Vince Houghton - Nuking the Moon - And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board

The answer, tragically, was no, it couldn’t. For the first few seconds after launch, it looked as though everything was going according to plan. The D-21 was in the process of clearing the back of the mother ship, until it got caught in the shock wave coming off the M-21 (remember, both of these aircraft were traveling at more than two times the speed of sound). The drone lost its aerodynamics, rolled 45 degrees, and smashed back into the rear part of the mother ship’s fuselage, nearly shearing it in two.

The two men in the M-21 were Lockheed test pilot Bill Park and Launch Control Officer (LCO) Ray Torick. As a test pilot, Park had been through aircraft emergencies before (in 1964, an A-12’s flight controls locked up on him and he had to eject from the plane at an altitude of only two hundred feet), so, amazingly, extraordinarily, unbelievably, whatever-elseably, he didn’t panic. He’s flying at Mach 2 and now his plane is in two pieces. I think you would be allowed an “Oh f**k, we’re gonna die” moment. But not Park and Torick. They’re totally cool. Completely in control. This is just another day at the office pushing the outside of the proverbial envelope for men like these with the Right Stuff.

Park and Torick rode their disintegrating airplane as it tumbled out of the sky. When it finally descended to an altitude safe for them to bail out, they ejected over the Pacific Ocean. Park survived, but Torick drowned.

There are several theories as to why Ray Torick did not live to fly another day. One is that he panicked and opened his suit’s visor too quickly, allowing the suit to fill with water. I’m not convinced. Ray Torick was a damn test pilot. Plus, those suits are extremely buoyant, and unless the suit’s body is damaged, it’s hard to believe enough water could flow into the helmet to drown someone. Another theory is just that: Shrapnel from either the crash or Torick’s ejection damaged the suit. When he hit the Pacific, water came in through the shrapnel holes, and even someone as fit as a test pilot wouldn’t be able to overcome the weight of the suit and the ocean. Finally, it’s altogether possible that Torick was injured from the crash or the ejection (pilot injuries from ejections are sadly all too common). Although the flight suits are buoyant, if he was severely injured he might not have been able to stay afloat.

Or it could have been a combination of any of these. Unfortunately, we will never know.

The death of Ray Torickwas the end of the Tagboard program. It had proven far too dangerous to launch a drone off the back of an aircraft in supersonic flight.

But that wasn’t the end of the D-21. You couldn’t safely launch a drone off the top of an airplane, but what if we dropped it from the bottom of one? But this wouldn’t be another modified A-12. Instead, the new D-21 program, which was eventually given the code name Senior Bowl, would drop drones using a U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bomber as a mother ship. This, of course, had one major advantage: gravity.

Yet there were still issues to deal with. For one, the B-52 is slow. Really slow. And a ramjet needs to be going very fast before its engine can do its thing. The solution was to attach a rocket booster to the drone, which would kick in once the B-52 released its cargo. The booster would propel the drone to supersonic speeds, at which point it would detach and the ramjet would take over. Not a bad idea. Maybe it could work…

…but then you’d be reading a different book.

The first time Johnson, Lockheed, and the Air Force tried to launch a D-21B (new name, but other than the down versus up launching, same thing), the drone fell off the plane before it had reached its launch point. It fell off the damn plane . A stripped nut on the B-52’s wing pylon gave out during the flight, and the drone went Geronimo.

The next series of launches was less embarrassing for Johnson and crew, but most of them were just as unsuccessful. An engine failure here, an electrical problem there, an internal navigation system going kaput. Problems on top of problems. But every so often things would go right. Maybe not all at the same time. Maybe not as perfectly right as the team would have liked. But enough to give it a shot in a real-world scenario.

That’s right, curveball: This one actually saw action.

Four operation missions were conducted under Senior Bowl in 1969, 1970, and 1971. All of them were flown over the People’s Republic of China, and each targeted the Chinese nuclear weapons test facility at Lop Nur, deep inside the Xinjiang Uygar region in the northwestern frontier of China. This was way inside China. The region is three times the size of France, and is so remote and isolated it is considered the country’s “Wild West.” The Chinese detonated their first atomic bomb there in 1964 and their first hydrogen bomb in 1967. It was an important intelligence target for the United States, and the perfect field test for the D-21B.

Here’s how the four Senior Bowl missions played out:

1. November 9, 1969—A B-52H flying out of Anderson Air Force Base in Guam brought the D-21B to the edge of the launch point (without it falling off the plane!). After a successful drop, the drone flew in the direction of the Lop Nur test facility. So far, so good. The RCS testing really paid off, as the Chinese had no idea what was happening, and they never detected the drone as it began its flight over their airspace. It continued on over Lop Nur… and then continued on. And on. And on. It was programmed to make a U-turn and head back to the open ocean, but the first operational D-21B failed to execute its turn and continued flying until it ran out of fuel and crashed somewhere in the eastern part of the Soviet Union (needless to say, not a great place to lose super-secret technology).

“Mission Success” Level? MILDLY CONFIDENT.

2. February 21, 1970—The mission began as the first: a successful drop, then the drone flew in the right direction (this might not seem like a big deal, but let’s give them all the credit we can), no Chinese detection, and it actually made the 180-degree turn back to the film drop point! And then it dropped its film, just as it was designed to.

But the parachute didn’t deploy correctly, and the film canister hit the Pacific Ocean at terminal velocity. Yes, the canister was equipped with flotation devices in the unlikely event of a water landing, but it wasn’t designed for meteoric speeds of descent. The canister, and the Chinese nuclear secrets it contained, were lost to the ocean depths.

“Mission Success” Level? DEEP SIGH.

3. March 4, 1971—This was as close to a perfect mission as we had. Up until the very end, at least. It started off great: good drop, good direction, no detection, pictures taken, turn made, canister detached, parachute opened!

But the C-130 tasked with snatching the descending canister out of the air missed its mark, and the canister splashed down into the Pacific.

But this is okay! Since its parachute deployed, the canister landed gently in the water. It had flotation devices for this exact contingency. Everything was still good to go. A U.S. Navy destroyer serving as a recovery ship was already on station and moving in to grab the precious cargo. Absolutely nothing could go wrong now. This is just academic at this point. Just mosey on up to the bobbing canister and pluck it out of the water. We’ve practiced this dozens of times, and literally nothing can possibly mess this up.

Okay, okay. Yes, I hate when people use “literally” in this way too. Sure, there was, like, one thing that could go wrong, but it’s so unbelievably remote that it’s not even worth mentioning. The thing was just sitting there in the water, ready to be picked up. It’s not like the Navy ship is going to run over the canister, or anything like that…