NW075 1/144 Navaho G-26 (XSM-64)
The North American SM-64 Navaho was a supersonic
intercontinental cruise missile project. The program ran from
1946 to 1958 when it was cancelled in favor of intercontinental
ballistic missiles.
the Navaho program was broken up into three guided missile
efforts. The first of these missiles was the North American X-10,
a flying subrange vehicle to prove the general aerodynamics,
guidance, and control technologies.
Step two, the G-26, was a nearly full-size Navaho nuclear
vehicle. Launched vertically by a liquid-fuel rocket booster, the
G-26 would rocket upward until it had reached a speed of
approximately Mach 3 and an altitude of 50,000 ft (15,000 m). At
this point the booster would be expended and the vehicle's
ramjets ignited to power the vehicle to its target. The G-26 made
a total of 10 launches from Launch Complex 9 (LC-9) at Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) between 1956 and 1957.
The final operational version, the G-38 or XSM-64A, was the same
basic design as the G-26 only larger. None were ever flown, the
program being cancelled before the first example was completed.
Officially, the program was canceled on July 13 1957 after the
first four launches ended in failure. In reality the program was
obsolete by mid-1957 as the first Atlas ICBM began flight tests
in June and the Jupiter and Thor IRBMs were showing great
promise.
The Navaho program is the least known, yet the most important of
the United States early missile programs. In rocket technology
alone, the Navaho made possible Thor, Jupiter and Redstone
missiles. It also allowed construction of the Atlas ICBMs, and in
the years to come this engine would power the Apollo moon rocket
and our present-day space shuttle.