Rationalised First-Generation US Ballistic Missiles

the reason why USAF wanted several ICBM system, was backup capacity in case one of project failed

first generation ICBM (kerolox)
Atlas main program
Titan 1 backup program

second generation ICBM (storable fuel)
Minutemen main program
Titan II backup program

the Titan I and Atlas were phase out soon as second generation ICBM went operational.
while the Titan II start it life as launch vehicle for USAF and NASA
 
the reason why USAF wanted several ICBM system, was backup capacity in case one of project failed

first generation ICBM (kerolox)
Atlas main program
Titan 1 backup program

second generation ICBM (storable fuel)
Minutemen main program
Titan II backup program

the Titan I and Atlas were phase out soon as second generation ICBM went operational.
while the Titan II start it life as launch vehicle for USAF and NASA

The above has already been established.

However, why two of each type of missile were developed and deployed was not the question. The question was if it had been decided to develop only one IRBM and only one ICBM, which IRBM and which ICBM should have been developed.
 
The above has already been established.

However, why two of each type of missile were developed and deployed was not the question. The question was if it had been decided to develop only one IRBM and only one ICBM, which IRBM and which ICBM should have been developed.

Putting all your eggs in one basket (militarily AND industrially) is a really bad idea.
 
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.

I had considered the possible negative effects of reducing the number of programs. However, the USN only had one SLBM program and were able to get it into service at about the same time as Atlas and Titan I.

It's competition vs economies of scale. There are advantages and disadvantages in both.

I was aware that although Navajo did not go into service much was learned from the program that was incorporated into the first-generation of ballistic missiles. I did not mention it in the opening post because it still happens in this timeline.
 
What you are missing there is something I stated earlier: These programs all advanced each other to one degree or another.
This is simply not the case to any significant extent. What you are missing is that there were generally multiple parallel lines of development in any given area that often did not influence each other very much. You cite inertial navigation; well, as I mention below, that was hardly something only North American was working on for their Navaho project. The same with rockets; you had the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, and NACA all working on rockets of various sizes. The same with reentry bodies; NACA, the Air Force, and the Army were all studying them. And, generally, they ended up coming to the same solutions about the same time; for instance, the Army (that is, Huntsville) and the Air Force (via General Electric) both independently figured out ablation during the development of their ballistic missile projects (the Army in 1955, the Air Force in 1957). Knock out one pole, and the others will just keep going as they did historically.

In science, it's usually the case that if you look at things closely enough, there was no discovery novel enough that it wasn't discovered twice, that is by two (or more) different people quite independently. The same thing is frequently the case in engineering, and it was certainly the case in the 1940s and 1950s.

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.
And there was a very considerable amount of work being done on inertial navigation regardless and outside of the Navaho program, given that it has obvious utilities for bombers, submarines, ships, etc. For instance, Charles Stark Draper was researching inertial guidance completely independently of the Navaho work in the 1940s, and this work was crucial in having Atlas go forwards in 1955. Not having the Navaho program would just mean that Polaris would use a system with a different heritage, not that it would just collapse in failure.

Jupiter and Thor both used engines developed from the G-26 and G-38 rocket booster engines for Navajo.
And Jupiter and Thor were both terribly useless militarily, given their long fueling cycles and short ranges. At least Atlas and Titan had the excuse that there weren't that many Soviet ballistic missiles around, and they were very inaccurate. If anything, the G-26 and G-38 were tremendous wastes of money, developed at great expense for very little to no military utility. It would have been far better to pour that money into advancing the state of the art in solid and hypergolic engines, so far as the military was concerned.

And, again, this whole thread has been about the ballistic missile program, not the cruise missile program. You keep bringing up the Navajo and Snark and similar programs and I'm not sure why, because no one except you is talking about them.

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.
No, if you get rid of the ICCMs and limit the number of programs around, what will happen is that the advances made for the ICCMs will be made for other programs, like the long-range bombers (for whom similar problems apply, anyways) or the ballistic missile program. I say this because this was in fact what happened--the advances needed to make the ballistic missiles work, the fundamental ones, took place before the programs started, for other purposes, and enabled the programs to begin in the first place.

Moreover, I'm not sure why you posted this as a response to me, because it has literally nothing to do with what I said. What I said was: the intercontinental cruise missiles started development before ICBMs (true). They were having serious technical difficulties by the time the ICBM programs started in 1955 (also true). Ultimately this was because the necessary technology was beyond the technology of the day. Finally, I said that I was only discussing ballistic missiles anyways, so the cruise missiles are irrelevant.
 
Last edited:
So for the ICBM...

Is it reasonable to start the development of a missile using the same fuel as Titan II in 1955 and have it ready to be deployed in place of Atlas E/F and Titan I?

The missile would not necessarily be Titan II itself. It is more likely to be Titan I using Titan II's fuel and less developed versions of the Titan II engines.
 
And for the IRBM...

AFAIK Jupiter was the best weapon because it was mobile while Thor wasn't. Bill Gunston in his Encyclopaedia of Rockets and Missiles wrote that if it hadn't been for the Not Invented Here syndrome Jupiter might still have been in service in the late 1970s.

However, of the two it was the Thor that was used as a satellite launcher, so thinking in the long term it should be the only IRBM to be developed. But for all I know if Jupiter had more development potential as a space launcher, but lost because it was an ex-Army weapon.

Furthermore if there was no Jupiter would the Saturn family have happened? Or at least in the form that we know, but as I'm not an expert that might be a good thing.

If Delta had been developed from Jupiter instead of Thor would that have helped Saturn I? Which began as the largest of a proposed family of launchers based on the Jupiter.

Therefore I'm inclined to go for Jupiter as the sole IRBM.
 
So for the ICBM...

Is it reasonable to start the development of a missile using the same fuel as Titan II in 1955 and have it ready to be deployed in place of Atlas E/F and Titan I?

The missile would not necessarily be Titan II itself. It is more likely to be Titan I using Titan II's fuel and less developed versions of the Titan II engines.

It wouldn't be ready in the same time frame as Titan I or even Atlas, even given that Martin wouldn't be hobbled by a two year low priority status on the program.

It's very ambitious program, scaling up from the smaller sounding rockets they had been doing. Alcohol and LOX fueled Viking was half the size of the V2, and jump right to the full two stage Titan I with storable propellant?

This means that the US won't have a man-rated Booster they could compete with the Soviets for a couple years after Yuri does his flight, unless there is a rush for the Saturn I, clustering a bunch of Redstones together sooner

This TL will see the XB-70 in service, given the weakness of the USAF ICBM arm
 
Last edited:
And for the IRBM...

Furthermore if there was no Jupiter would the Saturn family have happened? Or at least in the form that we know, but as I'm not an expert that might be a good thing.

IIRC it was the fuel tank was what was contributed, the rest, Redstone
 
Putting all your eggs in one basket (militarily AND industrially) is a really bad idea.

I don't disagree with that.

However, there are arguments in favour of economies of scale too. But I freely admit that we have the benefit of hindsight which gives us the luxury of knowing which egg and which basked to choose.

At this time IOTL there were 5 ballistic missile programs in progress, Atlas, Jupiter, Polaris, Thor and Titan. ITTL there will still be 3 programs, one IRBM, one ICBM and Polaris so the USA will have 3 eggs in 3 baskets rather than 5 in 3.
 
I'm still not convinced that the USA needed to develop two IRBMs and two ICBMs in case one of them failed. On that argument the USA should have developed a second SLBM to back up Polaris.

According to Encyclopaedia Astronautica Polaris cost $2,231.900 million to develop. Based on that a second SLBM system would have cost $2 billion to develop.

Again according to Encyclopaedia Astronautica production of the Polaris missile amounted to 87 development and 1,005 production missiles for a grand total of 1,092. on that basis there would have been two sets of 87 development and 500-odd production missiles had two SLBM systems had been developed. That might increase the unit costs of the missiles.

The USN would have ended up with 20 SSBN armed with Polaris and another 20 armed with the backup missile. It might not have been possible to refit the boats fitted for the backup missile with Poseidon which would have required the development of a "second" second-generation missile which would cost more.
 
I'm still not convinced that the USA needed to develop two IRBMs and two ICBMs in case one of them failed. On that argument the USA should have developed a second SLBM to back up Polaris.
Well unlike the UK the US had the free space and beneficial geographic location that they could have gotten away with only having land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles so the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile were more of a bonus than a necessity. If you only have one ICBM programme and it goes tits-up then you're completely reliant on bombers which puts you at a disadvantage, if your SLBM programme runs into problems but you already have land-based ICBMs then it's not quite as urgent until a few more years down the line. You can also throw in bureaucratic and political infighting between the various service arms.
 
