Rocky Point/Brookhaven,NY
for the last ten years or more i have followed
one of the most dedicated Nike Missile Historians.
His website and information helped me put
my information together and understand what
a rich cold war history is around me.
thanks to a great historian and Nike/Cold War guru
Don Bender - click title to visit his website
Changing military tactics and the proposed extension of the Long Island Expressway influenced the location of Nike missile battery NY-25. Plans originally called for the site to be located closer to existing Nike sites in Nassau County. However, the site ultimately chosen for what would become the easternmost Nike installation within the former New York Defense Area better reflected the enhanced capabilities of the second generation Nike Hercules missile system.
Located in Suffolk County on Long Island's north shore, this Nike Hercules equipped site defended the nuclear research facilities at Brookhaven National Laboratories, as well as Grumman's Calverton test facility, the Suffolk County Air Force Base, and the New York metro area in general. Site NY-25 remained in operation until 1974.
Location ROCKY POINT/ SHOREHAM NY
LONG ISLAND, SUFFOLK COUNTY
USAR ARAADCOM No. NY-25
Launcher Area: ARMY RESERVE CENTER- MAGAZINES ARE INTACT BUT NOT BEING MAINTANED Route 25a Shoreham Ny
Long Island/Suffolk County
Rocky Point, Brookhaven
(Suffolk County), NY
Control Area: DEFENSE HILL Across from Army Reserve Center at Top of hill end of road area is totally free of any abandonded military equipment, The early 1990s the large radar platforms and a couple of buildings was razed.only the perimeter fence is left. And the flag pole. currently The US Army housing was still there being used as low income housing units, The area water tank and playground are rusted beyond being usable.
Rocky Point, Brookhaven
(Suffolk County), NY
Dates of Operation
1956 -1974
Weapons Systems
& Missile Load
Nike Ajax / 30
Nike Hercules / 18
Missile Magazines
3 Magazines.
1 type "B" and 2 type "C".
Radar Types
ACQR, LOPAR, ABAR, HIPAR
Secondary Master Fire Unit
Reserve Radar Integration Station
Unit Information
Army -
D/505th (1956-1958)
D/3/51st (1958-1964)
National Guard -
B/1/244th (1964-1974)
Present Status
Portions of this site remain reasonably intact. The former launcher area with its 3 underground missile magazines is located within the current U.S. Army Reserve Center. The family housing area remains intact with the homes occupied by new, non-army, residents. Atop Defense Hill, the Control Area has been demolished and the site is used as a park and for flying model airplanes.
The Rocky Point / Shoreham NY-25 Site Was Situated next to Shoreham Wading River High School and was never a problem and was so quiet
i had family who grew up less than one mile away
and never new the full extent of the US Army Ground to Air Nike/Hercules base. Nor did they know they were nuclear , Across ny 25a was the housing for families of the Nike Unit a small not well built bunch of one story houses and at the end of Defense Hill rd. was the Command & Control Section with heavy fencing and perimeter guards, This battery was not ONLY to protect NYC but it's mission was the Nuclear Research lab (Brookhaven National Laboratory ) that housed a Functioning Nuclear Reactor and was involved in Radiological research for most of the Pacific Nuclear Tests and studied the effects on the people that lived on the islands surrounding the tests and did Radiological Research on Agriculture on the Lab's property,
RCA Radio had a radio broadcasting station just west of the site and was known for being the first to transmit overseas, A little further East was the Grumman Calverton Naval Weapons plant that produced many of the Cold War Electronic jamming and Counter Measures Aircraft and a was a big part of aircraft found on Aircraft Carriers the F-14 TomCat was the last of Grummans naval contracts.
It is also very possible that the site protected the Groton Submarine Base across the sound only 2o miles North. during the late 1960s all the way to the 1980s the power company LILCO (Long Island Lighting Company) was building a Nuclear Power Plant to generate power about 2 miles east of the NY-25 (built and decommisioned soon after) The Suffolk County Air Force Base was just east of the US Army Missile site and Montauk early warning radar a bit further east in Montauk also the US Goverment Infectious Disease Lab on Plum Island was East of Montauk but still part Of New York State . Other local Govt. had Command and Control Bunkers south of the nike base that was responsible for Suffolk County Fire, Rescue,Suffolk County Police Dept. and Civil Defense Now Office Of Emergency Mngmnt in Yaphank. The county Public Works is based there also.It is a shame that the Nike base was let to rot like the others on Long Island but if someone intervenes i am sure it could be saved and restored. As far as Protection For the residents of Suffolk County all air defense has been dismantled ,missiles, interceptor aircraft, Radar sites , and with that all the aircraft Mfg companies Republic,fairchild,Grumman, Douglas,Gyrodyne, and with that hundreds of radar, aviation electronics,and other military contractors. Riding the Long Island RailRoad all the big Cold War military Contractors were along side the rails and these huge Industrial sites like Sperry, Fairchild,Republic,Grumman, etc.. are rotting and torn down and retail outlets built in their place, Bethpage Grummans HQ where the lunar module was built had their Airport next to the tracks and military jets would be landing and taking off always now you can not even see a runway since factories and a water tower sit where the runway was, east of that at republic /fairchild the place that built cold war jets and helped win world war 2 and the cold war is in such disrepair it's factory is a fire hazard. its a shame and disrespectful.
