My dad was a janitor at the Martin plant in Denver. He used to tell me great stories about his role is the design, testing, and manufacture of critical parts of this missile. I followed his great footsteps and today, proudly work in the custodial department in Hawthorne for SpaceX doing the same critical part in the space program that my father did. I hope my son (or daughter) caries on our family's legacy in the space program.
It's a shame the B-58 didn't have a longer run in active service; it was _ridiculously_ fast -- not only for it's time, but even _by today's_ standards! Unfortunately, ICBMs kinda made the whole concept pointless and obsolescent.
@@DS-hy6ld Yep. Kinda crazy that so much in aviation technology peaked back then (the A12 and SR-71 Blackbird come to mind). Even crazier to think we are further removed from the peak today than that peak was from the Wright Brothers. I expect a boom in hypersonic development if it hasn’t been happening behind the scenes already but that will likely remain entirely unmanned.
The 52's are an expanded B-47, from 6 to 8 engines...medium bomber load with 3 crew total to a heavy bomb load with 6 crew. BUT, what they accomplished with the B-47 was a tremendous leap of skill and technology. Also the 47 is a gorgeous thing to behold, while the 52 looks like a train car with wings attached.
B 52s have been constantly upgraded since first being developed and brought into service by Boeing in . . 1952 would you believe, with improvements to avionics, airframe structure, guidance and bomb and missile capability - it is a great and classic bomber design to still be in service after 70 years. Personally, I prefer the zany American rock band of the same name. Rock lobster, anyone ?
and now you can't smoke the pipe but you get to sit in a bunker full of cancer causing chemicals (hi, leukemia called!). above ground FTW. The bearded ladies are literary on the bottom of the modern 'problems list', as they actually effect you.
I was enployed at Convair Division of General Dynamics in their Launch Vehicle Programs. We pretty much knew that the old "A-4" (political name "V-2) was an alcohol/LOX machine that was limited by design and low engine thrust. Convair began its MX-774 as a conceptual proof-of-concept project but was cancelled in the late 1940's. When re-energized as the Atlas; the newer machine would have had four booster engines plus the center sustainer. Subsequent nuclear weapon designs in the early 1950's permitted a much smaller warhead design which resulted in an accordant reduction in design capability with only two booster engines combined with the single sustainer and two small verneer engines for added stability and fine adjustment for targeting. We would visit the ultra-modern new manufacturing facility on Kearny Mesa in San Diego in mid-1958; many of us amazed at the oversll scope of what was to be one of the largest procurements ever attempted by the Air Force. A sense of urgency was present among us all. At some point Gus (Virgil) Grissom was asked to speak to us all on the vehicle final assembly floor. The self-concious Grissom could only blurt out the words: "Do good work." Those three words from the new astronaut rang through the packed assembly like lightning ⚡ with the audience of workers erupting in chears as well as just plain screaming just hearing the voice of one of the men who would eventually fly on one of our vehicles. What eventually became the annual "Do Good Work" pledge was signed by all employees. Atlas would eventually become a sub-obital & orbital workhorse and by the '70's an Atlas/Centaur launch vehicle would boost our first spacecraft to Jupiter as part of the Pioneer Project for NASA.
I joined the Convair team in 1982. While I missed these glory days of this video, I got to work as an engineer at Kearny Mesa and Lindbergh Field on Space Shuttle, Tomahawk, Centaur and several other programs I cannot talk about. This was the best job of my career. These were some of he best people in the industry, and I got to brush shoulders with them. I was sorry I had to leave as General Dynamics (the Crown Family) closed the doors in Aerospace and sold it all to other companies. I ended up in Wichita designing airplanes for Learjet and Beechcraft (while still rewarding, it was boring by comparison). Convair was a great R&D company.
@@randbarrett8706 I think the Manhattan project is the most amazing achievement, in just 3 years. That was motivation, total fear that the Nazi's would beat them.
The Congressional Record shows that on the day of that first successful flight, Dec 17, 1957 I believe, Gen. Schriever was testifying before Senator Johnson's subcommittee, and was asked if we had had a successful test of the Atlas. Just then an aide brought word of the successful test, and Schriever was able to answer with a resounding "yes."
That timing is far too dramatically convenient to be spontaneous, but who doesn't love a good political drama? Especially when it helps keep the appropriations coming!
@@OhShitSeriously You might be right, but that's what the records and documents showed. Also, at this time in history, Sputnik had just launched in October, and the Congress was trying to shove MORE money into the ICBM program! Ironic, no?
My grandfather (passed in ‘02)was with Convair and was a test engineer, he worked on heat shielding testing mainly, and did many tests for the Atlas and subsequent programs.
Heat shielding Technology is one of the unsung heroes of all of that stuff. Got2b paper thin, Can't weigh nothing just got to withstand thousands and thousands of degrees and lots of other extreme forces.
I was with General Dynamics-Fort Worth, until they laid off thousands back in '88... Worked in "the" heat-treat/test hanger. Never do found a similar job again. Got a lot of training and experience but became worthless. Perhaps Russia needs the education and experience? Only thing left in the US is what china needs-wants...
My mom worked for RCA West Coast Missile and Surface Radar Division in Van Nuys CA in 1959/60. They did a lot of work for the Navy and Air Force back then...
One of the things that made Atlas a good launch vehicle was having all five engines (outboard, inboard, and vernier) light up at once so you could confirm everything was running before committing to launch. The "breakthrough" in warhead design was the Castle Bravo test in the Marshalls when it was discovered that the Teller-Ulam lithium deuteride design exploded with two and a half times the expected yield, causing a lot of unexpected damage and allowing the warheads to get to weaponable size. I read that the early launch failures were due to the turbopump bearings failing under the acceleration loads at launch.
The Teller-Ulam design had nothing to do with lithium deuteride. Ulam had the insight that the hydrogen source could be compressed using a multi-stage approach starting with a fission bomb to provide the compression and heat needed for fusion. Teller had dismissed the idea of compression until Ulam described the multi-stage approach and the effects it would have in heating the hydrogen source to fusion levels. Teller then had the insight that radiation pressure could produce the needed compression and provided the bomb design using radiation pressure compression to trigger fusion. This has nothing to do with using lithium deuteride as the source of deuterium. Ulam provided the compression / multi-stage fission bomb approach and Teller provided the radiation pressure for compression and bomb design.
