 Here is the Big Picture, an official television report of the United States Army, produced for the armed forces and the American people. Now to show you part of the Big Picture, here is Master Sergeant Stuart Quain. The United States Army, as almost everyone knows, is placing an ever-increasing emphasis on guided missiles, projectiles which can deliver deadly conventional or atomic warheads to enemy targets hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Perhaps the most remarkable fact about these amazing weapons is that they have all been developed in little more than a decade. The guided missile age announced itself to the free world in 1944. When German guided missiles began a reign of terror on the city of London, over 17,500 explosive laden missiles fell on London within a year. The first of these German guided missiles was the B-1 Bosbach, jet-powered and traveling 400 miles an hour. Within a few months, the B-1 was followed by the now-famous B-2, which traveled at 3,500 miles an hour. There was no effective countermeasure. Fortunately for the friends of freedom, Nazi Germany got her missiles into operation only after the course of the war was already decided. She did not have time to make full-scale use of her technological achievement, and there was one other thing she did not have. The Germans did not possess nuclear warheads for their missiles. If the Nazis had had this, the war might have taken a different course. The combination of nuclear weapons and guided missiles have, in a very real sense, revolutionized our concepts of warfare. We have entered a new era, but it is not an era of push-button warfare. For to function, one of these new weapons requires more soldiers, better trained and more highly skilled than any other weapon in the history of war. It is an era both of missiles and of missile men. Today our big-picture cameras will take us to three of the major centers in which the Army's missile men receive their highly specialized training. Among the most important of these centers is the Artillery and Guided Missile Center at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The guided missile in the Army arsenal is actually a modern form of artillery, an explosive projectile to be directed at distant enemy targets. The Army's Artillery Center has long accepted the era of guided missiles as merely the latest development in an ancient military tradition. Here on Fort Sill's many thousands of acres of hills and valleys, training is in progress on artillery weapons of every conceivable variety. With the Army missiles to become operational, the Honest John is technically not a guided missile at all, but a so-called free rocket. Twenty-seven feet long and capable of carrying an atomic warhead, the Honest John is fired like any conventional artillery weapon. Once launched, the Honest John is completely on its own, not unlike an artillery cannon shell. Involving no radar or electronic computers, the Honest John is one of the simplest of missiles to operate. These men in training in the field have already completed a large part of their training, including basic combat instruction, but the missile man, like any other soldier, must be able to fight. He is a soldier first and specialist second. The Honest John is a weapon of rugged simplicity, but it nevertheless requires the services of skilled rocket men, such as these crewmen, making a last-minute electrical check of the rocket prior to firing. The Honest John is emplaced and prepared for firing in the manner of any conventional artillery weapon. Because of its range and great destructive power, one Honest John can today provide the military commander with artillery firepower, equivalent to the firepower of many batteries of conventional artillery. In the atomic age, mass batteries of artillery are an invitation to destruction. A single mobile weapon is less vulnerable to attack. One of the Honest John's great advantages as a weapon of war is the speed with which it can be set up and fired. But this too requires expert teamwork on the part of a crew. In a moment, one of these student missile men will make a quick downward thrust on the handle, and three tons of supersonic destruction will be on its way to the target. Completion of firing tests on the range, a new team of Army rocket experts is born. The launch of one of the major operational weapons in the arsenal of the free world. For more complex missile systems, much of the basic theoretical training at Fort Sill takes place in Snow Hall, an air-conditioned, windowless building with unsurpassed laboratory and classroom facilities. Applied mathematics plays a major part in missile work. The missiles themselves would be little more than spectacular toys unless guaranteed to hit their targets. Missiles are, in fact, remarkably accurate, an accuracy which stems in large measure from the classroom and laboratory work of the fledgling missile man. At the heart of every true guided missile system is the problem of control. The majority of missile men, accordingly, are experts in some form of electronics. Radar, developed as a detection device for enemy aircraft in World War II, is today a vital part of many guided missile systems. This is a radar lab in which men at Fort Sill are becoming skilled in the operation and field maintenance of some very complicated radar equipment. It cannot be said too often that the real secret of guided missile systems is in their control. These missile men must become expert troubleshooters, able to instantly find and replace the faulty circuit or tube without which their missile could not function. One of their instructors is here creating such a faulty part. Their job is to find it. At a crucial moment in his future career, one of these men may find himself struggling with a control panel whose dials indicate a short circuit in one of the complex wiring components within the cabinet. He will find the trouble and find it quickly because of the days spent at Fort Sill where theory is followed by practice, a lot of practice, and the end result is a thoroughly trained and competent technician. The principal missile understudy at the Fort Sill Artillery