SISTER MARGARET BRIODY was a young nun in training in Amityville when the Cuban missile crisis hit in 1962. People streamed into her church, Queen of the Rosary Chapel, to light candles and pray that nuclear missiles would not rain down on the United States. She remembers because it was her job to replenish the votive candles and she could barely keep them stocked. ''Those were very tense times,'' she recalled. ''People were very worried we might go to war.'' The threat seemed especially real in Amityville because a missile base sat next to the campus of buildings owned by the Sisters of St. Dominic. Throughout the missile crisis, she said, uniformed soldiers could be seen rushing about, aiming 40-foot-long Nike anti-aircraft missiles at the sky to shoot down any enemy bombers that might come. Unbeknownst to residents at the time, those missiles were fitted with nuclear warheads, some more than twice as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The instruments of nuclear Armaggeddon were literally in their backyards.
To protect New York City -- an obvious target for any enemy -- 19 missile bases were built in the suburbs surrounding the city. Long Island had five sites, in Lloyd Harbor, Oyster Bay, Lido Beach, Rocky Point and Amityville. Other bases were built in the city, in Westchester and Rockland counties and in northern New Jersey. The ring of missile bases was the area's last line of defense against Soviet bombers. There are few people around who remember the sight of missiles being carted across Long Island on trailers, and most of the bases have little more than a rusted chain-link fence left to them. Private homes have been built on parts of the Oyster Bay and Lloyd Harbor missile sites, and part of the Lido Beach site is now used for school bus parking by the Long Beach School District.
But now, a quarter century since the last base was closed, there are hopes that the missile site at Rocky Point can be placed on the National Register of Historic Places and someday turned into a cold war museum. ''A lot of cold war infrastructure is historically significant even though it's not very old,'' said Donald Bender, a military historian who researches Nike missile sites across the country for government agencies and who has started the process for historic designation. ''These missile sites aren't pretty like the old seaside fortifications that were built in previous centuries, but they're fascinating nonetheless.'' Instead of stately stone forts, they are steel and concrete bunkers buried in the ground and surrounded by barbed wire. Still, standing underground at Rocky Point's now-empty missile magazine, a cavernous room about 50 feet long and 60 feet wide, Mr. Bender easily conjures Strangelovian images.
''They make you think of spies, James Bond, secret codes, sirens blaring, red lights flashing,'' he says, his voice echoing through the dank expanse. ''It's cold-war scary.''
But for many among the hundreds of men who served on these Long Island bases, the ''missile years'' are remembered as their best years in uniform.
''It was different from other assignments,'' said Frank Hess, a 78-year-old World War II veteran who worked at missile sites on Long Island for more than 10 years. ''You're with a different group. These guys worked hard and it was a job, but it was in the line of defense of your country. We put in a lot of time together.'' It was the hours spent huddled underground, waiting for further orders and not knowing if the ''red status'' issued by higher-ups was real or just a drill, that bound these men in a way not easily forgotten.
''I would tell the guys to take it easy and then all of a sudden, we'd get a red status and boom, it was get to the pits, hook them up and get ready to fly them,'' said Mr. Hess, who lives in the same house in College Point where he lived while serving on the missile bases. ''And you never knew if it was practice or the real thing. The rest of the time, you'd be waiting for something to happen. After a while, it just gets in your blood.''