@@Pimp-Master Yes, for a 15 megaton yield. But Atlas only needed 4 megatons. This meant that warheads could be made lighter to still work at high yields. Prior to that, the original designs for Atlas were huge rockets that would have been necessary to carry the much heavier warheads. Castle Bravo discovered the lithium 7 isotope would fragment into tritium and helium during the reaction which would add to the overall tritium fuel. This had not been known prior to the test.
@spaceranger3728 I find it hard to believe that the breaking down of Lithium 7 into its fractals was an unknown process,this would have been discovered at an early stage of testing and development..
Thomas The Tank Engine could be a very different tank! - Thomas wasn't feeling very well today, he's had radiation sickness from the 0.3 kt nuclear round he's carrrying, it's a bit leaky. Can you spell radiation kids?
Oh yes, children's programming is so much more wholesome today. Just yesterday, heard Disney soon to produce transgender safe movies and will be pushing that philosophy in their parks😂🤣😵💫🤯
@@JDAbelRNyou know just cause you hear something doesn't make it true right? Also, kids programming kicks ass today, I wish I had a show like bluey growing up.
@@ColHogan-zg2pc I agree. In the 1960s, Captain Kangaroo was about as good as kids programming got, and that was at best feel-good fluff whose goal was to help sell Kelloggs of Battle Creek cereal. I can remember when The Flintstones was a prime time evening show with cartoon ads showing Fred and Barney selling Winston cigarettes. We’ve come a long way.
My late father worked on missiles (and later guided missiles) in South Africa. He was also worked on nuclear missiles that were built at the back of a shop which had a front of a motorcycle repair business. He would have enjoyed this documentary. Thank you for this upload. It is most interesting.
And it's genius is prooving itself today. The next generation of rockets that will travel to other planets, are also made out of stainless steel, just like Atlas.
As someone born in late 90s and now heading to aerospace industry, I look at the Cold War and see something that looks like an age of mystique and wonder, and at the same time simple and almost naive. It must have been exciting times back then.
@@MVHiltunen I lived in Omaha Nebraska and people were genuinely concerned about a nuclear attack. My parents did not want to purchase a house in the suburbs because they felt it would be closer to SAC Offutt Airbase and more dangerous. Offutt had an area where they parked war planes out of service and you could go there anytime it was designated an air museum. I also attended the airshows. They had an SR71 fly over at low altitude it was extremely loud and at that time in the 1960s was extremely new. During the Cuban Missile Crisis everyone went to church. It was like something from a sci-fi movie, people were very serious and you could sense that at any minute the church windows might be blown out. My first good job in college in 1975 was working for DOD Civil Preparation Agency evaluation fallout shelters in North Dakota. The shelters were set up without considering ventilation. We were the first national teams to consider ventilation and found that more than 90% of people would have died due to suffocation. Funny in the early 1960s my third grade teacher showed us a movie of the construction of NORAD. It turned out the film she received was not declassified and we kids all got a top secret briefing. In 1977 having graduated with a BS in Architecture I landed a job with the ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS updating construction drawings for NORAD. I have been a dumb shit all my life and I scolded the Corps of Engineers represented over stuff that was presented in that top secret movie. I was a really good looking kid, overconfident and brilliant. So repeatedly I gained access to secure facilities and classified programs. For ten years from 1983 to 1993 I believe I was part of a U.S. Gov. Alien Exchange Program. Possibly I was taken to an ice planet or ice moon.
@@MVHiltunen - You said it! I was a kid in grade school my hero was Wherner von Braun & I would draw, rockets in space, in art class & be scolded by the teacher & laughed @ by the other kids for wasting time on impossible things. - Then, suddenly *Sputnik-1* came to my rescue & stund the whole world. Followed rapidly by bigger & heavier 2 & 3. Scarring everyone with possible atom bomb attacks. - After that I was now the curious & frightened ones in school only available source of space information.
Its always bitching and moaning about how long it takes to develop something. Never about how much a fuckup would cost. Almost every single "advancement" in Computer Science in the past 20 years has been on the question "how do we work less on this!!!"
That's a little unfair, don't you think? After all, the Atlas program actually produced a functional weapon! 😂 Still, could be worse. As far as I've heard, the Fords don't have the LCS's amazing self-unsealing hull...
Between the awesome acting chops of the lady at 2:45 and the fact they made sure everyone was smoking in those natural clips of everyday conversation, I’d say this is a pretty good representation of the 1950’s 👍
My dad worked for GD Convair from 1955 to 1963, when he transferred to GD Pomona Division. During late 1961 & 1962 we were in Oklahoma based out of Altus AFB where he worked at various sites qualifying the Atlas missile installations prior to delivery to the USAF. Great memories of some of the trial runs they would do allowing the public to see the silo doors open, the rising of the missile fully fueled, and then lowering it back down. Thank the Lord we never had to fire those in anger or retaliation.
Interestingly, three main rockets involved in the space program started life as ICBMs. The Redstone short-range ICBM started the Mercury Program with Alan Shepard's sub-orbital flight before handing off to the Atlas ICBM with the first orbital flight of John Glenn. Next was the Titan 2 ICBM with John Young and Gus Grissom in Gemini 3.
Redstone was designated IRBM or intermediate range ballistic missle. It was Verner Von Braun’s baby which his company invented to compete with the Navy’s Vanguard missile. Atlas was Americas first ICBM
@@robme9845Thanks for updating my knowledge of the Redstone. I was unaware of the classification of the Redstone as Intermediate Range, it makes sense, though, because the Redstone didn't have the power to send Mercury into orbit as Atlas did.
@@patrickmusson4571 Alas I’d been following practically every second of America’s space program since my first grade school teacher took our class into the school auditorium to watch Alan Shepard’s launch into “outer space”.
Which just goes to show that so-called 'peaceful' exploration of space by states such as the USA and the USSR during the Cold War was probably never truly separate from the development of rockets and missile technology for use in war - and as a deterrent; witness the development of MRV and MIRV technology - which was used for the Minuteman missile programme by the USA; and also for its SLBMs like Polaris, Poseidon and Trident.
