276 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
ally result in the development and production of a select few missiles 
which would be the best available in their respective categories. It 
was also intended that this period, like the Russian 5-year “brain 
picking” period, should fill many of the basic research and engineering 
gaps as well as build up a cadre of missile specialists throughout the 
supporting industries. 
This concept, coupled with the pressures of an uncertain interna- 
tional picture, was indirectly responsible for fostering the much-dis- 
cussed parallel programing of the missile efforts which is still in 
existence today (Jupiter-Thor). Although the international pres- 
sures during the immediate postwar period were not as acute (because 
of the then nuclear superiority in the United States) as they are today, 
they were, nevertheless, present. 
These pressures even in the postwar period did not permit a normal, 
step-by-step engineering approach. Instead they dictated the 
simultaneous support of several approaches to the same problem in 
the hope that one would pay off. It was recognized that each branch 
of the military service had special tactical obligations possibly re- 
quiring missiles in the same category, and, furthermore, that these 
requirements would naturally lead to competition and probably dupli- 
cation in some areas. Moreover, as the state-of-the-art developed, a 
more critical evaluation of these projects was possible. These evalua- 
tions resulted in canceling less promising projects (Navaho) and 
placing greater emphasis on the more promising ones (Atlas and 
Titan). 
As to the soundness of this philosophy, there is agreement among 
those close to the facts that this concept has permitted the investiga- 
tion of a greater number of approaches to a particular missile problem ; 
that this policy has also resulted in producing in a shorter period of 
time greater quantities of technical information, which was readily 
exchanged between projects, allowing one group to profit from the 
experience of the other; and that in the final analysis it has developed 
the potential for producing far better weapons systems in the future. 
Perhaps the most significant event after World War II which gave 
the greatest impetus to American rocketry was the shipment of stocks 
of unused German V-2’s for upper-air research and operational train- 
ing purposes. The highlight of this program came in 1946 when a 
two-stage vehicle consisting of a WAC Corporal atop a V-2 reached 
a record altitude of 244 miles and a speed of 5,000 miles per hour. 
To supplement the depleted V—2 stockpiles in the latter part of 1940, 
limited funds were appropriated for building bigger and better re- 
search rockets. The Aerobee and the Martin Viking were developed 
at this time. Viking 11 still holds the world’s altitude record for a 
single-stage rocket (158.4 miles). 
