SMC Heritage Photos
by AF_SMC
The organizational ancestor of the Space and Missile Systems Center was the Western Development Division (WDD), a unit of the Air Research and Development Command created to develop an ICBM as the highest priority of the U.S. Air Force. WDD was activated in July 1954 under its first commander, then-Brigadier General Bernard A. Schriever. The Air Force added responsibility for developing the first military satellite system to the division’s original mission in October 1955. Both the missile and space missions remained with the division and its successors through the decades that followed, although the organization was twice split in two along mission lines. By the end of 1962, the organization had already developed, produced, and deployed three first-generation missiles, the Atlas, Titan I, and Thor. Before the decade was over, it had added the more advanced Titan II and Minuteman I, II, and III ICBMs to America’s arsenal. It developed the Peacekeeper ICBM during the late 1970s and 1980s.
View more heritage slide shows at our official site. www.losangeles.af.mil/library/historyofsmc/photopage/inde...
