Harp Technology (Part 6)

Harp Technology

(Part 6)

In the one of the chief adversaries of Harp he was a man and his name was J.L. Orr, who at that time he was the Industrial Research Advisor of the Ministry of Industry. Mr. Orr proved that he was skillful at applying all of the understated narrow-mindedness of the democratic bureaucracy to destabilize the Harp program at every achievable opportunity. And By manipulating the personal adversaries of Bull and disparagement the accomplishments of the Harp program that he was instrumental in repudiating Canada its first domestic satellite launching system.

1962

In March of the 1962 Mordell and Bull organized a press conference officially announcing the Harp program. And this presentation included models of Bull's Martlets, named for the bird on the McGill University crest. The media was appropriately impressed. This Harp project is not as nearly advanced as the press was led to believe. However the press conference had been arranged for not just to introduce HARP to the world but also to force a continuing commitment by McGill's upper echelons.

And with the media's can focused on it, and With the support of the US Army, the HARP project was developed a momentum of its own. McGill University found that they had no easy way out of the $200,000 advanced loan. To belay criticism of the projects funding, McGill University was announced that the HARP could not be financed by the university itself but by the 'contracts from governments and institutions desiring to utilize this unique research facility'. In practice this simply meant the US Army.

In starting of April HARP started the process of installing the big 16-inch gun on the island Barbados. This gun pit was dug into the island's coral base. The concrete emplacement was decanted so that the barrel would be elevated to vertical. In May the gun pit was ready and this big 16-inch gun was on its way to its new Caribbean home. As a further example of the US Army's interest for the HARP project, they organized the largest harmony over-the-beach-landing operation in history. The 16-inch gun barrels and equipment was placed on flat bed rail cars and then loaded onto the tank landing ship the USS John D Page.

This rough seaboard at the range site did not allow the gun barrels to be landed head-to-head to the range site. This Page had to land the barrels about 7 kilometers down towards the beach. From where they can transported this gun site to by laying a temporary railway track and tractoring with the rail cars along. And with only 450 meters of track can available, Most sections of track were pulled up as soon as the loads had passed and dispatched in front. Once at that site this big gun mountings and oppression were installed on the concrete emplacement and the barrel was maneuvered into the place. Installing the first barrel was a long and exhausting process with workman and scientist alike pulling and straining to maneuvers the 40-ton gun barrel where fix into its final position.

But in the end of the summer of 1962 the gun is in placed and the other services are be nearing of completion. Workshops, storage buildings, propellant magazines, telemetry and radar installations, and a multitude of other facilities has been assembled. The Barbados launch site was in beginning to take the form of a modern space launch complex.
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(To Be Continue…)