I find it amazing that this was designed before modern computers. The engineering, intelligence and skill required is something i can't get my head around.
@DOC HOLIDAY No but if your default is to believe a conspiracy theory you must believe in a metric-shit ton of conspiracies. I understand why, it makes life more interesting. The moon landings are fake and the world is flat and is being carried on the shell of a cosmic turtle. The world is being controlled by a small group of reptilans and they feed of the souls of the dead which is why they start wars. Live your best life brother.
Werner von Braun, commenting on the Saturn V:. "Every time we wheel one of these rockets out to the pad, all I can think of are the two million parts, each made by the lowest bidder, and I hope and pray that everyone has done their homework".
Yeah because he was thinking how many Jews could have died instead while making it. Yes, I love that we went to the moon and all the NASA shit but goddamn we had to save a bunch of fucking Nazis to do it? Then in fifty years people will just say his name as if he did something great for us without being the man whose factory killed more people manufacturing it's weapon than the weapon EVER did. Fuck me, Starpansy, (sp) you need to check your hero worship.
@@minirock000 if you toss von Braun in the same bucket as Speer (the guy who actually was in charge of all weapons production later during the war), then you did not do your homework. But if you are keen on toppling heroes, begin with those who committed genocide on Native Americans, then move forward in time.
@@Ganiscol I am keen on not worshipping gods or people. I don't think we should name military bases or ships after people either, because no matter how good we think they may be, they actually may not be.
I worked on these after they were deployed. They had problems, but worked a lot better than the missiles they replaced. I was quite impressed with them.
@@HC-cb4yp RE: "Did they replace the Nike missile or were they replaced by the Nike missile?" Neither one. The Nike missile was designed to shoot down Soviet bombers; it was not an ICBM.
Also, there are three abandoned Atlas sights near to me in Nebraska. One is in Mead, which is now the training sight for National Guard troops, one near Arlington, Nebraska, used for farm storage now. The third one escapes me. They had three horizontal launchers each, which raised the missile into the vertical launch position, controlled by a blockhouse.
@1284 seconds give or take, this was sampled by Splashdown and is used at the beginning of the song Games you Play on their unreleased LP Blueshift (1999). It took me a while to remember where I'd heard it before.
Thanks for posting. Very educational and worth watching. I've been down in some of the old silos here in NE and they are very interesting to explore. They were only operational for about 3-5 years before they shut them down. I spoke to an old farmer once who witnessed a missile sticking out of the silo for repairs. He stated it was quite a sight to see.
@@georgeplagianos6487it'd be like Cuba getting the checks for the land on Guantanamo Bay which they refused to cash, except one time where they accidentally did and it caused a lot of confusion in both of the governments.
Agile Development in 1957! Nice dodge: "it’s a very dynamic development period...therefore it is extremely difficult to provide you with a completely up to date report of progress." Probably true and probably a good thing that productive efforts outpace paper trails but it sounds like flummery.
@@johnt.4947 this film was propaganda meant to make people approve of increased military spending. This was when the military industrial complex which Eisenhower warned us about started to take over.
Periscope? I guess they figure if you want it without the timecode you can buy a copy from them, which seems fair enough to me. Digital transfers from film that old are harder than they seem.
Interestingly - this is a great insight into the so called 'Missile Gap' Propaganda being produced at the time. The reality was there was no missile gap. We were ahead.
We built a rocket. It fell into the swamp. We built a second rocket. That rocket fell over, burnt up then fell in the swamp. We built a third rocket, and that rocket son finally made it.
21:10 I believe that was the voice of Thomas J O'Malley, the gentleman that pressed the ENGINE START button on John Glenn's Mercury Atlas, sending him on his ride.
Dunno anything about rocket design but, I would think trying to get the rockets to vector 'just right' to control the direction (keep it upright for a start) especially without modern processors back then would have been damn hard. And doing it all within a horridly tight weight budget! Hats off.
Robert Goddard's liquid fuel rocket designs in 1913 used gyroscopic control, steering by means of vanes in the jet stream of the rocket motor, gimbal-steering, and power-driven fuel pumps.
Will never forget my time at Vandenberg AFB back in the 60s as a brand new 2Lt participating in the launches for Atlas, Titan II, Thor, Minuteman II&III. Great video on the development of the Atlas! Thanks.
The conclusion was interesting, as the Atlas was used for the Mercury orbital flights, and the Titan ICBM was used for the Gemini flights. The Saturn was initiated as a heavy-lift/super heavy-lift military rocket, not necessarily for ICBMs, but to put satellites into orbit. The Saturn 1B and Saturn V went on to NASA...
Schriever did a bang-up job developing the United States' inter-continental ballistic missiles for production and operation in such short order. Good old American efficiency and practical ingenuity came to the fore and shone through in the U.S. I.C.B.M. development, production, and operation program. This was back in the days when U.S. industry and technology were truly great and powerful.
I imagine all of this work was undertaken without electronic calculators and with laborious hand mathematical calculations. Does anyone today know how to use sine and cosine tables, or convert Cartesian to Polar coordinates or vice versa, know the function of logarithms, log tables and their uses? On top of this the electric logic circuits were often hand wired vacuum tubes and the test equipment was a simple Simpson multimeter. I tip my hat to these geniuses. We need them today not so much for world ending weapons but for world ending medical, environmental, and social problems.
16:59 The rocket exhaust spews out at supersonic speed, and multiple supersonic-gas-flow-induced shockwaves constantly ripple through the exhaust plume. Indeed with rockets today the rocket needs to be protected from these shockwaves while it is still on or near the launchpad, which is why nowadays the launchpad is flooded with water, to suppress the shockwaves, immediately before the rocket engines are ignited, and until the rocket is far enough away from the launchpad.
When I was little, I watched a feature film about the airbase where the bombers took off and there were Atlas missiles. Anyone remember the title of this movie? He is very old. I don't remember what actors played there.
