STUDIES IN MILITARY AND S1RATEGIC HISTORY

General Editor: Michael Dockrill, Senior Lecturer in War Studies, King's College, London.

This major series of books on nineteenth and twentieth-century military, naval and air history explores hitherto neglected areas of the subject or provides fresh interpretations of existing material. The series covers the whole range of issues - strategic, diplomatic, economic and financial -involved in preparations for the conduct of, and the ending of, wars.

Published Titles

R. J. Q. Adams (editor) THE GREAT WAR, 1914-1918: Essays on the Military, Political and Social History of the First World War

Rip Bulkeley THE SPUTNIKS CRISIS AND EARLY UNITED STATES SPACE POLICY: A Critique of the Historiography of Space

David A. Charters THE BRITISH ARMY AND JEWISH INSURGENCY IN PALESTINE,1945-1947

Andrew J. Crozier APPEASEMENT AND GERMANY'S LAST BID FOR COLONIES

David Devereux BRITISH DEFENCE POLICY TOWARDS THE MIDDLE EAST, 1948-1956

John Robert Ferris THE EVOLUTION OF BRITISH STRATEGIC POLICY, 1919-1926

Alfred GoUin THE IMP ACT OF AIR POWER ON THE BRITISH PEOPLE AND THEIR GOVERNMENT, 1909-1914

John Gooch ARMY, STATE AND SOCIETY IN ITALY, 1870-1915

G. A. H. Gordon BRITISH SEAPOWER AND PROCUREMENT BETWEEN THE WARS: A Reappraisal of Rearmament

Stephen Hartley THE IRISH QUESTION AS A PROBLEM IN BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY, 1914-1918

Brian Holden Reid J. F. C. FULLER: Military Thinker

Thomas R. Mockaitis BRITISH COUNTERINSURGENCY, 1919-1960

The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy A Critique of the Historiography of Space

Rip Bulkeley

M MACMILLAN

©Rip Bulkeley 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991 978-0-333-53814-2

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WCIE 7DP.

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

First published 1991

Published by MACMILLAN ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Bulkeley, Rip The Sputniks crisis and early United States Space policy: a critique of the Historiography of space. - (Studies in Military and Strategic History) 1. Outer space. Exploration by United States, History I. Title. II. Series 919.904 ISBN 978-1-349-11983-7 ISBN 978-1-349-11981-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-11981-3

This book is dedicated to all who have helped me to learn the crafts of writing and research, and especially to S. H. Bur­ton, Lawrence Freedman, Christopher Meredith, Paul Rogers and E. P. Thompson, and to the memory of John Pierson Bulkeley.

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations and Technical Terms

PART I CRISIS

1 A Devastating Blow 2 Ad Homines - Eisenhower and Johnson before 1953

PART II TRUMAN

3 Advice on Missiles for Truman 4 Advice on Space for Truman 5 Intelligence for Truman 6 The Truman Space Policy

PART III INTERNATIONAL GEOPHYSICAL YEAR

7 Proposing Satellites for the IGY 8 Satellites in the IGY

PART IV EISENHOWER

9 Advice for Eisenhower 10 Intelligence for Eisenhower 11 Eisenhower's Early Space Policy

PART V JUDGEMENTS

12 Post-Mortem 13 Versions of Events

Notes and References Index

Vll

Vlll

xi Xlll

1

3 19

27 29 45 60 70

87 89

104

123

125 145 156

183

185 201

215 270

Preface

During the 'Star Wars' debates of the 1980s I became increasingly curious about the underlying attitudes towards space policy of people in the United States. The more I learned about the field the more likely it seemed that the irrational but indefeasible anxieties expressed in such books as Soviet Conquest from Space by Peter James, or Strike from Space by Phyllis Schafty and Chester Ward, had at least part of their origins in the trauma of the American people's first frustrating and humiliating encounter with the problems of seeking political advantage from would-be technological feats in space, the sputniks crisis of 1957-8.1

According to Walt Rostow:

There is no clear analogy in American history to the crisis triggered by the launching of the Soviet earth satellite on October 4, 1957. This intrinsically harmless act of science and engineering was also, of course, both a demonstration of foreseeable Soviet capability to launch an ICBM and a powerful act of psychological warfare. It immediately set in motion forces in American political life which radically reversed the Nation's ruling conception of its military problem, of the appropriate level of the budget, and of the role of science in its affairs. The reaction reached even deeper, opening a fundamental reconsideration not only of the organization of the Department of Defense but also of the values and content of the American educational system and of the balance of values and objectives in contemporary American society as a whole.2

Taking Rostow's sketch of the sputniks crisis as a list of possible topics for a book with the present title, it is only fair to warn the potential reader that several will not be covered. The sequence of events discussed in these pages does not extend far beyond the early months of 1958. Nothing will be found here about the origins of NASA or the 1958 National Defense Education Act, for example, and very little about any aspect of the Eisenhower administration's positive space policy from 1958 to 1960. It has even been necessary to neglect certain aspects of the immediate sputniks crisis, such as President Eisenhower's failing health and the internal politics of the Democratic Party. On the other hand four chapters are given to the embryonic space policy of the United States under Eisenhower's predecessor, Harry Truman. The reason for this is that the

viii

Preface ix

focus of my interest has been the enduring influence of the sputniks crisis on American perceptions of the earliest phase of their country's space effort. As a powerful act of psychological warfare the sputniks should have left some mark on American culture, and the most likely place to find it was in the writing of space history itself, a discipline in which the bulk of original scholarship to date has been contributed by Americans.

