Missiles West

Despite some spectacular experimental failures and some anguished cries that the U.S. has lost its touch, the nation is deep into the most intensive, fast-moving and spectacularly promising scientific development program of its history. One sign was the Army's attempt to shoot the moon from Cape Canaveral last week--an attempt that was rated a failure because the Army's Pioneer III stopped rising after a breathtaking 66,654 miles out, gravitated back to burn up in earth's atmosphere (see SCIENCE). Another was the almost routine Defense Department announcement of an open-ended, long-term program to launch a series of low-flying eye-in-the-sky satellites weighing as much as 1,300 lbs., starting next month.

But the quietest and perhaps most meaningful news was that the Air Force was getting ready this week to fire an intermediate range Thor from a brand-new base perched on a jagged coastal saucer 168 miles northwest of Los Angeles--Strategic Air Command's Vandenberg Air Force Base. The West Coast missile complex is designed to take up where Cape Canaveral leaves off; i.e., primarily to shoot operational missiles and train crews to handle them. One Western advantage : satellites can be flung thence into polar orbits (see diagram) without hazard to populated areas.

Gantries & Sentries. Named for the late Air Force Chief of Staff (1948-53) General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, the new base is abuilding on 64,000 eucalyptus-strewn acres that in World War II and Korea were Army's Camp Cooke. Tattered bayonet targets, reminders of pre-pushbutton war, stand in a quiet tract, while 3,900 civilians and 3,500 airmen work busily around a futuristic maze: three 135-ft. Atlas gantries on nearly completed pads, three more Atlas pads still being poured, eight Thor pads, 8,000-ft. bases for electronic tracking, a hangar-shaped missile-assembly building and a convenient liquid oxygen (LOX) factory.

Commander of it all is Louisiana-born Major General David Wade, Atlas-sized (6 ft. 4 in., 210 lbs.) command pilot (7,000 hours) who served (1956-57) as SAC chief of staff to the father of alert deterrence, Air Force General Curtis E. LeMay. Wade's command includes the new SAC 704th Strategic Missile Wing at Vandenberg and two Jupiter squadrons now at Huntsville, Ala. In SAC's businesslike way, Wade now enforces "maximum security" on the base, will soon reinforce his armed guards with sentry dogs.

Headache & Bonanza. Wade's training shots of Thor, Atlas and second-generation missiles (perhaps the solid-fuel Minuteman) will soar over the vast National Pacific Missile Range, be scored for hits and misses by naval units reporting to nearby Point Mugu Naval-Air Missile Test Center. Already experienced at its work, the twelve-year-old Navy center has been scoring its own Sparrow and Bullpup guided missiles over a short ocean range, safely sent ship-based Regulus missiles over the mountains 500 miles inland to impact at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah. Now enlarging to handle bigger missiles--perhaps to test submarine-based Polaris as well as work on National Aeronautics and Space Administration experiments--the Navy has recently started pad construction on 20,000 acres at Point Arguello right next to Vandenberg.

The mushrooming of the West Coast missile complex has brought a combination bonanza and headache to the nearby town of Lompoc, once noted for its peaceful setting amid acres of seed farms. Population has jumped from 7,000 to 9,000 in two years, school enrollment has all but doubled, land values have gone from $2,000 to $8,000 an acre. But even though its streets are jammed with airmen, construction workers and even visiting R.A.F. trainees, Lompoc, remembering the fabulous buildups at Camp Cooke during past wars--and the abrupt shutdowns that followed--is alone in the world in not quite believing that missiles are here to stay.

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