 From Korea to Germany, from Alaska to Puerto Rico, all over the world, the United States Army is on the alert to defend our country, you, the American people, against aggression. This is the big picture, an official television report to the nation from the United States Army. Now to show you part of the big picture, here is Sergeant Stuart Queen. Today we bring you the story of America's newest weapon in her arsenal of defense, the guided missile. Portions of this story were filmed in secrecy and now have been declassified. In order that you, the American people, might know the progress that is being made in the field of guided missile research and development. The never-closed picked up and are tracking unidentified bombers. Any attack on our nation would first be met by the Air Force fighters for shores, but some of the attacking bombers may still break through, flying above the range of our best anti-aircraft guns. Vital seconds tick away as the aggressor planes are plotted on course. To halt any such attack, the Army has a new secret weapon and you will now see a radio-controlled plane intercepted. On the bridge in the plotting room, artillery control officers set in motion, operation intercept. Battle station. Flash. Missile to failure. This is landing. Intercept. Back number 9. 340,000. Out. Intercept accomplished by guided missiles. Rocket-powered weapons flying at supersonic speeds, destroying unseen targets are no longer science fiction, but are today a military fact developed after years of research by Army ordinance. To defend our cities, guided missile battalions are being organized and equipped and will supplement anti-aircraft defenses in the near future. The history of guided missiles began with the invention of rockets. Man soon learned that rockets could be used in his everyday life, but for many years the potential of this new power went unexploited. But a few visionary scientists, often scoffed at by the public, went ahead with their ideas. By diligence, mistakes, and greater effort, rocket pioneers made progress. Slowly, they were harnessing this tremendous power to the things around them. It was an historical moment when the first rocket plane was launched. The vision and skill of men like Zucker, Sonder, and the American Goddard, produced bigger and better rockets. But for every success, there were two failures. The way had been pointed, and men saw, not too far distant, the day when rockets would capture outer space. But World War II stopped all peaceful pursuit of rocket development. Masterminds in rocket experimentation, the Germans were quick to see the potential of rockets as weapons. Their scientific skill produced the V-1 bomb, and a new era in warfare was born. The V-2 guided missile followed, but only after many mistakes, as these captured German films of early rocket launching show. At war's end, Army ordnance brought back to America about 100 German rockets and some of the scientists who had built them. In our Army proving grounds, the old German rockets were put to work for research. In them, our military strategists saw the shape of weapons to come. Now after eight years of research, today's spectacular guided missiles have joined our arsenal of defense. Behind these amazing weapons are the well-trained rocket missile crewmen, not all college boys with scientific degrees, but soldiers of average backgrounds, men trained to launch the missiles under combat conditions. Rocket crewmen are trained in guided missile schools at Fort Bliss, Texas. From all branches of the Army, there are being drawn for special guided missile training. Recruits soon learn that this new assignment is different from anything they have known before. From now on, they will be living with secrets. They are cleared for top security, for in months to come, they will share some of our nation's most closely guarded information. At an orientation lecture after their first day in school, the men learn why they were chosen to be missile crewmen and what lies before them. You're probably wondering why you're here. Well, there's a very good reason for it. You're not here on a shortcut trip to the moon or learn how to fly a spaceship. You're here to receive intensive instruction in one of the Army's latest and deadliest weapons, the guided missile. Although you've come from all branches of the Army, your service records, which have been very carefully screened, clearly indicate that all of you possess the necessary technical and mechanical ability to become experts in handling guided missiles. During the next 11 weeks, you will receive intensive instruction in the field of guided missiles. At first, the missiles themselves and the control components that go with those missiles may seem to you to be highly complicated. However, with the classroom instruction that you will receive, coupled with the practical work on the actual equipment, you'll have no difficulty in thoroughly mastering your jobs. The field that you're in is a somewhat new field that you will find to be both challenging and highly interesting. The opportunities before you are almost unlimited. I urge you to make the most of them. Thank you, men. Class dismissed. The road to becoming a rocket crewman is a long and technical one and begins with a three-week evaluation course in basic mathematics. Students must also take an elementary course in electronics, and they must struggle with the principles of physics. After basic training, the student rocket men are divided and classified as electronics men or propulsion men. Then they are assigned to the missile which they will learn to operate and fire. The surface-to-air missile, Nike. Sleek, beautiful, deadly. An ingenious anti-aircraft artillery piece. Trainees remember their first good look at a guided missile. Security checks follow them into the hangar, where Nike, a weapon of tomorrow ready for use today, is stored under guard. Ask what they think as they see the missile unveiled for the first time. The men invariably answer, it's like nothing we've ever seen before. Up to now, these men have seen rifles and machine guns and tanks, but this kind of weapon is beyond their imaginations. It travels at a speed far greater than sound, piercing the supersonic barrier. It has its own electronic brain which can steer it straight onto a target, all by the press of a button on the ground. This is a weapon bordering on the unbelievable, Nike, named after the Greek goddess of victory. With it, the army can now destroy aircraft, flying outside the range of anti-aircraft guns, radars find the target and plot its course. Then the electronic brain on the ground computes a point of intercept and guides the missile to its target. But for all the mechanical and scientific genius of guided missiles, they are only as good as the men who will service, operate and fire them. It takes a lot of men, highly skilled and trained, to complete the guided missile team. Launching specialists, guided missile