The Fifth Academy
In his plan for developing China’s jet propulsion technology and rocketry research, Dr Qian Xuesen recommended the creation of dedicated missile R&D institutions as well as a government body to provide oversight and planning for the entire missile and rocketry programme. This led to the creation of three organisations for the missile programme in 1956, all under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of National Defence (MND):
- The Aeronautical Industry Commission established on 13 April 1956 was a governmental and military office for overseeing China’s military aviation and rocketry R&D. Marshal Nie Rongzhen, the patron of the Chinese strategic weapon programme, was appointed the commission’s director.
- The Fifth Bureau established on 6 August 1956 was the executive agency for managing the missile development programme. The bureau had 146 staff and was headed by Qian Xuesen.
- The Fifth Academy established on 8 October 1956 was the primary missile research, development, testing and production institution. The academy was also headed by Qian Xuesen. In March 1957, the Fifth Bureau was merged into the Fifth Academy to create a single entity with overall responsibility for China’s missile development.
Over the year, the Fifth Academy would have grown substantially in size and eventually evolved into today’s Chinese aerospace industry, which comprises two large state-owned aerospace consortia employing over 200,000 people in total. However, back then the situation was very different. At the time of its creation, the academy had merely 300 staff, two thirds of whom had just graduated from university and none had seen a real rocket. Operating from their temporary home in a disused military hospital and two sanatoriums in Beijing, Qian and his assistants’ first task was to develop curriculum for the staff on the foundation knowledge of rocketry and aerodynamics.
Luckily for Qian, the missile programme was given the highest priority by the Chinese leadership in funding and resources allocation. He put together a list of 21 key persons required to work on the missile programme, and received them with no delay. Just like Qian himself, most of the people on the list were Western trained scientists and engineers, including Ren Xinmin (MSc and doctorate in mechanical engineering from University of Michigan), Tu Shancheng (MSc and doctorate in electrical engineering from Cornell University), Liang Shoupan (MSc from MIT), Tu Shou’e (MSc from MIT), and Huang Weilu (MSc from the Imperial College, University of London). They later all became leading figures in China’s missile and space programme.
Despite lacking any experience or technical know-how to build even the simplest rocket, the Fifth Academy was set some very ambitious objectives for the period of the PRC’s Second Five-Year Plan (1958—1962) in March 1957. These included the reverse-engineering of Soviet short-range ballistic missile and the independent development of an indigenous medium-range ballistic missile, as well as the development of unmanned target drones.
Soviet Assistance
Even with China’s best talents at his disposal, Qian realised that his team were still be unable to develop a modern missile independently. In July 1956, the Fifth Bureau submitted a report to the Chinese leadership requesting for Soviet assistance on missile development and operations. The request was forwarded to the Soviet government in August, but received only a lukewarm response. Unwilling to share its latest missile technology, Moscow only agreed to send five Soviet professionals to help set up rocketry-related curriculum in Chinese universities, sell two R-1 missiles for teaching, and accept 50 Chinese engineers to study astronautics in Soviet universities.
The two R-1 (NATO code name: SS-1 ’Scunner’) missiles were delivered to China in the spring of 1957. First test launched in 1948, the R-1 was essentially a Soviet copy of the German A-4 (V-2) missile developed during the WWII. Although these obsolete missiles provided Qian with little help since he had already studied its technology in German a decade before, they provided a valuable opportunity for other Chinese engineers to gain insight into the design of a working rocket. One of the two R-1 missiles were completely dissembled and put back together by Chinese technicians at the Fifth Academy, allowing them to measure and examine every single component and part of the missile.
A turning point came in the summer of 1957, when the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was attacked by opponents within his own party. The Chinese Communist Party lent a helping hand by endorsing Khrushchev’s leadership. In return he agreed to expand the scale of Soviet assistance to China’s nuclear weapon and missile programme.
