Polaris out of the Sea

The Navy is gradually leaking information about missiles to be launched under water. In Missiles and Rockets, an article by Erik Bergaust gives intriguing details about the Polaris, an IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile) that the Navy is developing with the help of the Army's famous missile center at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Ala.

Launching rocket-propelled missiles from a submerged submarine is not a new idea (TIME. May 22, 1950). Rockets deliver the same kind of thrust under water that they do in air or a vacuum, so they can start their journeys from a considerable distance below the surface of the ocean. Small rockets were actually fired 13 years ago from the deck of a submerged German submarine by rocketeers under Dr. Wernher von Braun, who now heads the Redstone group.

According to Bergaust, the Polaris will be a rather fat missile 40 ft.-50 ft. long and about 8 ft. in diameter. Its range will be more than 800 miles, and it will carry a nuclear warhead. Instead of liquid fuels, which the Navy considers too dangerous and undependable to use in a submarine, the Polaris will have a solid propellant. It may be launched directly out of a special compartment in the submarine, or it may be released and allowed to float upward before its main motor ignites. Perhaps the submarine will have raised some sort of antenna above the surface to steer the missile on its course by radio after it has risen from the sea.

The submarines to launch such missiles will have to be specially built and unusually big. The Navy has not revealed how the missiles will be stowed on board. They may be carried in firing position in vertical cells, or, if this is too awkward, they may be carried lying down and be raised toward the vertical by a launching mechanism. The missile-subs will be nuclear-powered so they can hide off an enemy coast for months before loosing their missiles. The first such submarine especially designed to fire the Polaris will be launched in four or five years.

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