![]() ![]() Lethal radius of the blast was estimated to be about 300 metres (980 ft). However, there was no mechanism for disarming the warhead after launch. Detonation was by time-delay fuze, although the fuzing mechanism would not arm the warhead until engine burn-out, to give the launch aircraft sufficient time to turn and escape. Targeting, arming, and firing of the weapon were coordinated by the launch aircraft's fire-control system. Total flight time was about 12 seconds, during which time the rocket covered 10 km (6.2 mi). The final design carried a 1.5- kiloton W25 nuclear warhead and was powered by a Thiokol SR49-TC-1 solid-fuel rocket engine of 162 kN (36,000 lb f) thrust, sufficient to accelerate the rocket to Mach 3.3 during its two-second burn. Full-scale development began in 1955, with test firing of inert warhead rockets commencing in early 1956. The then top-secret project had various code names, such as Bird Dog, Ding Dong, and High Card. To ensure simplicity and reliability, the weapon would be unguided, since the large blast radius made precise accuracy unnecessary. In 1954 Douglas Aircraft began a program to investigate the possibility of a nuclear-armed air-to-air weapon. Firing large volleys of unguided rockets into bomber formations was not much better, and true air-to-air missiles were in their infancy. The World War II-age fighter armament of machine guns and cannon were inadequate to stop attacks by massed formations of high-speed bombers. The revelation in 1947 that the Soviet Union had produced a reverse-engineered copy of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the Tupolev Tu-4 ( NATO reporting name "Bull"), which could reach the continental United States in a one-way attack, followed by the Soviets developing their own atomic bomb in 1949, produced considerable anxiety. The interception of Soviet strategic bombers was a major military preoccupation of the late 1940s and 1950s. ![]() Fired from a US Air Force F-89J over Yucca Flats, Nevada Test Site at an altitude of ~15,000 ft (4.5 km). Plumbbob John nuclear test, the only live test ever of a Genie rocket, on 19 July 1957.
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