THE COLD WAR RACE TO BlILD AN ICBM

At the end of WW-II the US and USSR each captured German rocket scientists. V-2 rockets, and rocket development equipment. The captured engineers and technology enabled both nations to vastly accelerate their own rocket development work. The V-2 was flown many times in Russia and America. This famous rocket became the springboard for initiating a race between the two post-war superpowers to be first to build an ICBM capable of dropping a nuclear warhead on the other side. Building rocket defenses to counteract US strategic bombers, in the 1950s the USSR initially appeared to have the edge in this competition, wrhich led in turn to the perception in America of a "missile gap’. ‘This term was applied in several ways. Technically, it meant a gap in the range and ‘throw weight’ of a missile, but in some cases it was simply a measure of how many operational weapons each side had. and the Americans had an exaggerated view of the number of missiles actually pointed at them from inside the Soviet Union a misperception that delighted the Soviet government.

Despite starting at the same point in the late 1940s with captured V-2 rockets, the Soviet and American development programs took different paths towards an ICBM. In the early 1950s. the IJS had substantial advantages both in electronics technology and the ability to construct smaller, high-yield weapons. The fact that Soviet atomic devices were much heavier led to more pow erful rockets than those required by the Americans. The Soviets led in rocket mobility and deployment, in part because they assembled their rockets horizontally in production line fashion, and rolled them fully assembled on a railcar to the launching facility. The Americans built their rockets in sections and assembled them slowly on the pad by stacking them vertically one stage at a time.

The Soviet program culminated in the versatile R-7 two-stage rocket, which had its first successful test in August 1957. The kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants imposed a lengthy loading procedure prior to launch. The R-7 reached operational capability, but only five were ever deployed because by then the Soviets had learned howr to build smaller warheads and were developing a more suitable missile. It was rapidly replaced by smaller rockets that could be placed in hardened silos and loaded with storable propellants. The R-7 survived to serve as a space launcher because of its large "throw weight’, the mass that it could launch, and its versatility to use upper

stages for various military and civilian missions. It was called the Vostok’ launcher after the Gagarin flight, and became the base vehicle for Soviet lunar and planetary missions until superseded by the larger Proton vehicle in the 1970s. It is still in use today as the core vehicle for the Soyuz family of Russian launch vehicles.