Rationalised First-Generation US Ballistic Missiles

The Smaller, Faster, Cheaper thread had revived an idea I have had for a long time for a rationalisation of US ballistic missile development from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. That is:

one IRBM instead of Jupiter and Thor

and

one ICBM instead of Atlas, Titan I and Titan II

That should save money by reducing the R&D and production costs.

At first glance Delta should be the IRBM because it was used as a space launcher after it was retired as missile. However:

-AFAIK Jupiter was the better missile because it was mobile.
-Did Jupiter have any features that would have made it a better satellite launcher than Thor? I haven't checked but as far as I can remember the dozen or so Jupiter missiles that were used as satellite launchers under the name Juno II weren't very reliable, even by the standards of the day.
-AFAIK Saturn I was an development of the Jupiter (and was originally called Juno V) so there might be some possibilities for economies of scale in R&D and production in a family of Jupiter based space launchers.

For the ICBM the most obvious candidate is Atlas as it came first. IOTL the redundant Titan I missiles weren't reused as satellite launchers so the USAF has 54 extra Atlas missiles plus their backing rounds to be used as satellite launches.

On the other hand Titan II had a much longer service life. That might mean that the USAF would want a larger force of Minutemen or a Super Minuteman to complement it.

Furthermore no Titan II means no launcher for Gemini an nothing to develop Titan III from. That could be a good thing as it means the USAF would have to use Saturn I by default.

Could Titan II have been started early enough for a force of 240 to be deployed in place of the 132 Atlas, 54 Titan I and 54 Titan II of OTL?. Because:
-It would have been a better investment for the USAF and American taxpayer because they would have longer service lives as ICBMS;
-It might give America a more powerful launcher than Atlas in the early years of the space programme. Though it might also mean no Agena or Centaur as there was no Atlas to develop an upper stage for and the basic Titan II might satisfy current requirements.

So should it be?

Thor and Atlas. Or:

Jupiter and Atlas. Or:

Thor and Titan. Or:

Jupiter and Titan.
 
one ICBM instead of Atlas, Titan I and Titan II

Reason for all three.

ICBMs needed ASAP. Insurance policies in case of failure

Atlas, all stages lit on take off. easiest to make work.

Titan I, working two stage with LOX and RP-1 fuel, like Atlas

Titan II, now with storable propellants, hydrazine mixed with UDMH, plus Red Fuming Nitric Acid, and could be launched without partial raising from the Silo.

Sure, SAC would have loved the Titan II in 1958, but there was no way to get it working at that when the first contracts were signed in 1955
 
The reason so many designs were used was that the USAF wanted to get an IRBM and then an ICBM operational as quickly as possible. To that end, they copied many larger WW 2 programs and used parallel development to ensure that they'd get a system that worked as quickly as possible.

For WW 2 examples might be:

The B-29 and B-32. Boeing and Convair both developed a super heavy bomber in parallel. The B-29 worked while the B-32 had issues. Had only one been in development it is possible that it would have been the B-32 and the program would have failed.

The Manhattan project parallel developed uranium and plutonium bombs for the same reason.

Here you have Jupiter and Thor (USN) as two IRBM programs while Atlas and Titan are the two ICBM programs. In addition, the USAF was developing Snark / Boojum and Navajo as long range cruise missiles.

The programs ended up producing Atlas as the early ready ICBM with Titan being the second in service. The USAF in the end went away from liquid fueled ICBM's to the solid fuel Minuteman, as did the Navy who dropped Thor and began developing Polaris instead as a solid fuel SLBM.
 
Adopt only the Atlas and Glenn Martin will be very sad (plus all the congress critters from the districts where Glenn Martin factories are), adopt only Titan and Convair will be very sad (plus all the congress critters from the districts where Convair factories are) :D.
 
Reason for all three.

ICBMs needed ASAP. Insurance policies in case of failure

Atlas, all stages lit on take off. easiest to make work.

