Son of Sidewinder inventor in town

Among the guests at a Sisters wedding last Saturday was the son of distinguished physicist-inventor William McLean (1914-1976) whose premier accomplishment was developing the Sidewinder heat-seaking air-to-air missile.

Back in 1958 Dwight D. Eisenhower presented McLean with the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service; this spring the Navy will launch a ship bearing his name.

"My dad had a super aptitude for building things," Donald McLean of Palm Springs told The Nugget while he was in town to watch step-daughter Rhonda Schulke tie the knot with Chris Tosello of Sisters.

"He was always trying something new." In fact Donald grew up in a living laboratory amid the testing of myriad experimental gadgets; his living room played host to scientists and other assorted brainiacs discussing top-secret ideas over cocktails.

It was life as usual in the isolated Mojave Desert community where Donald's father pioneered the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) at China Lake, California from 1945 until 1968. Free from distractions and far-removed from Washington bureaucracy, the desert think-tank percolated with creativity.

As Technical Director of NOTS beginning in 1954, Bill McLean was always ready to listen to his team members' ideas. "He would ask 'Does it break the laws of physics as we know them today? If not we'll give it a shot,'" says Donald.

A Portland native, Bill was taught by his mom to knit, crochet, and use a sewing machine before kindergarten. As a boy he learned to repair autos and build a house alongside his dad. He built surfboards, canoes, and a photographic enlarger. Bill graduated from Caltech with three degrees in physics.

During World War II he lent his brain power to the war effort, working with fuses and rockets at the Bureau of Standards in Washington D.C., where Donald was born.

Says Donald, "He took some of those ideas to China Lake" where his analysis of aiming systems for air-to-air rockets convinced him that even the most precise aiming system for an unguided weapon would never succeed in destroying an unpredictably accelerating target. The weapon would have to guide itself.

"After the war they knew they needed missiles to follow planes but no one knew how to do that," says Donald.

"It had to be simple, easy to build and inexpensive because if you're going to be shooting a lot of them you're going to lose them. Dad promoted simplicity always."

Radar systems in those days were too large, McLean thought, to fit into a rocket's nose. He proposed using dime-sized infrared detectors that could sense the heat emissions of aircraft.

But the governmental powers-that-be were funding other ideas for missile guidance, so McLean's pet project - dubbed the Sidewinder - required "creative budgeting" and initially flew mostly under the radar of Washington bureaucrats.

Says Donald, "They weren't supposed to build a guided missile."

The Sidewinder team at China Lake buzzed with the excitement of knowing they had a good idea. The laboratory lights burned often until 2 a.m.; sometimes McLean's team would be out on the rocket ranges in the middle of the night, searching on their hands and knees in the dark for pieces of rockets.

They were successful. Eventually the Air Force, as well as the Navy, acknowledged the superiority of the Sidewinder over other technologies.

In its first appearance, in 1958, the Sidewinder helped the Chinese Nationalist Air Force of Taiwan fight off Communist China. "In ten minutes they shot seven communist MIGs down," says Donald, who remembers talking to one of the Chinese pilots who trained at China Lake.

"That was the end of the war. The Chinese stopped sending planes."

The Sidewinder played a key role in Vietnam, several Arab-Israeli conflicts, The Falkland Islands and Operation Desert Storm; it's still considered indispensable.

Next McLean developed space reconnaissance and weapons systems. In 1958 NOTS launched six satellites using orientation systems he devised and patented; the same technology that keeps Sidewinders focused on a plane's engine keeps satellites in orbit today.

McLean also loved the water. He left NOTS to become director of the Naval Undersea Center in San Diego where he worked on the Moray submarine and other deep-diving vehicles. He developed ways to communicate with porpoises and seals, experimented with sea farming and developed and patented scuba diving equipment.

"We grew up with homemade scuba gear and wetsuits Dad made," says Donald.

At the end of his life McLean was hard at work on solutions to the energy crisis. He held 49 patents when he died in 1976.

Donald's father also knew how to relax.

"Every August we'd come up highway 97 through Bend, camping all along the way."

Donald and his brothers and parents would visit family in Oregon and spend an extended time at his grandpa's cabin on Lake Chelan, Washington.

At 16 years old he remembers driving a boat on Lake Chelan while his father experimented with a winged glider attached to the back of it. It didn't work; William nearly drowned.

Donald is grateful for the excuse to come to Sisters more often now that his step-daughter has settled here. He accompanied Rhonda's mother Patricia to last weekend's happy affair at Three Sisters Fellowship.

Saturday afternoon, newlyweds Chris and Rhonda sailed off into the sunset together (honeymooning on the Oregon coast). They'll make their home in Sisters where Rhonda works for South Valley Bank and Chris works for Rescue Response Gear.

In mid-April on the San Diego waterfront, the new Mr. and Mrs. Tosello will be special guests at a ceremony honoring Rhonda's step-grandfather with the christening of the USNS William McLean. The soon-to-be-launched, 689-foot-long resupply ship takes its place as twelfth in a fleet of cutting-edge, fully electric T-AKE ships of the Lewis and Clark Class, named for influential explorers and inventors.