From an early stage in my research I was struck by the obscurity of the factual record of the development of American space policy between 1945 and 1957. Where possible I have done what I can to sort things out. This has prevented me from conforming with the convention under which scholars do not correct each other's mistakes in public, which is to say, in the presence of the fellow-citizens who depend on their expertise and who frequently pay their salaries. There was also the important consideration that widespread carelessness with the facts of the pre-sputnik period might itself be evidence for the persistence of an overly subjective historiographical tradition. It is surely right to be concerned for the intellectual health of a scholarly discipline within which a great American university can publish a historical study, apparently endorsed by two of the most eminent historians of post-war American science, which ignores both the vertical V -2 flights of the 1940s and the first two sputniks, to proclaim without even an argument that American scientists and engineers launched the first vertical sounding rocket to enter space and even, at one point, the world's first artificial satellite.3

But I must also admit that my own attempts at resolving factual difficul­ties have had only limited success, for several reasons. Though American archives have a well-earned reputation for their openness and generosity to visiting researchers, many important documents remain classified in whole or in part. A foreigner working in this field faces the additional obstacle that some important secondary sources, to which most American scholars have access, are still restricted. In my case there were also severe financial constraints on the amount of time I could give to primary research in the United States, and hence on the number of interviews I could conduct and the number of archives I could visit. This is of course a problem for all historical researchers to some extent. But it was exacerbated in this instance by the degree of factual unreliability in the secondary literature over matters ranging from minor details, such as the date of an international scientific meeting, to key events such as an official Soviet statement. Thus after doing the best I could with my· limited skills and resources I am aware that many errors must remain, to which I would welcome corrections, provided of course that those who tender them shall have first consulted the evidence cited here, and,. not merely the oral tradition of what too many people now

x Preface

'know' to have happened between 1945 and 1957, but which frequently did not. (Having departed so often from the conventional wisdom, I have taken care wherever possible to provide references to primary sources in sufficient detail for them to be checked with ease.)

To fellow peace researchers and campaigners who may be discomfited by my tendency, for the sake of narrative convenience, to assume the strategic values and global perspective of bygone governments of the United States and their advisers, I can only plead that I have feIt it more important to deliver some actual grounds for the revision of a historical tradition which still suffers from its origins in the Cold War, than to preach against the familiar lunacies of the nuclear arms race. I hope I have done enough to show that, while it may yet be too early to rescue space history entirely from the corruption of cold-war attitudes, it is not too early to try.

RIP BULKELEY

April 1990

Acknowledgements

Research for this book was conducted in. the following libraries and archives: in Britain - Bodleian Law Library; Bodleian Library; British Library, Bloomsbury; British Library of Economic and Political Science; British Interplanetary Society Library; British Newspaper Library; Inter­national Institute of Strategic Studies; Radcliffe Science Library; Rhodes House Library; Royal Society Library; Science Museum Library; Science Reference Library; US Information Service London Reference Center; University College Library; and the World Data Centre Cl (Geophysical and Solar), Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory. In the United States - Boston Public Library; Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; Georgetown University Library; Harry S. Truman Library; Library of Congress; Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; MIT Library; NASA History Office; National Academy of Sciences; National Air and Space Museum Library; and National Archives. I am grateful for the help of staff at all these institutions, and particularly for that of Dr Lee Saegesser at the NASA History Office and Dr David Haight at the Eisenhower Library.

I would like to thank the Cincinnati Historical Society for permission to reproduce from its Bulletin an excerpt from the diary of Oliver Gale (p. 190), the NASA History Office for permission to quote from transcripts of Oral-History interviews with E. M. Galloway, B. N. Harlow, H. E. Newell, R. M. Salter, and G. W. Siegel, and the Columbia University Oral History Research Office for permission to cite 'The Reminiscences of Richard Bissell, 1967', the transcript of an interview in the Dial History Collection of Columbia University. Passages from transcripts of Oral History interviews conducted with Professor James Van Allen and Dr Charles Johnson as part of the Space Astronomy Oral History Project at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, have been reproduced with the general consent of the Project. Since copyright rests with interviewees in the latter case every effort was made to secure their explicit permission and the author is grateful to Professor Van Allen for having granted it. Unfortunately it has not been possible to contact Dr Johnson directly, but since his interview was assigned 'public' status within the Project and the quotation has been made in good faith it is assumed that no objection will be raised.

I am especially grateful to all those who agreed to be interviewed as part

xi

xii Acknowledgements

of my research (p. 216), and to the following correspondents for their help with particular details or general background: Dr Ray Cline, Dr Desmond King-Hele, Sir Bernard Lovell, Dr Allan Needell, Professor Alan Shapley, and Dr Hans Ziegler.