Titan I, working two stage with LOX and RP-1 fuel, like Atlas

Titan II, now with storable propellants, hydrazine mixed with UDMH, plus Red Fuming Nitric Acid, and could be launched without partial raising from the Silo.

Sure, SAC would have loved the Titan II in 1958, but there was no way to get it working at that when the first contracts were signed in 1955

I understand that. However, Polaris was begun at about the same time and the USN didn't develop a second SLBM in case Polaris failed. Or for that matter the British didn't develop a second MRBM in case Blue Streak failed, but in a way its surprising that they didn't.

To me it's similar to the V-bombers and Short Sperrin, except the Americans could afford to develop backup weapons and the UK couldn't.

However, Atlas was begun in 1953 giving it a 2 year head start over Titan so it was the missile that was likely to be in service first and it was. If the USAF wanted lots of ICBMs as soon as possible then it should have ordered more Atlases and if Convair could not build them all then have another firm build the rest. E.g. IIRC Douglas built several hundred B-47s.

That was the method in my madness.

I thought bringing forward Titan II wouldn't be possible. However, I vaguely remember reading that Titan I was Martin-Marietta's first missile with LOX and RP-1 fuel and that Titan II was a return to the fuels it had used previously.
 
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The reason so many designs were used was that the USAF wanted to get an IRBM and then an ICBM operational as quickly as possible. To that end, they copied many larger WW 2 programs and used parallel development to ensure that they'd get a system that worked as quickly as possible.

For WW 2 examples might be:

The B-29 and B-32. Boeing and Convair both developed a super heavy bomber in parallel. The B-29 worked while the B-32 had issues. Had only one been in development it is possible that it would have been the B-32 and the program would have failed.

The Manhattan project parallel developed uranium and plutonium bombs for the same reason.

Here you have Jupiter and Thor (USN) as two IRBM programs while Atlas and Titan are the two ICBM programs. In addition, the USAF was developing Snark / Boojum and Navajo as long range cruise missiles.

The programs ended up producing Atlas as the early ready ICBM with Titan being the second in service. The USAF in the end went away from liquid fueled ICBM's to the solid fuel Minuteman, as did the Navy who dropped Thor and began developing Polaris instead as a solid fuel SLBM.

Fair enough.

However, the USN didn't develop 2 first generation SLBMs. The USAF didn't build a backups to Minuteman and Peacekeeper, while the USN didn't build backups to Poseidon and Trident. I admit that the technology was more mature by the time Minuteman was being designed so there was less risk of failure and the firms were given more time to put them into service.

With the IRBM I thought it was more a case that both the US Army and USAF wanted to operate the American ballistic missile force, which is why Jupiter was developed for the Army and Thor for the USAF. They both ended up being operated by the USAF because by 1958 it had been decided that all long range missiles should belong to them.

If the ruling had been made before 1955 then there might have been only one IRBM, probably Thor.
 
Fair enough.

However, the USN didn't develop 2 first generation SLBMs. The USAF didn't build a backups to Minuteman and Peacekeeper, while the USN didn't build backups to Poseidon and Trident. I admit that the technology was more mature by the time Minuteman was being designed so there was less risk of failure and the firms were given more time to put them into service.

The reason for that was the urgency wasn't the same. The US in the 1950's assumed the Soviets were building an ICBM and didn't want to be caught without one of their own. There was more breathing room for follow on generations.
The USN used Thor to test their IRBM needs and then developed Polaris as a system in tandem with USAF missile systems.

With the IRBM I thought it was more a case that both the US Army and USAF wanted to operate the American ballistic missile force, which is why Jupiter was developed for the Army and Thor for the USAF. They both ended up being operated by the USAF because by 1958 it had been decided that all long range missiles should belong to them.

With the formation of the USAF the US Army was reduced to developing battlefield and tactical missiles along with an air defense SAM. The USAF was to build "strategic" missiles (IRBM and ICBM) along with long range air defense missile systems (BOMARC and Thumper).


