Snark (SM-62) Development History
In August 1945 the Army Air Forces (AAF) solicited proposals for a subsonic missile with a range of 5,000 miles. Northrop Aircraft of Hawthorne, California, submitted a proposal, and in March 1946 the AAF awarded the aircraft manufacturer a research contract to study the feasibility of designing a subsonic missile that could deliver a 5,000- pound payload at ranges between 1,500 and 5,000 miles. Company president Jack Northrop called the new missile Snark, named after a mythical creature author Lewis Carroll described as part snake and part shark.
The Snark almost died on the drawing board. In December 1946, budget cutbacks prompted the AAF to cancel the program, but at the last minute Jack Northrop was able to convince the AAF to save the program. To win the Air Force's support the aircraft company president guaranteed that his firm could develop the missile in 2 1/2 years at a cost of $80,000 each, based on a production run of 5,000 units. It was a promise the company proved unable to keep.
Northrop designated its first Snark test model the N-25. The missile looked much like an airplane. It was 52 feet long and its sharply swept wings had a span of 43 feet. Powered by an Allison 533 turbojet engine, the N-25 had a launch weight of 28,000 pounds. Testing was scheduled to begin at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, in 1949, but numerous design problems delayed the first flight until April 1951.
Even before the first Snark left the ground, however, the Air Force amended the performance requirements. In June 1950 the Air Material Command ordered Northrop to provide the missile with a supersonic dash capability, and also directed the manufacturer to increase the payload to 7,000 pounds. Further complicating the development effort, the Air Force imposed more stringent guidance requirements, directing that at least half the missiles be able to strike within 1,500 feet of their targets.
To satisfy the Air Force's new requirements, Northrop redesigned the missile, calling the new weapon the N-69 or Super Snark. An enhanced version of the earlier model, the N-69 was 67 feet long, 15 feet longer than its predecessor, and also had longer wings. These changes, coupled with the new warhead, increased the launch weight from 28,000 to 49,000 pounds. To carry the additional weight, the early N-69 test models were equipped with Allison 571 engines. The final D and E models were equipped with Pratt and Whitney 557 turbojet engines.
In 1952 the Air Force ordered a reluctant Northrop to move its Snark test program from Holloman to the Air Force Atlantic Missile Range at Patrick AFB on Florida's east coast. Once in Florida, between 1953 and 1957 Northrop encountered further delays when the Air Force failed to complete vital test facilities on time.
Apart from numerous delays created by the Air Force, Northrop was running into plenty of roadblocks of its own making. In May 1955 tests demonstrated that poor handling characteristics rendered the missile unable to execute a "terminal dive" directly into its target. To compensate, Northrop modified the missile so that the warhead would be carried in a detachable nosecone. The first Snark to carry the redesigned warhead, the N-69C, logged its first test flight in late September 1955.
The Snark test program had more than its share of dramatic moments. So many missiles crashed off that Florida coast that the waters around Cape Canaveral were said to be "Snark Infested." On one test flight a missile heading out over the South Atlantic unexpectedly veered off course and disappeared into the rain forests of Brazil. The press had a field day. Noted one Miami paper, "They shot a Snark into the air, it fell to the earth they know not where."
As the miscues mounted, and the development program continued to stretch on year after year, the Strategic Air Command (SAC), the organization slated to receive the new weapon, began to question the missile's utility. As early as 1951 SAC complained about Snark's vulnerability, both on the ground and in the air. SAC planners noted that the missile would be launched from unprotected launch sites. Once in the air, they noted that the missile was slow, lacked defensive armament, and could not make evasive maneuvers.
Between 1955 and 1958 Northrop launched an extensive campaign to save its beleaguered program. In articles in the aviation press it defended the missile, pointing out that unlike bombers, Snark did not need an expensive tanker fleet for refueling, and neither did it put highly trained air crews at risk. Furthermore, Northrop argued that Snark was cost effective. About 1/10 the size of a B-52, the missile cost only l/20 as much.
Much to Northrop's consternation, advances in ballistic missile technology were rapidly encroaching on Snark's technological niche. When the Air Force initiated the Snark program in 1946, it anticipated that winged, air-breathing missiles would be able to do many things that ballistic missiles could not; namely, carry a heavy 7,000-pound fission warhead and bulky inertial guidance system.
By 1954, however, improvements in ballistic missile technology offset Snark's early advantage. The advent of thermonuclear weapons shrank the size of the warhead from 7,000 to 1,500 pounds, yet increased the explosive yield 50 times. In conjunction with improvements in the warhead, American engineers also made great strides in developing large liquid-fuel rocket engines, new guidance systems, and a new series of blunt- body reentry vehicles.
The net effect was that by the late mid-1950s ICBMs promised to deliver nuclear weapons far more efficiently than Snark. In comparing the two weapon systems Air Force planners envisioned that the ICBMs, based in heavily protected underground silos, would be much harder to destroy than the Snarks in their above-ground hangars. Snark was also far more vulnerable in the air. Once in flight the ICBM would be all but invulnerable, whereas the subsonic Snark, lacking both defensive armament and the capability for evasive maneuvers, could be intercepted by conventional air defense systems.
In 1958 General Donald Irving, the commander of the Air Research and Development Command, the organization charged with overseeing the missile program, cited Snark as an outstanding example of unwarranted funding. SAC commander General Thomas Power also harbored serious reservations about the missile, arguing that Snark would add little to SAC's already potent nuclear strike force. Tired of the endless debate, Power wanted to either fix the missile or terminate the program.
Tests by SAC missile crews in the late 1950s graphically demonstrated Snark's poor reliability and accuracy. Of the first seven launches conducted by Air Force crews, only two of the missiles reached the target area and only one warhead landed within 4 miles of its aiming point. Further tests revealed that on flights of 2,100 miles, on average, Snark had a degree of accuracy of plus or minus 20 miles. Accuracy was not the missile's only shortcoming. Random mechanical failures also marred the test program. Based on the last ten test Snark launches, the Air Force estimated that the missile stood only a one-in-three chance of getting off the ground.