and Guided Missile School is the corporal. The corporal is a five and a half ton weapon designed to deliver its package of destruction approximately 75 miles into enemy terrain and to do it as truly as if it had eyes. Here in the corporal division of the school, the men become familiar with the electronic eyes and brain of this giant surface-to-surface missile. This is the propulsion checkout laboratory where students begin applying the knowledge gathered from weeks of classroom study. Fort Sill provides training in all technical parts of the corporal as well as dry run training and practical techniques of launching. Even the thousands of acres of Fort Sill ranges, however, are not enough for the firing of this long range weapon. For the final test, therefore, a trip is made to the missile range at Oro Grande. This is the final test of the student's proficiency as a team. If they succeed, a new corporal battalion will have been created to take its place alongside other corporal battalions overseas, guarding the frontiers of the free world. The artillery and missile school at Fort Sill is concerned primarily with surface-to-surface missiles, those designed like the honest John and the corporal, to be fired from one spot on the ground to another. A few hundred miles south of Fort Sill, we find in the words of Army Secretary Brokker, the foremost guided missile center of the world, the U.S. Army Air Defense Center at Fort Bliss, Texas, devoted to surface-to-air missiles. The original Fort Bliss, founded in 1848, is memorialized in this life-size replica presented to the host by the adjacent city of El Paso. Being a center for cavalry troops, Fort Bliss has become the anti-aircraft missile and artillery center of the United States, with extensive firing ranges and maneuver areas. The Air Defense School at Fort Bliss is a large institution, with many different courses going on at all times in its carefully guarded buildings. About 3,500 students are to be found here at any time, two-thirds of them in list of men. Atty of courses, ranging in length from 8 weeks to 43 weeks. Nothing is taken for granted. Students begin with such relatively simple exercises as using these redboard mock-ups to learn basic electrical circuits of all types. In these laboratories are taught the fundamentals of basic electrical circuits. This furnishes a sound foundation on which to build as they progress to the handling of complex electronic equipment in the missile systems themselves. Students who have completed their work in the Department of Electronics and Engineering are thoroughly familiar with basic electricity, radio and radar. They are then ready to enter the Department of Guided Missiles for the more advanced and highly specialized training in the maintenance of the critical electronic parts inside the missile, the brain by which Nike responds to signals from her ground-controlled vans. While the electronic specialists to be are busy in their classrooms, other selected men are taking courses in mechanical maintenance. Here they will learn to assemble, fuel, test and troubleshoot mechanical aspects of the missile. The fueling of a missile is itself a job for specialists. Fuels are often highly toxic to human beings and must be handled with extreme care. This is one of the school's shorter courses. But it leaves nothing to chance. While the Air Defense School is busily training maintenance personnel, the first guided missile brigade, also part of the Fort Bliss Air Defense Center, has been conducting a training program of its own. This is an eight-week program whose graduates will be the key operators in the Nike unit about to be created. So the various courses at the Air Defense Center differ in length. The program of instruction is so arranged that the men all complete their course of individual instruction at the same time. Thus as the school-trained men complete their training, they can move to the modern air-conditioned buildings of the brigade. They are to join their brigade-trained comrades and begin the process of learning to work and live together as a team. 124 enlisted specialists and warrant officers are thus brought together to form a Nike package. A nucleus of a full-strength Nike battalion. They are furnished the material for their battalion, brand new, and straight from the factory. The addition of new electronic equipment to the field of combat does not lessen the need for trained soldiers. The crews of guided missile units are normally larger than were the crews who manned the guns which the missiles replaced. And like these students at the Air Defense Center, missile men require longer and infinitely more detailed courses of instruction than did their gun crew predecessors. Radar, which came into existence during World War II for use in air raid defense, is now an integral part of many guided missile systems. Radar finds the approaching target and subsequently provides the missile's electronic brain with the information necessary for a successful intercept. The missile man assigned to radar has a job as important as any assignment in a guided missile organization. For the final step in their training, the fledgling battalion now spends several days on the Air Defense Center's new McGregor range for actual firing practice with their weapon. Upon successful completion of this final phase of training, the Nike package will move out to take up its station. To become one of the Nike units deployed around strategic US cities and industrial centers, or travel overseas to become part of the air defense of an important US base. Big picture cameras. We've seen Army missile men in training at two of our major missile centers. The artillery and missile center at Fort Seale, Oklahoma. And the air defense center at Fort Bliss, Texas. Each has its specialized role in your Army's guided missile program. So also has a third missile center. The Ordnance Guided Missile School at Huntsville, Alabama. In existence for the past six years, it is the mission of the Ordnance Guided Missile School to conduct courses which will enable graduates to supply, maintain, and repair all the hundreds of thousands of parts which