13. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War, by Neil Sheehan, pp. 315-349

Book VI: Building the Unstoppable, 49. A Competitor; 50. The Team of Mettler and Thiel; 51. John Bruce Medaris and Wernher von Braun; 52. The Cape of the Canebrake vs. "Moose" Mathison; 53. A Few Grains of Sand; 54. Medaris Goes for the ICBM

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The Soviets' intermediate-range missile made Washington decide that concentrating all missile efforts on the ICBM might not be such a great idea, so Schriever had pressure put on him to develop an IRBM as well. As so often, interservice rivalry had something to do with it, too: The Army had its Jupiter IRBM under way at Redstone, under the direction of Wernher von Braun. Now Schriever was forced to get people to work on the Air Force's version, which was named for another thunderer, Thor.

Ramo chose Ruben Mettler, an engineering and technical director recently hired by Ramo-Wooldridge, to head the Thor project. Mettler was an expert in radar and had been present at one of the postwar bomb tests at Bikini, an experience that "led Mettler to vow that he would do all he could in future years to prevent weapons like this from being used against the United States." He had worked for Ramo and Wooldridge at Hughes Aircraft, but had declined an offer to join them when they left. This time he agreed to work for them again. Assisting Mettler on Thor was Adolf Thiel, an aeronautical engineer who had worked on the V-2 and had come to the States with the group of German rocketeers recruited after the war in Operation Paperclip. He had worked with von Braun at Redstone, but had broken away to form his own research group. Thiel knew enough about the work being done at Redstone that it's no surprise "that Thor was essentially a copy of the missile that was to become the Army's Jupiter." Edward Hall was project manager for Thor, but he had his hands full working on the backup ICBM, Titan, as well.

Schriever's counterpart on the Army's missile was Maj. Gen. Bruce Medaris of the Ordnance Corps. Medaris had an advantage in the rocketeering expertise of von Braun and his fellow Germans. Von Braun was more interested in space exploration than in warfare; he claimed that his membership in the Nazi party, his commission as an officer in the SS and his work on the V-2 were merely means to an end: developing spacecraft. (This would lead to the joke that von Braun's book, I Aim at the Stars, should have had a subtitle: But I Sometimes Hit London.) He had in fact been arrested by the SS, under Himmler's orders, and briefly jailed on suspicion of "defeatist talk and hindering V-2 production by wasting time discussing the future of rockets in space exploration."

The stage for the conflict between Thor and Jupiter was a reclaimed canebrake in Florida called Cape Canaveral (Spanish for "canebrake"). Schriever put Lt. Col. Charles "Moose" Mathison in charge of supervising the construction of the launch facilities at the cape. Thor No. 101 (its designating number inflated to fool the Soviets into thinking it had a hundred predecessors) arrived there in October 1956 and was readied to launch in January 1957.

It rose about eighteen inches and then suddenly fell back on the pad. With a deafening blast and a shock wave that was felt in the blockhouse, the missile blew up, not only tearing itself into pieces but also damaging the concrete launch pad seriously enough that Mathison's civilian construction crews needed two months to restore the pad to usable conditions.

Mettler expected to be fired, but Schriever just said, "I expect things like this to happen." It turned out that two technicians in charge of the liquid oxygen (LOX) tanks had dragged the hose used to fill the tanks on the ground, contaminating the LOX with sand.

Thor 102 also met with disaster when it was launched in April 1957. It left the launch pad and headed out to the ocean, but 32 seconds into the flight it exploded -- or rather it was blown up by the range safety officer. Thiel was so enraged that he almost punched the safety officer, an Air Force major, in the face before Mettler restrained him. The safety officer had three instruments that showed the course of the missile, and one of them had shown it not heading out to sea but inland toward Orlando. It turned out that a Ramo-Wooldridge had installed the Doppler radar apparatus backward. But the safety officer should have checked the other two instruments before detonating the rocket. "He was transferred not long afterward to Alaska."

Thor 103 was ready to launch in May. The launch team had agreed on a countdown of twenty-four hours, reasoning that if the countdown lasted longer, everyone would be so fatigued that human error might be introduced. When they reached the twenty-four limit on Thor 103, Mettler and Thiel were so eager to launch that they called Schriever to ask for an extension. He was reluctant at first but finally agreed. But the technician in charge of reading the gauge that recorded the pressurization of the LOX tank was so exhausted that he didn't see the needle slip over into red. The rocket exploded, doing so much damage that the pad had to be rebuilt again.

Meanwhile, the first Jupiter had launched in March 1957, five weeks after Thor 101 blew up. It flew for seventy-two seconds before breaking up. A second Jupiter lasted ninety-two seconds. After they discovered that the breakup happened because of the sloshing of fuel in the tanks and adjusted for that, on May 31, 1957, ten days after the fireball of Thor 103, a third Jupiter flew downrange for eight minutes and 1,610 miles. The Jupiter's Germans had almost succeeded in creating a missile that would meet the required 1,725-mile flight. But Medaris was unhappy because of two rulings by Secretary Wilson: any successful missile that the Army produced would be turned over to the Air Force for deployment, and in the future, Army missiles would be restricted to a 200-mile range. On the other hand, Medaris could argue that the Air Force was incapable of building an IRBM, and if it couldn't do this, how could it be trusted with the more crucial ICBM project? Surely the success of von Braun and his team meant that the Army should take over the development of the ICBM?

