The Hopi was an air-to-surface missile developed by the United States Navy's
Naval Ordnance Test Station
Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS) China Lake is a large military installation in California that supports the research, testing and evaluation programs of the United States Navy. It is part of Navy Region Southwest under Commander, Navy Install ...
. Intended to provide a medium-range nuclear capability for carrier aircraft, the missile reached the flight test stage during 1958, but the project was cancelled following testing and no production was undertaken.
Design and development
Developed by the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) at
China Lake, California during the mid-to-late 1950s,
[Parsch 2003] the Hopi missile was an improved development of the earlier BOAR (
Bombardment Aircraft Rocket). BOAR had been developed at China Lake as an unguided, nuclear-armed rocket for use by carrier-based aircraft, seeing limited service in the fleet between 1957 and 1963.
[Babcock 2008, p.323.]
In its essentials simply an enlarged version of BOAR,
which it was intended to replace in service, Hopi was designed as a medium-range weapon capable of being carried by a wide variety of carrier-based fighter and attack aircraft. The rocket-powered missile was capable of being fitted with a
W50 nuclear warhead capable of producing a yield between 60 and 400
kiloton
TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. A ton of TNT equivalent is a unit of energy defined by convention to be (). It is the approximate energy released in the det ...
s; however, no details of the planned guidance system for the missile, or if there even was intended to be guidance at all, have survived.
Operational history
Following its development, the Hopi missile was flight-tested on the China Lake weapons range during 1958.
The missile was test-fired from a variety of aircraft, including the
North American FJ-4 Fury
The North American FJ-4 Fury is a swept-wing carrier-capable fighter-bomber for the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps. The final development in a lineage that included the Air Force's North American F-86 Sabre, F-86 ...
,
Douglas AD Skyraider
The Douglas A-1 Skyraider (formerly designated AD before the 1962 unification of Navy and Air Force designations) is an American single-seat attack aircraft in service from 1946 to the early 1980s, which served during the Korean War and Vietnam ...
,
Douglas A3D Skywarrior
The Douglas A-3 Skywarrior is a jet-powered strategic bomber that was developed and produced by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It was designed by Douglas on behalf of the United States Navy, which sought a carrier-capable strategic bomber. In ...
and
Douglas A4D Skyhawk
The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk is a single-seat subsonic aircraft, subsonic Carrier-based aircraft, carrier-capable light attack aircraft designed and produced by the American aerospace manufacturer Douglas Aircraft Company, and later, McDonnell Doug ...
.
1958 Photo Gallery
Photographic History of NAF & VX-5 at NOTS China Lake. Accessed 2010-12-29. However, no details of the tests are known to have survived,
References
Notes
Bibliography
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{{USN missiles
Unguided nuclear rockets of the United States
Nuclear missiles of the United States
Air-to-surface missiles of the United States
Abandoned military rocket and missile projects of the United States