ARMED FORCES: Blast-Off at Sea

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Six miles east of Cape Canaveral one night last week, the 16,100-ton converted merchant ship Observation Island steamed an easterly course in gently rolling seas.

The seagoing missile laboratory, fitted with exact duplicates of launching tubes aboard the Navy's two Polaris submarines, listed 2^ degrees to starboard. Deep below the ship's afterdeck, a tube holding a Polaris missile was tilted another seven degrees to guarantee that the missile would fire away from the ship. Suddenly, amid a great puff of white steam formed by compressed air, the sleek, 28-ft. missile whooshed 70 ft. into the dark sky, seemed to hang motionless for an instant, then ignited in a blinding white flash and roared 800 miles down the Caribbean range.

Except that Observation Island lay on the sea's surface, this was the closest test yet to an underwater launching of Polaris on its urgent march toward operational deployment by late 1960. Premature burnout of the second stage cut 100 miles from the missile's programed flight, but the first complete test of the system's complex navigational, guidance and fire-control equinment was a success. Fort night ago, the Navy revealed, a dummy ("Dolphin") missile was ejected successfully by the submerged atomic sub George Washington, which will attempt an underwater, null Polaris shot in July.

The fast-paced Polaris project, a full three years ahead of original schedule, was pushed even harder as the Navy shifted $52 million from other shipbuilding and reserve funds to speed seven nuclear subs now under construction, advanced operational dates by ten weeks. The Navy's eventual fleet of 18 nuclear Polaris subs (by 1964) will berth and load missiles at a new $26.5 million base seven miles above the Charleston, S.C. harbor on the Cooper River. At dedication ceremonies last week, Rear Admiral William F. ("Red") Raborn, chief of the Polaris project, looked confidently beyond the Polaris' 1,200-mile range of 1960, predicted a 1,500-mile range by 1962 and an eventual 2,500-mile nuclear reach for the Navy's remarkable missile.