Hello All,

Last night I came across a photograph of an unusual Titan II round on page 160 of the book "To Reach the High Frontier: A History of U.S. Launch Vehicles," Edited by Roger D. Launius and Dennis R. Jenkins (University Press of Kentucky, published 2002). I'll try to scan it at my local Fedex-Kinko's so that I can e-mail it to myself and post it here. It is a Cape Canaveral test round, lifting off from one of the Titan pads on "ICBM Row" at the Cape, and it has the normal "bare metal and white, with black roll pattern and USAF insignia" Titan II test round paint scheme [the caption says, "Image 4-2: A Titan II ICBM lifts off from Cape Canaveral during a test flight in 1964. (USAF Photo)"]. BUT:

Its re-entry vehicle is *not* the big General Electric Mark 6 (which was white on some Titan II test rounds, but black on others [as well as on the operational Titan IIs]). Instead, the top of the second stage tapers down--in a conical transition that looks very much like the one on the Titan I's second stage--to a "blunt nose cone/cylindrical body/conical 'flared' rear skirt" re-entry vehicle (white in color, in the black-and-white photograph) that looks just like the Titan I's re-entry vehicle (or a later Atlas' re-entry vehicle). Yet the missile is definitely a Titan II, having a constant-diameter airframe right up to the top transition section on the second stage. Also:

Has anyone seen a picture of this (or a similar) Titan II round? If so, why did it (or they?) fly with the much smaller Titan I (or Atlas, perhaps) "cone/cylinder/flare" re-entry vehicle? (The very first Titan II, flown in March of 1962, had a GE Mark 6 re-entry vehicle, or at least a boilerplate version of one--it was white on that first Titan II). Unless the USAF was considering a "de-rated" version of the missile to strike smaller targets, using the smaller re-entry vehicle seems like a backward step, but I'm sure they had some good reason for flying it in that configuration.

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NAR #54895 SR

That book's available online: http://books.google.com/books?id=mU...epage&q&f=false (limited # of preview pages; $56 to get the whole book)

Here's a grab of the photo:

Attached Thumbnails

 

__________________
Rich Holmes
Camillus, NY
Secretary / newsletter editor
Syracuse Rocket Club

http://richsrockets.wordpress.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Titan_launches shows only 4 Titan II launches from Canaveral in 1964. Could have been a testing pod.

kj

Are you sure that isn't a Titan I launch, and the authors of the book made a typo?

__________________
-Wolfram v. Kiparski
NAR 28643 - TRA 15520
MTMA Section #606 President

As the OP says, it looks like constant diameter, and the roll pattern looks like Titan II. Furthermore according to the above Wikipedia link, no Titan I was launched out of Cape Canaveral after 1962.

__________________
Rich Holmes
Camillus, NY
Secretary / newsletter editor
Syracuse Rocket Club

http://richsrockets.wordpress.com

The "bible" for the Titan II is "Titan II, A History of a Cold War Missile Program" by David K. Stumpf. According to Stumpf, flight N-11, which was the eighth flight overall and took place on 6 Dec 1962, "carried a Mark 4 Mod 2A reentry vehicle, the reentry vehicle used on Titan I and Atlas F. One of the primary objectives of this flight was to evaluate the interaction of the Mark 4 reentry vehicle with the missile subsystems, such as arming and fuzing, as well as it subsequent flight (sic)." The book later states this was the only flight with the Mark 4 reentry vehicle.

I'd trust Stumpf (bad editing and all) over wiki any day!

Yeah, it was a Titan II. There was one Titan II launched with the Mk 4 payload in 1962. I even found another photo of it:

__________________
-Wolfram v. Kiparski
NAR 28643 - TRA 15520
MTMA Section #606 President

Well, the Wikipedia article ("wiki", by the way, is not a synonym for "Wikipedia") agrees completely with what you've quoted, including — now that I know to look for "Mark 4" — that this was the only Titan II / Mark 4 flight.

Not that I disagree on the trustworthiness of Wikipedia vs. professionally researched sources in general, of course. But in this case both match up (while the OP's source has a different, and I presume wrong, year).

__________________
Rich Holmes
Camillus, NY
Secretary / newsletter editor
Syracuse Rocket Club

http://richsrockets.wordpress.com

That's interesting. I thought all operational Titan II missiles were mated with Mk 6 systems. If they tested a Mk 4 on it, I wonder if they were having issues with the Mk 6 and contemplating moving Titan 1 warheads over at the time of testing?

Another question that comes to my mind, since I'm not very familiar with the payloads...were the re-entry vehicles designed to accept different nuclear warhead variations, or were they dedicated to a single nuclear warhead design? BTW, I vaguely recall that multiple warhead systems showed up around the Mk 12 era, give or take a mark .

Where are our retired missile crew YORF members?

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I love sanding.

WOW--I thank you all very much for your replies and posted photographs & information! I have seen variations of Titan I nose sections that were used on earlier test rounds before the slender Mark 4 re-entry vehicle was flown on them (a very blunt, rounded-tipped cone, and a biconical cone on at least one Titan I [which exploded on the pad]), but I had never seen a Titan II with anything other than the big GE Mark 6 re-entry vehicle. I can only guess at why the USAF flew a Mark 4 re-entry vehicle on a Titan II, but perhaps they envisioned possibly replacing the Atlas F and Titan I missiles with Titan IIs (in addition to the 54 Titan IIs that were emplaced in their own silos), and that these Titan IIs would be fitted with the warheads from the withdrawn Atlas F and Titan I missiles (rather like how the 9-megaton Titan II warheads were later used in free-fall bombs carried by jet bombers, after the Titan IIs were withdrawn from service). Also:

Frognbuff is correct--the book does contain several glaring errors (and possibly more that I haven't encountered yet, as I've just started reading it--I got my like-new copy from an AbeBooks.com www.abebooks.com bookseller for only about $8 or $9). For example, the caption of a photo (on page 12) of a Saturn V launch--a telephoto shot of the vehicle rising beyond an American flag in the foreground--says: "Image 0-3: The mighty Saturn V launch vehicle rocketed American astronauts to the Moon in the latter 1960s and early 1970s. Here the launch of an unmanned Saturn V rocket takes place in October 1967. (NASA Photo no. 67PC-0397)" [It was the very *first* Saturn V, and it was launched on November 9, 1967.] I'm not sorry I bought the book, though, as it contains photos and drawings I've never seen before, along with personal notes and recollections from the developers of U.S. launch vehicles.

__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR