Atlas' Rough Ride

A big yellow canvas ball rose jerkily up a pole on Cape Canaveral, Fla. one morning last week, a warning to fishermen to stay clear. At the Air Force Missile Test Center the long-awaited Big Shoot was on. A test version of the 100-ft. Atlas, prime Air Force intercontinental ballistic missile, designed for speeds up to 16,000 m.p.h. and 5,500-mile range, lay on its launching pad, set for its first limited flight.

Off the spectator-dotted beach south of Cape Canaveral an Air Force crash boat cut through the Atlantic rollers to wave off small craft. Just before lunch missile buffs spotted "the Bird" through binoculars--a slim, distant white finger pointed against the light blue sky. Bubbling clouds of evaporating LOX (liquid oxygen) obscured the Atlas as technicians completed fueling. But by 2:35 p.m. "T-time" (firing time) was close at hand.

At 2:38 p.m. a 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 only a few miles from its launching site.

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.

At 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."

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