If the ruling had been made before 1955 then there might have been only one IRBM, probably Thor.

Unlikely. The USN and USAF were in serious political competition for funding for weapons development in the late 40's and 1950's. It reached a head with The Revolt of the Admirals in 1949 when the USAF was pushing, and looked like they might get, new carriers cancelled and the USN taken out of the nuclear deterrence business in favor of "Strategic bombing."

In a way, it was good the USN won much of that battle. Without the USN developing their own missiles and such many of the better systems that ended up in service wouldn't have.
For example, in AAM's the USAF entries were all pretty much failures. AIM 4 Falcon was a poor performer while Sidewinder and Sparrow became the systems pretty much still in use today.
BOMARC wasn't much of a success as a SAM as it was too much technological push at the time. Nike, Terrier, and Hawk proved far more successful.

The reliability of the US Army's Redstone missile made it the first choice for early space flights.
 
Unlikely. The USN and USAF were in serious political competition for funding for weapons development in the late 40's and 1950's. It reached a head with The Revolt of the Admirals in 1949 when the USAF was pushing, and looked like they might get, new carriers cancelled and the USN taken out of the nuclear deterrence business in favor of "Strategic bombing."

In a way, it was good the USN won much of that battle. Without the USN developing their own missiles and such many of the better systems that ended up in service wouldn't have.
For example, in AAM's the USAF entries were all pretty much failures. AIM 4 Falcon was a poor performer while Sidewinder and Sparrow became the systems pretty much still in use today.
BOMARC wasn't much of a success as a SAM as it was too much technological push at the time. Nike, Terrier, and Hawk proved far more successful.

The reliability of the US Army's Redstone missile made it the first choice for early space flights.

I meant only one land based IRBM gets developed for the USAF and that is probably the Thor due to the not invented here principle. The USN still has Polaris. Maybe it still tries something like Jupiter first but as a USN only program as the US Army has already been excluded.
 
For example, in AAM's the USAF entries were all pretty much failures. AIM 4 Falcon was a poor performer while Sidewinder and Sparrow became the systems pretty much still in use today.

If you look at the numbers,Sparrow had a worse hit per launch rate than the Falcon, that was only was contact fuzed, unlike the other two that were proximity fuzed.

Sidewinder D/G/H 16%
Falcon 4D 10%
Sparrow 7 9%

The better 4E and 4F used in the F-106 never left CONUS, with twice the warhead than the 4D.

All that said, the Falcons all needed more maintenance and tuning
 
If you look at the numbers,Sparrow had a worse hit per launch rate than the Falcon, that was only was contact fuzed, unlike the other two that were proximity fuzed.

Sidewinder D/G/H 16%
Falcon 4D 10%
Sparrow 7 9%

The better 4E and 4F used in the F-106 never left CONUS, with twice the warhead than the 4D.

All that said, the Falcons all needed more maintenance and tuning

The Sparrow did poorly in Vietnam mainly because it was designed for long range shooting and ROE's prevented it.

Falcon had several issues that made it fail:

The AIM-4D was used in combat in South-East Asia by some F-4D Phantoms, which were equipped with special LAU-42/A launchers for this purpose. However, it became soon apparent that the AIM-4D was ill-suited for the close-range dogfights encountered over Vietnam, and only 5 kills were achieved with the Falcon. The main problem of the missile was seeker cooling. The limited amount of on-board coolant meant that the seeker could not be pre-cooled for any length of time, which in turn meant that it had to be cooled more or less shortly before firing, i.e. when close-range combat had already started. This cooling, however, took up to 5 seconds which is like eternity in a dogfight, so that most targets were out of reach again when the missile was finally ready. Moreover, when the coolant was exhausted after several aborted launches, the Falcon was just useless dead weight, which had to be brought back to base for servicing. Another problem of the Falcon was the lack of a proximity fuze, which made it effectively a hit-to-kill missile. Part of the blame for the abysmal combat record of the AIM-4D has been given to the fighter pilots, who did not make good use of the Falcon's relatively long lock-on range (9.6 km / 6 miles), which would have made BVR kills possible. However, this blame is somewhat unjustified, because combat rules required visual identification of essentially every potential target before engagement, making the deployment of the Falcon in Vietnam questionable at best. The AIM-4D was gradually withdrawn from use beginning in 1969, and by 1973, the AIM-4D was no longer operational with the USAF.