"Management concept by concurrency" looks similar, or why the Apollo program was able to complete Kennedy's goal of a crewed lunar landing before the end of the decade. 14:12
Used to see them transporting the MM3 missiles up in minot like that. One year the was so strong, it knocked the trailer and truck over and the missile rolled into a ditch
Man, it's really off topic but I feel like modern society has totally forgotten the attention to detail and quality in products. If, for instance, a common household personal computer game had this much ornate and complex testing...I feel like the games industry would either collapse in on itself or that we would only be assured, quality.
Consumerism makes people value buying more cheaper products than more expensive higher quality products. People are getting new cars like phones these days.
At 4:13 . In 1946 after hostilities have ceased. Wow, I never thought that the war took so long and it was...hostilities. Just by hearing this sort of thing, I am thinking twilight zone.
"The ballistic missile program puts us on the threshold of space travel. The same propulsive unit now powering Atlas could boost a lighter body like a satellite on an orbit path around distant planets like Mars or Venus. Yes, man is dreaming... Dreaming of horizons beyond the dimensions of earth. What started as weapons of conflict can develop into vehicles to satisfy man's insatiable craving for an understand of the universe for which he lives"
What we are seeing now with drone and AI tech, feels like what the people in the 1940s saw with rockets and missiles. Something initially thought of as neat and primitive slowly maturing into something to fear and take very seriously.
My dad was a janitor at the Martin plant in Denver. He used to tell me great stories about his role is the design, testing, and manufacture of critical parts of this missile. I followed his great footsteps and today, proudly work in the custodial department in Hawthorne for SpaceX doing the same critical part in the space program that my father did. I hope my son (or daughter) caries on our family's legacy in the space program.
Very funny!
He has seen some shit.
@Eric Fermín, you have found yourself, happiness and true genuine pride. Your father taught you right and you are doing the same for your children.
It's a dirty job but somebody has to do it.
lol
5:55 “our B-52s, and on to the B-58.”
…and here we still have the B-52 in service in 2022.
It's a shame the B-58 didn't have a longer run in active service; it was _ridiculously_ fast -- not only for it's time, but even _by today's_ standards! Unfortunately, ICBMs kinda made the whole concept pointless and obsolescent.
@@DS-hy6ld Yep. Kinda crazy that so much in aviation technology peaked back then (the A12 and SR-71 Blackbird come to mind). Even crazier to think we are further removed from the peak today than that peak was from the Wright Brothers. I expect a boom in hypersonic development if it hasn’t been happening behind the scenes already but that will likely remain entirely unmanned.
You just can't better a classic hairstyle.
The 52's are an expanded B-47, from 6 to 8 engines...medium bomber load with 3 crew total to a heavy bomb load with 6 crew. BUT, what they accomplished with the B-47 was a tremendous leap of skill and technology. Also the 47 is a gorgeous thing to behold, while the 52 looks like a train car with wings attached.
B 52s have been constantly upgraded since first being developed and brought into service by Boeing in . . 1952 would you believe, with improvements to avionics, airframe structure, guidance and bomb and missile capability - it is a great and classic bomber design to still be in service after 70 years.
Personally, I prefer the zany American rock band of the same name. Rock lobster, anyone ?
Man I love this type of historical documentary.
historical?? this is current isnt it?
@@blameusa7082 1957. Read the description for Christsake 🤦🏽♂️
Right? The music, The voices, The images.. All so cool.
Seems like less of a documentary and more of an advert for the ICBM program. To be viewed by decision makers i guess.
@@humungus3wouldn’t this have been all classified information?
Smoking on a pipe while guiding the massive rocket into place… the good ol days
Yeah...now you have to worry about pronouns...
and now you can't smoke the pipe but you get to sit in a bunker full of cancer causing chemicals (hi, leukemia called!). above ground FTW. The bearded ladies are literary on the bottom of the modern 'problems list', as they actually effect you.
I think he was referring to modern Osha regulations @buckhorncortez
@@buckhorncortez the only one bringing dem pronouns up is you
@@_marlenethe only one crying about it is you
I was enployed at Convair Division of General Dynamics in their Launch Vehicle Programs. We pretty much knew that the old "A-4" (political name "V-2) was an alcohol/LOX machine that was limited by design and low engine thrust. Convair began its MX-774 as a conceptual proof-of-concept project but was cancelled in the late 1940's. When re-energized as the Atlas; the newer machine would have had four booster engines plus the center sustainer. Subsequent nuclear weapon designs in the early 1950's permitted a much smaller warhead design which resulted in an accordant reduction in design capability with only two booster engines combined with the single sustainer and two small verneer engines for added stability and fine adjustment for targeting. We would visit the ultra-modern new manufacturing facility on Kearny Mesa in San Diego in mid-1958; many of us amazed at the oversll scope of what was to be one of the largest procurements ever attempted by the Air Force. A sense of urgency was present among us all. At some point Gus (Virgil) Grissom was asked to speak to us all on the vehicle final assembly floor. The self-concious Grissom could only blurt out the words: "Do good work." Those three words from the new astronaut rang through the packed assembly like lightning ⚡ with the audience of workers erupting in chears as well as just plain screaming just hearing the voice of one of the men who would eventually fly on one of our vehicles. What eventually became the annual "Do Good Work" pledge was signed by all employees. Atlas would eventually become a sub-obital & orbital workhorse and by the '70's an Atlas/Centaur launch vehicle would boost our first spacecraft to Jupiter as part of the Pioneer Project for NASA.
Thanks for sharing your story 🙏
Crazy how you guys did so much so quickly- and now we've been using the same ICBM for 51 years!
I joined the Convair team in 1982. While I missed these glory days of this video, I got to work as an engineer at Kearny Mesa and Lindbergh Field on Space Shuttle, Tomahawk, Centaur and several other programs I cannot talk about. This was the best job of my career. These were some of he best people in the industry, and I got to brush shoulders with them. I was sorry I had to leave as General Dynamics (the Crown Family) closed the doors in Aerospace and sold it all to other companies. I ended up in Wichita designing airplanes for Learjet and Beechcraft (while still rewarding, it was boring by comparison). Convair was a great R&D company.
LOL- the part where they complain it takes a few years to develop an entirely new technology. They were SO fast back then!
And they complained they are slow!
And they did it with slide rules and people manually doing calculations on paper.
