Space History: The “Banana River Ballistic Missile” Event

On September 24, 1958, the first Polaris AX propulsion test vehicle was launched from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 25. What happened next quickly became a part of local lore, with residents referring to the event for many years later as “The Banana River Ballistic Missile.”

Launch of The Banana River Missile

The Polaris rocket is a name familiar to many people of a certain age, as its existence was no secret and in fact, was widely discussed in serious circles as a major weapon in the Cold War.

Indeed, Polaris was a cornerstone of the United States’ nuclear deterrent in the Cold War era, and was deployed from 1960-1978 aboard US Navy submarines as the country’s first Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) system. Initially, it had a 1,400 mile range and could carry a single one-megaton nuclear weapon. It was built by Lockheed Corporation, and used Aerojet (now L3 Aerojet Rocketdyne) engines.

September 24, 1958 was the debut launch of the Polaris, and at the time, any missile launch from Cape Canaveral was big news and a local draw. Launches happened far less than today, and in the early days of rocketry, a lot less predictable than a typical launch from the Cape is now. In short, launches were spectacular, were in vogue and were must-see events if one found themselves in east-central Florida.

Heavy crowds had gathered in the Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach areas to watch the launch, and they were treated to quite a spectacle. The missile launched, rose about one half of a mile, then problems began as the first Polaris missile launched from the Cape failed due to wild spinning from what was later determined to be a programming error.

Once it was clear that the test flight was not going according to plan, the errant missile was issued a self-destruct order by the Range Safety Officer on duty. The problem is that the second stage survived self-destruction and came crashing down in the Banana River, just offshore from the town of Cape Canaveral in the Banana River, much to the shock of the local residents.

Unfortunately, few pictures of the launch, the crowds or the aftermath of the launch failure are available today, and the event is largely beyond local living memory as we lose that generation to aging. Newspapers of the time covered it quite well, all considered, and here’s the story as they told it immediately after it happened:

Reactions In 1958

Oddly — or perhaps not so oddly — the major local newspaper on the Space Coast, The Cocoa Tribune, half-heartedly covered the event:

Cocoa was the hub town in the immediate Cape Canaveral area at the time, and it had the largest paper in the region. Their article consisted of this:

Other newspapers in Florida were far more thorough:

The Sentinel account of the incident quotes one R. B. Brossier, a Cocoa Beach developer at time: “It looked like it was coming right toward me,” Brossier said in 1958. “[The missile] went straight up in a normal flight. Then, at about 2000 feet or so altitude it suddenly turned southwest toward Cocoa and the mainland.” This story was picked up by the Associated Press and was printed in several newspapers across the country.

The September 25, 1958 edition of the Miami Herald got an account from one of their employees (not a reporter), John E. Corea. He described the launch saying, “There was a crowd on the beach to watch. Everyone panicked. Mothers with kids tried to get the children out of the way but no one knew where to go.”

Corea then said that “It was 12:20 when it took off. It went up, I’d say, about a mile, then burst and started screaming down.

“The pieces fell right in the middle of the Banana River about 200 yards offshore. It came close to a trailer park west of Cocoa Beach.”

Corea concluded his account by saying, “Then smoke and bubbles started boiling out of the middle of the river. It looked like a geyser out there.”

The Orlando Sentinel’s article described the missile’s crash by recounting a Mrs. Brett Carver, who said that the failed missile landed just offshore from The Hitching Post trailer park, where it crashed into shallow water. Carver told reporters that the crashing Polaris second stage ‘flung a terrific mass of mud possibly as much as 1,000 feet skyward as the burning missile seemed to blow as it hit went under.’

Carver then added, “That’s when Bert and I started running towards our house. It threw debris up on shore. You could see quite a mass of debris in the water at first as it steamed and spewed after exploding and then it seemed to settle out of sight. That’s getting too close for me!”

Reporters at the time commented that the sight of the falling Polaris was visible as far away as Rockledge, some twelve miles southwest of Cape Canaveral. They also commented that no flames were visible from that far, which makes sense considering that only people nearby the crash scene reported seeing any fire.

Aftermath

While undoubtedly the US Air Force, associated contractors and perhaps even local officials gathered together to piece together what happened that day, there were no high-profile investigations reported in the months after the event.

Cocoa’s newspaper — which had barely mentioned the incident in its pages in the days after the event, had a few quips in the following months from local columnists who made light of the misfire, calling it “The Banana River Ballistic Missile.” The name stuck.

Life in Cape Canaveral and surrounding towns went back to normal quickly after the event, but for decades afterwards, local lore kept a place for the Banana River Ballistic Missile, even if the exact story of what happened the day it was launched was largely forgotten.

Today

This reporter inquired at the Sands Museum if anyone there had any memories of the Banana River Ballistic Missile event, but unfortunately no one could be found to give a first-person retelling of the event. That’s no surprise, given that it happened over sixty years ago. Too many of those gentlemen are gone.

Visiting the site of the missile crash reveals no sign of the event’s occurrence, again, no surprise given the number of years that have passed. Looking at the crash site is hardly different than any other view of the Banana River in Cape Canaveral: quiet, beautiful and a nice place to fish or go boating but otherwise wholly unremarkable, save for the occasional dolphin surfacing or perhaps the water glowing on a summer night from natural bioluminescence.

The Hitching Post trailer park is still there, albeit with a different name, “Sea Shells.” Sea Shells is a quiet neighborhood tucked off of bustling A1A, across the street from Cape Canaveral’s City Hall. One of the streets in this neighborhood still bears the name “Hitching Post” and for all intents and purposes, it appears that little has changed at the location save for the homes present on the lots.

Could It Happen Again?

In a word, no. Today, such an event as the Banana River Ballistic Missile is highly unlikely in the extreme.

Compared to the 1950’s, safety requirements are far more stringent, and a launch trajectory that would allow a missile to land anywhere near a populated area is simply not allowed. If anything, “safe” trajectories are far more conservative than they were sixty-odd years ago.

Secondly, self-destruct systems on rockets are far more advanced than they were sixty-six years ago, and new rockets have automated systems that destroy a rocket when it deviates from the planned flight path far more thoroughly than in the old days.

In short, this was a one-off event and while it is an almost humorous bit of space history as seen through the lens of today, it almost certainly was something that was taken very seriously at the time and immediate improvements to safety systems was a short-term and a long-term result.