The Viking Rocket Story.

Milton W. Rosen’s account of the Viking rocket, the largest American research rocket of its day, by the Naval Research Laboratory engineer who headed its development. The copyright page reads “First Edition,” copyright 1955 (Library of Congress card 55-6592), published by Harper & Brothers, and the book is dedicated “To the men of Viking.” The jacket, in blues with a photograph of a Viking, promises the story of how the rocket was conceived, designed and built, then follows the reader to White Sands Proving Ground and the blockhouse for the countdown and takeoff.

The Preface thanks the U.S. Navy, the Martin Company and Reaction Motors for permission to use their photographs, and the Naval Research Laboratory. Fourteen chapters run from “Now This Rocket,” “Background and Tradition,” “The Genesis of a Rocket,” “The Upper Atmosphere,” “White Sands” and “Design and Construction” through “The First Flight,” “Christmas Island” (Viking 4, launched from the deck of a ship at sea), “In Quest of the Record,” “We Learn a Lesson,” “Emulsions” and “Stand Clear, Take Cover,” to “From the Brink of Disaster” (Viking 10) and a “Postlude.” The jacket also singles out Viking 6, launched at midnight, and Viking 8.

A thirty-two page photographic section after page 82 shows V-2 launches at White Sands, the blockhouse, the Viking on its gantry and Barr cart, and the ship-launch tests aboard the Norton Sound, with diagrams in the text. Vaeth’s 200 Miles Up (1951) in this catalog treats Viking in its last chapter.