ARMED FORCES: Atomic War Birds

Flashing through the sky over Florida one morning last week, a pair of F-86 Sabre jets headed out to sea, engines shrieking at full power. Their fleeing quarry was a huge red “bird” that had shot up 35,000 feet from the Air Force’s Guided Missile Test Center at Banana River, leveled off, and sped out over the Atlantic. At top speed, the 670-m.p.h. Sabre jets could barely keep up with it. A few minutes later, the strange race was suddenly over. Radio signals bleeped out from Banana River, and the giant bird dived into the ocean.

The Air Force calls its swift missile the “Matador,” the airman’s latest argument in the debate over close ground support. With it, the U.S. Air Force has the first operational pilotless missile which can plant an atomic bomb in support of U.S. troops in the field.

Planes v. Missiles. Ever since the end of World War II, the development of such a weapon has been one of the Air Force’s main points in the endless arguments over tactical air power. In an age of jet aircraft and atomic weapons, prop-driven planes like the famed F51 Mustang would prove too slow, too vulnerable to interception by enemy jets unless heavily and expensively escorted. The jets themselves could not maneuver fast enough for accurate low-level support work except in relatively flat terrain. Finally, said the Air Force, any “inhabited” plane, no matter how fast, stood a good chance of being caught in the fiery blast of a tactical atom bomb dropped from low altitude.

The Air Force spent its slim appropriations available for tactical air for all-purpose fighters, and got to work on guided missiles. For six years, behind closely guarded walls at the Glenn L. Martin plant near Baltimore, scientists and technicians worked to solve the mysteries of an accurate ground-to-ground guided missile which could be used tactically on the battlefield. Last week, in the Martin Matador, the Air Force thought it had its first tentative answer.

Standing on its tractor-drawn launching trailer, the Matador looks like an odd crossbreed of a jet plane and a Buck Rogers fantasy. It is long, sleek, round as a cigar, and fitted with a pair of stubby supersonic triangular wings. In its nose, the missile carries a sand-filled dummy warhead. In its tail, the Matador carries a jet engine for endurance and a huge, underslung rocket motor for take-off power. Inside the Matador, every inch of space is crammed with fuel and the humming electronic navigator that guides it to its target.

Into the Bull’s-Eye. How good is the Matador? The Air Force admits that there are bigger & better guided missiles on the drawing boards, huge missiles with longer range and much greater speed. Much more accurate guidance systems are already in the works. But the improved models, says the Air Force, are still years away. At Banana River, enough specimens of the bright red Matador have been hurled into the skies to prove that no jet fighter flying today can catch and destroy it, and that it has enough range to reach any frontline target. The tests have shown that its electronic brain can guide it to the bull’s-eye and drop it day or night, under any weather conditions.

In a matter of months, the Air Force will put its first guided-missile squadron in service. Others will follow as soon as the men can be trained. At the Martin plant near Baltimore, the dies and jigs are ready, will start turning out the big red missiles on a production-line schedule. If war comes, the Air Force will exchange their sand-filled noses for atomic warheads, and the deadly Matadors will be ready for action.

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The Air Force is not the only service with an atomic warbird on the launching racks. The Army has a pair of true rockets: 1) the “Corporal,”* a huge, V-2-sized, supersonic rocket that, it is claimed, can deliver an atomic warhead within 500 feet of a target almost 100 miles away, and 2) the “Nike” (rhymes with Mikey), an antiaircraft guided missile designed to knock down enemy bombers at great altitude. Soon the Army will start production lines rolling, and organize the first battalions trained to assemble and fire the Corporals and Nikes. Cost of the U.S. guided-missile program in 1952 : $1 billion.

* Not to be confused with the smaller “WAC Corporal,” a slim, needle-nosed missile used for high-altitude research.