Author Topic: General Bernard Schriever  (Read 14846 times)

Offline CitabriaFlyer

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General Bernard Schriever
« on: 01/19/2013 02:33 pm »
During OTS (2006) we were required to give a PowerPoint (imagine that) on the leadership qualities of various USAF officers.  I picked General Schriever because his was one of the few names on the list with whom I was unfamiliar.  During his tenure as commander the Western Development Division both the Atlas and Titan ICBMs were developed.  His name comes up in various threads on rare occasion (the von Braun thread and the "Who Had the Greatest Impact on Spaceflight?" thread.)  It seems to me that the legacy of peace (at least freedom from nuclear exchange on American soil) afforded us by our ICBM programs is at least as important as the legacy of the lunar landing.  Consequently, I believe General Schriever deserves his own thread and I would be interested in hearing comments from the historians and the USAF space guys (like Jim) as to the degree that his legacy lives on in our current space operations.

Offline Rocket Science

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #1 on: 01/19/2013 02:47 pm »
I saw this a while back, enjoy! :)

"The laws of physics are unforgiving"
~Rob: Physics instructor, Aviator

Offline Jim

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #2 on: 01/19/2013 02:49 pm »
Based on number of rockets in the office, he had a greater impact.

Offline Jim

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #3 on: 01/19/2013 07:25 pm »
Kidding aside.

Shriever was responsible for Atlas, Titan, Thor, Minuteman, Agena, etc. in the 50's.  Later it was Titan III, MOL and Dynasoar. 

Offline Jim

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #4 on: 01/19/2013 07:27 pm »

Offline Rocket Science

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #5 on: 01/19/2013 08:05 pm »

Great charts Jim! Thanks for posting them... :)
"The laws of physics are unforgiving"
~Rob: Physics instructor, Aviator

Offline Art LeBrun

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #6 on: 01/19/2013 09:02 pm »
Circa 1962. The missile in the background later boosted a DMSP satellite into orbit in 1990.
« Last Edit: 01/19/2013 11:54 pm by Art LeBrun »
1958 launch vehicle highlights: Vanguard TV-4 and Atlas 12B

Offline edkyle99

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #7 on: 01/19/2013 09:34 pm »
Interesting that, like von Braun, Gen. Schriever had a German-American heritage.

Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station are separated by the Banana River (which is a lagoon, not a river).  I've long thought of the KSC side as von Braun's side, and the Cape side as Gen. Schriever's side, but neither name really applies to what is happening today, at least in Florida.  Redstone, Jupiter, Atlas, Thor, Titan, and Saturn are all long gone.  The only bits left from that era are Centaur and RL10, but those were neither really von Braun's nor Schriever's. (Krafft Ehricke conceived it and Abe Silverstein owned it by the time it succeeded).

There is one Schriever legacy that is still running strong, and I think that it is his greatest accomplishment.  It is the U.S. rocket that has flown more times than any other U.S. rocket, and achieved a better success rate than any other of its type:  Minuteman.  (The last year without a Minuteman flight was 1960, though several "tethered" silo tests occurred in 1959-60.)  People often say that Apollo gave us the microelectronic age, but Minuteman has a better claim.

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 01/19/2013 09:56 pm by edkyle99 »

Offline kking

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #8 on: 01/19/2013 10:46 pm »
He is a real space hero like Von Braun. I'm glad someone started a thread cause I was going to if nobody did. Schriever did do a interview for JSC Oral History Project few years ago. I was lucky to get a cds of his interview. I we can see more pictures. I've never seen the ones posted.

Kyle

Offline RyanC

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #9 on: 01/20/2013 03:50 am »
It seems to me that the legacy of peace (at least freedom from nuclear exchange on American soil) afforded us by our ICBM programs is at least as important as the legacy of the lunar landing.

I wouldn't be so quick to assign that to the various ballistic missile programs. They're remarkably inflexible weapons of extremely limited utility. Really, the best thing we got out of our ICBM program was the Atlas/Titan series of space boosters.

EDIT: But I digress. If you want a good history of Schreiver; A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan is pretty decent.
« Last Edit: 01/20/2013 03:52 am by RyanCrierie »

Offline RyanC

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #10 on: 01/20/2013 03:53 am »
There is one Schriever legacy that is still running strong, and I think that it is his greatest accomplishment.  It is the U.S. rocket that has flown more times than any other U.S. rocket, and achieved a better success rate than any other of its type:  Minuteman.

Wasn't MM more of Ed Hall's baby?

Offline Jim

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #11 on: 01/20/2013 01:17 pm »
It seems to me that the legacy of peace (at least freedom from nuclear exchange on American soil) afforded us by our ICBM programs is at least as important as the legacy of the lunar landing.

