The Genie was an unguided air-to-air missile with a nuclear warhead, used by interceptor aircraft of the United States Air Force.
Development
The interception of Soviet bombers was a great military preoccupation of the late 1940s and 1950s. The revelation in 1947 that the Soviet Union had produced a reverse-engineered copy of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the Tupolev Tu-4 (NATO reporting name 'Bull'), which could reach the continental United States in a one-way attack, followed by the Soviets developing the atomic bomb in 1949, produced considerable panic.
Against high-speed bombers, the World War II-vintage fighter armament of machine guns and cannon was inadequate. The use of large volleys of unguided rockets was not much more satisfactory, and true air-to-air missiles were in their infancy. In 1954 Douglas Aircraft began a program to investigate the possibility of a nuclear-armed air-to-air weapon. To insure simplicity and reliability, the weapon would be unguided, the large blast radius making relative inaccuracy mostly irrelevant.
The resultant weapon carried a 1.5-kiloton W25 nuclear warhead and was powered by a Thiokol SR49-TC-1 solid-fuel rocket engine of 162 kN (36,500 lb) thrust. It had a range of slightly under 10 km (6 mi). Targeting, arming, and firing of the weapon were coordinated by the launch aircraft's fire-control system. Detonation was by time-delay fuse, although the fuse would not arm the warhead until engine burn-out, to give the launch aircraft time to turn and escape. Lethal radius of the blast was estimated to be about 300 meters (1,000 feet).
The first test firings (of inert rounds) took place in 1956, and the weapon entered service with the designation MB-1 in 1957. Official popular name was Genie, but it was often nick-named 'Ding-Dong.' About 3,150 rounds were produced before production ended in 1963. In 1962 the weapon was redesignated AIR-2A Genie. Many rounds were upgraded with improved, longer-duration rocket motors, the upgraded weapons sometimes known (apparently only semi-officially) as AIR-2B. An inert training round, originally MB-1-T and later ATR-2A, was also produced in small numbers.
A live Genie was detonated only once, on 19 July 1957. It was fired by an F-89J over Yucca Flats Nuclear Test Site at an altitude of 4,500 m (15,000 ft). A group of USAF officers volunteered to stand underneath the blast to prove that the weapon was safe for use over populated areas. Whether this affected the health of the officers is unknown.
The Genie was carried by F-89 Scorpion, F-101B Voodoo, and F-106 Delta Dart interceptors. It was apparently cleared for use by the F-104 Starfighter, but the Starfighter never carried it in operational service. Convair offered an upgrade of the F-102 Delta Dagger that would have been Genie-capable, but it was not adopted. The only non-U.S. user was Canada, whose CF-101 Voodoos carried Genies under a dual-key arrangement that required American cooperation to arm the warheads.
Genie was finally withdrawn from service in 1985. It was never used in combat.
Specifications (AIR-2A)
- Length: 2.95 m (9 ft 8 in)
- Diameter: 0.44 m (17.5 in)
- Wingspan: 1.02 m (3 ft 4 in)
- Launch weight: 373 kg (822 lb)
-
Speed: Mach 3.3
- Range: 9.6 km (6 mi)
- Guidance: None
-
Warhead: W25 nuclear fission, 1.5 kiloton yield
- Date Deployed: 1957
See also
