IGOR

IGOR, the Intercept Ground Optical Recorder, was a tracking telescope designed to provide photographic records of missile performance, including attitude, intercept miss-distance, and other event data. With its long focal length lens, it could photograph missiles up to 100 miles away. It consisted of a telescope optical system, a high-speed movie camera, sighting telescopes, and an instrument mount based on a modified U.S. Navy 5-inch/25 Mark 19 Navy gun mount. Two trackers sat on opposite sides of the mount and moved the telescope and camera in azimuth and elevation. Designed and built by the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland, using an optical system specified by Clyde Tombaugh, the first IGOR was installed at WSMR in October 1951 and first used to track an Army Corporal missile on 6 December 1951. The example is model number two, installed in late 1951, and it was followed by eight more IGORs emplaced around WSMR. These tracking telescopes were used extensively through 1965. In 1952, the crew of IGOR No. 2 took a photograph of the first Armed Live Warhead Intercept of a Nike Ajax missile and its target, a B-17 bomber, and the photograph won the Ernie Pyle Award for outstanding still photo in support of national security.

White Sands, New Mexico · United States