I wouldn't be so quick to assign that to the various ballistic missile programs. They're remarkably inflexible weapons of extremely limited utility.


During the Cold War they were, but not post Cold war.

But also it was their technology and not the lunar landing that spurred the microelectronics industry
« Last Edit: 01/20/2013 01:18 pm by Jim »

Offline Jim

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #12 on: 01/20/2013 03:09 pm »
Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station are separated by the Banana River (which is a lagoon, not a river).  I've long thought of the KSC side as von Braun's side, and the Cape side as Gen. Schriever's side,

Actually, NASA was pretty engrained on CCAFS in the years between the birth of NASA and the construction of  MILA (Merritt Island Launch Area (KSC)).

ABMA/MSFC was in Hangars R&D with Hangar AF.  MSC/JSC was in Hangar S complex and the E&O building.  JPL was in the spacecraft laboratories Buildings AM and AO.  Building AE had GSFC.   And the KSC (LOD/LOC) headquarters was in the E&L building.
« Last Edit: 01/20/2013 03:09 pm by Jim »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #13 on: 01/20/2013 03:58 pm »
I interviewed Schriever back in the 1990s. By this time he had taken to repeating the same stories he had told numerous times. I only got one good quote out of him, about the National Reconnaissance Office: "They spend all their time hiding behind the goddamn door!"

Offline Jim

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #14 on: 01/20/2013 05:18 pm »
I interviewed Schriever back in the 1990s. By this time he had taken to repeating the same stories he had told numerous times. I only got one good quote out of him, about the National Reconnaissance Office: "They spend all their time hiding behind the goddamn door!"

The thing that bugged him the most was in the early 60's, there were no real white USAF programs, BSD/SSD/SAMSO was just a support group for the NRO, supplying people and boosters.
« Last Edit: 01/20/2013 05:19 pm by Jim »

Offline edkyle99

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #15 on: 01/20/2013 05:24 pm »
There is one Schriever legacy that is still running strong, and I think that it is his greatest accomplishment.  It is the U.S. rocket that has flown more times than any other U.S. rocket, and achieved a better success rate than any other of its type:  Minuteman.

Wasn't MM more of Ed Hall's baby?

Of course Schriever did not himself conceive the missile, much as von Braun did not actually design any of the Saturn rockets, but he did strongly support it at the critical moment.  Schriever had expended a lot of political good will gaining funding for Titan as a back up for Atlas.  Then, only months later, he went again to the well to ask for billions more for Minuteman.  This was no small decision (any of these programs could have been a career-ender if they had failed), and no small task, but Minuteman was delivered in less than 18 months.  It succeeded in large part due to his decisive decision making skills as an administrator and manager (keeping in mind that the decisions were made by a team, but he chose the team members - like a coach or general manager).  The fact that Minuteman missiles are still active today all these years later (upgraded over the years of course) shows how sound the original decisions were. (As an added treat, old Minuteman motors are now powering Minotaur 1 space launch vehicles, which have their own excellent record.)

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 01/20/2013 05:58 pm by edkyle99 »

Offline Art LeBrun

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #16 on: 01/26/2013 04:12 am »
Schriever (2nd from right) at the first operational site for the Atlas ICBM in 1959 during the ceremonial groundbreaking.
1958 launch vehicle highlights: Vanguard TV-4 and Atlas 12B

Offline Art LeBrun

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #17 on: 02/16/2013 04:48 am »
Bernard Schriever on a cold December 1960 night in Wyoming at an Atlas ICBM above ground launch building. The missile was normally stored in a prone position. This missile was one of nine assigned to the the 565th Strategic Missile Squadron at Francis E. Warren AFB.
1958 launch vehicle highlights: Vanguard TV-4 and Atlas 12B

Offline CitabriaFlyer

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #18 on: 02/19/2013 02:04 am »
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.  The book is a little inconsistent in that at times it reads like a biography and at times it reads more like a piece of history. Still I enjoyed it and there are not nearly as many good books on the USAF space effort as there are the NASA effort.

Does anyone know of a good back on Dynasoar and MOL?  Or are those topics still classified?  Has DoD had the foresight to get oral histories of the astronauts and project managers involved?  The JSC history office did a good job with a lot of astronauts including the MOL guys but of course they did not mention anything about it other than the obvious facts that they were participants.

Offline Jim

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Re: General Bernard Schriever
« Reply #19 on: 02/19/2013 10:36 am »
Has DoD had the foresight to get oral histories of the astronauts and project managers involved? 

No, because the project were canceled and never came to fruition.

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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