Teapot Committee

In October 1953, the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Air Force for Research and Development Trevor Gardner established the committee to study strategic missiles including the Snark, Navaho, and Atlas, all of which were Air Force projects. Gardner recruited eleven of the nation's leading scientists and engineers: Dr. John von Neumann served as chairman, and the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation (forerunner of TRW) was hired to administer the committee's work. The founders and chief officers of Ramo-Wooldridge, Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge, were also full members of the Teapot Committee. Simon Ramo had known Trevor Gardner since before World War II, when both had worked for General Electric at Schenectady, New York. After the war, Ramo joined Hughes Aircraft as head of electronics research and eventually rose to the position of Director of Guided Missile Research and Development; both Ramo and Dean Wooldridge had gained acclaim for their work on the Air Force's Falcon missile. Ramo had become Director of Operations and Executive Vice President when he and Wooldridge, in September 1953, left Hughes to form their own company. Other members of the Teapot Committee were Clark Blanchard Millikan, Charles C. Lauritsen, and Louis Dunn (all of Caltech); Hendrik Wade Bode (Bell Telephone Labs); Allen E. Puckett (Hughes Aircraft); George Kistiakowsky (Harvard); Jerome B. Wiesner (MIT); and Lawrence A. Hyland (Bendix Aviation). The committee's military liaison was Colonel Bernard A. Schriever, the Air Staff's Assistant for Development Planning and a brigadier general selectee. ==Deliberations==

Meeting first in November and twice more afterward, the Teapot Committee rendered its report on February 10, 1954. Originally, the Teapot Committee had favored eliminating the Snark, but in its report recommended only that the Snark's guidance system be simplified and that development continue. Members contended that Snark's primary usefulness was as a decoy for the crewed bomber force. Similarly, the Teapot Committee was not enthusiastic about the Navaho as a strategic weapon because of the inadequacies of ramjets. Nonetheless, the committee supported continued research in certain technological areas, especially in the propulsion systems, in which the Navaho project provided direct benefit for ICBM development. The Teapot Committee centered its attention on the feasibility of developing the major subsystems for the Atlas-that is, propulsion, guidance, airframe, and warhead. Given the reported Soviet lead in intercontinental ballistic missiles and the countervailing advantage offered by the American nuclear breakthrough, the committee concluded that it was imperative to accelerate Atlas development. However, the speed up and early delivery of the Atlas ICBM could be accomplished only by embarking on a "crash program" that would include changing drastically the missile's specifications and creating an entirely new management organization. In its summary, the Teapot Committee called for a "radical reorganization of the . . . project considerably transcending the [existing] Convair framework." == References ==