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Douglas Aircraft Co. final film report under
USAF contract no. AF 04(645)-65.
PGM-17 Thor, built by
Douglas Aircraft, was was deployed in
Great Britain between
1959 and
September 1963 as an intermediate range ballistic missile (
IRBM) with thermonuclear warheads. The film is hosted by
NBC space reporter
Roy Neal.
Reupload of a previously uploaded film with improved video & sound.
Public domain film from the
US Air Force, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/
3.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-17_Thor
Thor was the first operational ballistic missile deployed by the
U.S. Air Force (USAF).
Named after the Norse god of thunder, it was deployed in the
United Kingdom between 1959 and September 1963 as an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) with thermonuclear warheads. Thor was 65 feet (20 m) in height and 8 feet (
2.4 m) in diameter. It was later augmented in the
U.S. IRBM arsenal by the
Jupiter.
A large family of space launch vehicles—the Thor and
Delta rockets—were derived from the Thor design.
The Delta II is still in active service as of 2014 and with the retirement of
Atlas and
Titan in the mid-2000s, the last surviving "heritage" launch vehicle in the
US fleet (meaning that it's derived from a
Cold War-era missile system)
...
Design and development
Fearful that the
Soviet Union would deploy a long-range ballistic missile before the U.S., in
January 1956 the USAF began developing the Thor, a 1,
500 miles (2,400 km) intermediate-range ballistic missile.
The program proceeded quickly, and within three years of inception the first of 20
Royal Air Force Thor squadrons became operational in the UK.
The UK deployment carried the codename '
Project Emily'. One of the advantages of the design was that, unlike the
Jupiter IRBM, the Thor could be carried by the USAF's cargo aircraft of the time, which made its deployment more rapid. The launch facilities were not transportable, and had to be built on site. The Thor was a stop-gap measure, and once the first generation of
ICBMs based in the US became operational, Thor missiles were quickly retired. The last of the missiles was withdrawn from operational alert in
1963.
A small number of Thors, converted to "
Thrust Augumented
Delta" launchers, remained operational in the anti-satellite missile role as
Program 437 until
April 1975. These missiles were based on
Johnston Island in the
Pacific Ocean and had the ability to destroy satellites in low
Earth orbit. With prior warning of an impending launch, they could destroy a
Soviet spy satellite soon after orbital insertion. These missiles remain in storage, and could be reactivated, though the W-49 Mod 6 warheads were all dismantled by
June 1976.
Initial development as an IRBM
Development of the Thor was initiated by the USAF in 1954 as a tactical ballistic missile... range would allow
Moscow to be hit from a launch site in the UK.
The initial design studies were headed by Cmdr.
Robert Truax (
US Navy) and Dr. Adolph K. Thiel (
Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, formerly of
Redstone Arsenal). They refined the specs to an IRBM with:
A 1,750 miles (2,820 km) range
8 ft (2.4 m) diameter, 65 ft (20 m) long (so it could be carried by
Douglas C-124 Globemaster)
A gross takeoff weight of
110,
000 lb (50,000 kg)
Propulsion provided by half of the Navaho-derived Atlas booster engine (due, largely, to the lack of any alternatives at this early date)
10,000 mph (
4.5 km/s) maximum speed during warhead reentry
Inertial guidance system with radio backup (for low susceptibility to enemy disruption)
...On
December 27,
1955 Douglas was awarded the prime contract for the airframe and integration. The Rocketdyne division of
North American Aviation was awarded the engine contract,
AC Spark Plug the primary inertial guidance system,
Bell Labs the backup radio guidance system, and
General Electric the nose cone/reentry vehicle...
Noteworthy Thor IRBM flights
- 4 June 1962, failed
Starfish flight, Thor destroyed, nuclear device lost.
- 20 June 1962, failed
Bluegill Prime flight, Thor destroyed, nuclear device lost.
- 9 July 1962,
Thor missile 195 launched a Mk4 reentry vehicle containing a
W49 thermonuclear warhead to an altitude of 250 miles (400 km). The warhead detonated with a yield of 1
.45 Mt of
TNT (6.07 PJ). This was the
Starfish Prime event of nuclear test operation Dominic-Fishbowl...
- published: 05 Mar 2016
- views: 1826