HD-1956-HoundDog

A WS-131B Hound Dog, released from a B-52F over the White Sands Missile Range, performs a High-Low Altitude Profile mission using the physical feature of the terrain to avoid radar detection.

Part 1 of 3 Birth of the Hound Dog by E. Katz

I joined the Missile Division of North American Aviation in Downey in May 1955 and was assigned to the Preliminary Design Section headed by Bill Parker. Reporting to Bill were Bob Wilson for Design and Bernie Chew for Operational Analysis. My background at the time was aerodynamics and missile design. I was identified as a Responsible Engineer under Gordon Olson and George Jeffs. As an RE, I was to lead teams on projects to which I was assigned.

On July 13, 1957, the North American Navaho program was abruptly canceled. The cancellation was a result of the successes of the Atlas ballistic missile program. The Navaho, a 3,000-mile ramjet cruise missile, was deemed as not competitive for the prescribed mission. Ironically, much of the success of the Atlas could be directly traced to the technology developed for the Navaho.

Only weeks after the cancellation, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force invited North American to come up with a design for a "lightweight air-to-surface missile". It was to be carried by the B-52bomber with a weight of not more than 12,500 lb fully fueled and armed. We were told it was a "hurry-up" project and that the concept had to be back in Washington within a week.

I was assigned the project under George Jeffs and recall working the weekend with a team which included Lou Walkover -best layout designer ever, Norm Ryker for structures –later resident of Rocket dyne, "Bobby" Crawford (later Johnson) for aerodynamics -female member of our team and first-rate aerodynamicist, Fred Ethridge for propulsion -what Fred didn't know about propulsion wasn't worth knowing; and several others to evolve a design that might be acceptable. We based the configuration on the X-10/G-38 canard type to carry over as much data as had been compiled on the Navaho program.

As I recall, Bob Wilson and Bill Parker carried the concept back to the Pentagon and later returned with smiles. By that time, we came to know that we were in competition with Chance Vought who had an air-to-surface adaptation of their Regulus Navy shipboard launched missile. Of course, we didn't know then that the "dice were loaded" for us as consolation for the impending loss of the Navaho program. However, this view was later shared by many of us but not officially noted!

Although the general configuration of the first design was pretty much a scaled-down X-10, there were some significant configuration issues. Lou Walkover resolved the first issue: how to arrange the internal components (guidance & control, APU, etc.) of the bird so that they could be readily maintained while mounted under the B-52 wing. Lou immediately came up with the design that used a cantilevered "I-beam" projected from a forward bulkhead-all components would be mounted on both sides of the beam and easily accessible once the nose . "cowling" was removed. Although there was some issue about the guidance system (pure inertial vs. a star-tracker system), we had no trouble settling on the Autonetics inertial autonavigational guidance system.

The major issue was the choice of the turbojet engine. General Electric had come up with the small J85 non-afterburning engine (I think it had been developed to power small commercial jets), which, in a two-engine configuration would be just sufficient to drive the bird to Mach 2.0 with the engines placed on either side of the after-body. GE had the test data to prove its case and we quickly (too quickly as it turned out) focused on that configuration. In fact, we had models made for publicity, which featured that configuration.

However, Pratt & Whitney came to us proposing that we use their recently developed J52 engine. The "advertised" advantage of the non-afterburning J52 was that a single engine might do the job, but the test data did not prove it would be adequate. So we sent P&W back to the showers. They came back with more data but still we were unconvinced. By late September, the competition was nearing a close and, as the project leader, I (and others) did not want any "changes" made at that time. How naive I was-P&W went to the Air Force and the Air Force came to us and with test data still wet on the paper, the J52 became the power plant of choice. Of course, as it turns out, that was the right choice.

In August 1957, Secretary of the Air Force James H. Douglas telephoned "Dutch" Kindelberger and told him that NAA had won the development contract.

I recall that Joe Beerer, the President of the Missile Division at the time, returning from Inglewood where he had met with "Dutch" Kindelberger and Lee Atwood regarding the contract award and telling us that it had been decided to name the GAM-77 as “Hound Dog". At the time Elvis was "King" and his musical fame carried over to our bird.