http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-4.html
 
So the story so far for the ICBM is that if the USAF is going to deploy only one first-generation weapon its going to be Atlas because:

1) It was started first, in 1953 or 1947 if MX-774 is counted. Titan I wasn't begun until 1955 and Titian II in 1959 IIRC.

2) Starting Titian II in 1955 instead of Titan I doesn't mean it will be ready 4 years earlier so that more can be built in place of Atlas and Titan I.

However:

1) If they didn't develop Titan it would break 1950s practice of developing 2 of everything in case one of them wasn't ready on time or failed completely.

2) Because of the short timescale they didn't have the luxury of completing the test programme before deciding to put the best one into production.

3) Political considerations - Other firms wanted a share of the work.

4) This hasn't been mentioned yet, but I presume the USAF wanted more than one firm that was capable of designing and building ICBMs to keep the price of the second generation weapon down through competition and so that they could be built in larger numbers in an emergency.
 
Sure, SAC would have loved the Titan II in 1958, but there was no way to get it working at that when the first contracts were signed in 1955
They were actively working on hypergolic propellants (very actively, as a matter of fact) in 1955, and actually had been for some time--they had worked out the specs for inhibited red fuming nitric acid in 1954, for instance, and had nailed down the basics of Aerozine 50 by 1953 (both dates from John Clark's excellent book Ignition!). It would not have been much of a lift to incorporate their usage into the 1955 ICBM program. I'm not even sure that going for hypergols directly instead of faffing around with kerolox would create a delay, and certainly not much of a delay, in getting into service considering how much work was needed to build even kerolox rocket engines of the necessary size.

The USN used Thor to test their IRBM needs and then developed Polaris as a system in tandem with USAF missile systems.
No, the USN signed on to the Jupiter program then learned the following year (in 1956) that smaller nuclear warheads and solid rocket IRBMs were possible, pulled out, and started its own program. One wonders why the Air Force and the Army didn't follow suite, considering how militarily problematic the kerolox core of the Thor and Jupiter clearly were.
 

Archibald

Banned
The major roadblock was inter-service rivalry - the Army, Navy, Air Force and the civilians each had their wn rocket or missile program. At least the Sputnik crisis and the creation of NASA somewhat cleared the mess.
 
They were actively working on hypergolic propellants (very actively, as a matter of fact) in 1955, and actually had been for some time--they had worked out the specs for inhibited red fuming nitric acid in 1954, for instance, and had nailed down the basics of Aerozine 50 by 1953 (both dates from John Clark's excellent book Ignition!). It would not have been much of a lift to incorporate their usage into the 1955 ICBM program. I'm not even sure that going for hypergols directly instead of faffing around with kerolox would create a delay, and certainly not much of a delay, in getting into service considering how much work was needed to build even kerolox rocket engines of the necessary size.

New fuels, larger thrust chambers and multistage right off the starting line would have taken many more years to sort out, IMO
 
New fuels, larger thrust chambers and multistage right off the starting line would have taken many more years to sort out, IMO

Hardly, considering that the Titan II entered into service just two years after the first actually usable versions of the Atlas (the Atlas E/F) and three years after the first operational versions of the Titan I, despite the Titan II program starting four years later. Considering the resources available for investment and the actual progress made, I would expect that they would be able to introduce a hypergolic ICBM (not necessarily the size of the Titan II, and not necessarily multistage) into service by 1961 or 1962 if they start work in 1955, if not sooner, which is going to save a lot in the long run since it won't need to be retired almost immediately due to be militarily useless.

