Nothing Was Ever Normal: Memoirs of a Pioneer in the United States Missile and Space Programs

By Don Peeler

In the heady days of the early 1960s, the United States found itself perched on the edge of technological, sociological, and societal precipices. Advances made by its enemies with offensive ballistic-missile systems put America in catch-up mode, both on Earth and in orbit. Others were leading the race to space, and that was an affront to American safety, status, and national pride.

For the men and women employed as top-secret research workers at the General Motors Division, secrecy was a way of life. The projects they worked onincluding Project Jennifer, Big Bird, Thor, Titan missiles, Matador, Regulus, the stealth fighter, and the Fastest Gun in the Westwere cloaked in the highest security possible. In their labs, the Lunar Rover, Apollo Guidance, and the complex, multinational F-16 systems were born.

Don Peeler was a typical engineer in this high-stress environment, but his personal experiences were atypical. During his years at the General Motors Division, he experienced events that ran from the humorous to the heroic, and in Nothing Was Ever Normal, he shares his best memories of those days. For Don and his peers, there was no normal or any such thing as standard operating procedures, because what was occurring had never been experienced before. Compared to NASAs Manned Space Program, their glory came from knowing that what they were doing was essential to the security of the United States. Now that their classification designations have lapsed, the stories of the Band of Others can finally be told.

Don Peeler was one of thousands of bright engineers who helped America dominate space during the Cold War and beyond. He endured sleepless nights fueled by coffee and cigarettes to troubleshoot technical problems and meet launch deadlines, because every project was new and nothing was normal meant nothing was typical or predictable. In this book, he looks back on his storied career.

Peelers pride is palpable, whether hes describing an early missile launch at Cape Canaveral or the laborious, hands-on process of solving a new guidance systems glitch. But overall, Peelers memoir covers decades of wide-ranging projects Several Air Force Strategic missiles, Mercury, Apollo, several CIA programs, the F-16 aircraft and ends up with several automotive applications.

The recollections Peeler fleshes out the most occur later in his career, when he has moved up to management and contract negotiation for his employer, a highly regarded division of General Motors. (The astronauts, as depicted in documentaries and film, drove Corvettes: They were gifts from GM, Peeler notes.) His stories of his greatest negotiating successes demonstrate how the author earned the nickname Wheeler Dealer Peeler.

Peeler wrote this memoir to give credit to the men who toiled behind the scenes of the dramatic rocket launches and to tell the younger generation what his peers accomplished. In that, he has succeeded. The book will likely appeal mostly to people who have worked in the industry, but it may also whet readers appetites to read up more on the projects covered, or revisit films such as Apollo 13.

The Book is available in hardcover, paperback and eBook.

Review made by BlueInk,

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491746837

Don Peeler

For twenty-nine years, author Don Peeler worked with the highly secretive Division of General Motors located in Santa Barbara, California. An air force veteran, he later earned an engineering degree (BSEE) from Purdue University. While at GM, he earned his MBA. He was born in Kokomo, Indiana.

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Copyright © 2014 Don Peeler.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-4684-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4683-7 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4811-4 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014916692

iUniverse rev. date: 10/21/2014

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Disclaimer

Introduction

The Beginning

My Division, AC Spark Plug

The Organization

Rockets And Missiles

United States Missile Development History

My First Cape Canaveral Launch-Thor

My Leaders

Nothing Normal Stories

Titan II Program

Titan II Launches Begin, Failures Too

Knife Burial Ceremony

Titan II Flight Failure

Titan II Fails Again

The Manned Space Program Begins

To The Moon

Apollo Moon Program Begins

Computer Research And Development Department

The Short-Range Attack Missile (SRAM) Program

Carousel IV

The F-16 Contract

The Space Shuttle

Titan III Program

Titan III Flight Failure

Titan III Has Another Failure

Interim Upper Stage (IUS)

Big Bird

Delta Guidance Computer

Stealth Fighter Computer

Santa Barbara, California, GM Research

Titan Ii And Titan III Upgraded

Sea Operations

Project Jennifer

Fastest Gun In The West

Main Battle Tank

Lav And Gunship-Puff The Magic Dragon

Automotive Activities

Epilogue

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My family

The personal recollections and contributions of my fellow Band of Others that were compiled in the Company Book Nothing Left To Chance.

