SSC Pacific Marks Golden Anniversary of First Live Polaris Launch By Tom LaPuzza, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific Public Affairs, April 7, 2010 SAN DIEGO (NNS) -- Personnel at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) will celebrate 70 years as a Navy research, development and engineering center in 2010, marking the event is the golden anniversary of the first live launch of a Polaris missile, April 4. The launch took place off San Clemente Island, 75 miles northwest of San Diego, where SSC Pacific predecessor Naval Ordnance Test Station personnel had been working for three years to solve the engineering challenges of getting a missile out of a submerged submarine and to the surface without its engines. (The Polaris rocket engines could not ignite underwater.) Their challenges were to answer questions including: Would a missile launched more than 50 feet underwater remain on course? When it broached the surface would wave action alter its course? Could the underwater push propel it high enough into the air for the rocket engines to ignite? What was the maximum speed and appropriate depth of the submarine to ensure a successful launch? The engineers set up a test range at San Clemente Island and launched hundreds of redwood logs from an underwater launcher to answer those questions, using documentation cameras to record and study each launch. Varying the air pressure used for the launch determined how high out of the water the log traveled. They exchanged the redwood logs for steel cylinders filled with concrete, and then boiler plates filled with concrete. Finally, with the missile design completed, they test-launched the actual missile structure. A huge scaffold-like apparatus on a floating barge called the fishhook reeled in line attached to the nose of the missile as it rose to the surface and vaulted into the air. At the apogee of the unpowered flight, the fishhook caught the missile before it fell back into the water. With all their questions answered, the engineers readied their underwater launcher for the first live test. On April 4, 1960, a live Polaris missile was attached to the launcher, and a massive blast of pressurized air boosted it to the surface and high enough into the air that the rocket engines ignited. The missile then flew successfully down the test range. Within a few months, all the many engineering puzzles solved, center engineers watched proudly as the Navy's first ballistic missile submarine, USS George Washington (SSBN 598), successfully launched its first Polaris missile using the technology they had developed. Concurrent with the launch effort, engineers at the Navy Electronics Laboratory, also an SSC Pacific predecessor, solved the problem of precision targeting accuracy by modifying an existing inertial navigation system and then miniaturizing it to fit into each Polaris missile so it could be pre-programmed to reach its target. Kirk Smith