12 Facts About WAC Corporal

WAC Corporal was the first sounding rocket developed in the United States and the first vehicle to achieve hypersonic speeds.

Theoretical work setting the stage for the WAC Corporal was established in a 1943 paper "A Review and Preliminary Analysis of Long-Range Rocket Projectiles" by Malina and Hsue-Shen Tsien.

The WAC Corporal was intended to use a booster derived from the Tiny Tim air-to-ground attack rocket to gain sufficient velocity along a launch tower for the Corporal's three tail fins to provide passive stability.

Design of the WAC Corporal was innovative in that main structure containing the oxidizer, fuel, and pressurizing air tanks was of monocoque design, and that it had only three stabilizing fins, rather than the four that the Army preferred.

Since the WAC Corporal was conceived as an atmospheric sounding rocket to be utilized in part near populated locations, it was provided with a parachute recovery system for the rocket itself, along with a separate system for recovering the Signal Corps radiosonde payload.

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Production of the WAC Corporal was by Douglas Aircraft Corporation with critical parts supplied by JPL and the engines by Aerojet.

Design of the WAC Corporal B was initiated in March 1946 with P J Meeks as Project Coordinator, and differed significantly in detail while its basic shape remained the same.

For Bumper, the WAC Corporal was modified to provide stability in excess of Mach 5 by increasing the number of fins to four and increasing their size.

The WAC Corporal had to be modified so that the engine ignition would be initiated by the integrating accelerometer of the V-2 stage just before cutoff of the V-2 engine.

The WAC Corporal was spin-stabilized by two solid rockets placed between the oxidizer and fuel tanks.

WAC Corporal found itself in direct competition in its designed role, with the V-2 offering much larger payload capabilities that became available in the General Electric-operated Hermes program in April 1946.

Origin of the acronym "WAC" in WAC Corporal has been claimed to stand for multiple different phrases.