In September 1957, a 40-men Chinese military delegation led by Marshal Nie Rongzhen arrived in Moscow to negotiate the details of a nuclear and missile technology transfer package. On 15 October, the two countries officially signed the Sino-Soviet Accord on New Technologies for National Defence, which covered the technology transfer in a wide range of areas:
- The Soviet Union would help China establish an atomic R&D complex, provide assistance to China’s nuclear research and production, and provide teaching models and blueprints of the atomic bomb;
- The Soviet Union would sell equipment for Uranium enrichment, as well as enough quantity of the Uranium hexafluoride (UF6) material for the Chinese Gaseous Diffusion Plant;
- The Soviet Union would transfer two companies of the P-15 (SS-N-2 ‘Styx’) costal-to-ship missiles and their launch equipment, and help the PLA Navy to establish a costal defence missile force;
- The Soviet Union would provide assistance to China’s missile development and the construction of a missile test range, and provide China with examples and blueprints of the R-2 (SS-2 ‘Sibling’) surface-to-surface missile and S-75 (SA-2 ‘Guideline’) surface-to-air missile;
- The Soviet Union would provide assistance to the construction of a nuclear weapon test site and training of relevant technical staff;
Ballistic Missile Development
First flying in 1949, the R-2 short-range ballistic missile that Moscow agreed to transfer to China had considerable technical improvement over the R-1, including a greater range and a larger payload. However, the missile was not nuclear-armed and its 590 km range was not enough to reach U.S. military bases in Japan when launched from China mainland. By then, the Soviet Union had already successfully tested the 8,000 km range R-7 (SS-6 ‘Sapwood’) ICBM and used it to launch the world’s first artificial Earth satellite Sputnik-1 into orbit, but as a rule Moscow only allowed the transfer of weapon technologies that had been retired from the Soviet armed forces.
On 24 December 1957, a railway train from the Soviet Union carrying two R-2 missiles and their associated launch equipment arrived at the Chinese border. Along with these hardware was a Soviet rocket launch battalion of 102 men, whose mission was to escort the missiles and train their Chinese counterparts on how to operate them. Transfer of the R-2 technology took place throughout 1958, with six missiles and over 10,000 volumes of blueprints and design documents delivered to China. Soviet advisers arrived in China in August 1958 to provide assistance on the missile development and the construction of missile R&D and rocket engine test facilities. Construction of a rocket test range had also begun under Soviet supervision in the desert in northwest China.
The reverse-engineering of the R-2 under the code name ‘Project 1059’ began at the Fifth Academy in May 1958. For the inexperienced Chinese missile engineers, even producing such a relatively simple missile by following Soviet-supplied blueprints and technical documents proved highly challenging. The missile’s development encountered numerous technical difficulties and also suffered poor product quality. The situation was made worse by the rapidly cooling relations between Beijing and Moscow, which led to delays in receiving special alloys, rubbers, electronic components, and liquid oxygen propellant from the Soviet Union. As a result, Chinese engineers had to source locally produced alternatives.
The missile development programme was also impacted by China’s internal political turmoil. The Great Leap Forward, a failed campaign launched by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1958 for a rapid industrialisation and social transformation, had led to economic hardship and widespread famine in the countryside between 1959 and 1961. Even the engineers of the Fifth Academy suffered from malnutrition and Marshall Nie Rongzhen had to intervene personally to ensure that the staff on the missile programme was allocated with enough military rations.
A 1059 Missile at the Jiuquan missile test range in 1960
By 1960, the ideological disputes between Moscow and Beijing had turned into public arguments and eventually a breakup of all ties. In June 1960, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev ordered the suspension of all Soviet assistance to China and the withdrawal of 1,400 Soviet experts working in the country. The last Soviet advisers left China in August 1960, but the preparation for the 1059 Missile test launch continued as scheduled.
On 10 September 1960, China successfully conducted its first ever ballistic missile test using a Soviet-supplied R-2 missile fuelled with Chinese-made propellants from the Jiuquan missile test range. Two months later, on 5 November, a Chinese-made Project 1059/R-2 missile was successfully tested, marking the success in China’s first ballistic missile development.
