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According to U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground Heritage Center curator Bill Heidner, when the Yuma Test Station was re-opened in 1951, six different test activities reported back to separate home stations across the United States. They didn’t share range space, and rarely discussed aspects of their respective test missions with one another.
Intriguingly, the truck-mounted MGR-1 ‘Honest John’, the United States’ first surface-to-surface nuclear-capable missile, was developed at Redstone Arsenal in 1951, and thus could theoretically have been what the soldiers saw. But Heidner says the system didn’t come to Yuma for testing until 1958, the year after the Soviet Union proved it possessed intercontinental missile capability by launching Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite.
“White Sands Missile Range was really busy in a post-Sputnik spasm, so some of the hiccups with Little John and Honest John were tested here,” said Heidner. “It resulted in many upgrades like telemetry and cinetheodolites and a lot of range improvements. We didn’t really have the instrumentation to accommodate missile testing prior to that: YPG was mainly a tube-launched projectile kind of place.”
| Date Taken: | 01.01.1952 |
| Date Posted: | 07.21.2021 17:38 |
| Photo ID: | 6743938 |
| VIRIN: | 520101-A-GZ301-001-CC |
| Resolution: | 1368x1107 |
| Size: | 945.55 KB |
| Location: | YUMA PROVING GROUND, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 121 |
| Downloads: | 13 |
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