Against All Odds

How one man’s vision and determination led to unexpected breakthrough. An extract

In June 1953, the Department of Defense Armed Forces Policy Council ordered the establishment of a study group composed of the nation’s leading scientists to evaluate the Air Force’s strategic missile program. To perform this task, Trevor Gardner, special assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force for research and development, assembled a group of scientists under Professor John von Neumann. It would become known as the Air Force Strategic Missile Evaluation Committee. Under von Neumann’s leadership, the committee began to examine the impact of the recent breakthroughs in the development of the hydrogen bomb (which enabled them to be much lighter) on the development of strategic missiles and the possibility that the Soviet Union might be ahead of the United States in developing ballistic missiles. During its deliberations, the committee maintained very close working relationship with key individuals in the various fields of technology related to missile development. Especially important among these was “Stark Draper, the director of the Instrumentation Laboratory at M.I.T.,” who knew more about the science and technology of inertial guidance “than anyone else in the Western World.”

After conducting an intensive series of meetings in close coordination with the Air Force officials, the Von Neumann Committee concluded that: “The state of the art in the relevant branches of technology had reached the point where a practical rocket-powered ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead intercontinental distances and delivering it with sufficient accuracy could be built.” After the Eisenhower administration made the decision to go ahead with the development of ICBMs, the Von Neuman Committee focused its attention on the technical details of the system and established a rough outline of the design perimeters for an ICBM.

The specifications they established for Atlas, the first U.S ICBM to be started, called for a missile capable of delivering a one-megaton war-head over a 5,500-nautical-mile range with a CEP of five miles or better. Draper, always the technical optimist, “said he could foresee much better CEPs than five miles.”

In 1953, Convair approached Draper to discuss the development of the inertial guidance system that Dr. Kelly had recomm