AIR-2 Genie Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The Genie was an unguided air-to-air missile with a nuclear warhead, used by interceptor aircraft of the United States Air Force.The interception of Soviet bombers was a great military preoccupation of the late 1940s and 1950s. The revelation in 1947 that the Soviet Union had produced a reverse-engineered copy of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the Tupolev Tu-4 (NATO reporting name 'Bull'), which could reach the continental United States in a one-way attack, followed by the Soviets developing the atomic bomb in 1949, produced considerable panic.
Against high-speed bombers, the World War Two-vintage fighter armament of machine guns and cannon was inadequate. The use of large volleys of unguided rockets was not much more satisfactory, and true air-to-air missiles were in their infancy. In 1954 Douglas began a program to investigate the possibility of a nuclear-armed air-to-air weapon. To insure simplicity and reliability, the weapon would be unguided, the large blast radius making relative inaccuracy mostly irrelevant.
The first test firings (of inert rounds) took place in 1956, and the weapon entered service with the designation MB-1 in 1957. Official popular name was Genie, but it was often nick-named 'Ding-Dong.' About 3,150 rounds were produced before production ended in 1963. In 1962 the weapon was redesignated AIR-2A Genie. Many rounds were upgraded with improved, longer-duration rocket motors, the upgraded weapons designated AIR-2B. An inert training round, originally MB-1-T and later ATR-2A, was also produced in small numbers.
A live Genie was detonated only once, on 19 July 1957. It was fired by an F-89J over Yucca Flats Nuclear Test Site at an altitude of 4500 m (15,000 ft). A group of USAF officers volunteered to stand underneath the blast to prove that the weapon was safe for use over populated areas. The eventual health consequences to those men are unknown.
The Genie was carried by F-89, F-101, F-102, and F-106 interceptors. The only non-U.S. user was Canada, whose CF-101s carried Genies under a dual-key arrangement that required American cooperation to arm the warheads. Fortunately, it was never used in anger. Genie was finally withdrawn from service with the last F-106 interceptors in 1988.
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