The American-made Corporal missile was the first guided weapon authorised by the US airforce to carry a nuclear warhead. A surface-to-surface guided missile, the Corporal could deliver either a nuclear fission or high-explosive warhead up to a range of 75 nautical miles. Sketch of induced nuclear fission, a neutron (n) strikes a uranium nucleus which splits into similar products (F. P.), and releases more neutrons to continue the process, and energy in the form of gamma and other radiation. ...

Developed by the United States Army in partnership with Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Gilfillan Brothers Inc, Douglas Aircraft Company and Caltech’s pioneering Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Corporal was designed as a tactical nuclear missile for use in the event of Cold War hostilities in Eastern Europe. The first Corporal battalion was deployed in Europe in 1955 and remained in the field until 1963 when it was eventually replaced by the Sergeant missile system. The Army is the branch of the United States armed forces which has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. ... The JPL complex in Pasadena, Ca. ... A cold war is a state of conflict between nations that does not involve direct military action but is pursued primarily through economic and political actions, acts of espionage or conflict through surrogates. ...

The Corporal was first developed in White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico drawing on the technical experience and expertise that the Americans acquired from the German V-2 rocket programme after the second world war. After being sold to Britain in 1954, it became the first US guided missile destined for service in a foreign country to be used by a foreign power. Subsequent test-firing by British and German Corporal battalions took place in the Scottish island of South Uist in 1959, where a special Royal Artillery 'Rocket Range' was built in 1957-58. White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), formerly known as the White Sands Proving Grounds, is located in a valley between the Organ Mountains and the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. ... German test launch. ... South Uist (Scottish Gaelic: Uibhist a Deas) is an island of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. ...

For what was the front line of nuclear defence, the Corporal missile was notoriously unreliable and inaccurate. Until 1955, its in-flight accuracy was less than 50 per cent, with only modest improvements thereafter. The first year of British test firings in 1959 yielded a success rate of only 46%, a dismal record which raised questions among military planners of its operational effectiveness in Germany.

As with many such weapons of mass destruction, the Corporal missile was minituarised as a children's toy. A version of the Corporals was made as a die-cast toy by manufacturers such as Corgi and Dinky. The Corgi Corporal - targeted at children as 'the rocket you can launch' - was timed to co-incide with the British test firing in 1959. A die cast toy is a type of toys that is popular among collectors. ...

References

Army Ballistic Missile Agency (1961) Development of the Corporal: the embryo of the army missile program Vol 1. ABMA unclassified report, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama

MacDonald, F (2005) Geopolitics and 'the Vision Thing': regarding Britain and America's first nuclear missile [1] (http://www.geography.unimelb.edu.au/staff/macdonald.html), published by the School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, The University of Melbourne.