I would also like to express my gratitude to my wife, Jane Bulkeley, for her constant support, to the Institute of Policy Studies for its gen­erous hospitality in Washington, and to Fran Bagenal, Alex Godden, Ellen Gruenbaum, Gerry Hale, Hayden Peake, and Paul Stares for their assistance with various matters. During the initial gestation of this book as a doctoral thesis written at King's College London I received much needed encouragement and good advice from Professor Lawrence Freedman. I hope that some of it at least has been put to good use.

Needless to say none of the individuals or institutions named above is in any way responsible for my output from their input.

RIP B ULKELEY

List of Abbreviations and Technical Terms

Familiar abbreviations and acronyms such as 'Ltr', 'J.', 'CIA', or 'USAF' and any acronym used only in a single passage and explained at that point have been omitted. A separate list of abbreviations and acronyms for archival sources is given in the Notes (p. 215).

AAF ABC aerodynamics

aeronomy

AFB AMC Annals APL

apogee ARDC ARS

Biog. BoB BuAer

CalTech CSAGI

DCI DEW Line DOD DOS DTM

US Army Air Forces. US Atomic Energy Commission. study of the motion and control of solid bodies in air, and of air in motion. study of the physics and chemistry of the upper atmosphere. US Air Force Base. USAF Air Materiel Command. Annals of the IGY. Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University. maximum altitude of missile trajectory or satellite orbit. USAF Air Research and Development Command. American Rocket Society.

Biographical. White House Bureau of the Budget. US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics.

California Institute of Technology. Comire Special de l' Annee Geophysique Internationale.

Director of Central Intelligence. Distant Early Warning (radar) Line. US Department of Defense. US Department of State. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution.

Xlll

XIV

GPO

HMSO House

IAF IATME

IAU ICBM ICIC

ICSU IGY IPY2/3 IRBM IRE IUGG

HC JPL JRDB

mantle

mass ratio

MCI Mc/s

MIT MRBM

NACA NAS NASA NRL NSC NSF

List of Abbreviations and Technical Terms

US Government Printing Office, Washington.

His Majesty's Stationery Office. US Congress, House of Representatives.

International Astronautical Federation. International Association of Terrestrial Magnetism and Electricity. International Astronomical Union. Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile. Interdepartmental Committee on Interplanetary Communications, Soviet Academy of Sciences. International Council of Scientific Unions. International Geophysical Year. Second/Third International Polar Year. Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile. Institute of Radio Engineers. International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics.

Joint Intelligence Committee. CalTech Jet Propulsion Laboratory. US War and Navy Departments, Joint Research and Development Board.

region of Earth's interior between the outer lithosphere or crust and the central molten core. ratio of the mass of rocket propellent to the total mass of the rocket including propellent. ICSU Mixed Commission on the Ionosphere. megacycles, measure of frequency at one million cycles per second (= megahertz/MHz). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Medium-Range Ballistic Missile.

National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. US National Academy of Sciences. National Aeronautical and Space Administration. Naval Research Laboratory. National Security Council. National Science Foundation.

List of Abbreviations and Technical Terms xv

OASD OCB ODM ODM-SAC ONR OSD OSRD

perigee PSAC

R&D radio interferometer

RAFVR RCA RDB

SAB SACEUR SHAPE SLV SMEC specific impulse

telemetry

1PESP

TV

Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense. Operations Coordinating Board. White House Office of Defense Mobilization. ODM Science Advisory Committee. Office of Naval Research. Office of the Secretary of Defense. Office of Scientific Research and Development.

lowest point of satellite orbit. US President's Science Advisory Committee.

Research and Development. radio receiver with an array of antennas designed to provide information about the structure of a large radio source, or the trajectory of a mobile point-source such as a satellite-borne transmitter, by comparing the phases (or times) at which its signal is received on different antennas. Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. Radio Corporation of America. US Department of Defense, Research and Development Board.

AAF/USAF Scientific Advisory Board. Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers in Europe. Satellite Launch Vehicle. Strategic Missiles Evaluation Committee. ratio between thrust produced and rate of consumption of rocket propellent.

ODM-SAC Technological Capabilities Panel. RDB Committee on Guided Missiles, Technical Evaluation Group. technique of measuring a physical quantity and trans­mitting the results automatically to a distant receiving station. US IGY Committee, Technical Panel on the Earth ,Satellite Program. Test Vehicle.

xvi

UFO UNESCO

URSI USIA USNR

WDC WMO

List of Abbreviations and Technical Terms

Unidentified Flying Object. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. International Scientific Radio Union. US Information Agency. US Naval Reserve.

IGY World Data Centre. World Meteorological Organization.

You could write a whole book about 1945 to 1957.

Eugene M. Emme, first NASA Historian, 1959-78

In the long run, it is impossible to stand in the way of the exploration of truth. Someone wi11learn, somewhere, sometime.

Philip Handler, president, US National Academy of Sciences, 1969-80