AGM-28 Hound Dog Missile B-52 Launch: "Operation Bluenose" 1960 US Air Force Strategic Air Command - North American Aviation

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Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-28_Hound_Dog

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The North American Aviation AGM-28 Hound Dog was a supersonic, turbojet-propelled, air-launched cruise missile developed in 1959 for the United States Air Force. It was primarily designed to be capable of attacking Soviet ground-based air defense sites prior to a potential air attack by B-52 Stratofortress long range bombers during the Cold War. The Hound Dog was first given the designation B-77, then redesignated GAM-77, and finally as AGM-28. It was conceived as a temporary standoff missile for the B-52, to be used until the GAM-87 Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile was available. Instead, the Skybolt was cancelled within a few years and the Hound Dog continued to be deployed for a total of 15 years until its replacement by newer missiles, including the AGM-69 SRAM and then the AGM-86 ALCM...

During the 1950s the US became aware of developments regarding the Soviet Union's surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), notably at large installations being constructed around Moscow. At the time, the entire nuclear deterrent of the United States was based on manned strategic bombers, both with the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy. The deployment of large numbers of SAMs placed this force at some risk of being rendered ineffective. One solution to this problem is to extend the range of the bomb, either through glide bomb techniques, or more practically, by mounting them in a short-to-medium-range missile. This allows the weapon to be fired while the bomber remains outside the range of the missiles.

The Air Force's solution to this problem was the introduction of stand-off missiles...

On August 21, 1957, North American Aviation was awarded a contract to develop Weapon System 131B, which included the Hound Dog missile...

The Hound Dog missile's airframe was an adaptation of technology developed in the SM-64 Navaho missile, adapted for launching from the B-52. The Hound Dog's design was based on that of the Navaho G-38 missile, which featured small delta wings and forward canards.

A Pratt & Whitney J52-P-3 turbojet propelled the Hound Dog, instead of Navaho's ramjet engine. The J52 engine was located in a pod located beneath the rear fuselage. The J52-P-3 used in the Hound Dog, unlike J52s installed in aircraft like the A-4 Skyhawk or the A-6 Intruder, was optimized to run at maximum power during the missile's flight. As a result, the Hound Dog's version of the J52 had a short operating lifetime of only six hours. However, in combat, the Hound Dog was expected to self-destruct in less than six hours.

A derivative of the Navaho's NAA Autonetics Division N-6 inertial navigation system (INS), the N5G, was used in the Hound Dog. A Kollsman Instruments Co. star tracker located in the B-52's pylon was used to correct inertial navigation system orientation errors with celestial observations while the Hound Dog was being carried by the B-52. The INS could also be used to determine the bomber's position after the initial calibration and "leveling" process, which took about 90 minutes. The Hound Dog had a circular error probable (CEP) of 2.2 miles (3.5 km), which was acceptable for a weapon equipped with a nuclear warhead.

The thermonuclear warhead carried by the Hound Dog was the W28 Class D. The W28 warhead could be preset to yield an explosive power of between 70 kilotons and 1.45 megatons. Detonation of the Hound Dog's W28 warhead could be programmed to occur on impact (ground burst) or air burst at a preset altitude. An air burst would have been used against a large area, soft target. A surface impact would have been used against a hard target such as a missile site or command and control center.

The Hound Dog could be launched from the B-52 Stratofortress at high altitudes or low altitudes, but not below 5,000 feet (1,500 m) in altitude. Initially, three different flight profiles for the Hound Dog were available for selection by the commander and the bombardier of the bomber...