At Tyuratam, the Soviet moon booster emerged slowly and suffered disaster. The Secret at Complex J

By Dwayne A. Day

I T WAS mid-August of 1969 in Washington, D.C., and Jack Rooney was at work in the huge, windowless building that housed the National Photographic In- terpretation Center. Rooney was a photo analyst. His job was to squeeze useful data from sat- ellite images of the Soviet Union, and he was about to learn something big. Just a few weeks earlier, on July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. had stepped onto the lunar surface and into history. America had won the “moon race.” Yet the Soviet Union did not con- cede the point. Moscow did not claim to be the first to reach the moon; rather, it insisted that it had never even made an attempt. That being the case, sniffed the newspaper Pravda, A KH-7 Gambit satellite reconnaissance photo showed something the United States had merely won a huge under construction at the Soviet Union’s Tyuratam space “race” with itself. The claim was facility in present-day Kazakhstan. The massive complex was to be the support facility for the Soviet Union’s enormous and widely repeated in Western media. secret N-1 moon rocket. The N-1 would have been somewhat However, what Rooney found sug- larger than the Apollo program’s Saturn V. gested a very different conclusion. He not only saw evidence of a Soviet moon effort, he also found indica- tions that Moscow’s program had recently met with disaster.

72 AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2004 Early American reconnaissance satellites rode into orbit on rockets such as this modified Thor, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in December 1963.

lunar goal, US intelligence agencies sought evidence that the Soviets were also racing to the moon. They did not find any, but they kept looking.

Success or Stunt? Sayre Stevens was an “all source” analyst working in the Space Divi- sion of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI). His job was to follow Soviet space systems by piec- ing together data provided to him It was a big discovery at the from a variety of sources, such as time, 35 years ago, but it was satellite photos, communications in- never publicized. Doubts that tercepts, agent reports, scientific jour- the Soviet Union had a moon nals, and statements by cosmonauts. program would persist for an- Stevens recalls that, in the sum- other 20 years, until the Soviet mer of 1962, the Soviet Union had press, in a startling episode of launched two manned spacecraft at glasnost, loosed a flood of revela- once, flying them past each other. tions about the program. (See “Yes, This appeared to demonstrate a ren- There Was a Moon Race,” by James dezvous capability that might be criti- E. Oberg, April 1990.) cal for any lunar effort. Those revelations marked the last At the time, Stevens did not be- chapter of a long tale of intelligence lieve the Soviet space program actu- operations. ally had achieved a rendezvous. The story started in May 1961, when Rather, Stevens recalled, it had pulled President Kennedy challenged the na- off a major publicity stunt, one that tion to put an American on the moon made the US “look like a fool for the within the decade. The US had little 48th time in the space race.” intelligence on the Soviet space pro- Within the Soviet space program, gram. After Kennedy announced his the CIA had no sources to which it

AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2004 73 could turn for interpretation. David preters were “thinking space,” Doyle In April 1964, the photointerpreters Doyle, an NPIC photointerpreter in recalled. declared that the Soviet Union was, 1962, concluded that the United The site was close to what the CIA in fact, constructing a new launch States had no human intelligence at called Complex A, the first launch- complex at Tyuratam. They called it all on Moscow’s program. If it did pad at Tyuratam and the place from Complex J. They noted the Soviets have secret information from human which Yuri Gagarin and the other had begun constructing two massive spies, he recalled, “it wasn’t getting cosmonauts were launched into or- buildings, unlike anything yet seen down to us.” bit. When Soviet workers, a short at Tyuratam. US intelligence did, however, have time later, built a road from the site Stevens remarked to himself, “OK, spy satellites, which were growing to Complex A, US suspicions about let’s wait and see what happens with more and more sophisticated. a moon program were strengthened. J. Let’s just give ourselves a little In spring 1963, a Corona satellite In July 1963, however, a top Soviet leeway here.” photographed the Tyuratam range, a scientist told British astronomer Ber- That year, Stevens returned to work sprawling launch facility situated in nard Lovell that Moscow had no moon on his lunar report. This time, he the desert of the then-Soviet republic program at all. The comment created said, he included a judgment that, of Kazakh ASSR. Examination of the a stir within NASA and the CIA. Was “obviously, they were trying to build photos revealed a major new construc- it true or merely a ruse? To try to a big missile” but that the Soviet tion effort at the site. Subsequent spy answer this question, Stevens re- Union was not doing so with the satellite missions revealed that the viewed all available intelligence on speed required to complete the com- construction was following a typical the Soviet space program. He found plex and have it readied to launch a pattern. First to be built were barracks no evidence of a Soviet lunar pro- manned moon mission by the end of to house construction workers. Next gram, but the CIA deemed his report 1969—the American target date. came concrete batch plants and supply to be inconclusive. Stevens recalled that his second yards. Eventually, workers began a report caused some controversy in huge excavation. A Clearer Picture OSI. Albert Wheelon, the CIA’s At that early stage, no one could In July, the US also fielded a pow- deputy director for science and tech- determine what the Soviet Union was erful new reconnaissance satellite— nology, said later that he urged his planning to build at Tyuratam. designated KH-7, code name Gam- analysts to use great caution in this Doyle, who specialized in Soviet bit—which would provide images area. His message was: “Let’s be space and missile facilities, often was with clarity much greater than that sure, because an estimate here will the first person to look at the satellite of Corona. Gambit soon began re- affect national policy. Let’s be damn images of launch ranges and missile turning high-resolution photographs sure, because it really matters.” sites. From the beginning, the inter- of Tyuratam. The purpose of the rocket initially was not clear. The Soviet Union started building this large booster as a multi- purpose vehicle and not specifically as a moon rocket. In late 1963, how- ever, Moscow concluded that the US Note the long shadows in this early morning was, in fact, serious about reaching view of the two N-1 the moon, and Soviet officials in 1964 launchpads taken in formally, though secretly, launched a December 1968. They manned lunar effort. show two lightning- The Soviet military opposed a lu- rod towers with the massive N-1 between nar mission because of its massive them. The rocket is cost. Different Soviet design bureaus visible as a white fought for control of the project. As shape on the pad. a result, with limited support and resources, construction at Complex J proceeded in fits and starts. Meanwhile, though US satellite photos showed the massive construc- tion project was proceeding, Stevens and other analysts were waiting for a giant launch vehicle to emerge from the buildings. They had no hard data on this vehicle, only a conviction that it would be huge. They had a name for what they were expecting. They called it “Big Mother.” In addition, they had not yet seen a static test facility needed to carry out a test firing of the entire first stage of the rocket. They expected it