All of my fellow workers that never gave up during those tough, problem solving days/nights when nothing was going normal. You know who you are.

DISCLAIMER

This is presented as mine and others personal recollections of incidents or activities on assignments. All attempts have been made to make the reported activities accurate and chronological. The document does not represent the positions of General Motors Corporation, any GM corporate reporting division or any customer of the products identified.

In cases where a mentioned person is known to be deceased the full name may have been used, otherwise the last name is an initial only. Nothing sinister intended, but just to allow privacy.

Don Peeler

TABLES OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Cover

Figure 2 Earthrise As Seen From Apollo Landing Site

Figure 3 Don

Figure 4 AC Spark Plug Milwaukee Plant

Figure 5 New Plant in Oak Creek, Wisconsin

Figure 6 Learning New Technology. I’m Second From Top on Right.

Figure 7 Rocket Driven Sled. Guidance System In Pod On Front

Figure 8 Don Lectures About Inertial Navigation Principles

Figure 9 Graphics of a Gimbaled Platform

Figure 10 The V1 Rocket

Figure 11 The THOR Missiles Were Deployed In England

Figure 12 The Jupitor Missiles Were Installed in Turkey

Figure 13 Robert Goddard and His First Rocket

Figure 14 Peenemunde on the Baltic Sea

Figure 15 A Typical Ballistic Path

Figure 16 Multi-Staged and MIRVd Missile

Figure 17 MIRV Warheads

Figure 18 The THOR Missile

Figure 19 The Infamous Starlight Motel

Figure 20 Inertial Measurement Unit In Test

Figure 21 Wire-By-Wire Test Reveals a Problem. Mike and I.

Figure 22 THOR On Launch Pad. Gantry Surrounds Vehicle

Figure 23 Titan Computer Ready For Final Inspection

Figure 24 Paul Larson

Figure 25 MACE becomes Matador In Field

Figure 26 Minuteman Launch From The Cape

Figure 27 Titan II Missile In Operational Silo

Figure 28 Titan II Test Launch From Silo Simulator

Figure 29 Titan Flight Readiness Review. I’m Second From Bottom On Right.

Figure 30 Murrin, Ripple (Site Manager) and Me Looking At Flight Data.

Figure 31 Vanguard. Vehicle Exploded On Pad. Televised.

Figure 32 Manned Orbiting Laboratory. MOL

Figure 33 Original Seven Mercury Astronauts

Figure 34 Mercury Capsule With Escape Tower Attached.

Figure 35 Redstone Launcher For Mercury Manned Flight

Figure 36 Atlas Launcher. John Glenn Orbits First For USA

Figure 37 Saturn Is New Launch Vehicle For Lunar Landing

Figure 38 Gemini Capsule Returns Safely

Figure 39 Gemini 8 as seen From Gemini 7. 135 Miles Up.

Figure 40 Saturn V Apollo Launch Vehicle

Figure 41 Apollo Guidance and Navigation Equipments

Figure 42 Apollo Astronauts White, Grissom and Chafee

Figure 43 Apollo 1 Capsule Fire Kills Three Astronauts

Figure 44 Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle

Figure 45 Vacuum Tube on Right Versus Transistor and Solid-State Device on Left.

Figure 46 Engineering Award

Figure 47 SRAM Installed On FB-111 Fighter Bomber

Figure 48 SRAM Computer

Figure 49 Reino, Larson, Annie Larson, Me, Jack Weston. On Way To LA For Meeting

Figure 50 1000th SRAM Delivered. Dettman, Dr. B, Me, Bernie Wright.

Figure 51 F-16 Multi-National Fighter

Figure 52 Size Is 6 Wide, 14 Deep, and 9" Tall

Figure 53 F Troop. Palachek Missing.