A lot of stuff needs to be kept in mind about the situation as it stood after WWII and into development of ICBMs. Specifically in that while ballistic missiles were known to be possible in almost every sense they were not that militarily useful even armed with an Atom bomb. They were complex, expensive, inaccurate, and had multiple operational issues that the military was disinclined to work with unless they had to. Add in lack of incentive or perceived need for development along with multiple lines of research and development, differing service needs, and changing requirements even on "final" designs and things get even more complicated. On top of that you have a political aspect where Eisenhower's "New Look" policy specifically centered on the U.S. Air Force as the primary service and specifically the manned bomber as a delivery device.

Redstone was developed as a tactical weapon, Jupiter as an enhanced version with ranges useful to the both the Navy and Army. (The original joint development program was for a dual use missile for mobile basing by the Army and submarine for the Navy. The Navy didn't like the use of liquid fuels {any of them} and the need to fit it into a submarine causes a "squashed" design that satisfied no one.) Once the Navy dropped out of the program progress was pretty rapid as it was after all mostly a highly upgraded Redstone design. Once the Air Force general staff was convinced (pretty much ordered to) to begin development the overall priority given the program caused the Air Force to decide they needed their "own" IRBM so Thor was designed using most of the same work and parts from Jupiter. Meanwhile the Jupiter itself was eventually transferred to the Air Force when the decision was (by the DoD) to deploy BOTH systems and have the Air Force responsible (1956) for all long range missile development and operations.

The key driver was a need be able to deploy massive striking power in range of the Soviet Union as soon as possible due to the nature of the "New Look" defense policy. IRBMs were seen as more "near-term" than ICBMs and therefore could be deployed more rapidly. Not everyone agreed with this though (in fact Under-Secretary of the Air Force Trevor Gardener who had pushed for priority spending and effort on ICBM development resigned over the inclusion of IRBMs in the effort feeling they were a diversion that was un-needed) but at the time the decision was made (@1953/54) it was not clear how long development of fully functional ICBM would take. Atlas had been in development since 1951 but changing requirements didn't see the missile design "fixed" until around 1954 when it became clear that Hydrogen Bombs were found to be smaller than original assumptions allowing the original 5 engine design to be reduced to only 3.

Around the 1954/55 time period various studies noted that it would be "unwise" for the US to depend fully on any single ICBM system so it was recommended that a more 'conventional' (than the Atlas) design be pursued and the Air Force took the opportunity to increase the payload requirements. This lead to the beginning of the Titan 1 development program and studies to upgrade and enhance its capabilities (including propellant, see below) and to study future systems (Minuteman) for development.

It wasn't until the whole ICBM/IRBM development was given a national priority in resources and funding that extensive work was able to be done on both design and development as well as support and operations systems. So design and development started from the known starting point of the V2 and Redstone and LOX and kerosene propellants because those were well known and operationally acceptable propellants that the military was already working with on a regular basis. Hypergolics were known but had operational issues that had to be addressed before they could be considered and deployed. (A good majority of the work on Titan II was to develop, qualify, and produce seals, gaskets, and other "durable" materials to withstand long term exposure to hypergolic propellants so that the missiles could be kept filled with propellant to reduce the launch cycle times)

In the case of the Navy they were not interested in liquid fueled missiles at all because of the risks and operational issues with storage and transfer of liquid propellants on-board a ship or submarine. As soon as it became practical to develop solid propellant missiles they proceeded doing so as did the Air Force with the Minuteman.

I'm not sure you could get a more 'rational' development as the overall cycle IS pretty "rational" when circumstances are taken into account. IRBM could have been "skipped" but being conservative they are extensions of the tactical missile such as the V2 or the Redstone which didn't require any great leaps of technology to achieve. You could argue/suppose a more coherent effort to continue development of the ballistic missiles from 1947 onwards which could argue a larger, more capable Atlas being developed and deployed in the early 1950s but operationally it would have been a failure and "something" needed to replace it anyway. Again given proper incentive the Titan-1 could have been "skipped" in development once the needed materials were developed to allow the operational deployment of hypergolic and the known shortcomings of kerolox propellants allowing the Titan-1 to be more in-line with the Titan-II. The Navy isn't going to want anything less than Polaris though so they will push the development of solid propellant and that's the "ultimate" operable military missile propellant in the end.

