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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 1118.PDF
116 POLARIS . . . miniaturized guidance, integrated warhead and nosecone, high-impulse propellant, efficient steering system, accurate thrust cut- off, a simple separation scheme and, by no means least, a perfectunderwater launch procedure. Each of these giant hurdles wes surmounted ahead of schedule.Owing to its revolutionary character the original schedule for operational deployment was not precisely stipulated; instead itwas suggested that an FBM submarine should put to sea "before the end of 1964." As the full potential of the system became betterappreciated so was its rate of funding increased and the schedule compressed, until in December 1957 the Secretary of Defenseauthorized a challenging acceleration aimed at achieving initial operational capability of the first FBM submarine in 1960. InJanuary 1958 the Navy proposed that the programme be further accelerated and augmented, calling for the deployment of nineships by the end of 1961. This doubly compressed schedule has been adhered to. Administratively the Special Projects Office (Rear-AdmiralW. F. Raborn Jr) comes directly under the Secretary of the Navy; it is not a part of any Bureau of the Navy, but draws on all Bureauxfor support. SP is the FBM weapon system manager. Its staff (250 including secretaries and filing clerks) is divided into a plansand programmes division to handle management, facilities, resources and finance, and a technical division to handle thedevelopment, testing and production of every portion of the FBM system. SP has no research facilities, but its technical staff are allscientists and engineers chosen for their specialist knowledge and experience. The office can cut across the usual lines of commandand deal directly with all Navy Bureaux, Government departments and industrial contractors. Chief among the latter are LMSD (missile and overall manager),Westinghouse Electric (launching system), GE and Hughes (guidance), Sperry and NAA Autonetics (navigation), GeneralElectric (fire-control), Aerojet-General (propulsion) and Northrop FLIGHT, 22 July 19 ,o Nortronics (checkout and readiness equipment). The warhead sthe responsibility of the Atomic Energy Commission, and M;T has continued to collaborate with the firms responsible i rguidance, fire-control and navigation. There are many hundreds of other subcontractors, one of the largest of whom is Interst; eElectronic, who have provided much of the instrumentation. On paper there are several ways in which a missile of Pola istype can be transported by and fired from a submarine. Ev n quite a small vessel might carry a single missile horizontally, a: dmanage to launch it; but the US Navy finally decided that tie FBM submarine would be exceptionally large. It was a require-ment that a number of Polaris should be capable of being trans- ported and fired in quick succession; and another critical factorwas the weight of the nuclear reactor required for the submarine's propulsion. In co-operation with BuShips the basic design of t'nefirst class of FBM submarines was agreed, and contracts tor construction were let to a number of Navy and civilian yards. In the design of the missile the opportunity was taken tointroduce several new techniques to produce the simplest and most trouble-free weapon. The airframe is fabricated from stainless-steel sheet, most of the body of both stages being the case of an exceedingly large solid-propellant rocket motor. Cases of suchsize had not been manufactured before, and their fabrication involves a largely new technology. In America material with aUTS greater than 300,0001b/sq in is available from stock, but even when welding techniques have been perfected the problem ofnotch sensitivity has many times resulted in failure at below design combustion pressure. Case problems have been a plague,and indicative of the forces marshalled against them is the fact that SP and Aerojet-General farmed out work on Polaris cases tomore than 70 companies. Like all advanced rocket motors for strategic missiles, in whichburning time may be several minutes, the propellant used in Polaris is of the composite type—a homogeneous mixture of acombustible fuel and inorganic crystalline-type oxidizer. The former consists of numerous liquid polymers into which the finelyground oxidizer is mixed to form a uniformly dispersed suspen- T/iis drawing of a Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine—SSB(N) 598 "George Washington"—is the most detailed yet to have been published. Hydrodynamic design is based on the low-drag principles evolved with the earlier "Albacore" and nuclear "Skipjack," while in general the vessel resembles the earlier classes of nuclear submarine (excepting "Triton") with an added missile bay amidships. Later FBM ships will differ in detail Internal 1 Torpedo room 2 Main ballast tank 3 Mess room 4 Officers' quarters 5 Batteries 6 Missile control centre 7 Ship's control centre 8 Auxiliary tank No 2 9 Negative tank 10 Sperry stabilizing gyroscope (20-ton flywheel) 11 Compartment for 16 Polaris 12 Launching tube (shown sectioned) 13 Compressed-air reservoir 14 Nuclear reactor
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