Space Command hall of fame inductee honored

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Kate Rust
  • Air Force Space Command Public Affairs
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AFPN) --  The Navy rejected him for far-sighted vision he "might" develop later in life. So he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a Bachelor of Science degree on D-Day, June 6, 1944. By 1946 he was selected to serve in the super secret Manhattan Engineer District -- the Manhattan Project. His destiny unfolded behind tight security and among giants.

Retired Col. Francis J. "Joe" Hale gave a lifetime to the space and missile program, and Air Force officials said thank you March 6.

Colonel Hale stood with Maj. Gen. Thomas Deppe, Air Force Space Command vice commander,  to be recognized as an Air Force Space and Missile Pioneer Hall of Fame inductee. Colonel Hale was officially inducted Aug. 26, 2006, but was unable to attend in person.

From the Army Corps of Engineers, Colonel Hale volunteered in autumn 1944 for parachute school at Fort Benning, Ga. He served with a combat engineer battalion in Europe until mid-1945, then retrained with the Army Map Service. In 1946, while making maps in the Philippines, Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves selected him to serve in the Manhattan Engineer District, which then became the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, at Sandia Base, N.M.

Colonel Hale explained that when he was notified of his orders to proceed to work on the project he didn't have enough clearance to receive them.

"I thought I was reporting to Okinawa. I was a map maker," he said.

He became deputy supervisor for the first military team to assemble atomic weapons and supervisor for the second such team. He spent five months on Eniwetok Island as a member of the Blast Measurements Group during Operation Sandstone, when U.S. scientists tested three atomic bombs.

Colonel Hale explained that they were divided into three groups which capitalized on their body of work or their talents.

"The first group was made up of engineers, the really smart guys," he said. "The second group was electricians, and of course the mechanics made up the third group. The rest had no talent.  They made us commanders."

Later, he would earn master's and doctorate's degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral thesis examined the boundary layers of a magnetohydrodynamic accelerator for use in space propulsion.

He reported to the Western Development Division in January 1956 and became the deputy director of the Thor missile program under Col. Ed Hall, another hall of fame inductee. With establishment of the Minuteman missile program, Colonel Hale became its first plans-and-programs officer, then Colonel Hall's deputy program director.

General Deppe had first-hand experience with some of the 1960s tests of the Minuteman program when he was an enlisted Airman assigned to Edwards AFB, Calif. Having had a long association with the missile program as an officer as well, the general said he was honored to accord this tribute to this missile great.

"The Air Force has Colonel Hale to thank for the decisive space and missile capabilities used today by the nation and joint warfighters around the world."

Colonel Hale said he was surprised even to have been nominated.

"I always considered myself a number-two kind of guy," he shrugged. "I wasn't creative like Ed Hall. I was never a weapon system director. I was a deputy." 

But he said he had a good time and served with great people.

Colonel Hale retired from active duty in 1965 and joined the engineering faculty at North Carolina State University. He spearheaded development of an aerospace curriculum at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. In the late 70s as a visiting professor, he assisted the U.S. Military Academy with expansion of its engineering curriculum into aerospace.

Prior to becoming technical director of the Department of Interior's Desalination Test Facility at Wrightsville Beach, N.C., in 1982, he performed a dynamic analysis of a desalination process using techniques and equations developed for stabilizing and controlling spacecraft and aircraft.

He authored several engineering textbooks, including Introduction to Space Flight (1994). From the mid-1990s onward he developed and taught for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics home-study professional development courses in space flight and in aircraft design and performance.


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