Historic Week

Other notable events in the U.S.'s historic missile week:

P: At Vandenberg A.F.B., Calif., new training and operations center for military missile-launching teams (TIME, Dec. 15), Captain Bennie Castillo, 35, of the Strategic Air Command, fired the first Thor ever launched by a military crew. After prolonged preliminaries and one false start, Bennie Castillo turned the key that started the countdown. With cool efficiency, his five-man team rolled back a hangar-like shelter, elevated the bird, force-fed it with liquid oxygen, sent it soaring in 19 min. after the launch command was given (ultimate goal: 15 min.). The shot traveled the predetermined 1,450 miles over the Pacific, was rated a nuclear bull's eye by hitting within five miles of its target. The Vandenberg shot pointed up the fact that both Thor and military launching crews are well on their way to full operational status and readiness to fire within minutes after the word is passed.

P: At Cape Canaveral, only 4 1/2 hours after the Vandenberg shot at the other edge of the U.S., another Thor leaped from its pad carrying a nuclear warhead (minus fissionable material) and a triggering mechanism in its nose, scored an equally good hit.

P: At White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico the Army rocketed a Nike-Hercules into the sky to intercept an XQ-5 jet drone target traveling 14 miles up at more than 2,000 m.p.h. The Nike released a spotting charge near the drone that was close enough to be scored as a kill.

P: At Kingston, N.Y. demonstrators pressed a button on an enormous IBM-built SAGE computer, launched an air-breathing Air Force Bomarc missile from a pad at Cape Canaveral. Guided by Kingston, the Bomarc headed first for a B-17 drone over the Atlantic, found it, then attacked a second drone target miles away, finally was allowed to drop harmlessly into the sea.

P:At Cape Canaveral the Air Force successfully test fired part of a new air-to-ground weapons system called the Bold Orion. Slated for the Strategic Air Command, the revolutionary nuclear-tipped missile will prolong the useful life of SAC bombers by enabling them to fire at targets 1,000 miles distant--from points outside an enemy's radar screen. Last week's shot, fired by a supersonic B58 Hustler (whose sonic boom startled beach residents) was a one-stage version of the new weapon. The two-stage version, fired for the first time a few days earlier, was launched from a B-47 at a target 700 miles away. The Bold Orion is 25 ft. long, 6 ft. in diameter. Upon launching, a long lanyard from the plane to the rocket jerks free, firing the first stage directly ahead. After first-stage burnout and separation the second stage fires, guided by a new type of system devised by Martin Co.. then arcs upward at a 45DEG angle. Before reaching the top of its arc, it releases the nose-cone, which follows a ballistic curve to the target over the horizon.

After making successful static tests, Cape Canaveral's Air Force missileers scheduled the first launching (limited range) of the U.S.'s newest "second generation" ICBM, the two-stage, 9,500-mile Titan (TIME, Oct. 13). But the big (90 ft., 110 tons) job never got off the ground: malfunction kicked in a "fail-safe" mechanism that automatically shut off the first-stage propulsion system seconds after it began to fire. Still, in the light of a fast-growing technology, backed by last week's huge achievements, the U.S. knew better than to condemn Titan on the strength of a failed launching.

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