Mr. Hess joined the Army National Guard in 1955 and initially served at anti-aircraft gun batteries in Queens before moving on to missile bases on Long Island. The missile bases were initially staffed by the regular Army but by the 1960's had been shifted to the National Guard, which generally operated each base with about 90 full-time guardsmen and 40 or more weekend reservists.Each of the Long Island bases had a launch area where the missiles were kept and about half a mile away a separate radar area that searched the skies for enemy aircraft. Each base had three missile magazines or ''pits.'' Each pit held 10 Ajax missiles, lined up side by side. The Ajax, the first generation of the Nike missile, could fly 1,600 miles per hour, reached altitudes of 70,000 feet and had a conventional warhead and a range of about 25 miles. ''All these things were obsolete the day they were put into practice,'' said Harold Borodiansky, who worked at four of Long Island's missile sites between 1957 and 1974. ''We knew they were obsolete, but we knew the government was always working on perfecting something new that would be bigger or faster.''
The Nike Hercules missile was introduced in 1963 and because it was bigger and had a wider range, three of Long Island's missile sites were closed when it replaced the Ajax, leaving only the Rocky Point and Amityville sites through the 1960's and into the 1970's.
The Hercules missile looked like and was operated like the Ajax, but it could fly faster, higher and farther. But most important, the Hercules carried a nuclear warhead. Mr. Bender, the historian, said the nuclear missiles were designed to knock down a formation of enemy planes with one shot. Military commanders believed that because the atomic blast would take place at altitudes of 50,000 feet or higher, there would be relatively little effect on anybody on the ground.
Nuclear warheads also pushed the missile sites into top-secret status.
Soldiers were forbidden to talk about what they did on the Nike bases and were told to tell the curious only that they were military ''maintenance men.'' Frank Polis, the battery commander at Rocky Point from 1965 until the base was closed in 1971, said he told no one that the base had nuclear warheads, not even his wife. ''My wife used to say to me, 'I see you working in your office, but I have no idea what you do,' '' he said.
Security was maximized. A second electrified fence went up to surround the missile magazines and guard dogs were brought in to patrol between the fences at night. No one was allowed near a missile alone and the notion that every action on the base had to be a two-man operation was amplified. The fire panel operator, who handled the controls that raised the missiles, could not begin until a section chief unlocked the panel with his keys.
And the codes that authorized the base to fire its missiles were kept in a safe with two combinations, one kept by a captain from the radar area and the other by a technician from the launch area.
But even though the nuclear warheads were a classified secret, it would not have taken much for an inquiring civilian to figure it out. When the bases held Ajax missiles, tours were regularly conducted as a goodwill gesture to the bases' neighbors.
Boy Scout troops were given rides on the elevators that hoisted the missiles above ground and it was not uncommon to see an Ajax missile in a July 4th parade. But after the Hercules arrived, the parades stopped and outsiders weren't allowed past the fence. ''People knew it was a missile base, there was no hiding that because you could see the missiles from the road when we put them up on their launchers,'' said Mr. Borodiansky, 62, who retired to Arizona in 1974 after suffering a back injury while rushing down an escape hatch to help disarm a missile that had accidentally armed itself. ''But people didn't ask questions,'' he said. ''We were all kind of worried about the Russians and I got the impression that most of the time, they were just glad we were there. But glad in silence.'' Sister Margaret Clines, 69, who taught at the Queen of the Rosary Academy, a girls' high school within sight of the Amityville missile base, said that seeing the missiles raised regularly for drills ''was a scary thing.'' Even so, she said, ''I don't remember there being any great curiosity about the base. We never really knew why it was there. It was just the government put it there.''
Even through the tumultuous late 1960's, when anti-war protesters filled the streets, no one ever objected to the Nike bases. Mr. Hess remembers that neighbors occasionally would voice concerns about where the enormous booster rockets would land if the missiles had to be fired.
''My boosters would have landed in the Long Island Sound,'' Mr. Hess said. ''But I would say,
'If an attack comes, I don't give a damn where the booster lands because a bomb's going to be coming down otherwise.' That's how I explained it to people.''
Through the years, the missile bases and the men who worked on them tried hard to be good neighbors. Mr. Borodiansky, the platoon leader in Amityville, remembers acting quickly when the Mother Superior at the Sisters of St. Dominic complained that his men could be seen walking around the base in their underwear. ''There were also meeting places along the fence for the girls from the school and some of our young guys, which the Mother Superior really frowned on,'' he said. ''I did a lot of night reconnaissance to put a stop to that.''
