Author Topic: General Bernard Schriever  (Read 14845 times)

Offline RyanC

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #20 on: 02/19/2013 10:07 pm »
Just finished A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan.  Overall this is a pretty good treatment of our early ICBM efforts.

There are also some of the official declassified histories.

I downloaded the original PDFs from the National Security Archive LINK and HTMLed them for easier reading comprehension and CTRL-F of keywords.

USAF Ballistic Missiles [Programs] 1958-1959
HTML
PDF (3.4 MB PDF)

USAF Ballistic Missile Programs 1962-1964
HTML
PDF (7.5 MB PDF)

USAF Ballistic Missile Programs 1964-1966
HTML
PDF (5 MB PDF)

USAF Ballistic Missile Programs 1967-1968
HTML
PDF (7.4 MB PDF)

USAF Ballistic Missile Programs 1969-1970
HTML
PDF (5.4 MB PDF)

S.A.C. Missile Chronology 1939-1988
HTML
PDF (18.3 MB PDF)

A lot of good information in there; like this one from the 1967-68 history:

Quote
By the summer of 1966, the Air Force appeared to have solved an especially serious problem—the unreliability of the NS-17 guidance and control unit used in the LGM-30F missile. The solution adopted included modifying the design, careful handling of the device while in transit to the site, and cautious starting, especially in cold weather, to avoid a "thermal shock" believed to occur when coolant was added too rapidly to a unit being brought to operating temperature. But despite these actions, NS-17's continued to fail at an alarming rate. By April 1967, for instance, there were 107 fewer units on hand for the Minuteman force than plans called for; the deficit was due to the unexpectedly large number under repair.

Because of the importance of these units to the Minuteman II force, the Air Force asked for and OSD provided $13. 7 million for modifications to begin in the summer of 1967. This sum, however, turned out to be a little more than a third of the amount needed. Meanwhile, AFSC and BSD investigators studied the performance record of the NS-17 to determine the circumstances under which units were failing and scrutinized both the design and the method of manufacture to identify probable cause of failure.36

The TRW Systems Corporation, which participated in the NS-17 probe, concluded that poor quality control and sloppy workmanship were among the major causes of failure. Another factor, according to the BSD program manger, was that the manufacturer, Autonetics Division of North American Aviation, had been overly bold in attempting to advance the science of microminiaturized electronics. He suggested that a more conservative approach would have eliminated the need for many of the modifications now required by the NS-17. As a result of these assessments, Systems Command tried to persuade Autonetics to do a better job, mainly by reminding the firm's executives of the importance of the Minuteman II system to the nation's security.37

In the aftermath of the investigation came improved methods of production and numerous changes in the units themselves. Each group of modifications was identified by a color code, and SAC at one time found itself with yellow, blue, and red dot NS-17's in stock. By June 1967, however, the modifications had been standardized so that there were only two types of NS-17's : the old. and the new, with the latter having increased radiation shielding as well as other improvements. As a result of the corrective program, mean time between failure of guidance and control units increased from 1,400 hours in March 1967 to about 2,950 hours in July 1968. Some of the newer units, however, had operated in excess of 4,000 hours.

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