The SM-65 Atlas was armed with a W38 thermonuclear warhead and had a cicular error probability of 4,600 ft (1,400 m). Its range was 11,500 miles (18,500 km) for Atlas E and F. First, it was given the military designation XB-65, which made it a bomber, but it was redesignated SM-65 from 1955 and, from 1962, it became CGM-16. This letter "C" stood for "coffin" or "Container", the rocket being stored in a semi-hardened container; it was prepared for launch by being raised and fueled in the open. The Atlas-F (HGM-16) was stored vertically underground, but launched after being lifted to the surface.

Specifications for SM-65 Atlas ICBM

Development of the Thor began in 1954 as a Tactical Ballistic Missile. The goal set by the US Air Force was a missile system that could deliver a nuclear warhead over a distance of 1,150 to 2,300 miles (1,850 to 3,700 km) with a CEP of 2 miles (3.2 km). This range would allow Moscow to be hit from a launch site in the UK. On December 27, 1955 Douglas Aircraft Corporation was awarded the prime contract for the airframe and integration. The Rocketdyne division of North American Aviation was awarded the engine contract, AC Spark Plug the primary inertial guidance system, Bell Labs the backup radio guidance system, and General Electric the nose cone/reentry vehicle. The Thor IRBM first flight took place on 25 January 1957.

Armed with a W49 thermonuclear warhead, the Thor was deployed in the UK starting in August 1958, operated by twenty squadrons of RAF Bomber Command. The first active unit was No. 77 Squadron RAF at RAF Feltwell in 1958, with the remaining units becoming active in 1959. All were deactivated by September 1963. All sixty of the Thor missiles deployed in the United Kingdom were based at above-ground launch sites. The missiles were stored horizontally on transporter-erector trailers and covered by a retractable missile shelter. To fire the weapon, the crew used an electric motor to roll back the missile shelter (essentially a long shed mounted on steel rails), then used a powerful hydraulic launcher-erector to lift the missile to an upright position for launch. Once it was standing on the launch mount, the missile was fueled and fired.

Specifications of the PGM-17 Thor

Checkpoint Charlie was designated as the single crossing point by foot or by car for foreigners and members of the Allied forces. Members of the Allied forces were not allowed to use the other sector crossing point designated for use by foreigners, the Friedrichstraße railway station. The name Charlie came from the letter C in the NATO phonetic alphabet; similarly for other Allied checkpoints on the Autobahn from the West: Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt and its counterpart Checkpoint Bravo at Dreilinden, Wannsee in the south-west corner of Berlin. The Soviets simply called it the Friedrichstraße Crossing Point.

During its 28-year active life, the infrastructure on the Eastern side was expanded to include not only the wall, watchtower and zig-zag barriers, but a multi-lane shed where cars and their occupants were checked. However the Allied authority never erected any permanent buildings, and made do with the iconic wooden shed, which was replaced in the 1980s by a larger metal structure, now on display at the Allied Museum in western Berlin.

Right after the erection of the Berlin Wall, there were many means of escape which had not been anticipated. Checkpoint Charlie was initially blocked only by a gate. Once a citizen of East Germany smashed a car through it to escape, so a strong barrier was set up. Another escapee approached the barrier in a convertible, took the windscreen down at the last moment and slipped under the barrier. This was repeated two weeks later, so the East Germans duly lowered the barrier and added uprights.

Based on the Theory of Productive Forces, which were a widely-used concept in communism, the Great Leap Forward was personally led by Mao Tse-tung, who intensified it after being informed of the impending disaster from grain shortages. The period during which the Great Leap Forward economic and social plan was conducted was a period of economic regress or stagnation. The growth of national income for the entire 1958-63 period was less than half of the 1966-78 period, and it took almost twice the level of investment to produce a given increase in output in the former period as in the latter. In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster which cause the greatest famine of the 20th century history.

Background

Communist China’s firs attempt of economic and technological development was initiated with about 150 development projects planned, financed and staffed by the Soviet Union ruled by Stalin. Nevertheless, political and ideological differences between Nikita Khrushchev (the new Soviet premier) and Mao Tse-tung led to what is known as the Sino-Soviet Split. As a result, approximately 15,000 Soviet engineers and staff that had been working on several development projects in the People’s Republic of China were withdrawn and the blueprints for future projects destroyed. China did not have the technological and financial resources to complete these projects on its own and Mao Tse-tung was made conscious of how vulnerable China was in depending upon outside aid, even from communist regimes.

Mao decided to undertake the technological development and industrialization of China on its own. Mao Tse-tung knew that the first attempt to create a socialist economy was brought to a halt in the Soviet Union in 1921 when peasants had reacted to confiscation of their grain harvest by declining to plant and produce as much grain. Mao also had to bear in mind that when Stalin began his five-year plans he collectivized agriculture in order to have control over what was planted and produced. Mao should have also been aware, although perhaps he was not, that the collectivization program in the Soviet Union was a great failure in terms of production and that a severe famine occured in the Ukraine afterwards.

The Plan

In order to carry out his Great Leap Forward, peasants were organized into cooperatives of 20 to 40 families at the village level. Next the cooperatives were replaced by county-wide collectives involving hundreds of thousands of people. In addition to calling for the creation of communes, Mao Tse-tung urged the peasants to build backyard blastfurnaces to make iron and steel for tools. The unskilled peasants were supposed to melt down scrap metal to make useful items such as tools and utensils.

In practice the program worked backwards since peasants melted down useful items to produce unusable masses of metal. This was the result an authoritarian State that constantly demanded and ordered the peasants to increase production from the backyard blast furnaces and when they ran out of scrap they started melting down anything they could find, including the useles tools and utensils they had already made. Some of this destruction of useful objects to increase the production from the backyard blastfurnaces might be attributed to enthusiasm but probably more of it was due to there being quotas of production from the furnaces that had to be met.

The direct consequence of the backyard blastfurnaces and other nonagricultural projects of the Great Leap Forward was that they took labor away from food production and led to a shortage of food. China had always been on the edge of subsistence and any decrease in food production meant starvation. To make matters worse the centralized control resulted in no one with the authority to change things being informed of the decline in food production. The commune leaders were under pressure to exceed past production and when production declined they did report it. They, in fact, reported what the higher authorities wanted to hear. This caused the food shortage to continue beyond the point when no one could do anything about them. The central government made things even worse for the peasants by taking a share based upon the falsified production figures and thus leaving the peasants too little to survive on.

Aside from the steep decrease in food production due to the diversion of effort away from agriculture, there was losses in food production because of the erroneous policies carried out by the State. One of these idiocies was close planting. If two plants are set too close to each other there is not enough nutrients in the soil to feed both and both die. The State promoted close planting of grain to increase productivity.