Part of the environment that we might want to keep in mind is that while the Air Force and Navy were more focused on weapons development the Army with ABMA was actually more focused on manned and "heavy" launch vehicles at this point. The Navy was in a poor position due to the focus on "New Look" as they had little capability at the time to deliver nuclear weapons and were desperately trying to come up with a credible nuclear capability. Meanwhile the Air Force had been dragging its feet over long range missile development and had a very strong advocacy for manned bombers and (at worst) unmanned air-breathing cruise missiles with little internal support for "Buck Rogers" type weapons such as the IRBM or ICBM. And then there was the Army which had the majority of the former V2 engineers and scientist who were more interested in space travel than weapons development AND were on the very bottom of the priority list for funding or resources under the "New Look" policy yet had the most active design and development team working on long range missiles. Ya, there was nothing to feed the existing inter-service rivalry there :)

RAndy
 
I'm not sure you could get a more 'rational' development as the overall cycle IS pretty "rational" when circumstances are taken into account. IRBM could have been "skipped" but being conservative they are extensions of the tactical missile such as the V2 or the Redstone which didn't require any great leaps of technology to achieve. You could argue/suppose a more coherent effort to continue development of the ballistic missiles from 1947 onwards which could argue a larger, more capable Atlas being developed and deployed in the early 1950s but operationally it would have been a failure and "something" needed to replace it anyway. Again given proper incentive the Titan-1 could have been "skipped" in development once the needed materials were developed to allow the operational deployment of hypergolic and the known shortcomings of kerolox propellants allowing the Titan-1 to be more in-line with the Titan-II. The Navy isn't going to want anything less than Polaris though so they will push the development of solid propellant and that's the "ultimate" operable military missile propellant in the end.

I would argue that a more "rational" and coherent program starting in the 1940s would focus not on pushing into service a weapon which people at the time quite rightly recognized was not particularly useful, but rather on developing the necessary underlying technology, such as large rocket engines, precise automatic guidance, storable and solid fuels, and so on, many of which would have useful applications in other areas in any case. Then, when the development cycle made ballistic missiles more practical, one or several could be developed with considerably less crash effort and expense, and probably with a longer service lifetime due to being more fit for purpose from the beginning rather than raiding bits and bobs of old German weapons for the underlying (engine) technology. Some people halfway grasped this, but a coherent development program was lacking, probably because of the Buck Rodgers factor.

I don't think storables were all that much of a killer for the Titan II. It served about as long as the contemporary solid missiles Minuteman I/II and Polaris, and was only retired as part of an ordinary military replacement cycle. Sure, once you work out big solids you probably aren't going to build a storable liquid missile, but if you have 'em they're probably not going to be replaced early over it, unlike the kerolox missiles that have too many operational disadvantages to have a long service lifetime.

An interesting question here would be what would happen if someone other than Eisenhower was setting defense policy at the time, for instance if Dewey had won the 1948 election. Dewey was in the same general circles, so things probably wouldn't look too much different, but if there's less focus on massive retaliation as the answer...? Maybe IRBMs and ICBMs would be seen as a lower-priority program then (at least until Sputnik) and you might get a smaller number of programs out of it.
 
Well unlike the UK the US had the free space and beneficial geographic location that they could have gotten away with only having land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles so the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile were more of a bonus than a necessity. If you only have one ICBM programme and it goes tits-up then you're completely reliant on bombers which puts you at a disadvantage, if your SLBM programme runs into problems but you already have land-based ICBMs then it's not quite as urgent until a few more years down the line. You can also throw in bureaucratic and political infighting between the various service arms.

I take your point.

However, if Polaris had run into problems and the ICBM still went "tits up" they still have the single IRBM (plus over a thousand B-47s and B-52s) to fall back on.

And IMHO the SLBM was the most technically advanced and therefore the most likely to be delayed of fail outright. Therefore a backup to Polaris had more justification than any of the others.
 
