THE YEAR OF THE POLARIS

late in the spring of 1960 the George Washington left for Port Canaveral Florida to be wedded to the first Polaris missile the result of a two and a half billion dollar program opening a mother hatch on tube nine to receive missile as one of the 16 hatches opened to accept the long killer who's to shoehorn the missile down into the Washington we were suddenly reminded of how many technological revolutions were involved here as late as 1945 Fleet Admiral Leahy said that an atomic bomb could never be built in 1949 Vannevar Bush predicted that a long-range ballistic missile was completely unfeasible Robert Oppenheimer was skeptical about the hydrogen bomb and was convinced that if one could be built it would be too heavy and unwieldy to be used in war a whole covey of Admirals were opposed to the nuclear submarine and as recently as February 1960 dr4 Senate Champion Senator Stuart Symington challenged the wisdom of betting so heavily on Polaris rather than the b70 these breakthroughs were now combined in a single experiment small enough to be contained beneath one of those hatches in what is called sherwoodforest where 16 Polaris will eventually be stored we talked with Admiral Rayburn I know Reverend exactly where are we now well we're in the middle of the ship these are these are missile tubes and they have two rows here eight on this side eight on the other and I you might say the heart of the weapons system is here I don't know you'll have a very considerable course record in this whole operation not only the Polaris but the submarine as well how do you cut through the red tape how do you get things done this has been a most most wonderful experience for us that's been in gates in this and it's possibly because of the or the way we've been allowed to do well I'll be a very conservative kind of course delivered I took a deep breath and said let's let's really do this wound up right and the the way we have made progress is because we started out without having any preconceived or tradition or this is don't ask me any questions why we do it we just do the things that's why this know this entered into it actually we were given a complete free rein to to generate the type of organization to do this job and we're given complete authority and responsibility how much does one of these ships cost okay it's a very expensive item it's the most expensive item of our entire weapon system but fortunately it's the most it's the longest-lived now this first stage missile because it is so very versatile is expensive it's even recallable and I think hardly any other first stage of a missile can you can make that boast it's an intelligent first stage the cost to the submarine it runs about a hundred million dollars complete this is a this is expensive but it's useful life is fifteen to twenty years you can amortize the cost of this over that time but it isn't so costly then you can always put new missiles more exciting more higher performing whistles in these tubes and as far as the effect on the target was concerned is oh this was the latest thing is just off with simply right uh Admiral I'd like to get this matter of cost straight you say that the submarine itself costs about 100 million right yes sir and the cost of the missile every one slightly over a million slightly over a million each per copy yes sir I don't you expect that newer or more exotic fuels will give you more than a 1500 mile range oh yes we mean as I say having long expressed in this field only see that we can get in the very earth to a 2 or 15 heard Bob Russell the first one the course will be twelve hundred miles and we also see our way distinctly figure to go right up to a 2,500 mile that's a little bit right at least two so that it's sort of like a gun you have a gun you put a higher performing cartridge in it and you shoot a little further more accurate so on let's talk a moment about the missile system there are 16 of them here what if one failed what if one hangs in the rack in the old phrase now we have automatic checkout equipment which tells us that the missile was ready to go and tell us if the launching equipment is ready to go and after the missile has its information as to where it's going and where its brain is then it's all ready to go and if you've got the green lights on all you and your checkout boards you push a button and it's going to go oh if something happens if it is not quite ready to go in one aspect or another you merely bypass that woman and take the next one that's ready to go no you used a very interesting phrase there if the submarine knows where it is and the missile knows where it is let's assume you've been submerged for three weeks you haven't looked at the Stars but you indicated one that the submarine must know where it is and also the missile must know where it is how do they know where it is well that's a good question then there's one which is I'm sure well-meaning friends all over the country have been somewhat skeptical about are those who do this I must admit when we started out that this looked like a pretty sizeable job the heart of the navigational system is is a ship's inertial navigational device or a system that calls sins that's I am asked this has prepared many times in the print it's a device which I believe most people give credit to dr. stark Draper of the instrumentation laboratory at MIT now this is a nurse'll guidance system if you please of long duration it properly set from a known place what you do before you go to see it tells you who are you where you are it senses motions it has its own gyros and accelerometers and it senses motion that it tracks you if you please and so at any time reference to this you know where you are Moser once the submarine knows out of the missile know well this course is done by by means of some ingenious devices of transferring the dollars from the sends to the missile guidance system the brain of the missile there's a little boy you're here now when you take off we want go over there and here here again we have another inertial guidance systems were very like very much like the sins which since is the flight of a missile through the air it knows where the missile is going and and because we have preset into it where it should be going it compares the inserted correct path through the fortified missiles actually doing it and gives it the necessary commands get back on the correct path but when Admiral