Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Hot Big Day in Aviation & Space history & UFOs, Baby Nukes, Bhagavad Gita in Pink

July 17, 1902: Willis Carrier creates the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York. Praise Be Carrier.




Aviation/UFO History - First Man to Space on Wings
July 17, 1962 — Edwards AFB, CA
Maj. Robert Michael White is piloting Flight 62 of the X-15 at Edwards AFB, California. He flies it to 314,750 feet (59 miles), breaks altitude record qualifying him for USAF astronaut wings. For this, he is featured on the cover of the August 3 issue of Life magazine. At the top of his climb he sees a small grayish object “like a piece of paper” about 30–40 feet away. He exclaims, “There are things out there. There absolutely is!”



“A New Highway To Space,” LIFE Magazine (August 3, 1962; pp. 54-57)

Above Top Secret, Timothy Good (p. 366)

Space: Inside the Sky (TIME, July 27, 1962)

Air Force Major Robert White piloted a black needle-nosed X-15 rocket plane to an altitude of 59.6 miles—the highest man has ever flown in a winged aircraft, and a respectable second to the hundred-mile-high orbits of U.S. and Soviet astronauts. "For the first time," said Test Pilot White, 38, "it seemed as though I was up in this dark blue sky, instead of looking up at it." Like the astronauts before him, he was overwhelmed by the "fantastic view."

White's record-breaking flight over California's Mojave Desert (highest previous flight: 47 miles) made him the fifth man to receive NASA's pilot-astronaut badge, awarded to those "qualified to operate or control a powered vehicle in flight 50 miles above the earth."

This brief extra burst added 284 m.p.h. to his speed—which reached 3,784 m.p.h. —and six miles to his maximum altitude, disrupting the carefully planned flight pattern. But since he was flying an airplane rather than a capsule, the remedy was simple. White simply maneuvered the X-15 back on course, and made a perfect touchdown practically atop the magenta-smoke landing marker on California's Rogers Dry Lake. He emerged from the plane to greet his seven-year-old son trailing his air-conditioning tube behind him like an umbilical cord.

Closest Call. The U.S.'s hottest airplane (top speed to date: 4,159 m.p.h.) has given handsome, soft-spoken Bob White fewer problems than the P-51 he flew in World War II. Early in 1945, when only 20. White led a squadron of the Eighth Air Force's 355th Fighter Group in a treetop-level attack on a Luftwaffe airstrip.

...
White spent 2½ months in Nazi prison camps. After the war, he came back home and entered New York University as a freshman. He no sooner had his degree (electrical engineering) than the Korean war broke out. He had kept up his flying in the Air Force Reserve, and in 1951 was recalled to active duty. Though White saw no combat in Korea, he decided to stay in the Air Force.

New Mystery. After the sky-stabbing record flight last week, four Xis pilots —White. Walker, North American's Scott Crossfield and Navy Commander Forrest Petersen—journeyed to Washington, where President Kennedy gave them the Robert J. Collier Trophy, presented annually since 1911 for outstanding achievement in flight. But for White and his fellow X-15 pilots, the greatest reward for their work is the satisfaction of probing the mysteries inside the sky. In last week's flight Bob White found a new mystery for scientists to puzzle over: through the X-15's thick left quartz window, he saw a strange sight. "There are things out there," he said dramatically over his voice radio. "There absolutely is." As White later described one "thing": "It looked like a piece of paper the size of my hand tumbling slowly outside the plane. It was greyish in color, and about 30 to 40 feet away. I haven't any idea what it could be."

Bob White setting a previous altitude record 2 years earlier in the X-15. Only about 25 miles...



NASA documentary on the X-15 from 1962 Video


July 17, 1962: the United States conducted its 100th and last atmospheric nuclear test in Nevada: Little Feller I, the second operational test of the Davy Crockett recoilless rifle and its W54 warhead (plutonium-239, yield = .018 kilotons). More than 1,000 troops took part in on-site exercises.





Davy Crockett Atomic Battle Group Delivery System could fire conventional warheads but its big crowd pleaser was the ability to fire a W-54 warhead with a variable yield between 10 and 250 kilotons. The intent was for American infantrymen in Eastern Europe to directly counter Soviet armored units if the Cold War went hot.

Despite very serious concerns about its battlefield accuracy and risks to its operational security in wartime, the Davy Crockett and 400 W54 warheads were deployed in Guam, Okinawa, South Korea, and West Germany from 1961-71.



Rare high quality footage: Robert Kennedy watches a test of the Davy Crockett on July 17 fired from a stationary 155 millimeter launcher:



Here is the original and full(?) declassified version of the US Army’s official film report about Little Feller I and its concurrent military exercise, codenamed Operation Ivy Flats, as well as the preceding Little Feller II test on July 7, 1962:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv_q8q6Z9_I


At 51 pounds, the variable yield W54 (.01-1 kt) was the lightest and the lowest-yield implosion-type US A-bomb ever deployed. It also armed the GAR-26A Falcon air-to-air missile carried by F-102A interceptors (1961-72), and the Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM, 1964-88) for Dam & bridge annihilation.


"MISSILES AND MEN
Some of the weapons illustrated on this page make an individual infantryman more powerful armed than a bomber squadron of World War II; others give him a fighting edge over the most powerful tanks yet devised, Right, top: Mauler, a small vehicle-borne ground to air weapon deadly to strafing planes. Below, the T-55 chemical launcher. Close up, SS11 wire guided anti-tank missiles. On the jeep in the foreground in the launcher for Davy Crockett, a recoilless rifle which fires a nuclear warhead."


Davy Crockett Makes History with a Little Feller at the NTS




Mayer, Epton, and Schwartz also developed the 280mm artillery shell for the Army’s massive M65 atomic cannon (though not the nuclear explosive inside it).

Interesting Factoid: Even at .018 kilotons (18 tons), the explosive yield of the Little Feller I test was almost twice as large as the 11-ton yield of the most powerful conventional bomb currently in the US arsenal: the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (aka "Mother of All Bombs").





Books formerly owned by J. Robert Oppenheimer




Direct PDF Book listing (53 pages)