Unfortunately we don’t have the USSR to motivate the US to develop technology.
@@randbarrett8706 I think the Manhattan project is the most amazing achievement, in just 3 years. That was motivation, total fear that the Nazi's would beat them.
@@ssaraccoii And if you didn’t know how to use a slide rule by the time you were 4th grade you were left behind…
Love the cigarettes. The mini-ICBM for your lungs.
Too right, Operation Mongoose
Back when men were men and sheep were afraid.
Well, that trailer did have an ash tray.
These days its vapes. Insanely more harmful
@@ronaldrobertson2332 what the hell were they doing to the sheep
The Congressional Record shows that on the day of that first successful flight, Dec 17, 1957 I believe, Gen. Schriever was testifying before Senator Johnson's subcommittee, and was asked if we had had a successful test of the Atlas. Just then an aide brought word of the successful test, and Schriever was able to answer with a resounding "yes."
That timing is far too dramatically convenient to be spontaneous, but who doesn't love a good political drama? Especially when it helps keep the appropriations coming!
@@OhShitSeriously You might be right, but that's what the records and documents showed. Also, at this time in history, Sputnik had just launched in October, and the Congress was trying to shove MORE money into the ICBM program! Ironic, no?
My grandfather (passed in ‘02)was with Convair and was a test engineer, he worked on heat shielding testing mainly, and did many tests for the Atlas and subsequent programs.
Heat shielding Technology is one of the unsung heroes of all of that stuff. Got2b paper thin, Can't weigh nothing just got to withstand thousands and thousands of degrees and lots of other extreme forces.
I was with General Dynamics-Fort Worth, until they laid off thousands back in '88...
Worked in "the" heat-treat/test hanger.
Never do found a similar job again.
Got a lot of training and experience but became worthless.
Perhaps Russia needs the education and experience?
Only thing left in the US is what china needs-wants...
I love watching old press releases like this and imagining I’m living in that era and hearing about all of this for the first time
My mom worked for RCA West Coast Missile and Surface Radar Division in Van Nuys CA in 1959/60. They did a lot of work for the Navy and Air Force back then...
Thanks for posting this. It shows how much today we take any technology for granted.
One of the things that made Atlas a good launch vehicle was having all five engines (outboard, inboard, and vernier) light up at once so you could confirm everything was running before committing to launch. The "breakthrough" in warhead design was the Castle Bravo test in the Marshalls when it was discovered that the Teller-Ulam lithium deuteride design exploded with two and a half times the expected yield, causing a lot of unexpected damage and allowing the warheads to get to weaponable size. I read that the early launch failures were due to the turbopump bearings failing under the acceleration loads at launch.
The Teller-Ulam design had nothing to do with lithium deuteride. Ulam had the insight that the hydrogen source could be compressed using a multi-stage approach starting with a fission bomb to provide the compression and heat needed for fusion. Teller had dismissed the idea of compression until Ulam described the multi-stage approach and the effects it would have in heating the hydrogen source to fusion levels. Teller then had the insight that radiation pressure could produce the needed compression and provided the bomb design using radiation pressure compression to trigger fusion. This has nothing to do with using lithium deuteride as the source of deuterium. Ulam provided the compression / multi-stage fission bomb approach and Teller provided the radiation pressure for compression and bomb design.
@@buckhorncortezIf there was a picture in the dictionary for “well aKsHeWalLy” it would be you!!
Castle Bravo was something like ten tons in weight, so that wasn't the breakthrough since no rocket could handle that kind of weight in those days.
@@Pimp-Master Yes, for a 15 megaton yield. But Atlas only needed 4 megatons. This meant that warheads could be made lighter to still work at high yields. Prior to that, the original designs for Atlas were huge rockets that would have been necessary to carry the much heavier warheads. Castle Bravo discovered the lithium 7 isotope would fragment into tritium and helium during the reaction which would add to the overall tritium fuel. This had not been known prior to the test.
@spaceranger3728 I find it hard to believe that the breaking down of Lithium 7 into its fractals was an unknown process,this would have been discovered at an early stage of testing and development..
"Atlas the ICBM" would've been a very disturbing animated children's show.
Thomas The Tank Engine could be a very different tank! - Thomas wasn't feeling very well today, he's had radiation sickness from the 0.3 kt nuclear round he's carrrying, it's a bit leaky. Can you spell radiation kids?
Oh yes, children's programming is so much more wholesome today. Just yesterday, heard Disney soon to produce transgender safe movies and will be pushing that philosophy in their parks😂🤣😵💫🤯
Perhaps more Drag Queen Story hour of the 21st Century is more wholesome?
@@JDAbelRNyou know just cause you hear something doesn't make it true right? Also, kids programming kicks ass today, I wish I had a show like bluey growing up.
@@ColHogan-zg2pc I agree. In the 1960s, Captain Kangaroo was about as good as kids programming got, and that was at best feel-good fluff whose goal was to help sell Kelloggs of Battle Creek cereal. I can remember when The Flintstones was a prime time evening show with cartoon ads showing Fred and Barney selling Winston cigarettes. We’ve come a long way.
My late father worked on missiles (and later guided missiles) in South Africa. He was also worked on nuclear missiles that were built at the back of a shop which had a front of a motorcycle repair business. He would have enjoyed this documentary. Thank you for this upload. It is most interesting.
Cool story
@@dustybottoms2780 Thank you. 😊
every one has a relative who did important things.. my dad just peeled potatoes in arkansas but they were real tasty ones..
@@bradleysmall2230 I am sure potatoes taste much better than missiles. 😋
@@Daud76 my girlfriend says my missle tastes good and prefers it over a quarter pounder and fries.. i prefer her fish sandwich..
I grew up during the 1950s and I love the Atlas Rocket. Extremely unique design.
And it's genius is prooving itself today. The next generation of rockets that will travel to other planets, are also made out of stainless steel, just like Atlas.
As someone born in late 90s and now heading to aerospace industry, I look at the Cold War and see something that looks like an age of mystique and wonder, and at the same time simple and almost naive. It must have been exciting times back then.
