Tony Chong: ‘For the Snark Was a Boojum, You See.’
I really enjoyed writing this piece. How often does one get to quote Lewis Carroll in the title? Plus Boojum is a really cool name to say.
This article was originally published in Airspace vol. 2 no. 11, September 2011. It is posted here with permission and has approved for public release case number 12-1433.
“For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”*
By Tony Chong
Perhaps no two companion aerospace projects have had a more whimsical set of names given to them than the heritage Northrop Snark and Boojum. Yet, like the fantastical creatures featured Lewis Carroll’s nonsensical poem, the Snark and Boojum were meant to be deadly as well.In 1945 the U.S. Army Air Force’s Air Material Command issued a block of ten MX-designated research and study contracts to several companies for various advanced missile designs. Half of them were allotted for subsonic and supersonic Surface-to-Surface Missiles, of which three were to be ultimately built as air-breathing cruise missiles.