30 June 1961 - The Black Vault

In mid-Apr'11 19S3~
the Aer'ojet General Cor'poratlon,
Cor!solldated .....lJ.ltee Aircraft Corporation (later the Convair
Dlv1sj,on J General Dynamics Corpor-atlon)~ Nor·th American Aviation,
the WADe F1ghter and Bombardment Section and Power Plan~
laboratoryj
and the AFFTC reached agreement that the only meal)S or conducting
the vast ATLAS test program within schedule limitations
and on limited facilIties of the AFFTC Rocket Branch was nru::! tlple
util:tzatlon of test .stands initially. This would be accomplished
by establishing additional test locations on Test Stands 1-3 ar:.d
1_5. 16
!n 1954, a new side test position (1-3B) was added to Te~· t
stand 1-3 by the Apex Steel corporat10n. 17
F1rst Rocketdyne
hot firing of the ATLAS single engine test vehicle f'er- research
and development was performed 10 November 1954.18
pr·e11m.1nary a ttempts J
ATLAS test underway.
accomplish the task properly.
These were
however, only to get the Convair built
Several new test stands would be needed to
The new stands would become Test
Stand I-A, 1-1, 1-2, and 1-4 and control station 1-6, all U!1ci.er
study and deotgn in 1953 and 1954.
Test Stand 1-A was fo'reroost of the new facl11 ties. With
1,000 1
000 pound thrust capacity, Test Stand 1-A was the first
stand ever des1gned to acco~~date
a complete lntercontinental
ballistic missile (IC~~). Final drawings and specificat1on~ WGr~
16. H~st of the Rocket BrancnJ Apr 1953 .
17. MIst of Hie Rocket Branch, Oc't 1954.
18. J{lst of- the A~FTG, Jan- Jun 1957, p. 192.
..