Figure 54 Horizontal (percent), Vertical ($M) an example.

Figure 55 Carl Benes (Replaced Harrington), and Me sailing on the Baltic Sea With Rasmusssen.

Figure 56 Shuttle On Launch Pad

Figure 57 Space Shuttle With Satellite in Bay.

Figure 58 Shuttle Returns From Space Safely

Figure 59 Early Titan III A Launch. No Solids Strapped on.

Figure 60 Full Up Titan III C Uses VIB

Figure 61 Reusable Solid Rocket Motors Separate From Booster.

Figure 62 Titan IIIC Lifts Off.

Figure 63 Transtage With Payload. (Where stripes are). Note size of man.

Figure 64 Wheeler Dealer Peeler Wins Another Contract

Figure 65 IUS Graphic

Figure 66 IUS Releases Galileo Satellite To Mars

Figure 67 Big Bird in factory testing

Figure 68 Upgraded Delta Space Booster

Figure 69 Stealth Fighter

Figure 70 Goleta, California Plant

Figure 71 Air Force Rivet Hawk Program. Don and Colonel Litzinger.

Figure 72 SBO Has Navy. The Swan Is Depicted.

Figure 73 SBO’s Deep Ocean Work Boat. DOWB.

Figure 74 Glomar Explorer

Figure 75 The TATU is Built Into The Dispersed Cable

Figure 76 TATUs Being Deployed Off Of The Long Lines Ship.

Figure 77 Ship Positioning System

Figure 78 Project Jennifer Declassified.

Figure 79 Aerophysics Breech End of Projectile Firing Device

Figure 80 Replica Shows Up On Detection Systems.

Figure 81 Replicas Protected From Firing By Separating

Figure 82 Main Battle Tank. The Abrams

Figure 83 LAV and Puff The Magic Dragon

Figure 84 Systems That Use The Buss

INTRODUCTION

My story begins in the 1960s, when the United States was in a catch-up mode for offensive ballistic missile systems, as well as for the space program. The introduction of modern digital technologies that were needed to improve performance, accuracy and reduce weights in missile payloads also brought new, never before encountered problems. To the extreme, the primary reason that three astronauts on Apollo 1 were killed in a capsule fire was because the capsule air was 100 percent oxygen. A small spark from a wire shorting out was found to be the cause. Problems became known as glitches, but solving them is just a part of this writer’s story.

I was a typical engineer entering into this high-stress environment, and I spent over twenty nine exciting years advancing to one of the highest positions in the very secretive division of General Motors. Classified programs and technologies were an everyday activity in this GM division, which was known by many names: AC Spark Plug, Delco Electronics, and Delco Systems were just a few.

Some of my experiences were atypical, but most of them were shared by many of the aerospace people of that era. It is a story that tens of thousands of engineers could tell that worked on the defensive missiles and space age equipments being developed. We were inventing methods and techniques on the fly and solving new problems every day. There were no normal and no Standard Operating Procedures because what was occurring had never been experienced before. We also had The Right Stuff. You could even declare us as The Band of Others.

Some humorous happenings, almost heroic events, unique negotiations and technical breakthroughs are just a few parts of the overall story. My personal stories are enhanced with a history of the rocket and missile technologies dating back to the 1930s. You may have heard a lot about the Germans being the first in rocketry, but an American named Goddard preceded them by many years. His findings about a rocket’s travel in space are still true today.

Some of the now unclassified programs discussed in this book are Project Jennifer, Big Bird, the many Titan Missiles, Matador, Regulus, Thor, Stealth Fighter and the Fastest Gun in the West. The Apollo Lunar Program and other non-classified military programs such as the complex, multi-national F-16 Fighter and SRAM are also covered in these pages. Following the major lunar landing the division became heavily involved in the infusion of its digital technology know how into the automobile. That effort evolved in the transfer of hundreds of engineers to the many auto development centers, some as managers. There were two other program directors in the organization, and some highlights from their programs are included for completeness.

