Word: atlases
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...eucalyptus-strewn acres that in World War II and Korea were Army's Camp Cooke. Tattered bayonet targets, reminders of pre-pushbutton war, stand in a quiet tract, while 3,900 civilians and 3,500 airmen work busily around a futuristic maze: three 135-ft. Atlas gantries on nearly completed pads, three more Atlas pads still being poured, eight Thor pads, 8,000-ft. bases for electronic tracking, a hangar-shaped missile-assembly building and a convenient liquid oxygen (LOX) factory...
Commander of it all is Louisiana-born Major General David Wade, Atlas-sized (6 ft. 4 in., 210 lbs.) command pilot (7,000 hours) who served (1956-57) as SAC chief of staff to the father of alert deterrence, Air Force General Curtis E. LeMay. Wade's command includes the new SAC 704th Strategic Missile Wing at Vandenberg and two Jupiter squadrons now at Huntsville, Ala. In SAC's businesslike way, Wade now enforces "maximum security" on the base, will soon reinforce his armed guards with sentry dogs...
Headache & Bonanza. Wade's training shots of Thor, Atlas and second-generation missiles (perhaps the solid-fuel Minuteman) will soar over the vast National Pacific Missile Range, be scored for hits and misses by naval units reporting to nearby Point Mugu Naval-Air Missile Test Center. Already experienced at its work, the twelve-year-old Navy center has been scoring its own Sparrow and Bullpup guided missiles over a short ocean range, safely sent ship-based Regulus missiles over the mountains 500 miles inland to impact at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah. Now enlarging to handle bigger missiles-perhaps...
...first shot, scheduled for next month, will use a Thor IRBM as its first stage and is expected to put 1,300 lbs. in orbit. The instrument payload, said Johnson, will weigh "several hundred pounds." Later shots will use Atlas ICBMs as boosters and will put as much as five tons in orbit. Some of the satellites will carry live animals, including a "primate," and attempts will be made to bring them back alive...
Achievement of such a range would surpass the best ICBM effort so far--the Atlas which the Air Force hurled 6,325 miles on Nov. 28. It also would put almost all the United States within reach of Soviet weapons...