Rayburn said that no Polaris had in fact been fired from a submarine frequently in the past our missiles and rockets have failed to fly on their target date indeed some of them have been more than a year late but as far back as November of 1958 Admiral Rayburn said the George Washington would fire a Polaris while submerged by August of 1960 and in January of this year he went so far as to schedule the shoot for July 18th but there was another target date just 11 days before this could happen and that called for a final full-grain shot from the Ship Simulator on the observation island at sea the Polaris exited from the launch tube as planned ignited as it was supposed to and even appeared to begin its flight as programmed then it went sour all of this so near the critical shot date gave some people a turn but not Admiral Rayburn who said at the time we've been building automobiles for fifty seventy-five years and every now and then you've turn out one it's not so good we've been building missile school or conserving last time and we're doing advanced testing now and we expect to have some of our advanced models we come a cropper four out of six tests from the observation aisle had been successful and Raburn decided to keep his monday date at sea now is the faithful Monday July 18 1960 what was to have happened for the first time in 1963 is about to be attempted in the Gulf Stream 30 miles off Canaveral the George Washington with its blue and gold crews together with a variety of technical experts carried on this occasion a company nearly 300 almost three times its usual complement nearby the observation island loaded with more experts and massive amounts of monitoring and tracking devices sales a parallel course at 12:30 the Washington with Admiral Rayburn aboard but still under command of skipper Jim husband down its engine to a speed sufficient only to hold the ship against the current and assumes launch depth under combat conditions no part of the structure would be visible the antenna you see is a special device for radar tracking during tests only at 1:30 p.m. the final countdown begins nicknamed mobilize Lima confirm that you have no further need for command carrier over mobilize Lima mobilize Lima this is nicknamed nickname Leymah Roger out misfiring this button does not launch the missile it is the commander's authorization to fire when ready Gridley weapons launcher tube number nine is pressurized opening the muzzle hatch on tube nine weapons this is launcher tube number nine muzzle hatch locked open a tiny man at 50 solving all the lies Lamar right there at Green Smoke away the smoke signal has nothing to do with the Polaris a is here today only to help mark the experiment for surface observers immobilize them this is nickname nickname on the mark t-minus 30 and Counting [Music] t minus 25 seconds and counting can [Music] the umbilical is the final link in the electronic contact between the submarine system and the missile and as you heard something went wrong in the final seconds he counted down to one second then stopped Verdana goes hey or something three more times that afternoon Rayburn gave the order to try again and three times the countdown was aborted in the final minutes finally at 7:45 a tired and somewhat discouraged crew heard this now hear this the George Washington will not fire today the George Washington will not fire today the George Washington did not fire the George Washington and the observation Isle returned to port the reporters on the observation Isle were asked politely and not to report the failure pending another attempt to launch it was never reported on Wednesday July 20th the observation Isle and the George Washington put to sea again [Music] misae mom have learned to live with failure but a malfunction this time coming after the blow-up of the observation island launched the previous week and the discouragement of two days before would hurt badly [Music] [Applause] [Music] left full rudder [Music] watch for first separation which means the first motor the first container of solid fuel has burned itself out and an explosive boat will separate it from the second stage [Applause] [Applause] the next thing to watch for is the cutoff that means that the second stage has gotten the warhead out of the Earth's atmosphere has kicked the warhead which in war would be a hydrogen bomb into the proper trajectory and can now separate and fall away I would like to sincerely congratulate your client skipper captain Arvin and every member of this crew the most significant significant happening since the day that the airplane flew and certainly today that is off of a ship of a name you may not realize this now but and the world may not realize it deep in our hearts those first ignore the most about it that's certainly him [Music] [Applause] two hours later to make up for the Monday disappointment Rayburn fired a second Polaris there was another perfect shoot as it lifted itself toward its Caribbean target by way of the vacuum of space one is suddenly aware that in combat that button would be pushed sixteen times and sixteen hydrogen warheads could be fired in 15 minutes putting all of them in space before the first reaches its target as the George Washington turned back to Canaveral a sailor hoisted an old-fashioned broom on the periscope which by Navy tradition means a clean sweep later we talked with Admiral arleigh Burke about the larger meaning of this day's work Edmund is Polaris the ultimate weapon no there is there's no such thing as an absolute weapon how vulnerable to detection is this ship it's not very vulnerable the the reason for that is that this ship is for a the purpose of being on station to fire its missiles it's not searching for enemy ships or enemy submarines it is avoiding enemy ships in enemy submarines it will steam at low speed it will use various types of cover it it does not have to expose itself at all it's very invulnerable Edmund Burke you fired several of these missiles but most of them have been fired near Cape Canaveral where the Range Safety Officer could destruct them if they went off course but what if one should be fired later on from out in the ocean and suddenly take off in the direction of Chicago instead of say Moscow could it be disloyal no no he can't destruct it but it doesn't none of these missiles have ever gone in the wrong direction and I think that that danger is is very very remote so remote that is