The Atomic Powered Airplane

Starting on page 70 TRUE The Man's Magazine, A Fawcett Publication, May 1965

Portion of article titled "Our Billion-Dollar Defense Boondoggles"

Despite their obvious ability in the field, the Army and Navy have no monopoly on wild, irresponsible spending. The Air Force, in fact, holds the distinction of backing what may be the biggest boondoggle in history. It managed to spend more than one billion dollars - almost a half million dollars every working day for nine years - without receiving one single working machine for the money.

This bottomless hole was known to insiders as ANP-the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program - and to the rest of the world as the atomic airplane. "Here is a case where a major development program was undertaken before a suitable technological base had been created," said Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1963. "Throughout its history the program was characterized by attempts to find shortcuts to early flight." Most of the money, said McNamara, was spent in trying to design a series of airplanes that would work with a basically inadequate atomic reactor. If the money instead had been poured into building a small, light, powerful reactor - the kind yet to be developed - far less money would have been spent and today we might have an atomic airplane. Air Force brass, in other words, went off half-cocked. And for nine years, nobody noticed.

There was another reason for failure, too. "The importance attached to the ANP program varied greatly throughout its history," said GAO in 1963 after a massive probe into the project's tangled course. Translation: The off-again-on-again, controversy-ridden, confused, confusing effort never went in one direction long enough for engineers to know what they were doing. In less than 10 years, ANP went through seven basic reorganizations. So many study committees looked into the program that they created a traffic jam at the revolving door.

The country's most expensive research fiasco started back in 1946 when the Air Force launched a study project to decide if a nuclear-powered airplane could be built. The following year the atomic Energy Commission also set up group to explore the possibilities. By 1950, both groups had looked into the matter and come to the same conclusion: It would be expensive and take a long time, but it probably could be done.

ANP, a joint effort launched by the two agencies, began on a note of optimism. Cracked one officer, "It will only have to land every couple of years for the crew to re-enlist." There was talk of a flying prototype by 1956.

Two types of engines were considered promising. First was the so-called direct-cycle engine. The reactor was inside a jet engine. Air passing through the engine was heated directly by the built-in reactor, just as air in a regular jet is heated by burning oil. The direct-cycle engine was being developed by General Electric.

Second was the indirect-cycle engine under development by Pratt & Whitney. In this somewhat more complex machine, heat from a separate reactor was pumped into the jet engine to heat the air.

The GE direct-cycle engine was farther along in development and seemed to offer the possibility of quicker flight. The P&W indirect-cycle engine, on the other hand, promised greater ultimate advantages, but would take longer. It was decided to continue development of both.

By 1952 plans had progressed to the point where a B-36 was to be converted to nuclear power. The GE engine was to be used, and a target date for the first atom-powered flight was scheduled for 1956.

The indecision and lack of a clear objective that would plague the program for the next eight years started in 1953. Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, under White House pressure to cut the budget, cancelled the B-36 flight test program. He made fun of the atomic airplane at a press conference and called it a "shitepoke." ... "That's a great big bird that flies over the marshes, you know, but doesn't have much body or speed to it or anything," he chuckled, "but it can fly."

By 1954 the Air Force had devised another strategy to get the program going again. The administration had objected to the plan to convert a B-36 primarily on the grounds that the plane developed wouldn't be a useful military weapon. So the Air Force came up with a plan for what it called WS (Weapon System) 125. This strange hybrid would be basically a bomber able to cruise at subsonic speeds under atom power. With its atomic engines, it would have the range and endurance to go anywhere in the world and back without refueling. But since subsonic airplanes are easy targets for ground-based defenders and fighter aircraft, the WS-125 would also have what the Air Force called "supersonic dash capability." Regular jet engines would be turned on over target areas, driving the plane as fast as 2,000 miles an hour. By 1955, the Defense Department was so excited about the WS-125 that it speeded up the program and set 1959 as the date for testing a prototype power plant. General Electric predicted that the engine would be flight tested in 1960.

The optimism didn't last. In late 1956, Dr. Clifford C. Furnas, assistant secretary of defense for research and development, reported to his boss, Secretary Wilson: "For some time there has been a growing concern from both technical and fiscal aspects that the ANP program must be substantially reoriented." Wilson didn't have to be told twice. In December, he shot down the WS-125 program.

For the next two years, ANP drifted uneasily with occasional changes in plans. "The objectives were vague," said the influential journal, Aviation Week, in what surely must have been the understatement of the year. In June 1958 the nuclear airplane stew was stirred again. The Air Force decided that what it really wanted was a strange creature it named CAMAL-Continuously Airborne Missile-launcher And Low level weapon system (it's considered bad form in initial-happy military circles to have a project not known by an acronym). CAMAL, able to stay in the air for days at a time, would be relatively invulnerable to surprise attack. It could retaliate both by loosing the missiles it carried, and by launching direct bombing attacks at tree-top level.

ANP was eight years old by this time, and had produced little besides ill will. The joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, which had been sniping away at the Defense Department and the Atomic Energy Commission for slowness and bungling, was erupting in anger. "We find this almost incredible situation," reported the committee. "The program still has no firm set of objectives. . . No decision has been made regarding actual nuclear flight and no target dates have been set for such flight."

By mid-1959, the Air Force, backed by the Joint Committee, was pushing for quick development of a flying prototype. But nobody, said Dr. Herbert York, director of research for DOD, could design an airplane intelligently until the essential ingredient-a better reactor-was available. He cancelled the CAMAL project and told both GE and P&W to develop better reactors.

In January 1961 the outgoing Eisenhower Administration recommended that only one of the engines-it didn't say which one-be developed further, and that the ANP budget be cut in half.

In March, the incoming Kennedy administration delivered the coup de grace to the sick project. Despite all that time and money, said the new President, "the possibility of achieving a militarily useful aircraft in the foreseeable future is still very remote." The cancellation, he added, would "avoid a future expenditure of at least $1 billion, which would have been necessary to achieve the first experimental flight." A useful fleet of atom-powered planes would have cost more billions.

The joint Committee on Atomic Energy, strong backer of ANP from the beginning, was furious. Said Congressman Mel Price of Illinois, most outspoken backer of the atomic airplane: "The records are filled with the story of divided authority, vacillating budgets, withheld funds, technical reviews, changed objectives, transferred personnel-the list goes on." In other words, said Price, ANP was killed by indecision and bungling.

Copyright May 1965 TRUE The Man's Magazine

Portion of "Our Billion-Dollar Defense Boondoggles" C. P. Gilmore

Graphics Copyright 1959 HAWK Model Co.

Ed. Note : In all fairness to the ANP, the article went on to state that " ..... for sheer ineptitude, mismanagement, and bureaucratic boondoggling, none can approach the most incredible case of all: the saga of the P6M Seamaster."