"We Kind of Refused to Die"

For months, recalls Major General John Medaris, the U.S. Army and its missilemen "were in the position of a patient that has been given a death sentence by the doctor --but we kind of refused to die." How the Army patient survived to launch the first successful U.S. satellite is a history of groans, gall--and grit.

In satellite terms, the history began on June 25, 1954 in Room 1803 of the T-3 Building in Washington's Office of Naval Research. Among the service and civilian scientists present to discuss the possibility of firing a satellite into outer space was Dr. Wernher von Braun, father of the German V-2 turned U.S. Army missile expert. Von Braun assured the group that the Redstone missile, already developed at the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. and successfully fired at Cape Canaveral in 1953, could be souped up to put a 5-lb. satellite into outer-space orbit.

First Came Science. From that meeting came a joint Army-Navy undertaking named Project Orbiter. The Navy was to develop the satellite itself; the Army was to build the vehicle, using Redstone as its first stage. Target dates: launching sites to be established by April 1956, and the actual satellite shoot to be made in the summer or fall of 1957.

Project Orbiter died almost aborning. Reason: the decision was made at the highest Administration levels, and was announced by President Eisenhower in July 1955, to scrap the U.S. satellite as a military project and to make it part of the International Geophysical Year's scientific program. The Navy got the franchise in Project Vanguard, and the Army was ordered to stay away from satellite work.

The decision was made in the name of pure science: pressures were heavy on the White House to dissociate the satellite program from weaponry so the world's neutralists would not be offended. In retrospect, giving jurisdiction of the satellite programs to the service that knew least about it was a blunder--and it was protested by Medaris, Von Braun & Co. But the Huntsville team had some consolation: it did have a 1955 go-ahead on the Jupiter intermediate-range missile.

Then Came Termites. Jupiter was put into blazing competition with the Air Force's Thor IRBM, and the race more than occupied the energies of the Huntsville scientists. Even so, says Von Braun, the Army missilemen "had clear sailing for about a year." And then: "The termites got into the system again." Ironically, some of the termites were hatched by the Army itself.

The Army was not satisfied merely with building intermediate-range missiles; it also wanted sanction to use them operationally. To get that sanction, Army Pentagonians deemed it necessary to knock down Air Force doctrine that claimed exclusive operational rights to all but battlefield missiles. In May 1956, they began handing out scalding anti-Air Force docu ments to favored reporters. The Air Force replied with its own propaganda bombs, and the interservice brawl finally forced Defense Secretary Charles Wilson to redefine service roles and missions in the light of advancing missile technology. The war, begun by the Army, nearly ruined it: Wilson allowed the Army to continue its Jupiter work, but it seemed hardly worthwhile--since the Air Force had won the right to operational use of all missiles with more than 2OO-mile range.

Wearing Them Out. From that point on, says Von Braun, Huntsville lived "under a continued threat of extinction. We were all the time told that in all likelihood, since the Air Force had roles and missions, there was no need for the Jupiter, and we would go out of business." But Huntsville did not go out of business; instead, it fought back, bitterly and sometimes unwisely. Colonel John Nickerson, one of the Army's top men at Huntsville, wrote a violent criticism of Wilson's roles-and-missions order, sent it off to Congressmen and columnists (including Drew Pearson) and, for his pains, was court-martialed and sent off to the Panama Canal Zone.*

Still, the Army kept working on Jupiter, with Medaris and Von Braun shuttling between Huntsville and Washington, begging and borrowing Army research and development funds to keep going. Said Medaris: "We bend every effort we can to make up for whatever handicaps or checks have been thrown into it, and we tire people and wear them out, but we get it done." With the job of testing a nose cone for Jupiter, the Huntsville team kept going on Jupiter-C. Actually Jupiter-C--a bundle of rockets beefing up the Army's Redstone--was hardly kin to the sophisticated, sleek Jupiter itself. But while other services hooted at its "brute-force approach" to space, Jupiter-C once flew 3,500 miles, once carried the test Jupiter nose cone into space and back again; President Eisenhower displayed the recovered nose cone in his first television speech after Sputnik. The Army missilemen never for an instant lost sight of Jupiter-C as a satellite vehicle in case Vanguard failed--as they were convinced it would. All told, the Army made ten official pleas on behalf of Jupiter-C as a satellite vehicle.

Such-&-Such a Date. Last Oct. 4, Defense Secretary-designate Neil McElroy, touring U.S. military bases before taking office, was dining in the officers' club at Huntsville when Wernher von Braun was called from the table to the telephone. Von Braun returned red-faced: he had just been told that the Russians had launched Sputnik I. Next morning Von Braun urged McElroy to put Jupiter-C into the satellite contest. During the next few weeks, McElroy received more than 100 ideas from the services for putting a U.S. satellite into space. Finally, on Nov. 8, McElroy announced his decision: to backstop Vanguard, the Army was ordered to "proceed with preparations for launching a scientific satellite by use of a modified Jupiter-C test vehicle."

That order was passed on to General Medaris in what Medaris calls "good old-fashioned military terminology, 'You will on or about such-and-such a date do so-and so.' It just delighted my soul." Such-and-such a date turned out to be Friday, Jan. 31, 1958, when the U.S. Army missile team, which had just kind of refused to die, launched the first U.S. satellite.

*Last week Nickerson declined to comment on the Explorer's success. His wife had no such inhibitions. "He has orders not to comment on missiles," said she by telephone from Panama. "But I have no orders not to talk, and I think it's wonderful that the Army has lived up to all the things it promised."

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