I was transferred by RCA from a contract, which we had just lost to another contractor, to Grand Bahama Island during the summer of 1958. At that time, we were still launching several air-breathing missiles similar to airplanes, such as the Northrup Snark.
Those were the early days of ballistic missile launches. The grapefruit-size Vanguard was the only satellite we had in orbit. In December, 1958, we did put the shell of a large Atlas rocket into orbit, primarily to show that we could. Eisenhower broadcast a Christmas message on Dec. 19, 1958 that was relayed from space with equipment in that rocket.
The Snark was an unmanned, winged missile with a jet engine. It had a pair of rockets to assist on liftoff, then the jet engine took over. It flew a little over 600 mph and had a range of 5,500 miles. It could carry a nuclear warhead. It’s guidance system could track based on certain celestial objects or stars, in other words a stellar navigation system.
The Snark was deployed to Cape Canaveral for testing and training. There were so many failures in the early launches that the joke around Cape Canaveral was that the waters were “snark infested.” Another failure-prone missile was the North American Navaho, which we nicknamed the “Never Go.”
A day or two before a Snark launch, an airplane with Snark tracking, telemetry and communication equipment would fly a simulated Snark mission as far south as Puerto Rico. We had to man our station, track the airplane while Northrup engineers at each station were checking that all of the Snark equipment worked correctly.
Then the Snark launch would take place a day or two later in the evening. If everything worked correctly and the Snark was locked on the proper stars when it reached Antigua (about 1,500 miles downrange), the mission was a “go.” The stellar navigation would control the last 3,000 miles or so to the designated target near Ascension Island.
If it was determined to be a “no go,” the Northrup Snark engineers would control the Snark back uprange. It had no landing gear, but could be landed on the skid strip at Cape Canaveral, with minimal damage. The only problem was fuel, which had to be burned before skidding in. The Snark held fuel for the entire 5,000 mile trip. I don’t think they had a means of dumping fuel, since it was supposed to be an operational missile.
When the Snark arrived near Cape Canaveral, the Northrup engineers began controlling the Snark in a figure-eight pattern between the Cape and Grand Bahama for several hours until the fuel depleted enough for the skid landing. This meant we had three hours or a little over as it went downrange, three hours uprange and another four or more hours to burn the fuel.
The Cape had two shifts working, including overtime pay. We only had one shift and no overtime pay. Our 30-percent bonus for being downrange covered everything, being out of the country and long hours.
We prayed for a “go” on each Snark mission, but typically two out of three were “no go.” We had to stay on duty, catnapping until word on the “go/no go” status. If it was “no go,” then we had to be fully operational and assist with the tracking of the Snark for the next several hours until it was skidded in.
Of course, anytime this happened, it caused a ripple effect, delaying other scheduled launches, which could keep us on duty for many hours.
Copyright © Jerry Blackerby 2009