THE BEGINNING

I was born in Kokomo, Indiana. I had the normal number of childhood friends and grew up in a typical Midwestern town with the usual family values and beliefs. If you work hard you get ahead, etc. My three older brothers set the pace for what was going to be expected of me, marry your High School sweetheart, get a job, go to college, and raise a family. I was engaged to be married, but I had no idea of what I wanted to do after high school in 1950. I finally decided that the Air Force (AF) might be a good start, because if I didn’t enlist I would have been drafted into the Army to serve in the Korean War.

image02.jpg

Figure 2 Earthrise As Seen From Apollo Landing Site

I was married after finishing basic training and sent to Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi for Electronics Training. I ended up staying at Keesler as an Airborne Radar Instructor my whole enlistment. A few months before getting out of the AF in 1955, I decided to go to college. A local University Extension offered night classes where I took basic English and History Units. I obtained an interest in Electronics through my AF training. So Electrical Engineering seemed like the thing to do. Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana was a well-known Engineering School and was near my hometown. I received an early out by three months, so I could begin classes in January 1955. I graduated with honors and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) in 1958.

The Russians had already launched the first earth orbiting space object, Sputnik and the Cold War was heating up. The Russian, Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) and shorter-range missile developments were perceived as being much further along than the USA programs. The USA was also clearly behind in the race to space with the primary problem being the lack of a reliable booster. The booster deficiencies were causing problems in our offensive missiles that were needed to counteract the Russian ICBMs.

After graduating, I went to work for General Telephone Electric (GTE) Laboratory located in Northlake, Illinois. The Lab was to be GTE’s answer to Bell Telephone Labs, which was a well-known advanced research company. Unfortunately, after only nine months of doing very exciting research in my own lab with my personal technician, it was announced that the whole Research Lab was to be moved to Rochester, New York as part of a merger with Sylvania. I didn’t want to move east so I began looking for a new job.

image03.jpg

Figure 3 Don

I had a high school and college friend who had gone to work for AC Spark Plug, a Division of General Motors (GM) located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My family and theirs got together in Milwaukee on occasion, and I liked the area, especially the fishing and the many beautiful parks. My friend mentioned that his company was hiring engineers by the hundreds, and that I should apply. I applied the following week, was called in for an interview the next week and given an offer the same day with a large increase in salary.

At the time, I didn’t know that my whole career of over 29 years would be with this Division, which had many names over the years. I also learned that it was the most government secretive division within GM. From the time when I joined GM in 1959 until I retired in 1998, I was involved in many super-secret programs, some where even the name of the program was classified. The division was involved in many top-secret programs. To name a few, the deployment of: the Titan II ICBM; the development of a booster capable of putting very large classified spy satellites in orbit; recovery of a sunken Russian submarine; development of the initial spy satellite named Big Bird and the first stealth fighter.

The secretive Division of General Motors had many names over the years, beginning as a part of the AC Spark Plug Division, when we developed missile guidance systems. Not because the missiles used spark plugs, but because AC Spark Plug was a very profitable GM Division headquartered in Flint, Michigan and this new, secretive missile activity involving the government was most likely not going to be one with high profits. It could even be profit losses. It was concluded that overall they would be lost in AC Spark Plug’s Financial Statement.

There are many inside, some funny, stories because of this tie to GM. In particular, as far as GM was concerned, they didn’t want anything we did to reflect on them, good or bad, but especially anything bad. For example, even though my division had a major responsibility regarding the development of the Lunar Roving Vehicle that the Astronauts drove around on the surface of the moon, we were suppressed from putting a license plate reading GM-1 on the vehicle. What if it fails up there, we don’t want that kind of publicity. Was the unofficial word given to us. GM did give each of the original seven astronauts a brand-new Corvette, each with an astronaut chosen pastel color, but these gifts were never publicized. The Corvette gifts continued in later years to the early moon landing crews. In the movie, Apollo 13 Tom Hanks (playing astronaut Jim Lovell) was shown driving a Corvette.

