Powered flight on the A-series would last about two minutes and compared to later Atlases, long pad hold-down times, with up to 11 seconds between engine start and launcher release.

The Atlas reached a peak altitude of 9,800 feet (3,000 meters) and tumbled end-over-end through its own exhaust trail until T+50 seconds when the range safety officer sent the destruct command.

During 4A's launch, thousands of spectators lined the beaches around Cape Canaveral to watch, although the Air Force did not confirm that the new missile was in fact an Atlas.

Convair engineers decided that the Atlas needed a heat shield in the thrust section more substantial than the thin fiberglass one included on the missile.

They proposed a modified heat sink made from steel and fiberglass, but the Air Force rejected that idea as the shield would be extremely heavy and also complicate booster section staging on operational Atlases.

As one small modification, the pneumatic system was modified to vent inert helium gas down into the thrust section to reduce the risk of fire.

This time, overheating and high vibration levels had caused a LOX regulator to fail, resulting in gas generator flameout.

The PFRF (Pre Flight Readiness Firing) tests conducted on 4A and 6A also would have caused exhaust gases to go up into the boattail, and thus they probably already had internal damage at launch.

At T+75 seconds, the guidance system tracking beacon shorted, which caused a momentary large drain on the batteries but did not otherwise affect missile performance.

At T+108 seconds, the engines started oscillating in all three axes and the propulsion system quickly shut down due to propellant starvation caused by missile tumbling.

Because aerodynamic heating was believed to have caused the electrical malfunctions on 13A and 11A, more insulation and resistors were added around the vernier wiring and the fairing around the engine nozzles extended.

Total engine shutdown occurred at T+105 seconds and the Atlas fell into the Atlantic Ocean, remaining structurally intact until impact.

Postflight analysis concluded that a bearing in the LOX turbopump gearbox had come loose, resulting in shutdown of the pump and loss of thrust.

Telemetry data for the propellant utilization system was erratic or nonexistent for most of the flight, and the guidance tracking beacon failed at T+69 seconds; it was thought to have been torn off the missile.