[Sandboxx] America Really Launched An ICBM From The Back Of A C-5 Cargo Plane
The Minuteman I ICBM, or intercontinental ballistic missile, was a globe-spanning weapon with nearly ten times the destructive capacity of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, and in 1974, America successfully launched one out of the back of an airborne C-5 Galaxy.
As if lobbing an 87,000-pound nuclear payload out the back of an aircraft in flight wasn’t a dramatic enough undertaking in itself, the team responsible for history’s only air-launched ICBM were also under a strict deadline and potentially apocalyptic pressure. While their efforts could have resulted in a new approach to leveraging America’s nuclear arsenal, actually fielding a new capability may not have been the real aim of the program. Instead, the entire effort may have really been about sending a message to the Soviet Union before entering into a new round of disarmament talks.
Some cool video at the link |