I would argue that a more "rational" and coherent program starting in the 1940s would focus not on pushing into service a weapon which people at the time quite rightly recognized was not particularly useful, but rather on developing the necessary underlying technology, such as large rocket engines, precise automatic guidance, storable and solid fuels, and so on, many of which would have useful applications in other areas in any case. Then, when the development cycle made ballistic missiles more practical, one or several could be developed with considerably less crash effort and expense, and probably with a longer service lifetime due to being more fit for purpose from the beginning rather than raiding bits and bobs of old German weapons for the underlying (engine) technology. Some people halfway grasped this, but a coherent development program was lacking, probably because of the Buck Rodgers factor.

Although this is not a "What if the MX-774 wasn't cancelled?" or similar thread, that is what I think too. An additional benefit would probably be that they would be more reliable because they had more time to test the components. More reliable launchers would be very helpful in the early years of the space programme too.
 
IRBM could have been "skipped" but being conservative they are extensions of the tactical missile such as the V2 or the Redstone which didn't require any great leaps of technology to achieve.
I wasn't going to skip the IRBM. That is: partially because of the above; partially as a backup to the ICBM in case it was delayed; and finally my main reason, which is AFAIK the USA still needs an IRBM based space launcher for payloads that were too small to justify using one of the ICBM based launchers.

Once the Air Force general staff was convinced (pretty much ordered to) to begin development the overall priority given the program caused the Air Force to decide they needed their "own" IRBM so Thor was designed using most of the same work and parts from Jupiter. Meanwhile the Jupiter itself was eventually transferred to the Air Force when the decision was (by the DoD) to deploy BOTH systems and have the Air Force responsible (1956) for all long range missile development and operations.
Based on that if the USA was going to develop one IRBM it would have been Jupiter.

You could argue/suppose a more coherent effort to continue development of the ballistic missiles from 1947 onwards which could argue a larger, more capable Atlas being developed and deployed in the early 1950s but operationally it would have been a failure and "something" needed to replace it anyway.
As Workable Goblin said I think its more likely that the first generation of missiles wouldn't enter service any sooner, but due to the earlier start they would have higher performance and be more reliable.
Therefore the USAF might have deployed an all ICBM force of 360 Atlas F or 360 Titan II or a mix of the two in favour of 132 Atlas D/E/F, 54 Titan I, 54 Titan II, 60 Jupiter and 60 Thor. Meanwhile Polaris would have been a mark ahead of the real world with A-2 deployed in place of A-1, A-3 deployed in place of A-2; and possibly Poseidon deployed in place of Polaris A-3.

Again given proper incentive the Titan-1 could have been "skipped" in development once the needed materials were developed to allow the operational deployment of hypergolic and the known shortcomings of kerolox propellants allowing the Titan-1 to be more in-line with the Titan-II. The Navy isn't going to want anything less than Polaris though so they will push the development of solid propellant and that's the "ultimate" operable military missile propellant in the end.
T
herefore it would at least be possible for a Titan I½ using hypergolic fuel to be deployed instead of the Titan I and at least Atlas E and F. 162 of them would be a better investment for the USAF in place of the 54 Titan I and 162 Atlas E/F that were deployed. Atlas D would still be deployed as an ICBM and used as a space launcher.

More optimistically Titan I½ enters service in place of Atlas D then Titan II enters service with a front-line of 216 missiles deployed instead of 54 Titan I, 54 Titan II and 162 Atlas E/F. Atlas isn't developed at all so that the payloads it launched IOTL have to be put into orbit by Titan based launchers or a Jupiter derived launcher.

Though what I really wanted was a plausible way to get a force of 120 Jupiters and 240 Atlases to butterfly away the Thor based space launchers and Titan III.

I'm trying to stop Titan III happening to force the USAF to use Saturn I for its heavy satellites. If the USAF is using that instead of Titan III then it would be easier for NASA to keep Saturn IB in production for the manned space program.
 
I don't think storables were all that much of a killer for the Titan II.

Unlike a spill of LOX or RP-1, Hydrazine and RFNA got your attention to get the hazmat crews on it, pronto, and was expensive to clean properly

The Synthetic rubber and perchlorate in the Solids, you just didn't have to worry about.
 
And IMHO the SLBM was the most technically advanced and therefore the most likely to be delayed of fail outright. Therefore a backup to Polaris had more justification than any of the others.

If anyone other than 'Red' Raborn was running Polaris, there probably would have had a backup program in place
 
Top