Missiles over Mexico: A Cold War Story

on june 13th 1944 the first v1 flying bomb was launched against the city of london in the first v1 bombing campaign as many as a hundred v1s an hour were falling on the city and in the first 80 days as many as 6 000 people were killed and 17 000 were injured and the following september the germans would unleash an even more terrifying weapon in the v2 a ballistic missile that flew so high and so fast that it could not be intercepted by anti-aircraft weapons it was the rocket that launched the space age over the next decades rockets and missiles would come to dominate military technology and create a unique and surprising threat to mexico the u.s missiles that wandered across our southern border during the cold war are history that deserves to be remembered on may 2nd 1945 a man in austria walked up to a private of the us 44th infantry division and said in broken english my name is magnus von braun my brother invented the v2 we want to surrender in that moment the u.s has captured one of the most sought after of the german scientist over whom the east and west were competing in the waning stages of the second world war along with werner von braun the americans captured the plans to the v2 rocket and over 300 train car loads of spare v2 parts these parts would become the core of a program to develop and test u.s missiles both for military use and eventually to support the manned space program officially becoming part of the hermes project which was started in 1944 in response to german rocket attacks in europe to support the project the army developed a missile launching site within what was then called the white sands proving ground the military testing area they've been the site of the test of the world's first atomic bomb trinity in july 1945. the missile launch site first called army launch area number one and then launch complex 33 would be the location where captured v2 rockets would be fired as sounding rockets or rockets for scientific tests as well as to develop new us rockets the department of the interior noted the historical significance of the site when it nominated complex 33 for the national register of historic places in 1985. the site test fired 67 v2 rockets between 1946 and 1951 first major rocket firings conducted in the united states the v2 was the first vehicle to carry scientific instruments into the upper atmosphere and the first large rocket with a liquid propellant motor the v2 provided the technological base upon which the united states would build to develop the saturn family of rockets that eventually carried americans to the moon and beyond the project had several goals according to the program's final report first it had gained experience in handling and firing large missiles and trained army personnel to launch them second hermes had provided vehicles for experiments which aided the design of future missiles third hermes had tested components for future missiles fourth hermes had obtained ballistic data on high altitude trajectories as well as developing various means of tracking such trajectories fifth the v2 programmer provided vehicles for upper atmosphere and biological research but the project would continue to the development of new missiles notably hermes missiles the hermes missiles were an attempt to create a ramjet powered supersonic cruise missile these missiles would use a v2 engine to accelerate the rocket to a speed and altitude where the ramjets would then start the rocket was sometimes described as the world's first multi-stage rocket with the upper stage including a broad wing for flight tests of a split wing ducted airfoil ramjet although no active ramjet was yet included the missile was 51.5 feet tall at a gross weight of 31 750 pounds and the liquid oxygen alcohol-fueled engine produced 60 000 pounds of thrust the first test of what they had labeled the hermes ii was on may 29th 1947 and it went the wrong direction the website this day in aviation explained in 2020 the plan was for the rocket to arc towards the north heading for the far end of the proving grounds instead the hermes ii arched to the south the rocket peaked at 35 nautical miles passed over fort bliss in el paso and after about five minutes of flight hit the ground about one and a half miles from the buena vista airport in ciudad juarez mexico according to the new york daily news on may 31st an experiment with button warfare sent a modified german v2 rocket soaring over el paso and juarez at a speed of 12 miles a minute and scared the daylights out of residents of both cities according to the el paso times the rocket exploded on top of a rocky knoll three and a half miles south of the juarez business district and scooped at a crater 50 feet wide while no one was killed by the rocket the news noted that the explosion started a panic in the mexican city and jarred windows out of the central fire station in el paso women knelt in the streets of juarez to pray window panes were shattered plaster was dislodged in homes some thought and adam bomb had it the news noted that the united states was quick to apologize to mexico for bombing our southern neighbor with a nazi terror weapon and in fact managed to blame the germans claiming it was a defective german gyroscope that sent the missile south instead of north while the us army reportedly paid for the damage windows and the state department expressed its official regrets for bombing mexico the accident gained surprisingly little further attention it was possibly the first but not the last missile that would stray across the border on october 11th of the same year there was an explosion in the santa luca mountains about 35 miles south of juarez the mexican military identified the explosions coming from a b-2 although officials at white sands denied that there had been any launches the v-2 and the hermes were the genesis of both the united states military