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Up from the sands of Florida's Cape Canaveral last week shot the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile with fiery blast and awesome roar. It climbed majestically into a layer of low-hanging clouds, disappeared to the southeast, and a few minutes later plummeted into the ocean 600 miles away—as planned.
Hardly was the Atlas' bright orange tail lost from view when officials rushed to telephones in a concrete blockhouse 750 ft. from the launching pad. Out went the news to the White House, where President Eisenhower replied "good" to word of Atlas' second successful launching in less than a month. Another call flashed the news across the continent to the San Diego headquarters of Convair, builder of the Atlas. And in a small office on Manhattan's Park Avenue, yet another call came to Frank Pace Jr., 45, president of General Dynamics Corp., the giant industrial complex that embraces not only Convair but half a dozen other defense and weapons-producing industries.
Frank Pace, a lean man with worry-free eyes, had a lot of other things on his mind that morning, as befits a man who manages a missile-age empire—and who reached that top post in four short years. An Arkansas-born wonder boy. Pace was U.S. Budget Director (under Harry Truman) at 36 and Secretary of the Army at 37—two jobs that prepared him well for the presidency of General 1 Dynamics, a Arm that does 85% of its business with the Government.
With another General Dynamics-Government success-chalked up, Pace expressed the admiration of the top commander for the men in the industrial front lines. Said he: "A very fine job!"
Rare Marriage. The Atlas—or "The Bird" to missile workers—is the most spectacular of the new weapons produced by General Dynamics, which has rocketed out of obscurity in a single decade to become the second biggest U.S. defense contractor (after Boeing) and by far the most wide-ranging.
It has grown from a $14 million midget in 1946 to a $1.5 billion giant—a hundredfold sales increase. From two plants employing 3,500 people, it has spread across the U.S. and all the Western Hemisphere into more than 100 plants with upwards of 100,000 workers.
Many of them go about their appointed tasks in spick-and-span, air-conditioned surroundings as clean as a kitchen, as cloistered as a scientific laboratory. A rare marriage of scientific talent and hard-headed business know-how, General Dynamics employs one scientist for every five workers, has a roster of consultants that includes such greats as Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, and Dr. Theodore von Karman, Caltech's brilliant mathematician and aerodynamicist.
Dynamics' stock is one of Wall Street's most glamorous, and hardly a week goes by without a spate of reports about another project or merger planned by the company. Last week three mergers were rumored; all were denied by the company. The glamour is more than skin-deep: a share of Dynamics' stock bought for $25 in 1952 is now worth $192 (after splits); the company's profits rose 40% to an estimated $44.8 million last year. In the deadly competition of weapons, brains and power between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, General Dynamics is in the forefront of the battle. Besides the Atlas, its other products include: