Guided Missiles Ready For Action In Germany

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27444, 2 September 1954, Page 6

Guided Missiles Ready For Action In Germany

BITBURG, West Germany. Cigar-shaped objects looking like a cross between a bomb and a jet aircraft stand here, about 160 miles from Communist East Germany, ready for action at a moment’s notice if war should come. They can be guided by remote control at more than 600 miles an hour, day or night and through any kind of weather, to dive on to selected targets. This is what would happen, as demonstrated to reporters visiting this base at the invitation of the United States Air Force’s First Pilotless Bomber Squadron: Lorries roar on to the runway with their sinister load on trailers. Steel-helmeted men in drab green overalls spring down and swarm round each load. Other lorries drive up with compressors. Then mobile cranes arrive. Airmen connect lines and switch on electrical equipment. Men clamber on top of the missiles—named Matadors—and guide the crane drivers with hand signals as they lift into position at the rear of each missile a bottle containing an auxiliary rocket to assist the take-off.

An airman works at a control panel on the side of the trailer and slowly the launching ramp on which the aircraft is mounted begins to rise, lifting the Matador to an angle of 45 degrees. The airman picks up a telephone near the panel and reports to an officer controlling the whole operation from a table 50 yards away, draped with batteries, logbooks and equipment. Suddenly the Matador’s Allison turbo-jet engine crackles into life, its pitch rising to an ear-splitting scream. Then another starts up, and another, and another. The noise is deafening. All vehicles withdraw to a safe distance. Launching crews, their hands clapped to their ears, take cover.

The missiles are almost ready to take off. A controller counts off the remaining seconds. With a roar, the first missile shoots into the sky in a cloud of black smoke. The rest follow. They soar up accelerated by the combined

thrust of engines and auxiliary rockets. They level off, clouds of black smoke streaking from their tails as the rockets become exhausted and automatically drop off. Then,, guided by two men at the base which they have just left, the missiles head relentlessly for targets deep in enemy territory. None of the 40ft long Matadors, known officially as the Martin B-16A pilotless aircraft, was fired during the demonstration. The missiles, which can of course be used only once, cost between 60,000 dollars and 100,000 dollars each. Some were launched on training flights at the test centre at Cocoa, Florida, before coming to Germany in March, but not since. “We have no reason to ekpend any at this time,” an officer said. “We know they can fly. We know they can be guided on to a target. And we know the damage they can do when they land.” The squadron comprises 50 officers and 500 airmen and has about 75 Matadors. Another squadron is due in Germany later this year. Many of the details of the Matador and its operation are still secret. The squadron’s 40-year-old commander, LieutenantColonel Louis Carrol, said that the Matador, first adaptation of “push button warfare” to be deployed overseas in a tactical unit, can carry any one of several warhead types which are available within its load-carrying capacity. Its accuracy is camparable to to that of a piloted aircraft bombing at medium altitudes. He would not say whether this included atomic warheads, although it is believed that the Matador can take these. Unofficial estimates put the range at more .than 300 miles. Colonel Carroll did not disclose the height at which the Matador flies but other officers said that it is not bounded by the limitations of a piloted aircraft. Colonel Carroll said that all equipment for launching the Matador was on wheels. The entire opperation could be conducted as readily from the corner of a farm field as from an area laid with pierced steel planking.