On October 16, 1958, Headquarters USAF awarded a Hound Dog production contract to North American Aviation. With the award of the contract and the beginning of the production program, Martin Boe was named Chief Engineer and Sandy Falbaum Assistant Chief Engineer. I think that Dale Myers may have been named Program Manager. Being an advanced concept/preliminary-design type, I returned to Preliminary Design.

The design requirements called for a 350-mile range and Mach 2 speed at over 35,000 feet. The Hound Dog carried a 1,742-pound warhead-four megatons, approximately 500 nautical miles from its launch point at high altitude and supersonic speed, or approximately 200 nautical miles from its launch point at low altitude and subsonic speed. A B-52 could carry two of these lethal missiles.

Hound Dog was a highly successful program and an important revenue source for North American in the post-Navaho period. Most importantly, it kept a very talented cadre of engineers together for the eventual competition and development of the Apol1o/Saturn programs.

About the Author: After graduating from Georgia Tech in 1943, Ellis joined Bell Aircraft in Marietta, Georgia as a liaison engineer on the B-29 production line. In 1945, he joined NACA at Langley Field as an aerodynamicist in the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division. By 1951, he moved to Fairchild Guided Missiles as a project engineer on the Lark and Petrel Missiles. His service with NAA began in 1955 at Downey and came to an end in 1987 when he retired from Seal Beach as Director of Systems Engineering, Saturn II. Ellis currently resides in Encino, California.

Part 2 of 3 Recollections of the Hound Dog by B. Boykin

I joined the North American Aviation WS-131B "Hound Dog" Program in January 1958, having transferred from Data Engineering under Jack Grimes on the cancelled Navaho Program. Dale Myers was the WS-131B Program Manager, Sandy Falbaum was also in Program Management and a later Program Manager. Gary Osbon was the Chief Engineer. Bob Coburn was an Assistant Chief Engineer to Gary Osbon. As a personal note: I thought of Gary Osbon, at that time and still do today, as a classic and very technically proficient Chief Engineer-as good as they come.

Initially, I was in the Flight Test Plans and Operations unit under Nick Carter who worked under L. A. Williamson. I recall my first assignment was working with Mark Morris developing the test requirements for the Hound Dog House Missile. This was a dedicated Hound Dog vehicle that would be used to run all individual system tests and end-to-end systems integrated tests to verify hardware integrity and operational success prior to any flight. Bill Dunham subsequently became the Supervisor of the Hound Dog House Missile.

Parallel to the House Missile operations were two Staging Test Operations where the actual test vehicles would be processed. These two test areas were supervised by Jim Michaels and John Hayes.

As the program progressed, and since I was a recent former active duty Air Force fighter pilot, I was asked if I would be interested in being the Flight Test Engineer on the WS-131B Dummy Missile Program to be run at the Boeing Airplane Company Seattle plant. This program was to determine the flight characteristics of the B-52 with one or two "Dummy" Hound Dog missiles attached to the left and right wing, inboard of the B-52's inboard engines.

Chuck McKim was the NAA Instrumentation Engineer that was in Seattle for this Dummy Missile Test Program. Wendell Garton and "Hetz" Hetzel were the NAA test pilots that flew the B-52F with the Boeing test pilots. All the other participants were Boeing personnel. This is where I met Bill Blair who, at that time, was a Boeing copilot on the B-52 in this Dummy Missile Test Program. Bill later joined North American and became supervisor at the Johnson Space Center for the North American systems group that supported/backed up the NASA Mission Operations Flight Directors.

The Dummy Missile test operations involved many B-52F test flights with many different configurations of varying fuel loads and off-limit flight conditions with one and/or two Hound Dogs installed. There, also, were many extreme yaw and shudder tests conducted with different gross weights as well as slow speed and fast speed stall sequences to see how the B-52F responded with the one and/or two Hound Dog dummy missiles installed. An example of these extreme tests were intentional yaw induced tests performed by kicking hard right rudder and then hard left rudder several times to get the B-52F in an exaggerated yaw condition and then to get off the rudder and let the B-52F dampen out, all the time recording aerodynamic and structural load data on both the B-52F and the Dummy Hound Dog(s). The Dummy Hound Dogs were also instrumented to measure the aerodynamic and environmental conditions encountered and how the Hound Dog responded to the effects of the B-52F.