rocket program and its manned space program but as the strategic situation changed new rocket systems were developed according to the defense contractor lockheed martin the mgm-31 missile was developed as a reaction to the soviet intervention following the hungarian uprising of 1956 the lockheed martin webpage explains in 1957 nato officials fearing further soviet aggression into the heart of europe decided to act swiftly should any member of nato be attacked they declared the united states would be forced to respond with a large-scale nuclear strike but to enforce the strategy u.s officials needed an imposing weapon on the ground in west germany something to make the soviets think twice about any attempts to expand the iron curtain westward that weapon would be a two-stage solid-fueled ballistic missile named after general of the army john j pershing the 10 275 pound 34.6 foot missile had an operational range of 460 miles and could be equipped with a w50 nuclear warhead with a yield up to 400 kilotons built to be a shoot and scoot weapon on a mobile transporter erector launcher the missile is equipped by both u.s army and west german air force troops and units were stationed in west germany in 1964 but there was a problem with the missiles stationed in europe as there was no range in europe large enough for troops to practice launching the weapon thus both american and west german troops would come to the united states for routine training and practice the weapons range was too large to test on the white sands missile range and so sites were developed to allow troops to launch missiles that would then land at white sands among the locations used was the black mesa test range a place where the cannon or the post newspaper of fort sill oklahoma said the dust gives the whole area an ash rose hue that together with an expanse of clear blue sky and snowtop colorado mountains in the hazy distance makes the mesa look like a landscape painting by frederick remington the paper went on to explain what makes the mesa perfect for pershing firing is its geographical location it lies almost 400 miles north of the white sands missile range and so it was in september 1967 u.s and west german troops came to the black mesa test facility to fire pershing missiles fortunately without nuclear warheads at new mexico when according to the saint louis post-dispatch an out-of-control army pershing missile landed in an uninhabited region of mexico ryan eddington a visiting assistant professor of history at mcallister college explained in his 2014 book range wars a pershing missile broke into pieces in the wooded bosque benito about 140 miles southeast of juarez not far from the texas mexico border according to the new york times a west german unit had successfully fired a pushing missile earlier in the day but when the american unit fired a missile the 10 thousand pound pershing missile went off course and landed in mexico edgington says that an army civilian expert later suggested a short circuit most likely caused an electronic failure in the rocket the times reported that no property damage or injuries were reported and the mexican government gave the united states government permission to send a helicopter across the border to look for the missile finding the parts of the missile was not easy hedgington mentions that philippe chavez garcia a laborer on the puerto alto ranch recalled that in the early morning hours of september 12th a loud explosion followed by two other loud noises had startled him from his bed the impact crater measured 13 feet in diameter and nearly 5 feet deep it took 12 days of searching to find the missile's most significant parts despite the risk had the debris landed over a population center edgington explained in all the incident ended with little fanfare the lack of significant evidence of impact on the mexican landscape or harm to local communities may have hindered protests from government officials or the local populace ufo researcher no torrez concluded in his 2008 book mexico's roswell the mexican government was none too happy to have us military hardware raining down upon its northwestern territories but diplomats quickly resolved the dispute it was not lost on people at the time that the missile was named after general john j pershing who in 1916 had famously led an army across the american mexico border chasing michigan revolutionary pancho villa the albuquerque journal noting the 1947 event quipped every 20 years the united states sends a missile over mexico but it wouldn't take 20 years for it to happen again as the cold war developed the us became more and more concerned with a perceived missile gap and planters obsessed over soviet nuclear capabilities one solution to keep the american strategic edge was to research re-entry systems and in 1963 the us established a military joint service program for re-entry vehicle research development and testing called the advanced ballistic re-entry system project or abras but testing re-entry systems was complex not only was it incredibly expensive to fire and test full-size rockets like the atlas or titan but such tests generally had to occur over the ocean making them easier for enemies to observe one solution was to do scaled tests with a smaller rocket that could be produced more cheaply and tested at white sands but the air force needed a launch site some distance from white sands in order to make the test flights at re-entry velocities the department of defense finally chose a site near the tiny town of green river utah as the location where test launches towards new mexico would cause the least inconvenience the test vehicle would be a four-stage 50-foot eight-ton solid-fueled missile called the athena which could simulate the speeds and re-entry phenomena of the larger intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying a payload of 50 pounds at a re-entry velocity of