National Affairs: Rocket’s Red Glare

In the White House, the Pentagon and the remote missile-and rocket-testing areas from Florida to Eniwetok there was a new sense of urgency last week. Across the U.S. most of the post-Sputnik criticism and political backbiting gave way to the closest thing to an identity with national purpose that the U.S. has known since Korea.

At the White House the week began with the President in a foul humor. He resented the blatantly political charges by the Democratic Advisory Council that he had handled the Little Rock school integration crisis indecisively. He was concerned about the gyrations of the stock market. He was infuriated by White House Adviser (for foreign economic policy) Clarence Randall’s description of the Soviet Sputnik as “a silly bauble.” Dwight Eisenhower scowled darkly at the humdrum text of a speech on medical education, tb be delivered to the National Fund for Medical Education that night in New York. Growled he to an aide: “Let’s goahead with our idea—right now, tonight.”

The idea, announced at the beginning of his speech: President Eisenhower would soon take to the road to deliver a series of television speeches discussing the U.S. economy, the national defense program and efforts toward greater scientific achievement. The aim: to re-emphasize his “beliefs and determinations,” to reassert his leadership and to re-establish the nation’s confidence in itself.

With this announcement the week was off with a new pace. As the top-level meetings with Britain’s Macmillan began, the decision was made in another White House conference to review the severe money restrictions which the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve had clamped on the economy. And at long last, the President was prevailed upon to break the news blackout that he himself had imposed on the state and progress of American missilery. With that done, the new urgency was written in the skies in the rocket’s red glare. It was a week that made missile history, and a week that pointed up the successful investment of vast sums of money (see chart) in the missile program since Ike came into office. Items:

¶ A balloon-launched Air Force rocket, fired over Eniwetok as part of a research program called Project Far Side, burst into outer space, beyond the 580 miles of the Soviet satellite, beyond the 625-mile record set by the Army Jupiter, with preliminary instrument studies indicating the rocket may have soared 4,000 miles (distance from earth to moon: 238,857 miles).

¶ A Navy Vanguard fired at Cape Canaveral, Fla. climbed 109 miles in the first-stage test of the three-stage rocket that will, according to schedule, launch a fully instrumented U.S. outer-space satellite next spring.

¶ The third successful Jupiter, the Army’s intermediate range ballistic missile (1,500 miles), was fired at Cape Canaveral, and the Pentagon proudly announced it had flown “its prescribed course and impacted in the preselected target area,” i.e., within 2½-miles, the Army later leaked.

¶ Jupiter’s interservice rival, the Air Force’s Thor. was successfully fired for the third time—this time over a record-breaking 2,500-mile range (but without the target-seeking accuracy of Jupiter, the Army groused in a fresh outburst of characteristic Pentagon hostility).

¶ The Air Force Bomarc, long-range anti-aircraft missile, was in the air within two minutes after an alert signal, searched out and destroyed a drone B-17 bomber 100 miles out over the Atlantic Ocean from Cape Canaveral.

¶ The Navy reported that tests of its inexpensive, infrared, air-to-air Sidewinder missile showed the weapon so accurate that it could shoot a flare-pot off a target-plane wing at a 7½-mile range.

¶ The Navy awarded a $62 million contract to the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. for developing the Polaris IRBM, a most promising solid-fuel missile that can be launched from submarines or ships.

¶ The Air Force said it had recently scored four bull’s-eyes on ground targets with its air-to-surface Rascal, a missile designed to extend the reach of the bomber force now in being. Rascal can be launched from an airplane 100 miles from target, can pack an atomic or thermonuclear warhead.

The new weapons had been in design for many months, but the fact that the U.S. was able to talk about them—at a critical time., when the Russians were boasting a post-Sputnik balance of power in the world—was not so much a triumph for the President’s policies as for the policies of other top-level Administration officials, including Vice President Richard Nixon. At Administration conferences Nixon has urged 1) that President Eisenhower move sharply to re-emphasize his national leadership, and 2) that the Administration go farther toward explaining the true state of the nation’s security to the people, by relaxing the secrecy curbs on reports of missile progress. From his travels afield Nixon, along with Republican National Chairman Meade Alcorn, reported that the President still had a vast fund of popularity and respect—but that he was not making the most of it. Most of all, Nixon sensed that the rest of the U.S. was ready to join Washington in going to work.

Back to Hay-Pitching. That, far from panic, was the nation’s mood last week, as reported by TIME correspondents in 33 cities. Sputnik, the Middle East and other events had, as a Chicago lawyer remarked, “punctured the psychological Maginot line.” Said Jay Dillingham, president of the Kansas City Stock Yards Co.: “We’ve been like a farm boy gawking along the midway of a county fair. Now we’ve got to get back to work pitching hay.” Florida’s Congressman Dante Fascell reported attending a club meeting in Miami: “After it was over, a bunch of the boys gathered around me and spent a couple of hours asking me questions about what I knew of the missile program and the international situation. I didn’t detect any panic. There was just a genuine interest which I don’t believe existed a short time ago.” Said a Los Angeles sales engineer: “Six weeks ago I’d walk into an aircraft plant and it would look as if everybody from the chief engineer to the draftsmen was taking a coffee break at once. When I made my rounds this week, the recreation rooms were empty. Everybody was working.”

And from Lincoln, Neb., in the heart of the budget-conscious Midwest, came a remarkable wire sent by officials of the National Bank of Commerce to President Eisenhower. The bankers suggested that Deputy Air Force Chief Curtis LeMay be placed in charge of a unified U.S. missile program. Then they said: “As bankers, we realize the dilemma facing us—maintaining prosperity while controlling inflation, and at the same time maintaining a costly war-deterrent machine. We assure you of our backing in a program that will guarantee survival.”