Guidance
The missile was piloted via radio link and tracked via a network of ground-based AN/MSQ-1 radar stations. This guidance system, with its line-of-sight communications, limited the guided range to about 400 km (250 mi). As with all radio communications it was also prone to enemy jamming. While in theory the missile could be "handed off" in flight from one guidance station to the next, in practice that was rarely successful, and deployed missiles did not attempt it.
In 1954, the USAF started to develop the YTM-61C version which was equipped with the new Shanicle (Short Range Navigation Vehicle) guidance system. It became operational in 1957 and used ground-based microwave emitters to generate hyperbolic grids for range and azimuth, which were used by the missile steering system to navigate. Now the guided range could be extended to the maximum flight range of the missile, about 620 miles (1,000 km). Anecdotal evidence indicated that the Shanicle system was very accurate, with stories of one missile flying into the ground in the same crater left by a previous missile during an early exercise in North Africa. These may or may not be true, but in any case the Shanicle system was soon discontinued on operational missiles. By the late 1950s, all were using the MSQ-1 (called "MisCue-1" by the crews) ground-based guidance system.
A unique identifying feature of the TM-61C variant was the raised rear section of the fuselage above the jet exhaust, called the "doghouse" by those who were assigned to the missile squadrons. This had originally housed the Shanicle electronics, but was retained when those systems were removed. The "doghouse" had no access panels or doors and was an aerodynamic structural component added to TM-61C and TM-76A to prevent missile "shudder" and breakup during terminal dive. It contained no functional components. The operational Matadors were zinc chromate green in their final versions, but this doghouse was quite often left natural aluminum, as were the wings and tail group.
Read more about this topic: MGM-1 Matador
Famous quotes containing the word guidance:
“If Los Angeles has been called “the capital of crackpots” and “the metropolis of isms,” the native Angeleno can not fairly attribute all of the city’s idiosyncrasies to the newcomer—at least not so long as he consults the crystal ball for guidance in his business dealings and his wife goes shopping downtown in beach pajamas.”
—For the State of California, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Even healthy families need outside sources of moral guidance to keep those tensions from imploding—and this means, among other things, a public philosophy of gender equality and concern for child welfare. When instead the larger culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women or nods approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger world.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)
“Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.”
—Anne Sullivan, U.S. educator of the deaf and blind. The Last Word, ed. Carolyn Warner, ch. 16 (1992)