"Bruce R" wrote:

"William R Thompson" wrote:

The Outer Limits episode was filmed in 1963, so the footage
is probably older than the episode. "Regulus II" is the
best guess I have, but there were so many bizarre test
missiles back then that I don't feel certain.

I think it might be a Snark missile. There were so many lost off the
coast of Florida during testing that the area around the cape was called
"Snark infested waters". I don't have any Snark missile photos, but if
you Google a search for them, you will see the large boosters "JATO type"
bottles used to get it up off the ground.

Snark used two JATO engines, on either side of the fuselage,
while the bird in this picture seems to have only one JATO bottle
on the centerline.

One thing that baffles me here is the flame coming from what
would be the jet engine on a Regulus (or Snark, or Matador,
or Mace, or . . . ). I don't know if any of the Fifties-era cruise
missiles were fitted with afterburners, and if that's a rocket
engine, why would it need a (smaller) JATO booster? The
only reference I can find to a ramjet-powered cruise missile is
the Republic Hilo, and designation-systems.net

( http://www.designation-systems.net/d...pp4/other.html )

says the Hilo was probably never built.

I've tried to persuade myself that this missile was a special-effects
work by the Outer Limits, but they had a low budget and used
stock footage whenever they could get away with it. In addition
this doesn't look like their usual photography.

--Bill Thompson