Some of the weapons tested at WSMR had a great impact not only for their military uses, but in a larger geopolitical context. One of these is the Pershing II missile and the role it played in the 1983 “War Scare.” Because of President Ronald Reagan’s heated anti-Soviet rhetoric, fears the Soviet Leadership and KGB had of an American first strike, and events of 1983, the US and USSR came closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Category Archives: Education
Life at Los Alamos
By Darren Court, WSMR Museum Director/Curator
The V-2 Program: Operation Backfire to the Hermes Project
From the White Sands Missile Range Museum Archives
A Brief History of White Sands Proving Ground, 1941-1965
By Peter L. Eidenbach, Adjunct College Professor of Anthropology, New Mexico State University Alamogordo
Project Galileo Testing at White Sands Missile Range
From the White Sands Missile Range Museum Archives
Lure of Gold Leads Prospectors to Texas Canyon
By Jim Eckles, WSMR Public Affairs Office
The White Sands Missile Range Museum’s Missile Park
The Hermes Program
By Darren Court, Museum Director/Curator and the WSMR Public Affairs Office
M712 Copperhead
By Jenn Jett, Museum Specialist
The Trinity Test Site
Compiled and Written by Gerry Veara, White Sands Missile Range Historical Foundation