Schriever blamed Ed Hall for the failures, which were not so much the result of flaws in the missile itself as flaws in the testing process. Hall was also at odds with Mettler, and Thiel regarded him as "a horrible guy ... very arrogant." Schriever decided he needed to replace Hall. 

10. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War, by Neil Sheehan, pp. 231-260

Book V: Winning a President, 37. A Schoolhouse and a Radical New Approach; 38. The Guru of Rockets; 39. A Problem With Tommy Power; 40. How Greed Corrupts

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Schriever's new ICBM project set up in a converted Catholic boys school in Inglewood, Calif., so the team that worked there became known as the Schoolhouse Gang. Convair, sensing a serious threat from this new project, proposed that they continue to work on the rocket it already had underway, but von Neumann and his committee opposed the suggestion. It became clear that the new approach to creating an ICBM "would amount to a revolution in the Air Force's relationship with the aviation industry." Ramo would be the chief engineer and the chief scientist, but his firm would be barred from actually manufacturing components for the missile. Convair's reluctance to be cut out of the deal set Schriever up for a power struggle.

To work on development of the rocket engine, Schriever selected Lt. Col. Edward Hall, a rocket propulsion expert at the Air Development Center at Wright-Patterson. (Neither Schriever nor Hall knew that Hall's younger brother, Ted, was a spy for the Soviets.) Hall had distinguished himself during World War II by his skill at repairing aircraft damaged in their sorties from England over Europe. While stationed in England, he became interested in the German missiles, the V-1 and V-2, and collected pieces of them from the sites where they had exploded. He claimed in an unpublished memoir that he had actually been to the site where the missiles were built, at the Nordhausen slave labor camp, on a secret mission, but the claim is unverified. After the war he was sent to the Air Development Center and then to Caltech to study for a master's in aeronautical engineering. He returned to the Air Development Center's Power Plant Laboratory to work on ramjets and rockets. Under his supervision, North American Aviation's Rocketdyne division produced a test engine that Wernher von Braun selected for the Redstone missile, essentially an upgraded V-2.

Hall also claimed in his memoir that he had faked an intelligence report about a giant Soviet rocket engine in order to keep his work from being eliminated in budget cuts. He received the funding he needed for work on the ramjet engines for the Navaho intercontinental cruise missile, which was actually a cover for work on rocket engines for an ICBM. Hall persuaded Maj. Sidney Greene, head of the New Developments Office at the Air Development Center, to let him have $2 million to work on modifying the Navaho design to include a rocket engine. The money was originally designated for Convair, which protested but was overruled. Together with the engineers at Rocketdyne, Hall developed a successful prototype engine, a step toward the more powerful one that Schriever was looking for.

Schriever's next obstacle was Gen. Thomas Power, head of the Air Research and Development Command, who had succeeded LeMay as head of SAC and therefore was disinclined to approve of the ICBM project over which he had authority but no control. The consequences of the failure of Schriever's project would be a mark against Power. A meeting with Power left Schriever shaken: "If he did not succeed in allaying Power's worries, no amount of intervention from Gardner would suffice to protect him. Power would find a way to sack him in order to save his own hide." Power demanded written documentation on everything the project did: "He was preparing a defense for the investigation that would be certain to follow if the project failed -- men eminent in their fields had urged these actions on him and he had no logical recourse but to accept their advice." Schriever therefore took it on himself to woo Power by giving him everything he wanted and more -- and when he learned Power was "a keen golfer," he used that tool in his arsenal as well.

Golfing with Convair, however, was not an option. Its president was a retired general, Joseph McNarney, and the Atlas project was being overseen by Thomas Lanphier Jr., who was close to W. Stuart Symington, the former secretary of the Air Force who was now a senator from Missouri and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. McNarney and Lanphier "started a campaign against Ramo and Wooldridge in the trade press, accusing them of stealing technicians for their new rim from Hughes Aircraft in order to corner the ICBM business." Schriever saw that Convair was motivated by greed because of their disregard for the opinion of the scientific community represented by von Neumann's committee. When Convair tried to get Symington on their side, Schriever countered with presentations from the Schoolhouse Gang that convinced the senator that he should stay out of the crossfire.

What Schriever had run up against was the moral corruption that had become endemic to the U.S. military industry as a result of the Cold War and its demand, year, upon year, upon year for new weaponry.... U.S. military industry, particularly the aircraft industry, had been coddled for so long that its leaders were like spoiled children. They had come to expect profits as a virtual right.

(Anyone reminded of the oil industry?)

Finally, however, Convair yielded to pressure and agreed to Schriever's terms, with one concession: They would manufacture the airframe and assembly and participate in the testing, and would provide the control mechanisms for the missile. Schriever got Convair to create a work force dedicated only to the Atlas at its San Diego plant. But Ramo reported that Convair was not hiring properly qualified engineers for specialized parts of the project, and it took another sit-down with the brass to bring them in line.

