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Tomorrow's pushbutton war got its first full-dress showing last week at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico. On a dusty desert flat, surrounded by Salvador Dali mountains, hundreds of newsmen, photographers, scientists, U.S. and British generals, crouched behind hummocks at a safe distance. They watched a scene to horrify any man with imagination.

Beside a pyramidal concrete blockhouse with 10-ft. walls and a roof 35 ft. thick stood a German V-2 rocket, sleek, 46 ft. tall, bright yellow and black, with a German pin-up girl painted on its side. Its four tail-fins rested on an adjustable platform, and a tall crane held it steady.

About 2 p.m., Mountain Time, the crane was wheeled away, leaving the V-2 naked, a goddess of catastrophe. Then two red flares curved up from the blockhouse. The technicians scuttled down their holes like prairie dogs.

With Smoke & Flame. Two minutes later, at 2:13, a small orange flame licked the base of the rocket. With a throbbing roar, the giant main charge took light. A flood of flame submerged the launching platform. Slowly the rocket rose, so slowly and lazily at first that it seemed to be suspended by an invisible chain. It picked up speed, roared higher & higher, trailing a 60-ft. plume of brilliant flame. Up, up it climbed, its roar diminishing with distance, its glare contracting until it looked like a bright orange star. Then it vanished, leaving a thin trail of smoke behind.

One hour later, reports came in. Tracked by radar and captured German optical instruments, the rocket had climbed 75 miles into the ionosphere. Three minutes after its start, it hurtled downward, hit the ground 39 miles to the northward at 2,400 miles an hour, and, reported a watching Army flyer, buried itself in sand with a gush of flame.

This particular rocket was not allowed to rise as high as possible (some 120 miles) or to reach its full horizontal range (230 miles). Its only payload: a radar beacon, to make it easier to track, and an assortment of dummy instruments, for crash survival tests. But the Army has more V-25, most of them now being assembled by General Electric Co. from captured German parts. It plans to fire them one a week. They will shoot higher and farther, and will carry elaborate instruments to report by radio every detail of their performance.

Laurels, Old & New. It took German scientists twelve years to develop the V2, and U.S. experts nearly a year to learn how to operate it, with the aid of German technicians working in "voluntary protective custody." But the Army does not intend to rest on its secondhand laurels. Soon it will start work on bigger, longer-range rockets designed to carry a worthwhile atomic payload.

The rocket that was fired last week weighs five tons empty and carries eight tons of fuel. The tanks for the alcohol and liquid oxygen which it burns hold 2,500 gallons, and occupy more than half of the total length.

When the rocket is fired, the first gadget to start is a compact turbine developing 580 horsepower and driven by steam from a chemical reaction involving sodium or calcium permanganate and hydrogen peroxide. This runs pumps which force liquid oxygen and alcohol into the bulb-shaped combustion chamber. Reacting fiercely, they shoot a blast of gases through a venturi ring at about 6,000 ft. a second.

Rocketing Along. While the rocket is still moving slowly, its vertical flight is controlled by vanes of graphite which deflect the blast of gas. Later, as it gains speed, these are supplemented by four sets of vanes on the fins. These obey orders from gyroscope devices. They are pre-set on the ground; after the rocket has taken off, it cannot be deflected to a new course, or its aim corrected. All its nursemaids can do is cut off the power by radio. Last week they let it blast away for 59.4 seconds. Super-Vergeltungswaflen of the future, Army experts hoped, would be better trained.

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