I recall one maximum fuel load take-off test flight of some 452,000 pounds where the only objective was a maximum weight takeoff to see how the B-52F performed. Completing takeoff, we had to fly for some four hours at low altitude with landing gear down and flaps hanging out at high throttle settings to burn off the excess fuel to get down to the safe maximum load for landing. We flew up and down the coast of Washington State and around Mt. Olympia numerous times and the views were spectacular at about 2,000 feet.

The flight plan for one test flight required an above 50,000 feet altitude, so the entire crew was outfitted with the high altitude pressure suit (the Poopy Suit). We only wore it once and it was not the most comfortable flight garb.

Since my duties as Missile Operator had no real in-flight duties, i.e., only a dummy missile, Boeing trained me to perform their in-flight fuel management and fuel transfer schedule. They had a specially designed fuel management "slide rule" and I was assigned the task of maintaining the B-52F center of gravity (CG) during flight as the fuel was burned from the wing and main body tanks. Once I got the hang of it, I became proficient at keeping the CG exactly where the flight plan requirements specified with continual fuel tank monitoring and transferring of fuel between the various tanks as the fuel level decreased.

Between October 1958 and January 1959, I logged almost 60 hours in the B-52F during this test operations period.

The last flight of this series, after flying from Seattle to Eglin AFB, Florida in early January 1959, was to successfully launch Dummy Missile D-2 over Eglin Range 70 to assure proper and safe separation of the Hound Dog missile from the right in-board wing of the B-52F and to evaluate any effects of the separation on the B-52F.

All flight tests of these configurations were successful and that ushered in the actual flight test program with operable test Hound Dogs and the eventual production program for the Air Force.

I had an opportunity to go to Eglin AFB as a Missile Operator and finish the Dummy Test Program and go on to the active flight test program but declined that offer and became the supervisor of the Test Requirements and Planning (TR&P) group working under Bob Coburn, and later, Bob Weaver. As it turned out, Ted Clauss accepted the Eglin AFB assignment and finished that phase of the program.

In the Test Requirements and Planning (TR&P) group, we were responsible for coordinating and preparing the tests requirements for all the development test vehicle flights and monitoring the test operations for Program Management at Downey in coordination with Eglin AFB. Test Operations were staged out of Eglin AFB to Cape Canaveral, Florida, and to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. TR&P issued a one page Daily Quick Look Report to management, reporting on the previous day's test operations. We also operated a "real time" Mission Operations Room, monitoring test operations in Florida. I guess you could say it was the precursor to the Apollo/Shuttle Mission Support Room (MSR) operation. Some of the personnel in the TR&P group were Bill Beckner, Ernie Everett, Vern Dobbs, Gene Dryer, Ted Clauss, and Jim Blevins, Photo from the Ben Boykin Collection and others that were very senior in experience with the old NAA "gray badges".

The WS-131B "Hound Dog" operational vehicle, launched from the B-52 aircraft had several trajectories available. It could launch at high altitude, with a dogleg turn; it could launch at high altitude with a maneuver to a lower altitude; it could launch at a low altitude with a maneuver to a higher altitude, with or without a dogleg turn. The computer system was the Autonetics VERDAN computer system, the precursor to today's GPS systems. It should be also noted that the two Hound Dog engines could be used as additional power for the B-52.

As the Apollo Program began to come up to speed, the Hound Dog Program personnel were transferred to the Ferguson Facility off Atlantic Blvd. and down I-5 in East L.A. and eventually were transferred to the NAA Tulsa facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I transferred to the Apollo Program in Ray Pyle's Project Engineering office in January 1964.

