High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The PGM-11 Redstone was the first large American ballistic missile. A short-range surface-to-surface rocket, it was in active service with the U.S. Army in West Germany from June 1958 to June 1964 as part of NATO`s Cold War defense of Western Europe. It was also the first missile to launch examples of a live nuclear bomb, first detonated in a 1958 Pacific Ocean weapons test, with two tests occurring over a period of 12 days.