I also had a business relationship with many of the well-known Aerospace Contractors. Stories relating to activities with companies such as Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Martin Marietta, IBM, General Dynamics, Lockheed, Raytheon, Perkin-Elmer, Hamilton-Standard, and Singer-Kearfott appear in parts of the book.

To show the reader how vast the GM Corporation’s various capabilities were I’ll relate a story that occurred during a long and arduous negotiation with General Dynamics on the F-16 fighter contract. Over six weeks were spent in Fort Worth, Texas negotiating the F-16 Fire Control Computer program with General Dynamics. A unique part of the F-16 program required us to establish a manufacturer of our F-16 computer in Denmark. As part of my contract with General Dynamics and theirs with the Air Force, we were required to have a specific amount of offset dollars for our selected European country. Those countries were to build parts of the airplane or have monetary equivalents to offset their development investments. It was because of this offset requirement that I found out that General Motors had a Trade Division. It was set up to do trades between countries. This division would work deals for GM products and how payment could be arranged. A fictitious example would be France buys 10,000 GM cars and pays for them with 10 million liters of wine. GM doesn’t want the wine, so they trade it to Spain for their locomotives and then trade the locomotives to Italy for cash.

That was an interesting revelation. Profits were made by GM on each of those trades. It was a great profit center for GM. We ended up not needing their assistance on the F-16 negotiations. I don’t know if the Trade Group still exists.

MY DIVISION, AC SPARK PLUG

To put my business group in perspective within GM, we had sales in the $120 million range compared to General Motors (GM) profits in the billions. Our profits were in the 5 percent to 7 percent range, so you can see GM wasn’t in this business to make a lot of money from our profits.

At our peak, my division had several thousand employees, and 70 percent were engineers, including many with doctorates in their specific fields. All of top management in the division, were engineers. When I was first employed, the division was located in an old, Air Force owned, five-story brick building near downtown Milwaukee. The company also rented several other smaller buildings scattered throughout the Milwaukee area to accommodate all the activities.

The day that I went to work for AC Spark Plug, I wasn’t even considering the fact that I would be working for one of the largest employers in the United States. All I knew was the fact that this division was involved somehow in the business of missiles. General Motors had previously gotten into various aspects of the government military operations on many different occasions. The last major activity was building tanks during WW II instead of automobiles. It was therefore, not unusual for GM to add its name to the list of companies supporting the government in a time of need.

To put the Milwaukee group in perspective, we weren’t even given the status of a Division. We were a part of the AC Spark Plug Division, which indeed did make spark plugs and other auto parts, located in Flint, Michigan. Our Group couldn’t just be average. We needed to excel in this new field of missiles and especially in the selected niche that we had initially carved out, Inertial Guidance and Navigation and Control.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was heavily utilized to aid us in this new endeavor. Over the years, GM had been supporting MIT through the many Sloan Kettering Grants and research projects that were deemed appropriate. This money went a long way towards the funding needed by MIT’s Research Laboratory.

Officially:

The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and development activities focus on long-term technology development, as well as, rapid system prototyping and demonstration. These efforts are aligned within key mission areas. The laboratory works with industry to transition new concepts and technology for system development and deployment.

When GM decided to get into the inertial guidance business, it was none other than the head of MIT’s Lab, Dr. Charles Draper that assisted us. Dr. Draper was known as the Father of Inertial Navigation and the MIT Laboratory was aptly named The Draper Laboratory. The technology we required was transferred to our company from Dr. Draper and his staff and was primarily technology needed to manufacture the highly complex gyros and accelerometers required for the inertial guidance systems.

It wasn’t long after the technology transfer from MIT occurred that GM bought a company located near MIT in Boston that had been the lead manufacturer for MIT of the Gyros. The newly purchased company was moved to Milwaukee to support our programs. The Chief Engineer for the company, Don Atwood, was brought in as Director of Programs, reporting to the General Manager of our Operation. There were four Program Directors who reported to Atwood.

