rocketry, we slipped through the security fences to our motel. But there was to be no sleep—for someone had passedround the rumour that there was to be a midnight launching. An hour on the beach by the motel brought no reward, however.It was just as well that the management, which thought suffi- ciently well of the Press to instal a Western Union teleprinter inthe motel office, had thoughtfully put a small bottle of bourbon at my bedside. Early next morning we were off to Langley A.F.B. up inVirginia, headquarters of Tactical Air Command. There we wondered why the Pentagon ever bothered to invent StrategicAir Command, for T.A.C.'s swarms of fighter/bombers seem able to deliver their own nuclear weapons anywhere in the world withthe aid of the ubiquitous tankers. From Langley we bussed to Norfolk to inspect the Navy andits aircraft. There I became an honorary submariner, complete with certificate, and noticed that the U.S.N. is now using sub-marines in an early-warning role, instead of much more vulner- able destroyers. But what speed they can do under water withtheir colossal electronic protuberances I dare not guess. A brief visit to the carrier Intrepid (which has escalators like anUnderground station) and a swift tour of the Navy's aircraft repair yards, and we were off to New York. Not, however, beforeAdmiral Jerauld Wright had warned us that stockpiling in Europe was of supreme importance—particularly the need to build upour fuel reserves. Said the Admiral "I view with reluctance that, in making her anti-submarine contribution, the United Kingdom,in view of her economic position, has had to cut her other efforts." New York was its usual bustling, grubby and strident self.But 35 miles out in Connecticut, in a pleasant place called White Plains, we saw something which soon may be common in Britain.This was a surface-to-air guided-missile site, established for three years, and at instant readiness all that time. The site housed abattery of Nike Ajax missiles, and since I had seen all that a British Pressman could see of this weapon in Texas, I was moreinterested in reactions than in the arms themselves. I gathered that good public relations on the part of the Armyhas satisfied the civilians that Nike is just another concept of the great deterrent, and that if it ever has to be used then that's theend of the mission. So the marriage-rate among the G.I.s is high, schoolboys are invited to clamber over the site on the monthlyopen day, married men are housed in the best possible accom- modation at fabulous cost, the officers lecture the local Rotary,and morale is high. Finally, the last trip in Capt. Farar's Convair. It had carriedus more than eleven thousand miles over the States and had behaved in a lady-like fashion throughout. With good flight-planning, she had been on time all the time. We left her at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, and watched Farar take-off in a spectacular climb-away, homeward bound for Boiling A.F.B. just outside Washington. Then into the C-118 (DC-6) of MATS Atlantic Division forParis-Orly, via Stephenville in Newfoundland. I had lost eight pounds in weight, gained an appreciation ofthe United States military might which is already proving invaluable, and learned just how much a dollar will buy. . . . (Previous articles in this series: May 2,16 and 23; June 6)
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