Terrier (RIM-2D)
NUCLEAR anti-aircraft weapon
Explosive Power
1 kt.
Hiroshima Equivalent Factor
1/15th
Dimensions
26 ft, 4 inches x 18 inches
Weight
3000 lbs.
Range
36 miles, Mach 2.5
Year(s)
TBD
Purpose
Ship-based anti-aircraft
About THE Terrier
Forthcoming…
Gallery
Nukemap
NUKEMAP is a web-based mapping program that attempts to give the user a sense of the destructive power of nuclear weapons. It was created by Alex Wellerstein, a historian specializing in nuclear weapons (see his book on nuclear secrecy and his blog on nuclear weapons). The screenshot below shows the NUKEMAP output for this particular weapon. Click on the map to customize settings.
Videos
Click on the Play button and then the Full screen brackets on the lower right to view each video. Click on the Exit full screen cross at lower right (the “X” on a mobile device) to return.
Further Reading
- Wikipedia, Designation Systems
- A chapter from a 1965 history of the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins offers a detailed history of the Terrier and the lab’s role in its development. Here’s a 1981 history, also from APL at Johns Hopkins.
- Several photographs showing the Terrier in action.
- Additional views (photographed by Flickr user rocbolt) of the Terriers at the rocket garden at White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, and at the Nuclear Museum, in Albuquerque.
- An overview of the “3 T family” of missiles born of the Bumblebee program, which includes the Terrier, the Talos, and the non-nuclear Tartar. )
- A collection of archival images of Terrier launches.
- If you are a New York Times subscriber (and, if not, you should be) you can see the article from March 14, 1956, describing the Navy’s first public display of the Terrier. The first sentence: “The Navy proudly displayed today its first anti-aircraft missile, the Terrier, and announced that the age of push-button warfare had come to the sea.”