Jun 232011
The Lockheed CL-530 was a design circa 1958-1960 (details vague) for a truck-transportable, truck-launched Polaris-type ICBM. The missile was to be 26 feet 9 inches long, gross weight 26,720 pounds with a single 400 pound warhead. Range was given as 2000 to 5500 nautical miles.
9 Responses to “Ground-Mobile Polaris ICBM”
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I remember seeing something similar in a magazine or book somewhere with a boxcar on rails.
Are you thinking of the rail-mobile Minuteman?:
http://modcult.org/read/2010/1/12/image-parw-3
They also gave serious thought to doing a rail-mobile version of MX:
http://imagery.vnfawing.com/archive/Weapons/LGM-118/MISSILE_TRAIN.gif
I imagine the trick is driving to within 5500 km of Moscow. Gotta check that out on a map… see how far it is from West Germany to the Soviet Union.
Or is the idea to bomb Havana in case of an all out, no reserve, nu- klee- arr war? In that case, just cruise the highways in the South.
Ken, all of Europe (excluding a small area of south-west Spain) is with in 2000nm of Moscow and if you go out to 5500nm it includes all of the USA and Canada.Theoretically with the 5500nm range if it was located in West Germany or the USA (excluding Hawaii and the southern central states) it could have hit all locations in the USSR.
Hey David, thanks for clearing that up!
My fault… I misread ‘nautical miles’ as ‘kilometers’. The missile in the picture looks like a Polaris A1 which had a range of about 1000 miles and that got stuck in my head.
The Polaris A3 had a range of 2500 miles so I wonder where the 5500 nm range comes from, a missile that size can only go so far.
> I wonder where the 5500 nm range comes from, a missile that size can only go so far.
The data I have on this is pretty lean. While the missile is clearly the same size and weight as the Polaris, the range is *far* greater. This might be possible with improved propellants and improved mass fraction.
It also can use the launch tube ejection system to give it a real velocity boost on liftoff, as there’s no water to pass through till it reaches the air.
I’m trying to remember how deep underwater Polaris was to be launched from – was it 40-100 feet?
Was this design really implemented and made into a real weapon? If that so, this truck-carrying missile would be a destructive weapon in war. From the looks of it, this weapon is a long range type (can launch the missile at long distance), and with its size its damage is unimaginable.
what a powerful weapon of mass destruction.