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Principles of Guided Missiles and Nuclear Weapons, 1959, was created to introduce Navy
personnel to these weapons. This document was never classified and does not contain any
classified information. It is provided as a historical document demonstrating the technology
and implied tactics midway through the USSoviet Cold War.
For a current understanding of the effects of nuclear weapons and first responder tactics to
minimize death and disability, see the Federal Emergency Management Agency or Center for
Disease Control or the International Atomic Energy Agency web sites.
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INTRODUCTION TO GUIDED MISSILES
Definition
A GUIDED MISSILE is an unmanned
vehicle that travels above the earth's surface;
it carries an explosive war head or other
useful payload; and it contains within itself
some means for controlling its own
trajectory or flight path. A glide bomb is
propelled only by gravity. But it contains a
device for controlling its flight path, and is
therefore a guided missile.
The Navy's guided missiles, including
Terrier, Talos, Sidewinder, Sparrow,
Regulus, and Polaris, meet all the
requirements of the above definition.
The Army's Honest John is a 3ton rocket
that is capable of carrying a nuclear
warhead. But because it contains no
guidance system, Honest John is not a
guided missile. The Navy's homing
torpedoes are selfpropelled weapons with
elaborate guidance systems. The homing
torpedo can hunt for a target and, when it
finds one, steer toward it on a collision
course. But because it does not travel above
the earth's surface, the homing torpedo is not
a guided missile.
A MISSILE is any object that can be
projected or thrown at a target. This
definition includes stones and arrows as well will be described in some detail in a
supplementary volume.
The reader will find some repetition in this
text; this is intentional. The subject is
complex; it deals with many different phases
of science and technology. The beginning
student of guided missiles faces a paradox.
We might say that you can't thoroughly
understand any part of a guided missile unless
you understand all the other parts first. We
will deal with this problem by first discussing
the guided missile as a whole, with a brief
consideration of its propulsion, control,
guidance, and launching systems. Each of
these subjects will then be treated at some
length in one or more later chapters.
All guided missiles contain electronic devices;
some of these devices are very complex. A
sound understanding of the operating
principles of missile guidance is impossible
without some background in basic electricity
and electronics. Appendix A of this text
covers these subjects briefly. It may be used
for a quick review. Students who have no
background in electronics should use appendix
A as an introduction to the subject; it should,
if possible, be supplemented by further
reading in basic texts on electricity and
electronics.
Guidance systems
The history of guidance systems is short. All
of the significant developments are recent,
principally because the state of electronics
before the nineteen forties was relatively
primitive.
The Americans developed a flying bomb
called the Bug during the first World War; it
was simply a pilotless aircraft, with a range
of about 400 miles. The Bug was ready for
production by the middle of 1918. But by
that time it was apparent that the war would
be over in a few months, and the Bug was
never produced. Its accuracy would have
been poor; it had no guidance system. But
the Bug led to the suggestion that pilotless
aircraft could be controlled by radio.
Beginning in 1924, both the Army and Navy
experimented with radiocontrolled planes.
Several moderately successful flights were
made, with the pilotless plane controlled by
radio from a parent plane that flew nearby.
This project was dropped in 1932 for lack of
money.
In 1935, an American highschool student
named Walter Good built and flew a radiocontrolled
model airplane. This was the first
time on record that a plane of any kind had
been successfully launched, flown, and
landed while under complete radio control
from the ground. One of the problems that
plagued the armed forces was stabilizationkeeping
the aircraft on an even keel so that it
could respond properly to radio commands.
Because a wellbuilt model airplane is
inherently stable, Good didn't have to worry
about this problem. His contribution was to
design and build a miniature radio receiver
coupled to the control surfaces through a
miniature servo system.
The Army and Navy resumed their
experiments with radio command during the
late thirties, and by 1940 both had developed
radiocontrolled planes for use as target
drones. As we will note below, missiles with
elementary preset and command guidance
were used during World War II. But
successful beamriding, radar and infrared
homing, hyperbolic, and inertial guidance
systems are all postwar developments.