The men who signed up to work on a Nike missile site for the National Guard tended to be former military men who saw the assignment as a chance to settle down in one place as a civilian while still working for a branch of the armed forces. Pay was decent -- with an average salary of about $85 a week in 1960, most of the men earned enough to buy a house on suburban Long Island. Most of the time, the men worked regular 8- to 12-hour shifts running maintenance checks on the missiles and equipment and then went home to their families. But one week out of every month, each base was placed on an alert, known as alpha status. A certain number of bases in the New York region were always on alpha status in case Russian bombers flew into their airspace. While on alert, the crews would alternate 24 hours on and 24 hours off and they would sleep in barracks at the base because they could not be more than two minutes away from their battle stations.
Some days would pass uneventfully. There was a game room with a television, pool table and ping pong. At Rocky Point, there was even an outdoor swimming pool.
Other times would be more stressful, with drills called in the middle of the night and army intelligence officers mounting mock commando raids on the bases to keep the men on their toes. Occasionally, if an unidentified plane strayed into the area or an incident had occurred somewhere else in the region, a unit could be placed on ''yellow status'' and crews would have to stay in their pits for as long as 20 hours, ready to fire at a moment's notice. General alerts were also called at times of national crisis like the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy. ''The discipline that you learned from having to be on alert and being constantly evaluated stayed with you,'' said James F. Olsakovsky, 59, a commander at Rocky Point and Amityville who now lives near Albany and retired as a colonel in 1996. ''You could lose a whole evaluation if just one person didn't do his job, so everybody depended on everybody to do their job and to do it well.''
Once a year, each crew would head to New Mexico to fire missiles at simulated targets. In addition to those evaluations, the men who worked on the 250 Nike missile sites scattered across the country also faced constant safety inspections and security checks at their home bases. The Rocky Point site earned a reputation as one of the best in the nation, winning three awards for ''excellence in combat proficiency'' and a listing as one of the nation's top five missile batteries. But in all the years that missiles were kept on Long Island, the men who worked on the bases said they never really felt a serious threat to the area or thought that they might actually have to fire the missiles. ''The biggest threat we had had nothing to do with the enemy,'' recalled Mr. Polis, 62, the Rocky Point commander who also lives near Albany. He recalled that during the 1965 blackout that darkened most of the Northeast, he and his men feared the worst when in addition to being plunged into darkness, one of their sentry dogs suddenly turned up dead.
''That was a very deep-thought day,'' he said. ''I was thinking about Pearl Harbor and how they saw signs that something was happening.''
No one on the base breathed easy until a local veterinarian came to the base and autopsied the dog to discover that it had died of natural causes.
The Rocky Point site closed in 1971 and the Amityville site closed in 1974. Both bases are now used by the Army Reserve. The massive elevator doors on the missile pits have been welded shut and most of the buildings from the Nike days have either been demolished or sit abandoned and empty.
Mr. Polis said he and his colleagues would be delighted to see the old Rocky Point site turned into a cold war museum. ''Very little is known about what went on in the days of the cold war,'' he said. ''Hollywood does war movies, but the cold war wasn't exciting enough, I guess. Nobody really knows what was going on on the home front.'' Mr. Bender said that getting historic designation would be just the first step toward preserving the missile site. ''It gives it a certain status that would help potentially get funding to turn it into a museum or to get volunteers interested,'' he said. A missile site in the San Francisco area has been restored as a museum and is run entirely by volunteers, most of them missile site veterans. It attracts about 20,000 visitors a year.
Chet Marcus, a spokesman for the 77th Army Regional Support Command, which oversees the Rocky Point base, said that the Army Reserve would support restoration plans. He said that the missile magazines were ''40 percent ready to be brought back to life,'' noting that while the steel racks that held the missiles and the missile control panels had been carted off, much of the infrastructure remained, including fuse boxes and controls for the missile elevators.
Pacifists aren't that crazy about the idea of a cold war museum. ''I don't think I'd want to see that,'' said the Rev. Robert Lepley, executive director of the Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives. ''It was such an irresponsible thing to place nuclear weapons on an island when these things are so accident-prone, and a museum would probably give it a positive spin.''
But Josh Stoff, the curator at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, which will open next spring with a Nike Hercules missile, lauded the idea of preserving the missile site. ''People on Long Island now have no idea that during the cold war, Long Island was ground zero and we were protecting New York and the whole East Coast,'' he said. ''It's not about glorifying war, it's about remembering the cold war and how fear of attack was a social phenomenon that everyone experienced.''
