The Lockheed Polaris was a submarine-launched, solid fuel, ballistic missile. The early test launches were from launch pads at Cape Canaveral and, of course, some were failures. The first fully successful Polaris launch was in the spring of 1959.
When the missile was to be deployed on submarines, it would be ejected to the surface in a column of compressed air. The first time we saw this technology at Cape Canaveral was in the fall of 1959. A Polaris was launched from an unmoving ship’s motion simulator at a launch pad at the Cape. The Polaris was kicked upward on a column of compressed air.
What we saw at Grand Bahama was that our radars picked up a signal much sooner than normal. Because of the curvature of the earth and the time to build up enough thrust, it normally took several seconds for a launch to be high enough for our Grand Bahama radars to see a signal.
About two weeks later, another successful Polaris launch was from a compressed air system installed on a ship offshore from the Cape. A few months later, the first underwater launch was made from a submarine off the coast of Florida.
Copyright © Jerry Blackerby 2009