Nuking the Moon: And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board

by Vince Houghton

The fourth and final launch from the back of an M-21 was a heartbreaking disaster, so I’ll put my snark aside in deference to a brave pilot who gave the ultimate sacrifice for the security of his country. The July 30 test would be slightly different from the others. In the first three tests, the D-21 was detached from the mother ship while the M-21 was in a slight dive (0.9 g—nothing dramatic, but enough to play it safe and provide a better launch angle). The problem was, in real-world missions the crew might not have the opportunity to go into a dive to launch the drone. They might need to stay at altitude to avoid enemy fighters or SAMs. Johnson needed to know if the D-21 could successfully separate at level flight. The answer, tragically, was no, it couldn’t. For the first few seconds after launch, it looked as though everything was going according to plan. The D-21 was in the process of clearing the back of the mother ship, until it got caught in the shock wave coming off the M-21 (remember, both of these aircraft were traveling at more than two times the speed of sound). The drone lost its aerodynamics, rolled 45 degrees, and smashed back into the rear part of the mother ship’s fuselage, nearly shearing it in two. The two men in the M-21 were Lockheed test pilot Bill Park and Launch Control Officer (LCO) Ray Torick. As a test pilot, Park had been through aircraft emergencies before (in 1964, an A-12’s flight controls locked up on him and he had to eject from the plane...