NIKE MISSILE INFORMATION-
''The Nike Missile Defense System'' Nike Ajax was the world's first guided surface-to-air missile system. It was later replaced by Nike Hercules, which could carry a nuclear warhead. NIKE AJAX: DATES IN USE: 1954-63 LENGTH: 21 feet DIAMETER: 12 inches WINGSPAN: 4 feet, 6 inches WEIGHT: 1,000 pounds RANGE: 25-30 miles SPEED: Mach 2.3 (1,679 m.p.h.) ALTITUDE: up to 70,000 feet WARHEAD: 3 high-explosive fragmentation warheads NUMBER BUILT: 15,000 NIKE HERCULES DATES IN USE: 1958-75 LENGTH: 41 feet DIAMETER: 31.5 inches WINGSPAN: 6 feet, 2 inches WEIGHT: 5,531 pounds RANGE: over 75 miles SPEED: Mach 3.65 (2,707 m.p.h.) ALTITUDE: up to 150,000 feet WARHEAD: nuclear or high-explosive fragmentation NUMBER BUILT: 25,500 (Source: Jane's Weapon Systems; Department of Defense)
Origins Of The Nike System
Nike, named for the mythical Greek goddess of victory, was the name given to a program which ultimately produced the world's first successful, widely-deployed, guided surface-to-air missile system. Planning for Nike was begun during the last months of the Second World War when the U.S. Army realized that conventional anti-aircraft artillery would not be able to provide an adequate defense against the fast, high-flying and maneuverable jet aircraft which were being introduced into service, particularly by the Germans.
During 1945, Bell Telephone Laboratories produced the "AAGM (Anti Aircraft Guided Missile) Report" in which the concept of the Nike system were first outlined. The Report envisioned a two-stage, supersonic missile which could be guided to its target by means of ground-based radar and computer systems. This type of system is known as a "command" guidance system. The main advantage over conventional anti-aircraft artillery was that the Nike missile could be continuously guided to intercept an aircraft, in spite of any evasive actions taken by its pilot. By contrast, the projectiles fired by conventional anti-aircraft artillery (such as 90mm and 120mm guns) followed a predetermined, ballistic trajectory which could not be altered after firing.
The Nike Mission
During the first decade of the Cold War, the Soviet Union began to develop a series of long-range bomber aircraft, capable of reaching targets within the continental United States. The potential threat posed by such aircraft became much more serious when, in 1949, the Russians exploded their first atomic bomb.
The perception that the Soviet Union might be capable of constructing a sizable fleet of long-range, nuclear-armed bomber aircraft capable of reaching the continental United States provided motivation to rapidly develop and deploy the Nike system to defend major U.S. population centers and other vital targets. The outbreak of hostilities in Korea, provided a further impetus to this deployment.
The mission of Nike within the continental U.S was to act as a "last ditch" line of air defense for selected areas. The Nike system would have been utilized in the event that the Air Force's long-range fighter-interceptor aircraft had failed to destroy any attacking bombers at a greater distance from their intended targets.
Nike Deployment
Within the continental United States, Nike missile sites were constructed in defensive "rings" surrounding major urban and industrial areas. Additional Nike sites protected key Strategic Air Command bases and other sensitive installations, such as the nuclear facilities at Hanford, Washington. Sites were located on government-owned property where this was available (for example, on military bases). However, much real estate needed to be acquired in order to construct sufficient bases to provide an adequate defense. This was a sometimes difficult and contentious process. Often, the federal government had to go to court in order to obtain the property needed for such sites.
The exact number of Nike sites constructed within a particular "defense area" varied depending upon many factors. The New York Defense Area -- one of the largest in the nation -- was defended at one time by nearly twenty individual Nike installations. Due to the relatively short range of the original Nike missile, the Nike "Ajax", many bases were located relatively close to the center of the areas they protected. Frequently, they were located within heavily populated areas.
The second parcel of land was known as the Launcher Area. At the launcher area, Nike missiles were stored horizontally within heavily constructed underground missile "magazines". A large, missile elevator brought the Nikes to the surface of the site where they would be pushed (manually) by crewmen, across twin steel rails to one of four satellite launchers. The missile was then attached to its launcher and erected to a near-vertical position for firing. The near-vertical firing position ensured that the missile's booster rocket (lower stage) would not crash directly back onto the missile site, but, instead, would land within a predetermined "booster impact area".
The control and launcher areas were separated by a distance of 1,000 to 6,000 yards (roughly 0.5- to 3.5-miles) and were often located within different townships. Technical limitations of the guidance system required the two facilities to be separated by a minimum of 3,000 feet. Whenever possible, control areas were constructed on high ground in order to gain superior radar coverage of the area. Control areas were generally located between the area being defended and the launcher area containing the missiles.
