Bernard Schriever and Early US Military Spaceflight Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Institute of Political and International Studies Wing Commander Gerry Doyle RAF October 2016 i DISCLAIMER Research for this thesis was conducted under the auspices of a Royal Air Force Chief of Air Staff’s ‘Portal’ Fellowship while the author was a serving Royal Air Force officer. The view expressed within are, however, the author’s own, and should not be taken as representing the opinion or position of the Royal Air Force, the UK Ministry of Defence or HM Government. DECLARATION I confirm that this is my own work and the use of all material from other sources has been properly and fully acknowledged. 24 October 2016 G DOYLE © Gerry Doyle, 2016. ii CONTENTS Title Page………………………………………………………………………... i Disclaimer and Declaration…….……………………………………………… ii Contents…………………………………………………................................. iii Abstract………………………………………………………………………….. iv Bibliographic Notes…………………………………………………………….. v Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………….. vii List of Figures and Tables.…………………………………………………….. ix Chapter 1 – Technically Advanced Systems..………………………………. 1 Chapter 2 – Bernard Adolf Schriever …………………............................... 19 Chapter 3 – Literature, Sources and their Provenance............................... 47 Chapter 4 – The Virtuous Path: ICBMs and Reconnaissance Satellites…. 86 Chapter 5 – Manned Spaceflight: a Pet Project…………………………….. 120 Chapter 6 – Daydreaming: the USAF and Space Weaponization………… 151 Chapter 7 – Conclusions………………………………………………………. 187 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………. 201 iii ABSTRACT This thesis explores the life and work of General Bernard Schriever, principally with regard to his work introducing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) into United States Air Force (USAF) service during the 1950s, and his related efforts to develop systems for manned and unmanned military spaceflight. It situates his life and work in the early Cold War of the 20th Century, and through exploitation of the Schriever Archive at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, and recently declassified US Government documents, principally those released by the National Reconnaissance Office, it seeks to explore his understanding of the strategic context of his work. It posits that to introduce a technically advanced system into military service, it is necessary to evaluate both technical and non-technical risks to progress, and to possess or achieve sufficient administrative control to reduce those risks and improve overall programme maturity in both domains. By considering Schriever’s successful introduction of ICBMs into USAF service and his management of the early USAF reconnaissance satellite programmes, it demonstrates his understanding of all three facets of progress. It then examines two areas where Schriever failed to achieve his stated goals, firstly in his attempts to develop a military manned spaceflight programme in parallel with the national programme being run by NASA and secondly in respect of his advocacy for space weaponization. In each case, it shows that Schriever’s failures can be explained by insufficient progress along one or more of the identified lines of activity. Recently declassified US Government sources, and the Schriever archive in the Library of Congress, which includes unpublished book-length manuscripts by Schriever and co-authors, are used to corroborate his views. The thesis concludes by critiquing the analytic model used and suggesting alternative sources that might shed further light on Schriever’s work. iv BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES The Schriever Archive at the Library of Congress. This thesis draws on extensive exploration of the Schriever Archive at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. The provenance of the Archive is described in Chapter 3. References follow normal scholarly convention with two variations specific to this thesis: When the Archive was curated, all content, regardless of classification, was allocated to a Container according to subject and/or date. Classified content was then withdrawn and stored separately. The author submitted numerous ‘Mandatory Declassification Review’ requests to the Library staff in an attempt to gain access to the classified content, with some success. When content was declassified, however, it was released to the author without indication of its original Box and Folder location. Eventually, this content will be relocated to its original containers, but within this thesis, most such documents are, of necessity, noted as being in the ‘Schriever Archive, Recently Declassified Documents’ folder. The full citation to an item in the Archive requested by the Library would be: “Container number, Bernard A. Schriever Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.’. To aid future scholars, all references in this thesis also indicate folders within the individual containers. In the interests of brevity, after the first instance of an archival source, references are abbreviated to ‘Schriever Archive, Box ‘x’, Folder ‘y’.’ The Sheehan Archive at the Library of Congress. Reference is also made in this thesis to the content of the ‘Sheehan’ Archive. Mr Neil Sheehan wrote a biography of Schriever, published in 2009.1 He is also the source and donor of a large archive at the Library of Congress relating to his previous publications in the 1970s and 1980s. On publication of his biography of Schriever, he donated his source material for that publication to the Library too. Eventually, it will be incorporated into his existing collection at the Library, but it is currently (2015) awaiting processing. Mr Sheehan and the Library granted the author access to the unprocessed acquisition relating to Schriever. Currently, it comprises 21 containers, as sorted by Mr Sheehan during his writing. There is no finding guide for the acquisition, but the container names are descriptive. There is some duplication in the collection – Sheehan would copy his interview transcripts, for example, and file them under multiple themes in various boxes if the interview had covered more than one relevant topic. In this thesis, material from the Sheehan collection is referenced simply as being from the ‘Sheehan Archive, Box ‘x’.’, noting the container used by the author. There can be no guarantee that these references will translate into any new storage scheme when the acquisition is processed, but they should then be locatable via the Sheehan Archive Finding Guide in the normal way. Republished Primary Material. Two series of republished primary documentation have been used in this thesis. The NASA publication ‘Exploring the Unknown’ (currently in 7 volumes) comprises a large amount of primary material from NASA 1 Neil Sheehan, A fiery peace in a cold war : Bernard Schriever and the ultimate weapon (New York: Random House, 2009). See also Chapter 3, p70 et seq within this thesis. v archival sources, reprinted verbatim with linking explanatory essays.2 The US Air Force Space Command publication ‘Orbital Futures’ (2 volumes) does similar, drawing on USAF sources.3 In each case, reference is made to the archival document as reprinted, with a note that it can be found in one or other of those publications. References to the explanatory essays are treated as content of an edited volume and follow normal referencing conventions. Web-published Historical Volumes. The author has been given and referred to copies of various source documents during the course of his research. Some appear to be downloaded reprints, but the web-source of the downloads is not always clear. References to these publications are made in the normal way for printed sources by title, author, publisher/place of publication and date. The reader seeking to access titles referred to, but not otherwise locatable, is recommended to try searches at the US Defense Technical Information Center (www.dtic.mil), the NASA History web-page (www.history.nasa.gov) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) ‘reading room’ (http://www.nro.gov/foia/index.html). 2 John M Logsdon (ed.), (1995-2008), (SP-4407) Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the US Civil Space Program 7 vols.; (Washington DC: NASA History Office). 3 David N Spires (ed.), (2004), Orbital Futures: Selected Documents in Air Force Space History (Essays and commentaries by David N Spires) 2 vols.; (Peterson AFB, CO: USAF Space Command). vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would firstly like to thank my supervisors, Professor Colin Gray and Dr Geoff Sloan; without their encouragement and support, I fear I would have made little progress. Other staff and my fellow students within the Graduate Institute of Political and International Studies at Reading also encouraged me to keep going; I would particularly like to acknowledge the support of the various Directors of Graduate Studies during my time in the Department, including: Professor Beatrice Heuser, Dr Alan Renwick, Dr Patrick Tomlin and Dr Robert Jubb. This thesis would also not have been possible without the cooperation of many individuals and organisations, who have given freely of their time and frequently worked hard to secure access to publications and records that have illustrated various points in this thesis. I would like to offer my particular thanks to the following: The staff at the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, the Air Force Historical Records Agency at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, the Air Force Historical Research Institute at Bolling AFB, DC,