This one's gonna be a biggie as it's gone by many names over the years. It started as the Hurricane Supersonic Research Site, then as the Supersonic Military Air Research Track, and is now called Hurricane Mesa Test Facility. Information gleaned from both the Wikipedia entry and Paul Freeman's Abandoned & Little Known Airfields site (who's info was partially sourced from a writing called “Chronology of Hurricane Mesa Test Facility” by Jack Reed, but I was unable to find a copy). All pictures are sourced from Paul Freeman's site as well, with credits attributed where possible.
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| A map of the facility that is displayed in the St.George airport. Pic taken by Tim Tyler in 2012. |
The story starts not long after WWII with the higher proliferation of jet aircraft and the need to have more sophisticated escape equipment (ie. ejection seats), as the USAF was (and still is) buying British ejection seats, as US companies producing them at the time were lagging behind their UK counterparts. So, come 1953, the Coleman Engineering Company of Torrance, CA was awarded a 2 million dollar contract to build a test track at a spot of land selected (and owned) by the USAF, and construction started subsequently in '54.
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| Photo of the rails taken May 10th 1959 by Norvin Alcorn. Note the cool car in the shot there. |
The site was selected due to it's relatively mild weather conditions, and a constant supply of braking water provided by the nearby Virgin river (and the remoteness likely helped security). The facility is on property owned by the USAF, and initially it was administered by the Indian Springs AFB (now called Creech AFB) in Nevada. The facility had a test track, and several support buildings/facilities. The track itself comprised of 12,000 feet of continuously welded rails that was the longest rocket research track in the US at the time. Once the facility was finished, operations were contracted to the Coleman company and tests began in 1955.
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| B-52 forward fuselage mounted on the sled sometime around 1955-1961. Note the Coleman logo near the nose (photo provided by Tim Tyler on A&LKA site) |
During their operations, Coleman engineers achieved a world land speed record using a 9,400-pound rocket sled on the track at 1,800 miles per hour (Mach 2.36). More regular or typical speeds run at the track would be around 1,050 mph (Mach 1.3) with a dummy filled with instrumentation called "Hurricane Sam", but the team reportedly also used apes for selected tests as well. The track was also reportedly used for the boosting of rockets launched from the site, but I couldn't confirm this, nor the types of rockets that may have been launched.
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| Another picture taken by Norvin Alcorn on the same day, with an F-102 Delta Dart fuselage mounted on the rocket sled. |
Coleman and the Air Force continued operations for 6 years, conducting 334 tests, until December 1961. These helped the Air Force to standardize its ejection systems and perfect a new ejection seat to make emergency escapes much safer for American pilots.
Subsequently, the facility has been listed as a Formerly Used Defense Site, which is government (Defense Department) owned land, and was leased to multiple companies over the years for continued use. Some of which are: Stanley Aviation Corporation, Bell Aircraft, Stencel Aero Engineering, Collins Aerospace (a division of Raytheon), Universal Propulsion Company, and BF Goodrich Aerospace.
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| Tim Tyler took this pic of the main gate in March of 2010. |
These companies helped develop multiple systems at the site that were implemented on multiple aircraft such as the B-47 Stratojet, B-52 Stratofortress, B-66 Destroyer, F-104 Delta Dart, FJ-2 Fury, F-106A Delta Dagger, F4H Demon, P6M Seamaster, B-58 Hustler, A-1 Skyraider, T-28 Trojan, T-6 Texan II, A-3B Skywarrior & B-66 Destroyer, EA-6B Prowler, F-15 Eagle, T-38, A-4 Skyhawk, F-16 Falcon, and the OV-1 Mohawk. That's a big list!
Stanley Aviation in particular are the ones who later built the adjacent gravel airfield at the site sometime around 1962-1965, to better facilitate personnel to transit to and from their company headquarters in Colorado without having to commute from St.George or Hurricane. They later paved the runway in 1975, but did not construct any hangars or other support buildings. The runway itself has been in a state of disrepair/out of service for some time, since before 1996 (more than 25 years).
Currently, the test site is owned/operated by Alliant Techsystems (ATK Aerospace), which is now a subsidiary of Northrop/Grumman, and tests are still regularly conducted there. Again, most of this info was obtained from the Abandoned & Little Known Airfields page for southern Utah, and I still recommend you visit it for the full story, as he has much more info than I could provide here in my summary.
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| October 2012 photo by Tim Tyler of one the sign with support building and and test articles. I don't doubt this is the original signage from the 50s. |
Another fun little aside on the facility, is that it was the focus/climactic setting of a little known techo-thriller novel written by local author Timothy Burton Anderson called, "The Reign of The Stavka". It was a book I remember enjoying as a young adult, and I still have a copy to this day. I remember meeting the author in passing one day, and I commented to him how much I liked it. Mr. Anderson was appreciative, but gave me the impression he was quite disappointed with the final product not being edited well enough, as it seems he thought it contained an excessive amount of mistakes by a new (at the time) author. In any case, if you like stuff like Tom Clancy, I'd still give it a recommendation, as it's a fun read.