In addition to the above actions, there was a group within the Air Force located in Los Angeles that had been given the charter to develop Inertial Navigation for the AF missiles. This group was headed by General Bernard Shriver with staff officers made up of several Colonels, all who had advanced degrees in navigation-related fields. Once GM became aware of this group, it began to offer them opportunities they couldn’t refuse. Two colonels were hired by GM. One eventually became the General Manager and is reverently referred to as Dr. B throughout the book.

image04.jpg

Figure 4 AC Spark Plug Milwaukee Plant

The old Air Force Building was located in a semi residential neighborhood with a two-hour parking restriction. Everyone would go out within that time and move our cars around every two hours. The police would come along and mark the tire with white chalk and then repeat their path every two hours. It was almost comical when several people would get up in the middle of a meeting got to move my car and everyone just took it for granted as a necessary thing to do. There were a few small parking garages nearby, but they were expensive. The alternative was to park down at Lake Michigan’s area and walking the 10 blocks. That wasn’t much of a choice considering the cold winters of that area so most of us just drove around until we caught someone else moving their car.

THE ORGANIZATION

Our company was initially organized into Program Groups, which meant that everyone working on a specific program was assigned to that program’s Program Director. Any Program Director would have upwards of 500-600 engineers assigned to his particular programs at any one time. Later, functional organizations were formed for efficiency. Departments such as Engineering, Reliability, etc. were formed, and the Program people contacted those organizations for specific tasks.

My company was an engineering organization from the top down. All the equipments being developed were state of the art and required a high level of engineering knowledge. All four Program Directors were engineers. The Program Directors reported to the Director of Engineering who in turn reported to the General Manager who was also an engineer with a PhD. You get the picture.

image05.jpg

Figure 5 New Plant in Oak Creek, Wisconsin

The unique thing about this arrangement was that you could talk to anyone in the organization and expect that they would know what you were talking about. Don’t get me wrong; I was just an entry-level engineer, and I wasn’t talking to any of these high position people. The organization method didn’t change much over my 29 years with the company.

GM Management from AC Spark Plug headquarters in Flint, Michigan held their reviews at our Milwaukee, Wisconsin facility on a monthly basis. Due to our expansion, we built a larger facility located in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Needless to say, one thing that intrigued the many high level GM executive was the very nature of our business. I don’t think the majority of them ever did fully understand in detail what we were doing. Their main job within GM was building automobiles, but that didn’t keep them from showing interest in our early test flights at Cape Canaveral.

I spent a lot of time in the company library the first three months because I was awaiting my government security clearance. After receiving the clearance, I was assigned to a six-month technology-training program concentrating on the technical details of Inertial Guidance Systems. The class emphasized that we were in the Missile Guidance business and what we were doing was Top Secret within the government.

image06.jpg

Figure 6 Learning New Technology. I’m Second From Top on Right.

The training program I entered described in detail what a missile guidance system was designed to do, yeah right, guide the missile. The

way this all took place was through the concept called Inertial Navigation, which used gyros and accelerometers. The advantage of this technique over Radio Guidance was that it was self-contained and required no external inputs. Radio Guidance could be jammed and the missile thrown off course. Remember, the Cold War was going on at this time. Classification of our activities was required because we dealt with warhead accuracies and targeting, as well as, the deployment plans for the missiles.

The range of the new ICBM, the TITAN II, was also classified at the time. The missile’s characteristics have long been declassified and the missiles are now out of the field; the range was over 10,000 miles, and the warhead covered that range in 15 minutes. It was an awesome weapon system, a city buster with a 10 megaton warhead (Hiroshima’s warhead was 125 kilotons.). 54 of the TITAN missiles were eventually deployed within the USA in hardened, underground silos with 18 each in Arkansas, Arizona and Kansas, and they were on continuous alert 24/7.

The training program I attended gave me some insight into the many different inertial systems being developed and the problems that were occurring with them. The biggest problem seemed to be the reliable fabrication of the basic unit of the guidance system, which was the