@@MVHiltunen I lived in Omaha Nebraska and people were genuinely concerned about a nuclear attack. My parents did not want to purchase a house in the suburbs because they felt it would be closer to SAC Offutt Airbase and more dangerous. Offutt had an area where they parked war planes out of service and you could go there anytime it was designated an air museum. I also attended the airshows. They had an SR71 fly over at low altitude it was extremely loud and at that time in the 1960s was extremely new. During the Cuban Missile Crisis everyone went to church. It was like something from a sci-fi movie, people were very serious and you could sense that at any minute the church windows might be blown out. My first good job in college in 1975 was working for DOD Civil Preparation Agency evaluation fallout shelters in North Dakota. The shelters were set up without considering ventilation. We were the first national teams to consider ventilation and found that more than 90% of people would have died due to suffocation. Funny in the early 1960s my third grade teacher showed us a movie of the construction of NORAD. It turned out the film she received was not declassified and we kids all got a top secret briefing. In 1977 having graduated with a BS in Architecture I landed a job with the ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS updating construction drawings for NORAD. I have been a dumb shit all my life and I scolded the Corps of Engineers represented over stuff that was presented in that top secret movie. I was a really good looking kid, overconfident and brilliant. So repeatedly I gained access to secure facilities and classified programs. For ten years from 1983 to 1993 I believe I was part of a U.S. Gov. Alien Exchange Program. Possibly I was taken to an ice planet or ice moon.
@@MVHiltunen - You said it! I was a kid in grade school my hero was Wherner von Braun & I would draw, rockets in space, in art class & be scolded by the teacher & laughed @ by the other kids for wasting time on impossible things.
- Then, suddenly *Sputnik-1* came to my rescue & stund the whole world. Followed rapidly by bigger & heavier 2 & 3. Scarring everyone with possible atom bomb attacks.
- After that I was now the curious & frightened ones in school only available source of space information.
@@josephpiskac2781 - I hope you know what I know about the *47 Roswell Incident* that panicked the millitary eggheads.
Crazy that the B52 was around in the 50's and is still going strong today
I really enjoyed their hit song "Love Shack"!
Yep… and the follow-up they were touting is long gone, made obsolete by ICBMs. Weird how technological development works!
2:25 "Takes too long for development" Laughs in F-35 & Ford class aircraft carrier.
Is the Fords EMF launch fixed yet?
@@MitzvosGolem1 Nope. They have said it was fixed several times but always has more problems. Dont get me started on the Zumwalt class.
@@terrydavis8451 We have a dangerous situation now.. Not good.
Economic war will occur ... Not weapons but dollars will collapse..
Its always bitching and moaning about how long it takes to develop something. Never about how much a fuckup would cost.
Almost every single "advancement" in Computer Science in the past 20 years has been on the question "how do we work less on this!!!"
That's a little unfair, don't you think? After all, the Atlas program actually produced a functional weapon! 😂 Still, could be worse. As far as I've heard, the Fords don't have the LCS's amazing self-unsealing hull...
Between the awesome acting chops of the lady at 2:45 and the fact they made sure everyone was smoking in those natural clips of everyday conversation, I’d say this is a pretty good representation of the 1950’s 👍
Thanks, for keeping the parts outside of the 4:3 frame black! 👍👍
That film quality is still pretty crisp!
My dad worked for GD Convair from 1955 to 1963, when he transferred to GD Pomona Division. During late 1961 & 1962 we were in Oklahoma based out of Altus AFB where he worked at various sites qualifying the Atlas missile installations prior to delivery to the USAF. Great memories of some of the trial runs they would do allowing the public to see the silo doors open, the rising of the missile fully fueled, and then lowering it back down. Thank the Lord we never had to fire those in anger or retaliation.
Interestingly, three main rockets involved in the space program started life as ICBMs. The Redstone short-range ICBM started the Mercury Program with Alan Shepard's sub-orbital flight before handing off to the Atlas ICBM with the first orbital flight of John Glenn. Next was the Titan 2 ICBM with John Young and Gus Grissom in Gemini 3.
Redstone was designated IRBM or intermediate range ballistic missle. It was Verner Von Braun’s baby which his company invented to compete with the Navy’s Vanguard missile. Atlas was Americas first ICBM
@@robme9845Thanks for updating my knowledge of the Redstone. I was unaware of the classification of the Redstone as Intermediate Range, it makes sense, though, because the Redstone didn't have the power to send Mercury into orbit as Atlas did.
@@patrickmusson4571 Alas I’d been following practically every second of America’s space program since my first grade school teacher took our class into the school auditorium to watch Alan Shepard’s launch into “outer space”.
Which just goes to show that so-called 'peaceful' exploration of space by states such as the USA and the USSR during the Cold War was probably never truly separate from the development of rockets and missile technology for use in war - and as a deterrent; witness the development of MRV and MIRV technology - which was used for the Minuteman missile programme by the USA; and also for its SLBMs like Polaris, Poseidon and Trident.
Excellent documentary! Thank you for sharing this!
This has a glorious Ed Wood feel to it!
That's because Ed used lots of stock footage probably.
Holy mackarel!
I find it amazing that this was designed before modern computers. The engineering, intelligence and skill required is something i can't get my head around.
They sent people to the Moon with far less computational power than a cheap modern scientific calculator.
@@obe22099 well they had human computational power which is stronger than a modern calculator!
Now think what the Germans accomplished with the V2, and they didn't even have digital computers.
Better generations and stock
@DOC HOLIDAY No but if your default is to believe a conspiracy theory you must believe in a metric-shit ton of conspiracies. I understand why, it makes life more interesting.
The moon landings are fake and the world is flat and is being carried on the shell of a cosmic turtle.
The world is being controlled by a small group of reptilans and they feed of the souls of the dead which is why they start wars.
Live your best life brother.
So cool to see these old clips.. Informative
A very honest and sobering video.
Werner von Braun, commenting on the Saturn V:. "Every time we wheel one of these rockets out to the pad, all I can think of are the two million parts, each made by the lowest bidder, and I hope and pray that everyone has done their homework".