approximately 23 000 feet per second the las cruces sun news noted that the athena was dubbed the flying trash pile because it was created cheaply by combining parts of existing missile systems a january 1964 issue of the salt lake tribune noted that the rocket would make the approximately 470 mile trip between green river and white sands in just nine minutes while reaching altitudes of up to 200 miles however the missile was not without its problems as the sun news noted the first two firings of the missile in 1964 went astray pieces of the first launch were found near the new mexico colorado border after it misfired shortly after launch the second missile was destroyed in flight and parts of it landed on a navajo reservation near shiprock new mexico the problem was of enough concern that a february 12 1964 issue of the new york times noted that utah senator wallace f bennett asked for a halt in the program but by 1969 the program had recovered in the july 1969 edition of the las vegas optic headlined white sands proud of athena missile quoted program ceo air force colonel l.r sugarman i think the athena program has over succeeded for an off-the-shelf type of program of putting parts together for a missile bragging that athena has pushed the state of the art we have been getting here on the range the program had detained such a level of success that a larger version called athena h was in the works but the missile's record took a hit when on july 11 1970 an american missile launch again went across the border a memorandum just released in 2015 from the national security adviser henry kissinger to the president read at 5 a.m eastern daylight time today an athena rocket test fire from green river utah overshot its target at white sands new mexico and impacted 180 to 200 miles south of the mexican border the philadelphia enquirer noted the next day that an air force athena missile program to impact on the new mexico desert testing ground went astray early saturday and probably crashed in a remote section of mexico as with the previous missile crashes the u.s had to seek mexican permission to search for the missile as noted in a july 13th issue of the baltimore sun at the time the sun reported there were no explosives or classified material on the missile however it later came out that the missile was carrying a small amount of the radioisotope cobalt 57 but the air force said that the risk was small the official line was that it was not dangerous to human or animal life so long as it was not ingested or handled however the inclusion of radioactive material created a new tension between the nations not apparently felt in the previous incident as endington explained in range wars conflict and confusion surrounded reports moreover air force promises about its safety assumed the material had stayed within its protective tungsten sleeve the debris proved difficult to find and was in the end only identified using a special atomic energy commission plane called arms or aerial radiological measuring system which had sensitive materials for identifying radiological contamination while the system did locate the radioactive material it also determined that the material had dispersed it was no longer in its protective sleeve while the risks from the tiny amount of material were not clear concerns by the government of mexico required that the us sent a team to remove the material the orlando sentinel reported on september 24th the army said that contamination at the site represented no hazard but the army said the mexican government has requested that the soil be returned to its natural condition a 40-man team was required to build a road to the remote area and remove the contaminated soil in steel drums the website redacted explains the cleanup effort was long costly and included the construction of a road through the mapamy desert to excavate hundreds tons of soil from the impacted site one of the unintended impacts of these cross-border missile mishaps is that the entire remote area of northwestern mexico that was affected has developed a reputation for paranormal activity including both ufo sightings and a supposed dead zone where compasses and electronic instruments won't work much like the bermuda triangle while there are some anecdotal stories this zone supposedly moves around and so the so-called mappamy dead zone has proven untestable by scientific means many experts believe that this reputation for paranormal activity is nothing more than speculation and confusion that came as a result of the missile accidents the athena missile testing program was briefly stopped in 1970 following the july accident but it was restarted again in january of 1971. both the black mesa and the green river sites are now abandoned and there are several reports online of people who have gone and visited these ransacked and rotting cold war facilities in the end maybe because the area is simply so remote or maybe because of blind luck none of these missile mishaps killed anyone and they actually did very little damage although they did stress u.s mexican relations and to be fair the vast majority of the missiles that were fired at white sands ended their career there but as the website redacted notes the fact that this testing continued despite multiple testing failures and a reduced budget and the looming possibility of an international incident shows just how central nuclear arms parity was to u.s foreign policy by the beginning of the 1970s i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section i will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on facebook instagram twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 151,206

Rating: 4.9773445 out of 5

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, cold war, V-2 Rocket, Pershing Missile, Athena Missile, Mexico, new mexico, utah

Id: VxOk2Egxrdw

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021