About the Author: Ben is an old friend of the Retirees Bulletin, always ready to provide helpful suggestions and encouragement. In 1957; he joined the NAA Space Division where he held key assignments on Navaho, Hound Dog, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo/Soyuz, Space Shuttle and STSOC in Downey and in Houston. In 1994, he joined Allied Signal as Program Manager at the NASA White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. He is retired now and resides with his charming wife, Janis, in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Part 3 of 3 Remembrances of Hound Dog by D Landau

I was in charge of the “Bomb Shelter” flight control test lab conducting test on Navaho series hydraulic controls under extreme conditions. When the Navaho program was cancelled the Hound Dog was activated. While the Hound Dog program got underway we were on contract to do special follow on tests on Navaho hydraulics. During that time several of the engineers I worked with were also called upon to support the Hound Dog then being checked out on the factory floor in Downey CA. Later when I was lead engineer for Minuteman I hydraulic power element we conducted tests on a Hound Dog hydraulic servo returned from a crash site. By association, I have these Hound Dog remembrances.

Factory Floor Shakes: Flight control engineer Tom Albright told me they were having a problem with the Hound Dog flight control system. Tom said when they activated the Hound Dog system, and someone happened to slap the missile it would go into a St Vitas Dance, it would have the shakes. He said we’ve traced it to the accelerometer in the control loop, when the structure is disturbed it is sensed by the accelerometer and causes commands to be issued to the flight control surfaces whose motion feeds back to the accelerometer causing the vehicle to have the shakes on the factory floor.

They decided to block the body bending mode frequency from being passed to the flight control servos. Clarence Ashe, who had been supporting tests being conducted at the Bomb Shelter, was assigned to design an analog “notch filter” in the Hound Dog servo controls loop. Fly by wire was then relatively new but controls analysis simulation lab studies provided methods for designing “shaping networks” to handle special conditions. Clarence designed the notch filter and helped check it out on the system.

The Hemisphere Switch: I don’t recall the where and when but at a flight control gathering we were told of a Hound Dog test flight where the chase plane lost the missile. The B-52 launched the Hound Dog for an intended flight over the FL tracking range into the Gulf. However shortly after launch the missile went into some clouds and the chase plane lost contact. The pilot wasn’t immediately alarmed until coming out of the clouds he couldn’t find the missile. He called the cape who should have picked it up by then, saying he lost contact, the cape responded that they had not picked it up. They were totally mystified – until about an hour later a farmer in Pennsylvania placed a call to the AF, asking if anyone had lost a missile, as he found one in his field with AF markings on it. It was determined that someone set the inertial navigation “hemisphere switch” to the wrong hemisphere. Instead of flying south it had reversed and headed north.

Test of Hydraulic Servo from crashed Hound Dog: A servo actuator from a Hound Dog crash was brought into the Minuteman I hydraulic test lab to determine how well it held up. The actuator body looked normal but the end of the 1 inch shaft was badly bent in the crash. We connected the servo to the hydraulic test stand and electronics test panel and found it worked, So we ran a frequency response test – the servo valve and position transducer had survived the shock and performed as well as new, However the fact of there being a crash caused further field testing.

Test of notch filters in fielded systems: Clarence Ashe was put on special assignment to test all the systems in the field to determine if the filter “notch” had shifted, it was known some analog electronics attributes can change with age. Capacitors available at that time were known to deteriorate with time, so there was a basis for concern. Clarence checked out all delivered systems but I don’t recall Clarence saying and I didn’t ask if they found any shift in the notch filter performance. (About 1971, aware of analog vulnerability, I changed fields, beginning an effort to develop a digital signal processor to control Flight Control Servo actuators.)

Clarence later worked for me on the Minuteman III Post Boost Propulsion System until sent on special assignment to help Rocketdyne with a problem. There people from Honeywell were so impressed with him that they gave him an offer hard to refuse. Clarence became a Director at Honeywell.

A Dummy Hound Dog attached to the B-52F left wing pylon at the Boeing Flight Center in Seattle prior to extensive flight test.

An unusual view of the B- 52F from below with a WS-131B Hound Dog mounted on each wing.