Word: atlases
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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BIGGEST DEFENSE ORDER since World War II for General Electric Co. for developmental work was disclosed by Air Force. Contract is for $158 million worth of G.E. missile nose-cones to go on Atlas ICBM and Thor IRBM...
...brilliant white flash lit the horizon, and the pencil-shaped Atlas slowly, silently lifted into the air, gaining speed, her exhausts pushing down neat twin yellow-white flames. Then, almost 8,000 ft. up, one flame trail lengthened, turned orange, mingled with ominous black smoke. The missile lurched to one side, straightened out, began to drop away, spewing metal shards. The trouble: one engine had lost power, thrown the Bird out of kilter, made the missile a safety hazard. On Cape Canaveral test officers quickly reacted, exploded Atlas by remote control. The missile crashed with a thud into the surf...
Dismayed outsiders saw multimillion-dollar disaster in the Atlas' crash. Air Force missilemen, although disappointed that the ICBM failed to complete its assigned course (well under extreme range), quickly claimed a "scientific success," i.e., failure had been mechanical, did not involve basic design, hence would be relatively easy to correct. Even in the 55 seconds of Atlas' brief debut, films and complex recording devices had furnished valuable data on its characteristics in flight...
...week's end another Atlas shoot was in the works. With a stiff upper lip one Air Force colonel on Cape Canaveral explained: "This is research and development-and that always means more missiles go wrong than right...
...failure of the first Air Force test Atlas gave underdog Army spokesmen new confidence in the bitter interservice fracas on U.S. missile dominance. Against Atlas' crash and the Air Force's bug-ridden 1,500-mile Thor missile, the Army touted its own relatively successful 1,500-mile Jupiter (TIME, June 10) and the new low-level-surf ace-to-air Hawk, made its boldest pitch yet for operational control of intermediate-range missilery (1,500 miles) now assigned to the Air Force...