74 AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2004 to be similar to the one NASA built to test fire the Saturn V first stage at Huntsville, Ala. However, the ana- lysts could not find a similar facility anywhere in the Soviet Union. Some speculated that Soviet space offi- cials might try to test the rocket while it sat locked onto the launchpad, but Film from KH satel- nobody was satisfied with that theory. lites was retrieved in Some intelligence analysts theo- a dramatic way, as film canisters re- rized that the Soviets might strap entered the atmo- together several smaller rockets, such sphere and were as the SS-8 ICBM, to make a single snagged, dangling big booster. That would not require from their parachutes, construction of a new static test fa- by specially equipped C-130s. cility. However, a NASA rocket ex- pert at Huntsville said such an ap- proach would not work. The analysts were puzzled by other aspects of the Soviet effort, such as the slow progress of the construc- tion. It did not fit the known pattern. “We’d seen them build launchers ... and launchpads and all that kind of stuff,” Stevens said, “but this thing went on and on and on.” It was apparent that the launchpad “was going to have a Big Mother,” said Stevens, but the question in everyone’s mind was, “When are they going to get it ready to go?” What the analysts did not know, The images showed construction of a Soviets seemed to be using the rocket Stevens went on, was that there was massive rotating service tower that for fit checks with the ground equip- “a big war going on among the chief would support the rocket and early ment, but there was no indication of designers in the Soviet Union, ... and Soviet construction work. an imminent launch. they couldn’t get the money. ... That’s A new national intelligence esti- In April 1968, NASA made its the kind of stuff you don’t see” at the mate in summer 1967 repeated the second and final Saturn V unmanned time. view that the Soviet Union likely test. Agency officials were so confi- had a moon program. dent about the booster that the third Probable Soviet Program In December 1967, US reconnais- launch, on Dec. 21, was manned. In 1965, the Intelligence Commu- sance satellites silently passing over The Apollo 8 spacecraft and its three- nity stated in a national intelligence Soviet territory finally hit the jack- man crew circled the moon. estimate that the Soviets probably pot. They photographed a massive Intelligence officials concluded were pursuing a manned lunar pro- rocket on the launchpad at Complex that, unless NASA stumbled badly, gram but one that was not competi- J. The CIA had finally caught a the USSR had no chance of winning tive with Apollo. glimpse of Big Mother. Dino Brug- the moon race. We now know that the Soviets did ioni, a senior official at NPIC, re- have a manned lunar program. It had membered that the photo analysts Playing Catch-Up an internal schedule for launching started calling it the “Jay Bird.” In fact, however, the Soviets were their rocket, testing their spacecraft, Recently declassified CIA reports rushing to catch up. Just two months and beating the Americans to the on the booster indicated that it was to after the Apollo 8 success, the So- moon. Virtually everyone in the So- have a first stage thrust of eight mil- viet Union in February 1969 con- viet program knew that these sched- lion to 16 million pounds. The Saturn ducted an unmanned launch of Big ules were a fiction, but nobody wanted V booster had a launch thrust of 7.5 Mother, which had been officially to state that conclusion out loud. million pounds, but it also could use designated as N-1. It flew well for Over the next few years, the US powerful upper stage rockets. More- 70 seconds, but then the booster’s Intelligence Community continued to over, the US had developed very light- computer detected a problem and monitor the Soviet space program. weight payload materials. shut down all engines. N-1 contin- Gambit satellites produced detailed Throughout 1968, American spy ued coasting and falling for approxi- photographs of launchpad construc- satellites continued to photograph the mately two minutes before it crashed tion at Complex J, showing that the giant Soviet rocket on the launchpad far downrange. Soviets were building a large multi- or transporter, spotting it several more The US Intelligence Community story structure inside a deep pit and times. (Some of the sightings may entirely missed it. Soviet space au- carving out three huge flame trenches. have been of booster mock-ups.) The thorities had just launched their larg-

AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2004 75 ball. The explosion knocked out windows for dozens of miles around the area. Moreover, it knocked down a lightning tower, caused the collapse of most of the flame trenches and the underground pad facility, Disaster Strikes. and scorched and crumpled the Black smudges around the lower of the two launch tower. N-1 pads tell the tale US seismic detectors actually had of a massive explo- picked up the explosion, but a US sion. The blast deci- satellite did not overfly the facility mated the N-1 infra- until weeks later. Later still, the sat- structure and spelled the end of Soviet ellite disgorged its film capsule, hopes to reach the which re-entered Earth’s atmosphere moon first. and was snatched out of the air by an Air Force JC-130, a specially modi- fied transport rigged to retrieve a capsule as it floated back to Earth on a parachute. Eventually the film arrived in Washington and landed on Rooney’s light table. Rooney’s discovery of the devas- tated launchpad—the pad thought to be at the heart of the Soviet moon program—was a hot intelligence item. Brugioni recalls that he was told to rush information about it to the CIA’s deputy director for intelli- gence, who would brief President Nixon, and to the director of the est-ever rocket and crashed it, but pletely missing. The thick grates that Defense Intelligence Agency, who America’s multibillion-dollar intel- had covered the flame trenches were would brief Secretary of Defense ligence apparatus was completely no longer visible. Melvin R. Laird. unaware of these events. Rooney instantly reached his con- The message was that the Soviet That brings us to August 1969 and clusion: Something very big had ex- manned lunar program had suffered Jack Rooney standing at his light ploded, wiping out the entire pad a catastrophic setback. table in Washington. area. Two years later, in 1971, the Sovi- Rooney moved a thin strip of He involuntarily shouted an epi- ets launched another N-1 rocket, positive film across the frosted glass thet. which also was destroyed. This time, surface until he reached the famil- In the room, all heads snapped US intelligence assets detected the iar Y-shaped image of the Tyuratam around. Doyle, who by that time was event. The following year, in No- launch range. He had seen the sprawl- the branch chief, came over and vember 1972, the Soviets tried again ing Soviet facility in the desert hun- peered into the lens of the micro- and again they failed. dreds of times in similar photos. scope. So did other photointerpreters. A few years later, Moscow finally He and his colleagues called it “TT” mothballed the project. In the West, for short. Major Disaster the media continued to report the Rooney slid his dual eyepiece mi- What they saw was evidence of a Soviet claim that it had never en- croscope into place and came to Com- major Soviet disaster, the outlines gaged in an effort to put a man on the plex J. He knew that it was the So- of which were pieced together fairly moon. viet equivalent of NASA’s Saturn V quickly. On July 3, 1969, the So- It was not until 1989 that the Soviet Launch Complex 39 at Cape Kennedy, viet Union had made its second government finally revealed what US Fla., where the Apollo 11 mission attempt to launch its Big Mother intelligence officials had known for had begun the previous month. He space booster. Something had gone decades: Moscow had tried hard to was familiar with its features. Like terribly wrong. Shortly after it lifted get to the moon. Big Mother had been spokes of a wheel, three flame off the ground, it fell back onto its a big part of that effort. It was real, trenches radiated from each of the pad and exploded in a huge fire- but it proved to be a total failure. ■ two huge launchpads. When Rooney adjusted the focus, Dwayne A. Day is a space policy analyst and historian. He worked at the he was shocked at what he saw. A George Washington University Space Policy Institute and the Congressional vast dark smudge enveloped one of Budget Office. He is the author of Lightning Rod, a book about the Office of the the two pads. Familiar details, seen Air Force Chief Scientist, and edited Eye in the Sky, a book about early satellite many times in previous examina- reconnaissance. He recently served as an investigator for the Columbia Acci- tions of satellite photos, were com- dent Investigation Board. This is his first article for Air Force Magazine.

76 AIR FORCE Magazine / July 2004