Remember, the Titan I, a multistage missile, started work at the same time as the Atlas (both became official programs in 1955; any work done before that was paper studies at most). The Atlas required building quite large engines as well (the XLR-89-1 booster engine used in early versions had a thrust of about 650 kN; the LR-89 used in the Atlas E/F operational versions had a thrust of about 730 kN. Each is quite large). And the chemistry, as I cited, had been worked out by the time they started work on the Atlas or Titan I.

By all means, they could work on the Atlas...as a backup. The other program should not have been Titan I, but Titan II, or at least some kind of hypergolic missile, since this type was both technically feasible and quite evidently had much more long-term utility than anything using cryogenic fuels.
 
The major roadblock was inter-service rivalry - the Army, Navy, Air Force and the civilians each had their wn rocket or missile program. At least the Sputnik crisis and the creation of NASA somewhat cleared the mess.

Actually, the fact that the US had three separate programs was beneficial. Each one produced stuff, often using the same contractors, that then benefited the other programs.
NASA other than being an information clearing house really didn't contribute anything close to what the DoD would in space exploration in terms of technology.
 
By all means, they could work on the Atlas...as a backup. The other program should not have been Titan I, but Titan II, or at least some kind of hypergolic missile, since this type was both technically feasible and quite evidently had much more long-term utility than anything using cryogenic fuels.

Actually, the other program was the dual development Snark / Boojum and Nativ / Navajo intercontinental cruise missile programs. These sought to deliver a aerodynamic solution to warhead delivery rather than a ballistic one.

Snark

http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app1/sm-62.html

Boojum

http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app1/ssm-a-5.html

Navajo

http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app1/sm-64.html
 
Actually, the other program was the dual development Snark / Boojum and Nativ / Navajo intercontinental cruise missile programs. These sought to deliver a aerodynamic solution to warhead delivery rather than a ballistic one.

I am aware of the intercontinental cruise missiles programs. They were not a backup to anything but rather started before the bulk of the Air Force thought ballistic missiles were practical. If anything, the ballistic missiles were their backups, especially as they were having serious technical problems by the time the ballistic missile programs started and eventually all collapsed due to the technical incapacity of the time to build a true autonomously piloted aircraft (which is what they essentially were).

In any case, I am limiting myself to the question of ballistic missiles, in which the Titan I was a backup to the Atlas and vice-versa. I am suggesting that this was, quite frankly, stupid, and they would have been better off with a program that would have more aggressively pursued "advanced" fuels than the rather useless Titan I.
 
I am aware of the intercontinental cruise missiles programs. They were not a backup to anything but rather started before the bulk of the Air Force thought ballistic missiles were practical. If anything, the ballistic missiles were their backups, especially as they were having serious technical problems by the time the ballistic missile programs started and eventually all collapsed due to the technical incapacity of the time to build a true autonomously piloted aircraft (which is what they essentially were).

In any case, I am limiting myself to the question of ballistic missiles, in which the Titan I was a backup to the Atlas and vice-versa. I am suggesting that this was, quite frankly, stupid, and they would have been better off with a program that would have more aggressively pursued "advanced" fuels than the rather useless Titan I.

What you are missing there is something I stated earlier: These programs all advanced each other to one degree or another.
With the Navajo program the inertial navigation system for that missile became the N6 system used on nuclear submarines and many other systems for accurate navigation in an era before GPS. Without it Polaris wouldn't have worked.
Jupiter and Thor both used engines developed from the G-26 and G-38 rocket booster engines for Navajo.

So, what you have is these programs feeding off each other to advance to completion. You limit it to one or a few and many of the advances vanish or would have taken much longer to occur. You need more than an engine to make an ICBM work.

What really ended intercontinental cruise missiles was Sputnik. That focused all the attention on ballistic missiles and the cruise missile systems were now all but ignored.
 
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