mechanics, propulsion experts. It takes men who understand electronics, men to work the radar, nerve system of guided missiles. Trainees work hard. They must know the workings of jet engines and how to check the complex insides of a missile. Soldiers with engineering backgrounds take a specialist's course in guided missiles, which is more advanced than that taken by the crewman. These are the men who will be guided missile instructors, the men responsible for keeping the missiles in firing order, qualified to troubleshoot and diagnose malfunctions. They are the engineers and brains in support of the launching crewman. When they go on their first bird shoot, that's what crewman call a guided missile launching, the men no longer consider themselves rocket rookies. For practice launchings, the men fire obsolete V1 rockets brought from Germany after the last war. Maybe they aren't the latest thing in guided missiles, but they give the propulsion men who are called plumbers a chance to prepare a rocket for flight. And for every plumber at work on the bird, there is somewhere an electron man checking some wires. Artillery officers, hand-picked engineers in training to be unit commanders of guided missile battalions, undergo their own field training as part of their long course in guided missiles. Week after week, the training continues and hundreds of hours of classroom theory slowly turn to fact as the men become familiar with guided missile operation. The missiles grow more complex. The complicated guidance systems must be checked and rechecked and the special procedures for fueling must be practiced. Protective suits give the soldiers a men from Mars appearance during the fueling of these super rockets. Carefully, the fuels which will hurdle the missile into atmosphere unpenetrated by man are pumped into the rocket. The target for this practice firing is a small radio controlled plane which takes the place of an enemy target. The plane is flown by a crewman on the ground. With target in flight, the missile is raised and then launched. At Army Ordnance's White Sands Proving Ground, deep in the New Mexico desert, crewmen finish off their training using the latest tactical missiles science can produce. After months of preparation, the crewmen now handle and work on the real thing in the research and development stage. These are missiles capable of carrying atomic warheads. Readying one of them for flight is an engineering miracle in itself. There can be no mistakes. One wrong move, one misplaced screw or wire could sabotage a missile costing thousands of dollars. Electronic circuits must be checked. Guidance systems must be in trigger operation. For this to be a successful launching, hundreds of electronic sequences must be run through without a single hitch. At a speed which must still remain a secret, the missile rockets into the ionosphere eclipsed by the sun on its journey into space. These are the forerunners of rocket ships to the moon. And an idea of what space travel of the future will be like is vividly depicted in these films taken from a rocket in flight. The takeoff is smooth and through the motion picture camera, an armchair trip into space begins. Slipping away below can be seen the white sands of New Mexico and the mountain ranges holding in the Texas and New Mexico desert and up the rocket flashes traveling at a speed many times greater than our fastest plane. The high speed camera slows down the action to bring this startling view of the earth and the mountains of the continental divide pass by like whistle stops has reached its summit 76 miles up. This is the highest distance at which the earth has ever been photographed. Tipping and spinning like an inverted top, the rocket starts its descent to earth. One minute pointing at the sun and at the earth the next, the camera sweeps across the lower length of the continent, giving man an unprecedented view of the planet he calls earth. Many guided missiles are pioneering the way into space. But these soldiers are training to handle a weapon and not a trip to the moon. Behind closely guarded doors, Nike missile crewmen assemble the weapon they will later fire from the manufacturer's crate to actual launching and listed men build and check the wonder weapons. A missile is ready to take part in a research and development test firing against an actual plane in flight. From the hangar where it was assembled, the Nike missile is taken to the transporter, which will carry it to the launching area. But first, the missile must be fueled and it stops off at the fueling area. During fueling of the missiles, crewmen wear protective clothing just as they did in their training. This protection permits a safe fueling operation. And right up to the time of firing, elaborate and extensive safety precautions are observed. The missile is now hot. It is fueled and ready for flight. On the last stage of its journey to the launching pad for its research test firing, this missile is escorted the last few miles by a fire truck. Just before the test shoot begins, the missile is joined to its booster. This assists the rocket at takeoff and helps it reach supersonic speeds in a matter of seconds. With the missile now firmly fixed to the launching rail, it has moved into the firing position. Last minute adjustments are made. As the last safety pin is pulled, the firing operation begins. All stations, this is Nike project command. At my signal of time will be x minus six zero minutes. Mark x minus 60 minutes. A red smoke signal is set off on top of the blockhouse. Inside the men stand ready at the command controls. Should a hitch occur, the firing process can be stopped with the press of a button. The status is now ready. The minutes take away and from the blockhouse a warning flare is fired. And all over the range roadblocks are set up to keep everything out of the firing area. Three miles away at the control center, the target tracking radar is fixed onto the plane, which is to be attacked and is sending its position data to the computer. In a split second, the computer works out a point of intercept. The atmosphere at the fire control center is tense. The project officer is ready to throw the switch. All stations, this is Nike project command. At my signal of time will be x minus 20 seconds. Mark x minus 20 seconds, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. That's the story of the guided missile, a new weapon of defense of the artillery's anti aircraft battalions. And this is Sergeant Stuart Queen inviting you to be with us next week for another story in the big picture. The big picture is a weekly television report to the nation on the activities of the army at home and overseas produced by the signal core pictorial center presented by the US Army in cooperation with this station. You can be an important part of the big picture. You can proudly serve with the best equipped, the best trained, the best fighting team in the world today, the United States Army.