Ballistic Missile Logistics 1958 USAF; Atlas & Titan ICBMs, Thor IRBM (Patreon)

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SFP-602

Overview of USAF logistics requirements for ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads (Thor, Atlas & Titan). Your instructor is Major General Ben I. Funk.

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-17_Thor

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Thor was the first operational ballistic missile deployed by the U.S. Air Force (USAF). Named after the Norse god of thunder, it was deployed in the United Kingdom between 1959 and September 1963 as an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with thermonuclear warheads. Thor was 65 feet (20 m) in height and 8 feet (2.4 m) in diameter. It was later augmented in the U.S. IRBM arsenal by the Jupiter.

A large family of space launch vehicles—the Thor and Delta rockets—were derived from the Thor design. The Delta II is still in active service as of 2014 and with the retirement of Atlas and Titan in the mid-2000s is the last surviving "heritage" launch vehicle in the US fleet, being derived from a Cold War-era missile system...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas

The SM-65 Atlas was the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed by the United States, and the first member of the Atlas rocket family. It was built for the U.S. Air Force by Convair Division of General Dynamics at the Kearny Mesa assembly plant north of San Diego, California. Atlas became operational as an ICBM in October 1959 and was used as a first stage for satellite launch vehicles for half a century. The Atlas missile's warhead was over 100 times more powerful than the bomb dropped over Nagasaki in 1945.

An initial development contract was given to Consolidated Vultee Aircraft (Convair) on 16 January 1951 for what was then called MX-1593, but at a relatively low priority. The 1953 testing of the first dry fuel H-bomb in the Soviet Union led to the project being dramatically accelerated. The initial design completed by Convair in 1953 was larger than the missile that eventually entered service. Estimated warhead weight was lowered from 8,000 lb (3,630 kg) to 3,000 lb (1,360 kg) based on highly favorable U.S. nuclear warhead tests in early 1954, and on 14 May 1954 the Atlas program was formally given the highest national priority. A major development and test contract was awarded to Convair on 14 January 1955 for a 10-foot (3 m) diameter missile to weigh about 250,000 lb (113,400 kg). Atlas development was tightly controlled by the Air Force's Western Development Division, WDD, later part of the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division. Contracts for warhead, guidance and propulsion were handled separately by WDD. The first successful flight of a highly instrumented Atlas missile to full range occurred 28 November 1958. Atlas ICBMs were deployed operationally from 31 October 1959 to 12 April 1965...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-68_Titan

The SM-68 Titan (individual variants later designated HGM-25 and LGM-25) was the designation for two American intercontinental ballistic missiles; which were members of the Titan family of rockets. These consisted of the Titan I and Titan II missiles, which were operational between 1962 and 1987, and were a major component of the United States fleet of missiles during the Cold War.

Titan was originally built as a backup to the SM-65 Atlas. The Titan I used RP-1 and liquid oxygen propellant, resulting in a response time of around fifteen minutes, required to fuel the rocket and raise it to a launch position. It was replaced by the more powerful Titan II, which used nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine, allowing it to be stored with propellant loaded, giving it a much shorter response time...