Missiles

[DrPR]

OK, this may be stretching it a bit, but it does have something to do with ships, and it shows another use for CAD.

The ship I am modeling had the Talos anti-air and anti-surface missile system. It was a very early cruise missile, and the first fully developed ramjet. It was bleeding edge stuff back in the late 1940s and 1950s. Pretty antiquated by today's standards. Still, a conventional Talos round carried about twice the punch of the largest battleship rounds and had a range of about 40 nautical miles against surface ships. Also, it couldn't miss a target as large and slow moving as a ship - one shot and one ship sunk. It also could carry a nuclear warhead, in case someone wants to question what it could do to a battleship. It had a range of 130 nautical miles against air targets, but the longest distance actual intercept was 98 nautical miles.

Along the way while I was modeling the ship I became interested in the missile as a modeling project in itself - I need two on the ship model. I eventually created a web page for the Talos missile, and that evolved into a history of the development of the missile. I used the DesignCAD program to create the models and generate the images to illustrate the missile history. Discovering the history of the missile and creating the models has been a lot of fun.

The XPM missile was the first fully operational prototype surface to air missile. It's first intercept was in 1951. It has only a superficial resemblance to the Talos missile that was deployed.

One of the things I was interested in was the structure of the propellant grain in the boosters. I am working on the history of the development of these rockets. They were ten times larger than any solid fuel rocket that had been built at that time. A lot of what was learned from Talos went into the design of Minuteman and the space shuttle boosters.

The prototype booster image shows the "perforated" grain style that had been developed by 1949. It had lots of flame channels running lengthwise through the propellant grain. The propellant was a mixture of nitrocellulose (gun cotton) and nitroglycerine. This design turned out to have several inherent problems.

The Mk 11 booster had a new "star" pattern propellant, and used two different types of propellant. Both were mixtures of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine - 2800 pounds of class B explosive that burned for 5.2 seconds. It propelled the 3300 pound missile to Mach 1 in about two seconds and reached about Mach 2.2 and eight miles in five seconds! This was the production form of the booster. The "star" grain pattern in one form or another was used in nearly all subsequent large booster rockets.

I'm still gathering information for the booster history, but what I have so far is posted here:

http://www.okieboat.com/Booster%20History.html

I also posted an image of the CAD model of the missile. The missile cruised at Mach 2.7 at up to 80,000 feet.

I just wanted to show how a project can get out of hand and lead off on some odd tangents. This is part of the reason it is taking so long to finish the ship!

Phil

[tea monster]

Got to say I am impressed with how detailed this is. I do get the feeling that in a few years, when CAM has come along a bit, there would be the possibility of hitting 'print' and having a complete reproduction of the ship! That is a formidable job you have done there. How did you get all the details on the missiles and their interiors?

Owen

[Roscoe]

Very cool project Phil, the detailing is great, plus adding the history behind it just tops it off, nice work...

I'm curious, did you find the plans online or did you have to purchase them?

Dean

[Suvoroff]

I'd seen your TALOS website previously, and found it very impressive indeed! I worked my way through the whole thing over several evenings, though I confess the electronics were largely over my head.

I was stationed on the USS Long Beach, but by then the TALOS missile launcher and radars had been removed. There was a "sea story" that during the Vietnam War, a TALOS missile with a real warhead had been run out on the launcher and had somehow come loose and fell to the deck. After a bit they organized some deck department personnel who crept out there, took down the lifelines, and rolled the missile overboard while the Long Beach was cranked up to the highest possible speed.

Of course, like all sea stories, it was a good story, but I do not know if it is at all credible.

Yours,
James D. Gray

[DrPR]

Guys,

There is very little accurate Talos information on line (except my site, of course). Just about all of the original Talos documents have been declassified and are in the National Archives, but I estimate there are about 15,000 pages, and at $0.75 per copy that is a bit too expensive for this hobby. Some day I will visit College Park with a scanner and laptop and copy as much as I need.

