| Abstract |
A small group of rocket enthusiasts at the California Institute of Technology in 1936 requested and received permission to organize at the Institute's Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory the GALCIT Research Project to investigate rocketry and its related aspects. The Project began as a private endeavor, and one of its own members financed the initial studies with a gift of $1,000. From such a modest beginning has expanded the 1961 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. And under the sponsorship of the U.S. Army Ordnance Department, the original GALCIT group, considerably augmented since 1936, in 1944 undertook the research and development of a succession of rocket test-vehicles, one of which became the first, the pioneer U.S. Army tactical guided missile-CORPORAL- American-developed from drawing board to deployment in Europe. The story of CORPORAL's birth, growth, and development into a full-fledged guided missile system is one of trial and error, a pattern of devoted human endeavor studded with many failures and fewer heartening successes, acknowledging each failure and profiting from it, and striving toward the goal of providing the Army Field Forces with an efficient deterrent to aggression. This story is one of improvisations, of making do what was available in materials and components, and of feeling the way as explorers into the unknown, uncharted realm of rocketry. |
