![]() In May 1944, the USAAF, through the Office of the Chief of Ordnance (OCO), contracted with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (GALCIT), for the Army’s first ballistic missile program to “develop long-range rocket missiles and ramjets and…associated guidance and launching equipment.” This project became known as ORDCIT, an acronym for Ordnance-California Institute of Technology, also used as the name of the original range. In December, the German Air Force pulse-jet propelled V–1 was also successful in tests at Peenemünde, although this first flight only achieved a distance of 3,000 yards.Ī Fritz X radio-guided missile being dropped by the German Luftwaffe. This rocket was larger but almost identical to missiles Goddard tested years earlier at Roswell. On October 3, 1942, Goddard’s early rocketry research bore fruit in Peenemünde, Germany, with the first successful launch of an A–4 (V–2) missile for the German Army. rocketry programs that took place in the western United States. Ironically, Goddard’s success in obtaining military sponsorship and the subsequent relocation permanently removed him from participation in the first major U.S. Goddard, who had flown the first liquid-fueled rocket in 1926, had failed to interest the War Department in rocketry until September 1941, when he finally obtained contracts with the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics and the Army Air Corps. Goddard’s program relocated to the Naval Engineering Experiment Station in Annapolis, Maryland, in July 1942, just three years before the fruits of his early research arrived at the new Proving Ground with the captured V–2 program. Robert Goddard’s rocket research group, the only such effort in the United States prior to World War II, had been operating in nearby Roswell, NM (about 200 miles northeast of WSMR and Fort Bliss, TX), since 1930, under the sponsorship of the Guggenheim Foundation. Groves, promoted to Brigadier General on September 22, continued to command the Manhattan Project until its transfer, in March 1947, to the new Atomic Energy Commission. Army, under the command of (then) Colonel Leslie Groves, who supervised its relocation to the secret site of Los Alamos, New Mexico, the following year. In June, the Manhattan Project, initiated the previous year, was transferred from its original headquarters at the Manhattan, New York, Engineer District, to the U.S. Construction began at AAAF on February 6, and the base was elevated to full status on June 1. Most of these ranges lay within Doña Ana, Otero, and neighboring counties within or close to the current White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) and U. Ten practice ranges had also been established in the New Mexico Texas Southwest. Five additional bases were located in Texas, and one was built in each of the states of California, Colorado, Arizona, and Louisiana. Five of the 14 major bombardier training bases in the United States, designed to accommodate 45,000 trainees, were located in New Mexico. 1942īy early 1942, new construction was underway at the Alamogordo, Carlsbad, Deming, Clovis, and Roswell Army Air Fields, resulting in a massive increase in the military presence in southern New Mexico. ![]() In December, following the air attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy, and ranchers in 55 townships in four New Mexico counties were rapidly notified that grazing leases on public lands had been canceled to accommodate the newly established Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range. By October, the government ordered local ranchers to begin disposing of livestock in anticipation of the establishment of the proposed bombing range. Alamogordo Army Air Field (AAAF) was officially established on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1941. “Hap” Arnold, USAAC, met with Vice Marshall Sir Guy Garrod, RAF, to establish the British Overseas Training Program, which would use new air bases built in the vast, open spaces of the American West. Anticipating the inevitable fall of Europe to the Axis and direct American participation in World War II, military planners recognized the need for a fallback position for the Royal Air Force (RAF). Army Air Corps began planning for rapid expansion of existing aircraft training facilities throughout several western states in 1941. ![]()
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