Yeah because he was thinking how many Jews could have died instead while making it. Yes, I love that we went to the moon and all the NASA shit but goddamn we had to save a bunch of fucking Nazis to do it? Then in fifty years people will just say his name as if he did something great for us without being the man whose factory killed more people manufacturing it's weapon than the weapon EVER did. Fuck me, Starpansy, (sp) you need to check your hero worship.
Well if you guys didn't get them, the other side would. Time to reflect later and all that. Hard times that we don't seem to have learned from.
@@minirock000 if you toss von Braun in the same bucket as Speer (the guy who actually was in charge of all weapons production later during the war), then you did not do your homework. But if you are keen on toppling heroes, begin with those who committed genocide on Native Americans, then move forward in time.
@@Ganiscol I am keen on not worshipping gods or people. I don't think we should name military bases or ships after people either, because no matter how good we think they may be, they actually may not be.
I worked on these after they were deployed. They had problems, but worked a lot better than the missiles they replaced. I was quite impressed with them.
Did they replace the Nike missile or were they replaced by the Nike missile?
@@HC-cb4yp
RE: "Did they replace the Nike missile or were they replaced by the Nike missile?"
Neither one. The Nike missile was designed to shoot down Soviet bombers; it was not an ICBM.
@@HC-cb4yp The Minuteman missile was what replaced Atlas.
The guy in charge 'this project is close to MY HEART' say what? This also sounds like a defenses of the perception we were behind given Sputnik.
Also, there are three abandoned Atlas sights near to me in Nebraska. One is in Mead, which is now the training sight for National Guard troops, one near Arlington, Nebraska, used for farm storage now. The third one escapes me. They had three horizontal launchers each, which raised the missile into the vertical launch position, controlled by a blockhouse.
@1284 seconds give or take, this was sampled by Splashdown and is used at the beginning of the song Games you Play on their unreleased LP Blueshift (1999). It took me a while to remember where I'd heard it before.
Military-quality acting
Field-expedient acting. Grab a couple accountants, a secretary, and the first half dozen guys you see with coffee cups on the shop floor...
Thanks for posting. Very educational and worth watching. I've been down in some of the old silos here in NE and they are very interesting to explore. They were only operational for about 3-5 years before they shut them down. I spoke to an old farmer once who witnessed a missile sticking out of the silo for repairs. He stated it was quite a sight to see.
2:54 How nice of Nikita Khrushchev to volunteer to act in a US military film about ICBMs. He even showed up again at 6:52 as himself.
He was a shameless ham...you should see what he can do with a shoe...
I wonder did he get royalties for the Cameo appearances?
@@georgeplagianos6487it'd be like Cuba getting the checks for the land on Guantanamo Bay which they refused to cash, except one time where they accidentally did and it caused a lot of confusion in both of the governments.
Agile Development in 1957!
Nice dodge: "it’s a very dynamic development period...therefore it is extremely difficult to provide you with a completely up to date report of progress." Probably true and probably a good thing that productive efforts outpace paper trails but it sounds like flummery.
I think it was more about OPSEC. This film was made for public release.
@@johnt.4947 this film was propaganda meant to make people approve of increased military spending. This was when the military industrial complex which Eisenhower warned us about started to take over.
Thanks for not putting a HUGE watermark like others do!
Periscope? I guess they figure if you want it without the timecode you can buy a copy from them, which seems fair enough to me. Digital transfers from film that old are harder than they seem.
it's crazy to think they just starting to figure out how to build rockets and 12 years later, they put boots on the moon.
This video sweet talked me into supporting more nukes and more delivery methods!
Interestingly - this is a great insight into the so called 'Missile Gap' Propaganda being produced at the time. The reality was there was no missile gap. We were ahead.
There was a missile and a bomber gap...in favour of the US.
Before Atlas went operational, the US had zero ICBMs, so there was a gap at first.
It was the mineshaft gap we were all really worried about....
@@ShmuelWeintraub Exactly. That's the one to worry about...
@@RCAvhstape R-7 wasn't armed before Atlas appeared
We built a rocket. It fell into the swamp. We built a second rocket. That rocket fell over, burnt up then fell in the swamp. We built a third rocket, and that rocket son finally made it.
But father... I just want to sing!
Ahhh yes.... Swamp Rocket... Been there many times!
Lesson to learn: just start with the 3rd rocket.
I'm more blown away by the pronunciation of Los Angeles! 😮.
Are we saying it wrong now?? 😳
Loess angle ease.
I'd love to go back to this time and watch all of this taking place❤
21:10 I believe that was the voice of Thomas J O'Malley, the gentleman that pressed the ENGINE START button on John Glenn's Mercury Atlas, sending him on his ride.
Fascinating insight into 1950's weapons programme.
Hell of a Baby.
Beautiful use of color! 💜💙💚
I think I read General Schriever's biography some years ago. Good read.
We didn't need to do much studying when we got the creators in paperclip.
The blockhouse footage at 20:37 would later be used in the beginning of the 1962 film "Journey To The Seventh Planet".
Favorite part, was the "casual" ICBM talk amongst the citizens. Treating it as if ANY of those questions were being asked. Lmao
No other tech after so long still retains an element of "fingers crossed". I imagine that feeling simply comes from relative usage.
“Mushrooming expansion.”
Well played.
My eyebrows went up on that line, too.
This was extremely interesting. Such a well preserved time capsule of the state of the U.S. during the infancy of it's Nuclear Triad.
14:07. I love how the operational phase comes before the production phase...
When men were men and we used the prototypes
Amazing that General Schriever, the Human Vegetable, got a base named after him. Well, maybe not: we named bases after the losers of the Civil War
I think this is a case where "operational phase" includes things like setting up ground equipment and the like, since launch pads had to be prepared.
There’s something to be said for “Ready! Fire! Aim!”
He said the production phase meant the "mass-production phase"
I was at Vandenberg AFB as Medic in 1965 when the Atlas was being ending but I saw a couple launched👍🇺🇸
Dunno anything about rocket design but, I would think trying to get the rockets to vector 'just right' to control the direction (keep it upright for a start) especially without modern processors back then would have been damn hard. And doing it all within a horridly tight weight budget! Hats off.
Robert Goddard's liquid fuel rocket designs in 1913 used gyroscopic control, steering by means of vanes in the jet stream of the rocket motor, gimbal-steering, and power-driven fuel pumps.