There are a lot of photos at White Sands, and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (designed Talos, Terrier and Tarter, and produced the original proximity fuze in WWII) has published several historys of the Bumblebee Project and Navy ramjets. One of the most unexpected sources of information was the US Patent Office. The entire Talos missile and shipboard launching systems were patented, and dozens of these patents are available on line! The patent for the prototype Talos missile is No. 3,908,933 - 45 pages of text description and 106 drawings! I found patents for the Polaris, Terrier, Tartar and many other missiles, guns, ammunition, launching systems, jet engines, nuclear weapons components, etc.! Whodathunk?

I got photos and drawings from a number of sources over the years. Most of these were people who found my web page and sent me bits and pieces. For example, I recently got dimensioned plans for the Mk 11 booster from a fellow who once worked for Bendix building Talos missiles, and who recently helped refurbish two Talos missiles for a military park in South Bend, Indiana (where Talos missiles were made). His plans and data were essential for creating the drawings of the Mk 11 booster propellant grain.

One of the fellows I am in contact with was in charge of the Navy's Talos engineering division, and another was in charge of the Navy's missile systems engineering division at Port Hueneme, CA. These guys still have contacts "inside" and have been siphoning off documents as they were declassified. Another fellow is a Navy missile nut like me who has been collectiong information for years. We all exchange information as it becomes available.

Every now and then I get new information, and when I do I update the web page.

The correspondence the web page has generated has been amazing. One fellow needed plans for the Talos booster to build a full scale model for a museum exhibit of a sounding rocket that used the booster. Another was a fellow who wanted to know how to dispose of radioactive thorium-magnesium Talos airframe parts. Amazingly, I had recently obtained a document telling how to do it, and was able to send it to him and give him a contact name! Another fellow needed the Tech. Manual for the AN/SPS-10 radar antenna to repair the antenna on a destroyer museum ship, and I had one I got from a fellow who has restored the antenna on a carrier museum ship. I have sort of become a clearing house for Talos missile and Cleveland class information.

James,

Several of the fellows in the OK City missile house had also served on the Long Beach. I don't remember hearing that story, but I did hear a few other Long Beach sea tales.

Phil

[Jean-Paul Binot]

This is a very worthy effort indeed. Kudos to you!

I believe that weapon systems are often the most interesting part of warship models, and I was wondering why there were not more self-contained kits of such. To me at least, a range of well detailed kit models of guns on missile mounts with associated directors at a decent scale (say 1:50) would be irresistible.

On the Talos missile system itself, would there be reasonably simple but accurate drawings available on which to base a model at that scale?

[DrPR]

Jean-Paul,

I know of no dimensioned drawings of the Talos missile system right now. However, I am working on 2D drawings of the launcher and fire control radars and eventually I will be able to provide them.

When I was in officer's training there was a 1:48 scale operating Talos missile handling system - the heavy cruiser type. It was a beautiful model. Just push a sequence of buttons and it removed a missile from ready storage, moved it to the wing and fin area and then on to the launcher. Really slick. I remember thinking that some lucky guy actually got paid to build that model!

Someday I would like to build a working model of the CLG system like we had on the OK City. One of these years I plan to spend a week in Buffalo, New York, going through the missile house on the USS Little Rock CLG-5 museum ship, photographing and taking measurements of everything in the missile house. The Little Rock was the sister ship to the Oklahoma City and the missile house is almost identical to the one I worked in.

Phil

[Rusty White]

The Talos Missile was one the most beautiful ever created. GREAT job. I hope to get that good on DC3DMax someday, then watch out!

[Cadman]

Very cool, I love cutaways!

[DrPR]

Timothy,

So do I but they can be addictive! Remember, I am supposed to be building a model of the ship!

The missile has been frustrating. I still haven't found drawings or photos of the electronics compartment. I can vaguely see it in my mind from 40 years ago, but not enough to draw anything. Someday, maybe ...

The DesignCAD program does work pretty well for generating illustrations for texts and web pages. Rusty has created some great illustrations with it for his instruction sheets. Not bad for a $70 program!

Phil