The United States successfully test-fires its first Titan 1 intercontinental ballistic missile. The threat of global nuclear holocaust moves from the plausible to the likely.
The Titan 1 was not the first ICBM; both the United States and the Soviet Union deployed ICBMs earlier in the 1950s. But the Titan represented a new generation: a liquid-fueled rocket with greater range and a more powerful payload that upped the ante in the Cold War.
The Titan that the U.S. Air Force successfully launched from Cape Canaveral featured a two-stage liquid rocket capable of delivering a four-megaton warhead to a target eight thousand miles away. Puny by today’s standards, four megatons nevertheless dwarfed the destructive power of the A-bombs dropped on Japan (see here). The Titan’s range meant that, firing from its home turf, the United States was now capable of hitting targets in Eastern Europe, the western Soviet Union, and the far eastern Soviet Union.
The first squadron of Titan 1s was declared operational in April 1962. The missiles were stored in protective underground silos but had to be brought to the surface for firing. The Titan 2, which followed in the mid-1960s, could be launched directly from its silo. Though developed as a vehicle for delivering nuclear warheads to targets thousands of miles away, the Titan also proved effective as a launch platform for NASA. The Titan 2 was used extensively during the Gemini program (see here), before being replaced for Apollo (see here) by the far more powerful Saturn 5.
The Cold War is now history, and various treaties have led to the reduction of nuclear arsenals in both the United States and Russia. But the ICBM (which can be launched from silos, mobile launchers, or submarines) is still around, and still lethal.—TL