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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1597.PDF
FLIGHT. 2 November 1961 701 MISSILES 1961 formance of the latest Sputnik and Vostok vehicles would appear to be much greater than would be necessary to deliver even the fear- some 100MT warhead of which Mr Krushchev has spoken. Considered conclusions regarding the vehicles used in Russia's space programmes were contained on pages 230-1 of Flight for August 17 of this year. Numerous "multi-stage carrier rockets" have been launched over ranges in the bracket 7,450 to 8,078 miles from an unstated place or places to a designated target area in the central Pacific. These firings took place in January and July last year, and throughout last month. Each series of tests was said to involve a "new" or "more advanced" type of vehicle, and in every case extreme accuracy was claimed. On at least six of the last nine firings it was announced that the dummy final stage, adapted for passage through the atmosphere, struck the water close to the calculated impact point. Regarding submarine-launched weapons. Mr Krushchev announced a year ago that his country had "submarines with atomic engines, armed with rockets," and the Tass news agency made a similar claim two weeks ago. In con- trast, the US Chief of Naval Operations said last month that, while Soviet submarines had been observed to have "certain capabilities for launching missiles," they did not appear to be capable of launching missiles while submerged. THOR IRBM for deployment from fixed, soft emplace- ments ROYAL AIR FORCE (US Air Force Weapon System 315A, Strategic Missile 75) AT a time when no modern ballistic missile had been fired outside Russia, the complete Thor weapon system was produced as a crash programme in the incredibly short period of ten months, from receipt of the development contract by Douglas Aircraft in December 1955 to delivery of the first SM-75 missile to the USAF in October 1956. For obvious geographical reasons this fixed-base weapon is not in the inventory of Strategic Air Command, but it is the only strategic missile in the United Kingdom or in British hands anywhere. A total of 60 Thors are emplaced by 20 squad- rons of Bomber Command occupying four complexes extending from Yorkshire to East Anglia, as described in Flight for February 19 and March 11, 1960. Full details of the weapon system were given in the issues dated December 5, 1958, and May 22, 1959. At the time of writing, 129 firings have resulted in 100 suc- cesses and 13 partial successes, and scientific launchings boosted by Thor have put 39 payloads in space. TITAN 1CBM for deployment from fixed, hardened installations us AIR FORCE (Weapon System 107A-2, Strategic Missile 68) DURING the development of the Atlas it appeared increasingly that, while the concept of an ICBM was so attractive as to demand a crash programme and the maximum possible rate of expenditure, the technological problems attending such a deep penetration into un- Titan, by Martin's Denver Division, has a greater payload/range performance than any other missile outside the Soviet Union. In this photograph a J-series missile is seen departing from Cape Canaveral on a test flight down the Atlantic Missile Range charted regions were so severe that the possi- bility of obtaining a usable weapon was by no means certain. In 1953 the Strategic Missiles Evaluation Committee recommended that contracts should be placed for a second type of ICBM, differing where possible from Atlas, while reaping the maximum reward from the experience already gained with the earlier missile. This back-up insurance programme was named Titan, and given the number WS-107A-2, for the design requirements were initially identical with those specified for Atlas. Prime contractor is the Martin Company, chosen in October 1955. To handle the pro- gramme. Martin and the Air Force jointly built and equipped a vast new factory near Denver, Colorado, which builds and equips the complete missile and then conducts static testing before despatch to the customer. Chief innovations introduced by Martin were the following: two-stage propulsion, with the second stage ignited above the atmosphere; hardened deployment (this may not have been demanded in the original specification, but the emplacement evolved as a silo); and vertical storage, with the missile fully assembled. Although in no way an innovation, the new missile differed from its predecessor in having propellant tanks made sufficiently rigid for the airframe to be stable, when either horizontal or vertical, without internal piessurization. Both stages of the missile are built up from relatively thick sheets of aluminium alloy, which are chemically etched and machined before being curved to the body profile and joined in horizontal rotary jigs to form com- plete tank sections. The first stage has a diameter of 10ft, and the liquid-oxygen tank is placed above that for the RP-1 fuel. The second stage, which weighs about 48,0001b loaded, has a diameter of 8ft, and the relative positions of the tanks are reversed. Propulsion is the responsibility of Aerojet- General. For the first stage they have de- veloped an engine with a pair of gimballed chambers side-by-side, their thrust being transmitted to four points around the base of the airframe through a triangulated structure of welded steel tubes. Stage separation occurs at about 130 sec. The second-stage engine has a single gimballed chamber, with an expansion ratio (25 : I) matched to vacuum conditions. The second-stage turbopump gas-generator discharges its exhaust through four small nozzles spaced at 90 around the base of the stage in order to provide vernier thrust for accurate final trimming of velocity. The thrust from these nozzles also facilitates a clean separation of the two stages. Originally Titan was to have introduced pure-inertial guidance into ICBM operations, in contrast to the radio/inertial system devel- oped for Atlas. However, in 1958 the decision was taken to switch these two guidance systems. As a result, the Atlas has the unjam- mable pure-inertial system, with salvo capa- bility, while the first Titan squadrons are tied to the possibly more accurate radio command guidance. Western Electric is chief contractor. Powerful ground radars (by Sperry, although GE was the contractor for the Atlas radar) track the flight of the missile up to second-stage burnout, providing data for a Remington Rand (Univac) digital computer which pro- duces steering signals transmitted to the
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