make up our guided missile systems. A good index to the progress of the Army's Virginia guided missile program, the Ordnance Guided Missile School has more than doubled in size during the past two years, and is now in the midst of a $17 million expansion program. Ordnance trained missile men are the mechanics and maintenance men of all Army guided missile systems. Like these men in the Acquisition System Laboratory of the Surface to Air Missile Division, they must be able to perform the most intricate repairs on complicated equipment. To familiarize themselves with the inner workings of complicated missile systems, students at OGMS have the assistance of skilled workmen in the model shop. Using transparent or translucent plastics, workmen in the model shop are able to create enlarged models of complex missile parts. These educational tools speed the learning process as well as increase its thoroughness. This is probably as much fun as it looks, but it is education, not recreation. An electronic automobile. This model is equipped with a program tape which governs its movements much as the roller operates a player piano. The model is used at OGMS to demonstrate an important principle in missile guidance. Here is a demonstration of a somewhat different nature. The missile is a corporal surface to surface missile, and the test instead of a dry run is a wet run. Students in the Corporal Maintenance Supervisors course have fueled her with water in place of her normal complement of highly volatile liquids, thus providing a safe but adequate test for both themselves and the missile. A landmark of the Ordnance Guided Missile School is this base from a captured German V2 missile. It forms the center of a spectacular exercise in firefighting. Using a mixture of gasoline and oil, instructors in the school create an accurate simulation of a malfunctioning missile. A student firefighting team moves in to bring the emergency under control. In this Nike training shop, at the Ordnance Guided Missile School, the finest facilities and an ample supply of missiles guarantee expert training for the missile man. Here the missiles are carefully examined and stripped down by Ordnance Repairman who must be depended upon for the maintenance and repair of the weapon when joined to a firing unit. Soldier students are also engaged in training on the recently released La Crosse Surface to Surface Missile, a deadly all-weather weapon designed to destroy enemy strong points and supplement air or artillery attack. These students are learning the ins and outs of the La Crosse in order to design courses of instruction to be taught at OGMS in the near future. This will be the next new missile course instituted at the school. Others are still under wraps and are of a classified nature. Most of these men, shown here mating the wings to the missile body, will be utilized as instructors once the course is finalized and becomes a full-scale part of the OGMS curriculum. One of the latest additions to the Army Guided Missile family is the Redstone. As the Jupiter A, it was also the forerunner of the intermediate range Jupiter C, which recently achieved distances of many hundreds of miles. The Redstone itself is a highly accurate, liquid-propelled surface-to-surface missile capable of bringing tremendous firepower against targets nearly 200 miles distant. The Redstone, making its debut with Army troops in the field, is not only a potent weapon, it is also one of the first man-made objects to enter space. Or on its flight to the target, the Redstone actually passes beyond the Earth's atmosphere. Traveling many times, the speed of sound it is immune to any counter-measures known to exist today. With the advent of the Redstone, the Ordnance Guided Missile School has also been called upon to devise and conduct the initial training, instructing the men who will themselves become instructors at other Army missile centers. The Army Ballistic Missile Agency, like the school, is also at Huntsville, Alabama. This makes it possible to conduct Redstone training at the location where research and development is taking place. While a missile of the Redstone's range cannot be fired in Huntsville itself, firings are frequently conducted in the static test stands of the ABMA. Big picture cameras, we have seen brief glimpses of Army missile men in training in the three major missile centers of the Army. The family of Army missiles grows larger every year, almost every month. Today it includes the Nike Ajax, the Army's first supersonic anti-aircraft guided missile already deployed around vital industrial centers, to which is now being added the Nike Hercules, the nation's second combat-ready land-based guided missile system, capable of intercepting enemy planes at higher altitudes and longer ranges than the Ajax. The Hawk has serviced to wear a missile design for the destruction of fast, low-altitude enemy jets. Honest John, a powerful free rocket for use by Army troops in the field. And the Little John, a medium-range rocket only 12 feet long, but packing enormous explosive power. The recently developed La Crosse, a highly accurate all-weather guided missile for use by troops in the field, replacing or supplementing conventional artillery. With either an atomic or conventional type warhead able to engage targets approximately 75 miles away. The Tiny Dark, a guided anti-tank missile for use by frontline troops, which can deliver its warhead against enemy armor with pinpoint accuracy. First long-range ballistic missile of its type. Army developed intermediate-range ballistic missile, Jupiter. Remarkable progress in a science which had scarcely begun only a dozen years ago. We must not forget, however, that our missiles, like other weapons, are only as good as the men who operate them. It is for this reason that today's big picture was dedicated to that new kind of soldier, the Army Missile Man. Now, this is Sergeant Stuart Queen, your host for The Big Picture. The Big Picture is an official television report for the armed forces and the American people, produced by the Army Pictorial Center, presented by the United States Army in cooperation with this station.