236

UNITED STATES NAVAL AVIATION 1910-1995

1960-Contin ued

Service was set up as a field activity under the man-

agement control of the Chief of Naval Operations. The

responsibilities of the new office included manage-

ment control of the integrated Fleet Weather Central

system and technical direction of meteorological mat-

ters within the shore establishment and the operating

forces.

26 January The first of two giant unmanned bal-

loons was launched from Valley Forge, at sea south of

the Virgin Islands. Almost as high as a 50-story build-

ing and with a cubic capacity greater than that of the

rigid airship Akron, the balloons carried 2,500 pounds,

including 800 pounds of emulsion sheets to record

cosmic-ray activity. The first balloon achieved an alti-

tude of 116,000 feet and remained aloft 8 hours, while

the second reached 113,000 feet and made a flight of

Valley Forge prepares to launch Skyhook balloon l046721

2612 hours. The balloons were tracked by early warn-

ing aircraft from the carrier and shore bases, and the

instruments were recovered by a destroyer. The pro-

ject was under the joint sponsorship of the National

Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Naval

Research (NRL).

25 February A Navy R6D transport, carrying mem-

bers of the Navy Band and a team of antisubmarine

specialists, collided with a Brazilian airliner over Sugar

Loaf Mountain, Rio de Janeiro. The accident took the

lives of all 26 persons on board the airliner and all but

3 of the 38 Navy men on board the R6D.

29 February The Department of Defense announced

that two new developments in airborne mine counter-

measures had been successfully demonstrated to Navy

and Defense officials by the Navy Mine Defense

Laboratory and the Navy Air Mine Defense

Development Unit at Panama City, Fla. The first was

air-portable minesweeping gear that enabled a heli-

copter to become a self-sufficient aerial minesweeper;

the second was equipment for transferring the

minesweeping-gear towline from a surface minesweep-

er to a helicopter, from one helicopter to another, or

from a helicopter to a surface minesweeper.

29 February Navy and Marine Corps personnel from

Port Lyautey were flown to the Agadir area of

Morocco to aid inhabitants of the city razed by a

severe earthquake. Before rescue and relief operations

were over, a Navy-wide effort brought food and cloth-

ing to the stricken people from Reserve and other

units as far away as Seattle, Wash.

1 March A ZPG-3W airship of ZW-l returned to NAS

Lakehurst, N.J., from an Air Defense Command barrier

patrol over the North Atlantic after having been on sta-

tion for 49.3 hours and 58 hours in the air. This new

record for continuous patrol more than doubled the best

time logged by its predecessor, the smaller ZPG-2W.

18 March On the first firing test of Project Hydra,

conducted at Naval Missile Center, Point Mugu, a 150-

pound rocket was successfully ignited underwater and

launched into the air. The test demonstrated the feasi-

bility of launching rockets while floating upright in the

water and gave promise of eliminating the cost of

launching pad construction and allowing greater free-

dom in the choice of launching sites.

25 March In the first launch of a guided missile

from a nuclear powered submarine, Halibut (SSGN

587), fired a Regulus I during training exercises off

Oahu, Hawaii.