Northrop RF-62 “Megasnark” – The Forgotten Titan of the Early Cold War
(Excerpt from “The Secret Skies of the Cold War,” Strategic Air Command Historical Division, 1987 Edition)

In the uncertain dawn of the Cold War, when fear of nuclear confrontation shaped the ambitions of engineers as much as generals, the Northrop RF-62 “Megasnark” emerged as one of the strangest and most audacious projects ever conceived by the United States Air Force.

The project traced its lineage to the SM-62 Snark, a long-range intercontinental cruise missile developed by Northrop in the mid-1950s. Conceived as a stopgap strategic deterrent before intercontinental ballistic missiles became operational, the Snark was a large, jet-powered missile capable of crossing oceans — and, at least theoretically, returning photographic or telemetry data.

In 1957, Lt. Col. Samuel “S.” Cratch, a maverick test officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, proposed an idea as bold as it was unconventional: transform the unmanned Snark into a family of manned aircraft — an entire “Snark force.” His concept envisioned three principal variants:

• The F-62 “Fightersnark”, a high-speed interceptor;

• The A-62 “Gigasnark”, a low-level strike and tactical nuclear delivery aircraft;

• And the RF-62 “Megasnark”, a high-altitude photographic reconnaissance vehicle.

Cratch’s idea centered around quantity over survivability. The manned Snarks were to be cheap, disposable aircraft, launched en masse from mobile platforms to overwhelm Soviet defenses. The coordinated release of dozens of such aircraft was code-named “Operation Snarknado.”

Since the Snark airframe had never been designed to return to base, none of the proposed manned variants included a conventional landing gear. Instead, pilots — irreverently dubbed “Snark-Riders” — were expected to bail out after completing their missions, or, with luck and good aim, bring their craft down in controlled belly landings on reinforced runways. The official safety documentation optimistically referred to this as “pilot retrieval optional.”

The first RF-62 Megasnark was rolled out in March 1959, fitted with a bubble canopy ahead of the air intake and a camera compartment replacing the missile’s warhead section. Powered by the same Pratt & Whitney J57 turbojet as the SM-62, the Megasnark could reach Mach 0.95 at 55,000 feet and had a range of nearly 4,000 miles.

Three prototypes were built and conducted a total of 26 test flights between 1959 and 1961. Flight reports described the controls as “heavy,” visibility as “extremely poor,” and landings as “inevitably destructive.” On three occasions, Snark-Riders were forced to eject after control loss or engine flameout. Despite the unconventional challenges, the RF-62 demonstrated impressive high-altitude stability and accurate camera performance.

Nevertheless, the program was quietly cancelled in late 1961, as reconnaissance satellites and the U-2 program rendered such dangerous manned concepts obsolete. Lt. Col. Cratch, embittered by the Air Force’s lack of enthusiasm for his “Snarknado doctrine,” resigned in 1962 and disappeared into the Californian aerospace industry — where rumors persist he later advised on early reusable space vehicle concepts.

Only one partial RF-62 airframe survived the scrapyard. It was rediscovered in the 1980s at a storage yard near Edwards AFB, its nose section preserved at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force under the label:

“Northrop RF-62 Megasnark – Test Article. Project Cancelled, 1961. Pilot Recovery: Optional.”

The model shows the first RF-62 Magasnark before its first flight in March 1959.