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On September 19, 1955, it was cloudy and windy. Just a few minutes before 3:00 p.m. on this day, one man came out from a shack on Michikawa beach and crept toward the sea. Some men held their breath and were staring at him from behind. If you looked toward where this man was creeping, it appeared as though a rocket was lying down on the sand. Not quite. If you looked at it very carefully, the thin object was just the motor and not far from it was the rocket's head cover shoved into the sandy beach.
The man ran down about 70 meters from what was called a "Kamaboko (semicircle) shack", and he got on all fours as he neared the rocket and crept closer to it before carefully touching it with his hand. The other men understood the seriousness of the situation and unintentionally closed their eyes. Some of them even joined their hands in prayer. Yes, this rocket motor had propellant inside it. Not only that, the ignition time had well passed.
Just minutes before, at 2:40 p.m., the Baby T rocket II was launched. The first stage burnt without any trouble, but for some reason, the second stage did not ignite and the vehicle body went up only 35 to 40 meters before plunging to the sand only five meters away from the launcher. The titanium tetrachloride attached to the fin shroud for the flight tracking reacted to the oxygen in the air and caused smoke to come from the titanium oxide. This was very dangerous, as it could have caught fire at any time. In addition, if the rocket's body was lying on the beach in an awkward position, it could have taken off toward the place where the experiment team was taking refuge.
These unusual observations continued for a while and then the smoke stopped. And the man, Yasuaki Toda, started to creep forward risking his life. Actually, before the rocket's launch, Toda had offered a bottle of Akita's famous sake and Cleyera Japonica branches next to the launcher as a custom to pray for a safe launch. It looked like the gods hadn't heard his wish for this Baby rocket. Under the watchful eyes of the experiment team, Toda checked the rocket several times and cut the lead wire to the igniter and grounded it. He then shouted, "Hey, it's okay now!" Relieved cheering voices were soon heard. Each member of the team run up to him and the Baby rocket and the second stage were recovered. At that moment, a surprised voice was heard from the "Kamaboko shack." "The telemeter started transmission!"
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The "T" in Baby T stands for telemeter and we tested the telemeter to be used for the transmission of the measured data. The rockets were originally designed to transport freight, so they could carry payloads. When a rocket was to transport such payloads in the future, the data to show the correct operation of the payload was to be transmitted electrically. That's the role of the telemeter.
The radar was tested soon after when a larger-scale rocket was built, but there is a famous story about Mr. Shinji Urimoto from Meisei Electric Co. named after the famous historical story of "Yoshitsune's eight-boat hop." Let me tell the story. The ground radar antenna must follow the electric waves transmitted from the radar transmitter aboard the rocket that flies. To check the performance of the ground radar antenna, we performed a test while we were moving the transmitter. At that time, Mr. Urimoto held the transmitter and ran, and the radar antenna tracked him. Apart from this test on the beach, an idea to carry out the test on the sea emerged, so we moved the transmitter onto a boat and tried to track it. Mr. Urimoto ran and hopped over boat after boat with the radar in his arms, so that scene just looked like the famous scene from "Yoshitune's eight-boat hop." (Kakimi)
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