SSM-A-5 Boojum

As part of a United States Army Air Forces effort to develop guided missiles for the delivery of nuclear weapons, the Northrop Corporation was awarded a development contract in March 1946 for the design of two long-range cruise missiles designated MX-775. The contract called for a subsonic missile MX-775A, later designated SSM-A-3 Snark, and a more advanced supersonic missile MX-775B, which in 1947 was given the name SSM-A-5 Boojum. Northrop named the missiles after characters from the works of Lewis Carroll, with Boojum coming from the final line of The Hunting of the Snark. Designated N-25B by the company, the final design called for a long, slender missile, fitted with delta wings, and powered by a pair of General Electric turbojet engines, mounted in nacelles near the tips of the wing. The Boojum was intended carry a warhead weighing up to over a range between . ==Cancellation==

At the end of 1946, the contracts that had been awarded to Northrop were revised; the Snark was canceled, while the Boojum was to be fully developed as an operational system. Northrop lobbied for the reinstatement of the Snark, however; this was successful in getting the program reauthorized during 1947, with the Boojum being deferred to a follow-on project. Despite the design having been finalized, the United States Air Force (which the USAAF had become in 1948) determined that the project was technologically unfeasible, given continuing development difficulties and technical problems encountered during the Snark's development. Accordingly, in 1951, the Boojum project was canceled, before any prototypes of the missile had been constructed. ==See also==