As for Power, he had been converted to Schriever's cause by the information he had been receiving and the persuasion of von Neumann. He recommended Schriever for promotion to major general. "From this point on Schriever no longer had to worry about the wary three-stars in Baltimore. Power was now behind him."

6. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War, by Neil Sheehan, pp. 117-142

Book III: The Perils of an Apprenticeship, 21. Hap Arnold's Legacy; 22. Getting Organized; 23. Bomber Leader

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After his return from the war, Schriever was sent to the Army Air Force headquarters at the Pentagon where he was assigned to the Scientific Liaison Branch of the Research and Engineering Division, where his job was to forge connections with the civilian scientific community. This put him in contact with Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian-born aeronautical engineer who had come to Caltech in 1930. Hap Arnold had been acquainted with von Kármán for some time, and in 1944 recruited him for the Scientific Advisory Group that would plan the postwar direction of air power. Von Kármán, whom Arnold made a major general, was among the first to go to Germany after the end of the war in Europe in 1945. There he met Wernher von Braun and Gen. Walter Dornberger, who had been the head of Germany's rocket program, both of whom had surrendered to the American forces.

From what he learned about the advances in rocketry made by the Germans, von Kármán and his team put together a report called Toward New Horizons that laid out a vision of "world air supremacy" (Sheehan's italics) as the key to security for the United States. One of the things von Kármán proposed was an emphasis on research and development, particularly the establishment of a research and testing center that would have to be located near a source of hydroelectric power. The first of these was established at Tullahoma, Tenn., and named the Arnold Engineering Development Center after Arnold's death. Arnold also created a permanent Scientific Advisory Board and put von Kármán in charge of it.

After Arnold's retirement in 1946, however, the Scientific Advisory Board was almost abolished. Arnold had made Curtis LeMay the assistant chief of research and development, and LeMay wasn't interested in anything but bombers. The establishment of the Air Force as an independent branch of the service in September 1947 also led to its being a target of the other branches, which were always in search of something that could be cut from another branch's budget. But the Scientific Advisory Board survived, especially after LeMay was promoted to command the Air Force in Europe and Maj. Gen. Laurence Craigie took over as head of a new Directorate of Research and Development. Craigie had known Schriever since 1923 when Craigie was learning to be a pilot at Kelly Field in San Antonio and played golf on the course where 13-year-old Schriever was a caddy.

In 1949, Schriever was scheduled to spend a year at the National War College, but before then he and some other members of the Scientific Advisory Board invited the Air Force chief of staff Hoyt Vandenberg, whose uncle was the influential Sen. Arthur Vandenberg to speak to them. Hoyt Vandenberg canceled, but his place was taken by his vice chief, Muir Fairchild. And a committee was formed that included the enormously influential Jimmy Doolittle, who supported the aims of von Kármán and Schriever, which meant that Vandenberg would take notice of the committee's recommendations. The result was that in January 1950, the Air Research and Development Command (ARDC), was established under the direction of Maj. Gen Gordon Saville.

After returning from the War College, Schriever was called back to the Pentagon by Saville and given the job of assistant for development planning. But this put him in direct conflict with Curtis LeMay. Curt "Bombs Away" LeMay is best-known today as the right-wing ultrahawk who was George Wallace's running mate in 1968 and who advocated bombing North Vietnam "back into the Stone Age." Sheehan also singles him out as "the inspiration for General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's film Dr. Strangelove," although there were plenty of military men who went into that caricature. At the time, however, LeMay was generally regarded as an American hero for having contributed to the victory over Japan by the ferocious bombing raids that devastated the metropolitan areas of that country. Sheehan calls the attack on Tokyo on March 9, 1945, "the most horrendous fire-bombing in the history of modern warfare." LeMay himself didn't fly in that raid because he had been briefed about the atomic bomb and it was feared that he might be tortured into revealing its secrets if he was captured. Although the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a kind of coup de grâce, Sheehan sees LeMay as "the man most responsible for ending the war with such swiftness."

In October 1948, LeMay was put in charge of the Strategic Air Command, "a languishing organization" that by 1951 he had turned around "into an organization that inspired dread in Moscow" and had earned him a fourth star as general. SAC, with its long-range bombers capable of reaching any point in the Soviet Union, had "become the centerpiece of America's national strategy." But of course, this rankled the other services, which wanted to demonstrate their usefulness, leading to a "Revolt of the Admirals" in 1949 after Truman canceled the Navy's "supercarrier" so it could put more funds into LeMay's B-36s. Truman was forced to sack the secretary of the Navy and the chief of naval operations because of their protests. And even after the Soviet Union acquired the bomb and Truman left office, President Eisenhower continued the policy of relying on nuclear-equipped intercontinental bombers.

By 1954, when LeMay would have 1,500 atomic bombs at his disposal, the estimate was that 60 million people would be killed and 17 million injured within the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China if SAC was unleashed.... While Eisenhower reduced the overall strength of the military establishment by nearly a million men, inflicting most of the cuts on the ground forces of the Army but also shrinking the Navy and the Air Force as a whole, he encouraged SAC to grow.