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WAC Corporal
The WAC Corporal was the first operational sounding rocket developed in the United States. It was an offshoot of the Corporal program, that was started by a partnership between the United States Army Ordnance Corps and the California Institute of Technology (named "ORDCIT") in June 1944 with the ultimate goal of developing a military ballistic missile.
The California Institute of Technology had been fostering a group of rocket engineers in the 1930s at their Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (GALCIT) including Frank Malina, Jack Parsons, and Edward Forman. They became known as the "suicide squad" because so many of their early experiments at the Laboratory blew up. Some of the GALCIT enthusiasts had founded a business to manufacture rocket motors called Aerojet.
During the first years of World War II, GALCIT had pursued the development of both solid and liquid-fueled Jet Assisted Take Off (JATO) boosters to aid aircraft take off performance. As the group had experimented with rockets for several years before the war they were selected by the Army to pursue ballistic rocket development.
The first rocket designed by the group for the Army was designated as XFS10S100-A, also known as the Private, that being the first Army enlisted rank. The second ORDCIT project, which became the Corporal, named for the next Army enlisted rank, was a project originally named XF30L 20,000. The Corporal project envisioned a liquid propellant missile of 30-inch (760 mm) diameter and a power of 20,000 pounds-force (89 kN). The Signal Corps had created the requirement for a sounding rocket to carry 25 pounds (11 kg) of instruments to 100,000 feet (30 km) or higher. This was merged with a requirement of the Rocket R&D Division of the Ordnance Corps for a test vehicle. Frank Joseph Malina of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) proposed the development of a liquid-fueled sounding rocket to meet this request, thus providing a practical developmental step towards the ultimate Corporal missile.
The theoretical work setting the stage for the WAC Corporal was established in a 1943 paper "A Review and Preliminary Analysis of Long-Range Rocket Projectiles" by Malina and Hsue-Shen Tsien. Design was started by Frank Malina and Homer Joe Stewart to meet the Signal Corps' request with their study "Considerations of the Feasibility of Developing a 100,000-ft. Altitude Rocket." The final design work was done by a team of persons specializing in particular areas and involved significant efforts to derive performance from theoretical means (a relatively new method for America rocketry). The key persons responsible were M.M. Mills (booster), P.J. Meeks (sounding rocket), W.A. Sandburg and W.B. Barry (launcher and WAC nose), S.J. Goldberg (field tests) and H.J. Stewart (external ballistics) and G, Emmerson (photography).
For propulsion, the 38ALDW-1500 Aerojet liquid-fueled engine was chosen, which had been developed as a JATO system for Navy flying boats. The 38ALDW-1500 was modified for hypergolic propellants, with red fuming nitric acid as the oxidizer and furfuryl alcohol as the fuel. The WAC Corporal was intended to use a booster derived from the Tiny Tim air-to-ground attack rocket to gain sufficient speed along a launch tower for the Corporal's three tail fins to provide passive stability. Despite the emphasis upon a theoretical approach, it was deemed necessary to empirically prove the Corporal's aerodynamics, especially the three fin configuration, so a solid propellant one-fifth scale model called the Baby WAC was tested from a scaled-down launcher in July 1945. Four Baby WACs were flown.
The design of the WAC Corporal was innovative in that main structure containing the oxidizer, fuel, and pressurizing air tanks was of monocoque design, and that it had only three stabilizing fins, rather than the four that the Army preferred. Since the WAC Corporal was conceived as an atmospheric sounding rocket to be used in part near populated locations, it was provided with a parachute recovery system for the rocket itself, along with a separate system for recovering the Signal Corps radiosonde payload.
The production of the WAC Corporal was by Douglas Aircraft Corporation with critical parts supplied by JPL and the engines by Aerojet.
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WAC Corporal
The WAC Corporal was the first operational sounding rocket developed in the United States. It was an offshoot of the Corporal program, that was started by a partnership between the United States Army Ordnance Corps and the California Institute of Technology (named "ORDCIT") in June 1944 with the ultimate goal of developing a military ballistic missile.
The California Institute of Technology had been fostering a group of rocket engineers in the 1930s at their Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (GALCIT) including Frank Malina, Jack Parsons, and Edward Forman. They became known as the "suicide squad" because so many of their early experiments at the Laboratory blew up. Some of the GALCIT enthusiasts had founded a business to manufacture rocket motors called Aerojet.
During the first years of World War II, GALCIT had pursued the development of both solid and liquid-fueled Jet Assisted Take Off (JATO) boosters to aid aircraft take off performance. As the group had experimented with rockets for several years before the war they were selected by the Army to pursue ballistic rocket development.
The first rocket designed by the group for the Army was designated as XFS10S100-A, also known as the Private, that being the first Army enlisted rank. The second ORDCIT project, which became the Corporal, named for the next Army enlisted rank, was a project originally named XF30L 20,000. The Corporal project envisioned a liquid propellant missile of 30-inch (760 mm) diameter and a power of 20,000 pounds-force (89 kN). The Signal Corps had created the requirement for a sounding rocket to carry 25 pounds (11 kg) of instruments to 100,000 feet (30 km) or higher. This was merged with a requirement of the Rocket R&D Division of the Ordnance Corps for a test vehicle. Frank Joseph Malina of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) proposed the development of a liquid-fueled sounding rocket to meet this request, thus providing a practical developmental step towards the ultimate Corporal missile.
The theoretical work setting the stage for the WAC Corporal was established in a 1943 paper "A Review and Preliminary Analysis of Long-Range Rocket Projectiles" by Malina and Hsue-Shen Tsien. Design was started by Frank Malina and Homer Joe Stewart to meet the Signal Corps' request with their study "Considerations of the Feasibility of Developing a 100,000-ft. Altitude Rocket." The final design work was done by a team of persons specializing in particular areas and involved significant efforts to derive performance from theoretical means (a relatively new method for America rocketry). The key persons responsible were M.M. Mills (booster), P.J. Meeks (sounding rocket), W.A. Sandburg and W.B. Barry (launcher and WAC nose), S.J. Goldberg (field tests) and H.J. Stewart (external ballistics) and G, Emmerson (photography).
For propulsion, the 38ALDW-1500 Aerojet liquid-fueled engine was chosen, which had been developed as a JATO system for Navy flying boats. The 38ALDW-1500 was modified for hypergolic propellants, with red fuming nitric acid as the oxidizer and furfuryl alcohol as the fuel. The WAC Corporal was intended to use a booster derived from the Tiny Tim air-to-ground attack rocket to gain sufficient speed along a launch tower for the Corporal's three tail fins to provide passive stability. Despite the emphasis upon a theoretical approach, it was deemed necessary to empirically prove the Corporal's aerodynamics, especially the three fin configuration, so a solid propellant one-fifth scale model called the Baby WAC was tested from a scaled-down launcher in July 1945. Four Baby WACs were flown.
The design of the WAC Corporal was innovative in that main structure containing the oxidizer, fuel, and pressurizing air tanks was of monocoque design, and that it had only three stabilizing fins, rather than the four that the Army preferred. Since the WAC Corporal was conceived as an atmospheric sounding rocket to be used in part near populated locations, it was provided with a parachute recovery system for the rocket itself, along with a separate system for recovering the Signal Corps radiosonde payload.
The production of the WAC Corporal was by Douglas Aircraft Corporation with critical parts supplied by JPL and the engines by Aerojet.