Rocket pioneer Col. Edward Hall dies at 91

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Col. Edward N. Hall, who as director of the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile program helped develop the country's solid-fuel rocket technology, putting the United States decades ahead of other superpowers, has died. He was 91.

Hall died Sunday at Torrance Memorial Medical Center, said his daughter, Sheila Hall of Calabasas. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Thanks to Hall's immense knowledge of rocket propellants, the Air Force created its first solid-fuel ICBM in the late 1950s.

His work helped switch the country's missiles from liquid fuel to solid fuel, which made them smaller, easier to deploy and less expensive. He also envisioned putting thousands of missiles in unmanned silos that were electronically linked to launch control facilities.

The Minuteman became the country's premier missile defense system while it took countries such as China and the former Soviet Union decades to create similar programs.

"It's on a short list of military marvels of the 20th century ... right up there with the Manhattan Project," John Pike, director of the military information Web site, globalsecurity.org, said of the accomplishments of Hall and those he worked with.

Hall was born in New York City in August 1914 and received a bachelor's degree in engineering from City College of New York in 1935. He later earned a master's in aeronautical engineering from California Institute of Technology.

After enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, he was deployed to England where he repaired U.S. aircraft. Near the war's end he was assigned to acquire intelligence on Germany's rocket propulsion equipment and studied parts recovered from V-2 rockets.

After the war he was assigned to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, where he worked on liquid-fueled rocket engines. While there, he constructed a rocket that had a thrust of 135,000 pounds - more than double the power exerted by the German V-2.

Hall left the Air Force in 1959 and spent 14 years as an engineer at United Aircraft Corp. After retirement, he was hired as a consultant for a number of engineering and aerospace companies.

In 1999, Hall was presented the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Award and became a member of the Hall of Fame at the U.S. Air Force Space Command in Colorado.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife of 62 years, Edith Hall, and two sons, David Hall of La Crescenta, Calif., and Jonathan Hall of Kendall Park, N.J.

http://www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=jf05norris

U.S. nuclear forces, 2005
Type	Name	Launchers	Year deployed	Warheads x yield (kilotons)	Warheads active/spares

ICBMs
LGM-30G	Minuteman III
	Mk-12	150	1970	1 W62 x 170	150
	Mk-12	50	1970	3 W62 x 170 (MIRV)	150/15
	Mk-12A	300	1979	2-3 W78 x 335 (MIRV)	750/30
LGM-118A	MX/Peacekeeper	10	1986	10 W87 x 310 (MIRV)	100
Total		510			1,150/45

SLBMs
UGM-96A	Trident I C4	48/2	1979	6 W76 x 100 (MIRV)	288
UGM-133A	Trident II D5	288/12
	Mk-4		1992	6 W76 x 100 (MIRV)	1,344/150
	Mk-5		1990	6 W88 x 455 (MIRV)	384/20
Total		336/14			2,016/170

Bombers
B-52H	Stratofortress	94/56*	1961	ALCM/W80-1 x 5-150	450/25
				ACM/W80-1 x 5-150	400/20
B-2A	Spirit	21/16	1994	B61-7, -11, B83-1 bombs	200/55
Total		115/72			1,050/100

Non-strategic forces
Tomahawk SLCM		325	1984	1 W80-0 x 5-150	200
B61-3, -4, -10 bombs		n/a	1979	0.3-170	580**
Total		325			780

Grand total***					~5,000/315
ACM: advanced cruise missile; ALCM: air-launched cruise missile; ICBM: intercontinental ballistic missile (range greater than 5,500 kilometers); MIRV: multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle; SLCM: sea-launched cruise missile; SLBM: submarine-launched ballistic missile. The first figure is the total inventory, including those used for training, testing, and backup; the second figure is the primary mission inventory: the number of operational aircraft assigned for nuclear or conventional missions. Four hundred and eighty are deployed at eight bases in six European countries. **Approximately 5,000 additional intact warheads are retained in the reserve or inactive stockpiles.

I had the great pleasure of knowing Dr. Karl Klager who also worked on the minuteman. He was an Austrian chemist that we brought over after the war. He worked on fuels, both solid and liquid, for most if not all of our rockets. He started using aluminum powder in the propellant.

THE HISTORY OF SOLID-PROPELLANT ROCKETRY: WHAT WE DO AND DO NOT KNOW

Many more discoveries were behind these large solidrocket developments than just these propellant contributions. Integral to the stories of the propellants used on large rockets and missiles, smaller tactical missiles, and a host of smaller rockets for a variety of rockets and spacecraft were the various binders, fuels, and oxidizers that went into the propellants. For example, the motors for the Polaris A1 missile designed by Aerojet featured a cast, case-bonded polyetherpolyester- polyurethane composition with 15 percent aluminum and ammonium perchlorate. Karl Klager at Aerojet has been credited with being largely responsible for developing both the grain and the propellant for these motors, but the story of their development is evidently quite complex. Klager received the U. S. Navy Distinguished Public Services Award in 1958 for his work on the Polaris missile, but the development of some of the propellant ingredients predates when Klager joined Aerojet in 1950.
-snip-
Karl Klager, who is credited with the development of HTPB, was asked how he came to develop this lowcost, low-viscosity propellant that has become an industry standard. He said only that he started development in 1961 but waited until 1969 to propose the propellant to NASA for the Astrobee D and Astrobee F sounding rockets on which it flew successfully. Perhaps, however, Klager’s response regarding how he came to discover unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) (which is a liquid propellant used on the Bomarc missile, Titan 2 missile, Titan 3 and Titan 4 rockets, and other missiles and rockets) applies equally to HTPB. Klager said that he simply brought his knowledge of the science of chemistry to bear on the need for a propellant. He had earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Vienna in 1934 and had worked for several chemical firms in Europe from 1931 to 1948 before moving to the United States and starting work for Aerojet in 1950.

Karl was a conservative and we had a great time talking politics.

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U.S. nuclear forces, 2005