@@buckhorncortez Yes - Goddard was a true pioneer in rocketry.
Will never forget my time at Vandenberg AFB back in the 60s as a brand new 2Lt participating in the launches for Atlas, Titan II, Thor, Minuteman II&III. Great video on the development of the Atlas! Thanks.
Vandenberg is not Air Force Base any longer. Kinda sad, but understandable with the Space threat
"Los Angle-es" kills me every time.
It's the City of Angles. ICBMs use angles. Maybe that's what he meant.
He *did* say that, didn't he? I think that's the 1st time i actually hear someone pronounce it that way.
Kills a lot of people everday.
Thanks, for not stretching to 16:9 👍👍
Fantastic voice.
Heavy smoker voice. Very common back then, even preferred for voiceovers.
What a crazy time that was for the United States. They were truly standing at the precipice of the unknown.
They only just recently took the Altas sign down off the factory here in San Diego. It's crazy to think how long it had probably been there.
Long for Americans, perhaps. The Colosseum, the Parthenon, the Pyramids?
Normal houses lmao@@oisnowy5368
We STILL use the Atlas. Amazing, isn't it?
Lovely
Yikes, supply map shows Philly PA in upstate New York, at 15:20.
A good read on this topic: "A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon"
I've just ordered on your recommendation.
Fallout should have used the Atlas as basis for their ICBM's instead of the Minuteman.
Atlas's look goes perfect with Fallout's retrofuturism.
Very interesting.
The conclusion was interesting, as the Atlas was used for the Mercury orbital flights, and the Titan ICBM was used for the Gemini flights. The Saturn was initiated as a heavy-lift/super heavy-lift military rocket, not necessarily for ICBMs, but to put satellites into orbit. The Saturn 1B and Saturn V went on to NASA...
First few seconds were a bit Star Trekish?
For sure
Schriever did a bang-up job developing the United States' inter-continental ballistic missiles for production and operation in such short order. Good old American efficiency and practical ingenuity came to the fore and shone through in the U.S. I.C.B.M. development, production, and operation program. This was back in the days when U.S. industry and technology were truly great and powerful.
13:52 lmao it's early agile methodology, it's wierd to see the proto version in this period.
I feel so safe and cozy 😌 ✨
Wait until you read about MAD, MIRV, and the Patriots simulated trials results
Love old docs
interesting video.
I imagine all of this work was undertaken without electronic calculators and with laborious hand mathematical calculations. Does anyone today know how to use sine and cosine tables, or convert Cartesian to Polar coordinates or vice versa, know the function of logarithms, log tables and their uses? On top of this the electric logic circuits were often hand wired vacuum tubes and the test equipment was a simple Simpson multimeter. I tip my hat to these geniuses. We need them today not so much for world ending weapons but for world ending medical, environmental, and social problems.
Godspeed John Glenn
So many style
Oscar-level performances here! 😅
16:59 The rocket exhaust spews out at supersonic speed, and multiple supersonic-gas-flow-induced shockwaves constantly ripple through the exhaust plume. Indeed with rockets today the rocket needs to be protected from these shockwaves while it is still on or near the launchpad, which is why nowadays the launchpad is flooded with water, to suppress the shockwaves, immediately before the rocket engines are ignited, and until the rocket is far enough away from the launchpad.
"...nowadays..."? The launch pads were water flooded during the entire Apollo Progam - that was 60 years ago. Hardly a new development.
When I was little, I watched a feature film about the airbase where the bombers took off and there were Atlas missiles. Anyone remember the title of this movie? He is very old. I don't remember what actors played there.
Strategic Air Command
@@LOLHAMMER45678 THX man i search this all live!!!
"Management concept by concurrency" looks similar, or why the Apollo program was able to complete Kennedy's goal of a crewed lunar landing before the end of the decade. 14:12
An Atlas missile was used for John Glenn's flight in the early 1960's.
All done with cigs and slide rules
Have a good day
Every one in this documentary have passed away, it's almost 70 years ago.
Used to see them transporting the MM3 missiles up in minot like that. One year the was so strong, it knocked the trailer and truck over and the missile rolled into a ditch
(sigh 😢) a glimpse at back when our country still strove for excellence.
So was there really a 'missile gap' like the one in Pat Frank's Alas Babylon?
"Concurrency" was the Agile of the 1950's military-industrial complex.
The idea of "concurrentency" explains whys we have ample videos of Atlas ICBMs blowing up.
10:46 wow if this isn't the inspiration for Kerbal Space Program's space and orbit music
Man, it's really off topic but I feel like modern society has totally forgotten the attention to detail and quality in products. If, for instance, a common household personal computer game had this much ornate and complex testing...I feel like the games industry would either collapse in on itself or that we would only be assured, quality.
How much would you be willing to pay for it? Two times? Five times?
Consumerism makes people value buying more cheaper products than more expensive higher quality products. People are getting new cars like phones these days.
@@ColHogan-zg2pc must be with monopoly money
WW4 will be with rocks and sticks..... Thanks for reminding us the beginnings of the end recipe. It was not if, but when, and it feels close.
@E Van he is on UK TV right now (Channel 4) on that comedy show where he played a teacher who became Ukrainian President
@E Van yes, let Russia keep killing civilians, old men and women, and raping and genocide. That's how Hitler, Stalin and Mao started.
At 4:13 . In 1946 after hostilities have ceased. Wow, I never thought that the war took so long and it was...hostilities. Just by hearing this sort of thing, I am thinking twilight zone.
"The ballistic missile program puts us on the threshold of space travel. The same propulsive unit now powering Atlas could boost a lighter body like a satellite on an orbit path around distant planets like Mars or Venus. Yes, man is dreaming... Dreaming of horizons beyond the dimensions of earth. What started as weapons of conflict can develop into vehicles to satisfy man's insatiable craving for an understand of the universe for which he lives"
"War is a Racket "- Smedley Butler. US Marine Corps
What we are seeing now with drone and AI tech, feels like what the people in the 1940s saw with rockets and missiles. Something initially thought of as neat and primitive slowly maturing into something to fear and take very seriously.
I though we were going to see a rocket with a smiley face