From Student Rocketry to Weapons Research

In 1936, Caltech graduate student Frank Malina learned of Austrian engineer Eugen Sanger’s proposed rocket plane. This stimulated Malina’s interest in rocketry, and aeronautics professor Theodore von Karman agreed to serve as his thesis adviser. Learning little from a visit to secretive rocket pioneer Robert Goddard, Malina and his assistants began rocket motor tests in an isolated area near Pasadena. After several failures, they succeeded in running a forty – four-second test firing. In May 1938, a new heat-resistant design operated for more than a minute.2

In 1938, Army Air Corps commander H. H. ‘‘Hap’’ Arnold made a sur­prise visit to Caltech and took interest in the project. He asked the National Academy of Sciences to fund research on rocket-assisted aircraft takeoff. Von Karman got the job, with Malina doing most of the work. Money soon began to flow, and by July 1940 the group moved permanently from the Caltech cam­pus to the test site.3

Malina’s growing team used theoretical analysis and practical experimen­tation to create a series of technical breakthroughs that became the founda­tion of solid-propellant rocketry. The army and navy wanted rockets to assist aircraft takeoff from short airfields and aircraft carriers, leading Malina’s team to consider mass production of the rockets. Malina unsuccessfully tried to interest aircraft companies. Failing in this, he, von Karman, and others started the Aerojet Company, which by 1943 had large navy orders. Although JPL de­veloped the initial designs, it never had to deal with manufacturing problems, passing these to Aerojet.4

After the military discovered German preparations to launch V-2 rockets,

some army officers paid greater attention to rocketry. The Army Air Forces was not interested because long-range rockets did not promise an immedi­ate payoff and because it had a vested interest in manned bombers. By con­trast, Army Ordnance officers saw rockets as long-range artillery and hence as a means to extend the range of their artillery and political aspirations. They urged Caltech to propose a comprehensive program, which led to the offi­cial founding of JPL in June 1944 with an Army Ordnance contract for $1.6 million. Despite Caltech leaders’ initial view that JPL would aid the army dur­ing only wartime, they quickly became addicted to the contract’s overhead money. JPL became a permanent operation.5

JPL proposed to build a series of progressively larger and more sophisti­cated rockets, named in rank order Private, Corporal, Sergeant, and Colonel. Private, developed in 1944 and early 1945, proved successful when designed as a simple rocket but inaccurate when modified to include wings. Private’s performance proved not only that JPL could design a simple rocket without attitude control or guidance but also that long-range rockets were imprac­tical until JPL developed an automatic control system. The Corporal series began with an unguided sounding rocket known as the WAC Corporal, in­tended to achieve the highest possible altitude. It reached altitudes of forty miles in October 1945 and was the immediate progenitor of Aerojet’s Aero- bee sounding rocket, used for years after as a scientific research vehicle. Rela­tions between JPL and Aerojet were good, as JPL researchers passed research innovations to Aerojet, which developed them for production. With financial interests in Aerojet, JPL researchers benefited handily.6

The organization of JPL’s early rocketry was simple. It began as a stu­dent research project, with Malina, John Parsons, and Edward Forman con­structing test stands, motors, and fuels. The group added a Research Analysis section, which performed parametric analyses of aircraft takeoff with rocket assistance and developed design objectives. Homer Stewart and Hsue-shen Tsien did many of these tasks, which Stewart later recalled as being the sys­tems engineering for the group.7

As the program grew, Malina directed JPL while Army Ordnance handled the coordination among JPL, White Sands Missile Range, the Signal Corps, and the Ballistic Research Laboratory of Aberdeen Proving Ground. The lat­ter two organizations assisted with flight test data acquisition. Malina di­vided JPL’s twenty-two personnel into seven small groups: Booster, Missile, Launcher and Nose, Missile Firing, External Ballistics, Photo and Material, and Transportation and Labor. The army’s contingent totaled thirteen. Prior to each test round, Malina held a conference where each group discussed prior results and checked weather and preparations. Douglas Aircraft manufactured the rocket, but the team often performed last-minute modifications at White Sands.8

WAC Corporal paved the way for JPL’s first true surface-to-surface missile, the larger and more complex liquid-fueled Corporal E. JPL engineers devel­oped a comprehensive test program to ensure that the components and the integrated vehicle functioned correctly. They developed static structural tests, hydraulic tests for all fluid flow components, and rocket motor tests. Engi­neers also created a full-scale model used to check pressure and temperature characteristics under firing conditions on a static test stand at Muroc, Cali­fornia. The test stand held the vehicle on the ground as the engine fired, while electrical instrumentation measured structural loads, pressures, and tempera­tures. Douglas Aircraft manufactured the flight test vehicles, which the army transported to its new assembly and launch facilities at White Sands, where engineers performed final leak and electrical tests. Technicians then moved the rocket seven miles to the launch site, where the crew simulated a firing for training purposes and as a final telemetry check. They then fueled and launched the vehicle.9

JPL engineers fired the first Corporal E in May 1947. The first round was a success, but round two produced insufficient thrust. Round three failed when the rocket motor throat burned out and the control system failed. Engineers went back to the drawing boards. Only in June 1949 did the next Corporal E fly, with a new design using axial-flow motors.10

After the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in August 1949, Army Ordnance officers asked JPL Director Louis Dunn11 and Electronics Depart­ment head William Pickering whether Corporal could be converted into an operational missile. Dunn stated that JPL could handle this conversion if it developed a guidance and control system from existing technologies. In March 1950, Army Ordnance decided to make Corporal into a weapon.

When the Korean War broke out in the summer of 1950, the Truman ad­ministration gave Chrysler executive K. T. Keller the charter to develop mis­siles as quickly as possible. Rejecting a Manhattan Project-style program, Keller decided instead to exploit existing missile programs that held prom­ise. Corporal was the army’s best-developed missile, so Army Ordnance com­mitted it to rapid development. With this decision, JPL embarked upon a ven­ture that changed it from a research institution into the equivalent of an army arsenal.12