Talk:Project Wizard

Merge from Thumper missile
I am proposing this merge because of a WP:RM at Talk:Thumper_missile. walk victor falktalk 23:37, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment The proposal at Talk:Thumper_missile is for "revert" which is WP:RV, not WP:RM. Also, renaming the article to remove "missile" from the article name has disagreement.  64.134.242.204 (talk) 12:17, 5 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Disagree The Thumper missile, the Wizard missile, and the GAPA missile are different, so different pages are the convention. 64.134.242.204 (talk) 12:17, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Do not merge: They were were different missiles/programs.  30 SW (talk) 13:24, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
 * n.b. Thumper missile has been moved to Project Thumper. This shouldn't really affect the outcome of the discussion. --BDD (talk) 23:42, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Do not merge. Thumper and Wizard (and GAPA, for that matter, which seems to have been captured into orbit somehow here) are entirely seperate projects; that there was some R&D overlap is natural, but seperate pages are best here. - The Bushranger One ping only 04:49, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment I have closed this, as there is no consensus to merge it. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:24, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Project Thumper and Project Wizard should not have been merged as they were entirely different contracts. Both contracts were let on 4 March 1946. Though they involved a similar objective they were not connected anymore than Hermes A-1 was with Project Nike, or Hermes A-3B was with Corporal.

Wizard was MX-794, which was with the University of Michigan (Professor E. W. Conlon) for a series of studies into the problem of intercepting a missile moving at 4,000 mph and at an altitude from 60,000 to 500,00 feet.

Thumper was MX-795. The MX-795 contract was with General Electric (under Project Hermes) to explore the interception of "rocket powered ballistic and glide missiles and supersonic ram-jets." General Electric was operating Project Hermes which was a broad exploration of missile and ram-jet technology. Another part of Hermes was Project Bumper, which involved a two-stage liquid fueled missile with a V-2 first stage and a WAC Corporal second stage. Project Thumper was involved with Project Bumper until Thumper was cancelled in March 1948.

Project MX-606, aka GAPA, and Condor was with Boeing. Thumper was dropped and Wizard was merged with GAPA and eventually resulted in Bomarc. The name Wizard was reused for a late 1950s antiballistic missile to compete for funding with the Nike Zeus program.

Sources: Baucom, Donald R. "The Origins of SDI, 1944-1983," 1992 University Press of Kansas and Rosenberg, Max,"The Air Force and the National Guided Missile Program 1944-1950," 1964 USAF Historical Division Liaison Office.

Mark Lincoln (talk) 23:18, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Duplicated content redundant with that in primary articles
Relevance: This article about the Wizard missile has extensive, detailed, redundant info not about the title subject and that needs removed--e.g., the redundant info about the different GAPA and Thumper missiles is described in those missiles' articles, which are appropriately separate pages. 64.134.242.204 (talk) 12:17, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Mea Culpa: I saw that the GAPA and other information here was redundant quite a while ago and made a mental note to remove the redundant info in this article, but distracted with a list of other edits I had planned.  I'll do the edits now.  30 SW (talk) 13:24, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Wow
I find it a little odd that the author of this article, me, was not consulted on any of the rather sweeping changes made to this and the creation of the redundant Thumper. The result is confusing, misleading, and in some cases, simply wrong.

The key issue is that there are TWO WIZARD PROJECTS. One was launched in 1946, and is absolutely identical to Thumper. Both contracts called for the same missile with the same performance for the same role. The only difference was who was running the project, GE or MARC.

As to GAPA, Thumper's funding was given to GAPA, and then Wizard's was given to GAPA. GAPA was only saved because there was money in these projects that could be re-directed. The final merging of the projects marks the death of the original Wizard.

The confusion may be about the "new Wizard", which was an entirely different design for ICBM defense in CONUS. This was apparently called Wizard simply because the AF already had a Wizard ABM project, although by all evidence it was moribund by this point.

All of this is very well recorded in the historical record, and I have provided ample references. Please consult before making major changes again, it's taken me the better part of a day to wire this back together.

Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:34, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Wizard was merged into GAPA. The later project Wizard was a USAF (not AAF like the first Wizard) project to compete with Nike Zeus. There was a constant competition between the US Army and USAF for various missile projects in the 1950s (see the Jupiter-Thor controversy).

Mark Lincoln (talk) 23:24, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Questionable statement
I always take Leonard with a grain of salt, and this statement just jumped out at me:

"The planned missiles were 60 feet (18 m) long and 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter, with a range of 550 miles (890 km)."

Yes, I realize he says this, but this seems rather odd given that it is a longer range than the missiles it would attack. It's possible this is referring to the missiles it was designed to attack, but I cannot find the original source online.

Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:51, 15 July 2016 (UTC)