practically that it's negligible the Air Force has a fail-safe device which they contend will prevent any bomber taking off and dropping its bombs without complete authorization you don't have a fail-safe device do you well that's as far as the missile is concerned but we have the failsafe system if you'd like to call it that in the submarine itself we're not under any pressure to get all four missiles because if we don't get them off they will be destroyed in addition to that the first stage of this ICBM which is in this submarine is the submarine itself that's its part it's largely it's already covered most of the distance so we thought we wait until we are sure then tell the commander fire that he fires Admiral never in the history of armed force will a man have put to sea with so much power so far from his base so far from the source of command what about the possibility of mutiny madness or a mistake oh we've thought of those that we have a wild captain that some that something happens and we have ends over the executive officer checks the captain so that both of them would have to go crazy at the same time and that's never occurred what about faulty communication well it doesn't matter whether the we have good communications now we have very many different methods of communicating with the submarine both normal methods and unusual methods but even if there were no communications whatever that we had directly with the submarine still the submarine would be in a position to fire it would be a no danger it's a no hurry it doesn't have to get its missiles off in a hurry so it will it can wait it can get to the data from the world's radios all the world if anything happens we'll be talking about it over the radio there will be a lot of news and he know what's happening then and then he can come up and ask he can ask Washington he got to know her answer from Washington he asks all the other radio stations is the naval radio stations in the world some of them will be there Admiral it has been contended that these Polaris missiles are good city busters but not very useful against hardened bases they're quite accurate they're they're extremely accurate and they will destroy any target that we want destroyed what happens if NATO nations decide to adopt Polaris be a good thing it would be be perfectly all right now it depends of course upon whether they develop their own more heads or not as you know the AEC our laws require that we cannot release to anybody the warheads which we build so but we have procedures by which the warheads are under the custody of United States people and the same sort of a procedure could be used for these polaris submarines if some of the other nations do want to build them Admiral Burke I know you're reluctant to discuss politics but doesn't this Polaris submarine make us less liable to blackmail by our allies who in turn may be being blackmailed or threatened by the Russians know that the word blackmail perhaps is a little is a little too strong less dependent upon our allies certainly we are not dependent upon our allies solely for this we can use this with with our allies approval or we or if there if the situation should come this can be used it's not on their territory it's not fired from their territory it's fired from the high seas so they need not fear Russia the pressure on them for them to prevent us from using their soil then this can be used as a military instrument without reference to political considerations that is correct and that is a very valuable adjunct to this missile that's a better definition than my use of blackmail I don't know do we have any overseas bases that are secure or reliable for a prolonged period of time well you know there's probably nothing fixed in a fixed location any place in the world that is very secure or will be very secure in the next three or four years at least this is either by long-range missiles or short-range missiles depending upon where it is so there is no known fixed location any place in the world that cannot be destroyed hence bases are becoming more and more vulnerable because they're fixed and they're known 10 Polaris missiles have been launched from underwater four have been failures due to special technical and safety devices used in test firing you may never read or hear that the George Washington is operational she and the Patrick Henry will continue their seat tests and one day they will go out and just stay out on station submerged fully armed with 16 missiles each submarine carrying more destructive power than was dropped by all bombers flown by all the nations engaged in world war ii by december the robert e lee will be firing its first test Birds then the Theodore Roosevelt to be followed by the Abraham Lincoln the Ethan Allen and the Thomas Edison by the end of 1961 there should be six submarines on station there is money appropriated now for 19 the Navy says we need 45 for a global Polaris system Polaris is not the ultimate weapon for there is no such thing each weapon in due course produces a counter weapon what Polaris has done is to bias a certain amount of time time in which to try to solve the great problem of our age and that problem is to determine the conditions if any upon which the Communist world and the free world are willing to live together on this minor planet Polaris does not solve that problem Polaris was designed to deter aggression it is clear warning to any enemy but if he reckons to destroy our missile launching sites and our bomber bases and those of our allies by surprise attack and succeeds in doing it then there will remain off his coast those hidden Swift silent underwater launching pads ready and able to destroy him that's what the military man calls second strike capability Polaris reduces our reliance upon foreign bases it may tempt some to return to a fortress America attitude but it provides nothing in the way of national life insurance Polaris is the result of accelerated technology it may be impossible to apply that same technique to matters having to do with human will and Prejudice but Polaris gives the statesman an opportunity to continue trying the question is what shall we do with the time Polaris has bought us Polaris means power deterrent power destruction is its final ultimate desperate purpose if it is ever combat fired it will have failed its purpose and our civilization will have failed its promise good night and good luck [Music]