Chronology
- 13 April 1941 - Alamogordo Army Airfield established.
- December 1941 - Public land grazing leases were canceled on the newly formed Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range.
- 20 February 1945 - White Sands Proving Ground (WSPG) established as a missile test range.
- 26 September 1945 - A modified Navy Tiny Tim (rocket) configured as a booster for WAC Corporal became the first missile launched by the Army at WSPG.
- October 1945 - United States Army Air Corps Chief of Ordnance (OCO) invited the Navy to participate in the WSPG guided missile program.
- January 1946 - OCO offered Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) use of captured V-2 rockets for research; and NRL established the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel chaired by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Dr. James Van Allen.
- 17 May 1946 - WSPG Naval Ordnance Missile Test Facility established.
- July 1946 - Navy Bureau of Ordnance began construction of the WSPG Navy Cantonment Area.
- May 1947 - Navy began construction of the Launch Complex 35 (LC-35) blockhouse with two tiltable, 140-foot Aerobee launch towers.
- 24 November 1947 - Navy launched the first fully configured Aerobee sounding rocket, which carried cosmic-ray instruments to an altitude of 36.7 miles.
- 3 May 1949 - First launch of the Navy's Viking (rocket) reached an altitude of 50 miles.
- Late 1949 - After a V–2 was launched at sea from the deck of USS Midway, the Navy intentionally toppled and exploded a fully fueled V–2 on a segment of carrier flight deck (Operation Pushover) at WSPG.
- 21 November 1950 - Viking 5 set a single-stage altitude record of 107 miles.
- August 1951 - Viking set a single-stage altitude and speed record of 135 miles at 4,100 miles per hour.
- 1951 - Talos program testing moves to WSPG from Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake.
- August 1952 - First Talos missile launch at WSPG.
- May, 1953 - Base name formally changed from White Sands Proving Ground to White Sands Missile Range (WSMR).
- June 1953 - Construction completed for USS Desert Ship blockhouse.
- May 1954 - Viking 11 set a single-stage altitude record of 158 miles.
- April 1957 - Aerobee-Hi set a single stage altitude record of 190 miles.
- 1957 - Completion of the Desert Ship deckhouse addition enabled missile assembly to be moved from headquarters to Desert Ship.
- September 1957 - The first land-based Talos Defense Unit (TDU) was completed just west of Desert Ship.
- December 1957 - The first launch of a TDU-directed Talos scored a direct hit on the target drone.
- March 1961 - First launch of the Typhon Combat System
- 1966 - Testing of RIM-2 Terrier and RIM-24 Tartar missiles was shifted to WSMR from China Lake.
- 1983 - Aegis fleet fire-control system completed development at WSMR and entered fleet service.
Read more about this topic: USS Desert Ship (LLS-1)