1958

June. The first apartment building in Mirny town was laid and wide scale construction of town's infrastructure started. July 25. Sergei was born in Sevastopol.

During 1958, 30-km railway and concrete road linked Plesetskaya station with Facility N° 1 on the bank of Yemtsa River, where excavations for the first launch pad were underway. Road tracks with rail wheels instead of tires became the first vehicles on the rail line. The original train included one steam engine with a single car. In June 1958, excavations for the missile stage storage had started, as well as construction of the first permanent apartment buildings of the new military town. Later known as Mirny, for Russian "Peaceful," the town was founded on the shore of Plestsy Lake and was off-limits for outsiders for decades. In 1958, more than 11,000 people worked in Plesetsk. Average 400-800 tracks delivering construction materials were arriving daily at the site. Clearly, government was in a hurry to complete the project; in July 1958, Marshall Nedelin, Deputy to the Minister of Defense on Special Weaponry personally inspected the site. In a setback for the construction, the truss elements of the launch pad prepared for assembly in Plesetsk had to be shipped to Tyuratam, to repair a pad damaged in July 10, 1958 launch failure.

Yemtsa River

Total four pads for R-7 missiles were founded along Yemtsa River, where steep edges of the banks saved a great deal of digging efforts for future smoke ducks. Since geographical location of Plesetsk has not allowed to fit 500-km ground track with two control stations, R-7A designers had to improve the missile's navigation system to use only one remote control site. The first military unit to serve operational ICBMs R-7A was officially formed on May 19, 1958. It was led by Colonel G. Mikheev, who up to that time had been a chief of staff in Plesetsk. A month later, Mikheev's unit was reorganized under cover up name "3rd training artillery range," which did include an artillery unit, to provide a "smoke screen" for super-secret operations. In the Ministry of Defense, the same unit was known as the 42nd battlefield launch station.

"Missile Gap"

( Continue from "Chronology, 1957") In July 1958, an added complicating factor appeared when the Soviet Union halted testing of the SS-6. Two interpretations emerged for the halt. The Air Force believed it meant Soviet Union had solved the ICBM's technical problems and were ready to begin mass production. The estimates of 1,000 ICBMs by 1961 were, in their view, still valid CIA's estimate was different. They thought the test halt was a reflection of the technical difficulties of the SS-6. The CIA also pointed to the irregular intervals between firings well as the variety of tests that had been made. Accordingly, the CIA pushed back their estimate of when the first Soviet ICBMs be ready to late 1959. This was a year late than the Air Force estimate. The CIA also pushed back their projections of the total to 100 missiles by 1961 and 500 by 1962.

The issue revolved around whether the number of Soviet launches was sufficient to discover all the bugs in the system. It had been estimated that from twenty to thirty launches would be needed to do this. If it were true, then the Soviet Union were only one-third of the way through the complete test cycle. In this case, the Air Force was wrong. If, however, the number of Soviet launches meant had been sufficient to discover all the bugs in the system, the first missiles would be ready by the end of the year. The lack of tests made it impossible for the U.S. to resolve the question. No launches meant no new data. There was only the old information that had given rise to the question in first place. This circular argument continued for nearly a year. The differing interpretations of the Soviet test halt were the first sign of how divergent the estimate would become.

Continued in "Chronology, 1959"

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