Nike "Ajax": The First Nike Missile
The first successful test firing of a Nike missile occurred during 1951. This first Nike missile was later given the name Nike "Ajax". Nike Ajax was a slender, two-stage guided missile powered by a liquid-fueled motor utilizing a combination of inhibited red fuming nitric acid (IRFNA), unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (UDMH) and JP-4 jet petroleum. The Ajax was blasted off of its launcher by means of a jettisonable solid fuel rocket booster which fired for about 3 seconds, accelerating the missile with a power of 25 times the force of gravity.
The Ajax missile was capable of maximum speeds of over 1,600-mph and could reach targets at altitudes of up to 70,000 feet. Its range was only about 25 miles, which was too short to make it a truly effective air defense weapon in the eyes of its many detractors. Its supporters countered that the new missile was markedly superior to conventional antiaircraft artillery, and that it was, significantly, the only air defense missile actually deployed and operational at that time.
Nike Ajax was armed with three individual high-explosive, fragmentation-type warheads located at the front, center and rear of the missile body. Although consideration was given to arming the Ajax with a nuclear (atomic) warhead, this project was canceled in favor of developing a totally new, much-improved Nike missile. Even as the first Nike Ajax missiles were being deployed across the nation, work on its successor, first known as "Nike-B" and later as Nike "Hercules" had already begun.
The Nike "Hercules" Missile
Work on a successor to the first Nike missile, the Nike "Ajax", was initiated well before the first Ajax missiles were deployed at sites across the nation. Two primary considerations drove the development of the this second-generation Nike missile. The first involved the need to field a missile with improved capabilities to defend against a new generation of faster and smaller targets, including supersonic aircraft and tactical ballistic missiles. The second was the desire to arm this new missile with a powerful atomic warhead.
Originally designated as "Nike B", the Nike "Hercules" -- as this missile was later known -- was a far more capable missile than its predecessor (the Nike Ajax) in nearly every way. With a maximum range of about 90 miles, maximum speeds of over 3,200 mph, and the ability to reach targets at altitudes in excess of 100,000 feet, the Nike Hercules was a very potent air defense weapon. The Hercules missile lacked most of the complex, miniaturized vacuum tubes utilized by the Ajax, and employed solid rocket fuel in its "sustainer" motor which made it easier and safer to manage than the Ajax which employed highly caustic liquid fuel components.
Unlike the Ajax, the Hercules was designed from the outset to carry a nuclear warhead. Designated "W-31" the Hercules nuclear warhead was available in three different yields: low (2-Kilotons); medium (20-Kt.) and high (30-Kt.). By comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, near the end of the Second World War had a yield of approximately 12 Kilotons.
Armed with its nuclear warhead a single Nike Hercules missile was capable of destroying a closely spaced formation of several attacking aircraft. This warhead enabled the Hercules to destroy not only attacking aircraft, but also any nuclear weapons they carried, preventing them from being detonated. Some of the first Hercules missiles deployed in the United States were initially equipped with the "W-7" nuclear warhead.
The Hercules could also be equipped with a powerful, high-explosive, fragmentation-type warhead designated "T-45". The warhead provided a useful alternative to the W-31 (particularly for use against a single aircraft and for low altitude use in proximity to populated areas) and was deployed at many overseas sites. Additional warhead designs, including "cluster" type warheads containing numerous submunitions, were developed although not deployed operationally on the Nike Hercules missile.
More sophisticated radar and guidance systems were also part of the Hercules "package". These made the Hercules system more accurate and effective at longer ranges. During the early sixties, an "improved" version of the Hercules system, utilizing ABAR (Alternate Battery Acquisition Radar) or HIPAR (High Power Acquisition Radar) was deployed. The improved radar capabilities and other advanced electronic features of the Improved Hercules system made it more effective against small supersonic targets including aircraft, aircraft launched "stand-off" missiles, and tactical ballistic missiles.
An relatively unknown fact is that the Hercules missile could also be used in a surface-to-surface mode. In this role, Hercules would have been used to deliver "tactical" nuclear warheads to destroy concentrations of enemy troops and armored vehicles, or bridges, dams and other significant targets from bases and field deployments located primarily within Western Europe. This surface capability might also have proven useful in other areas where the Hercules missile was deployed including South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey.
aximum range of the Hercules missile in the surface-to-surface mode was slightly over 110 miles, and was limited by the effective transmission range of the Missile Tracking Radar (MTR).
Although deployed at permanent sites within the continental United States, and at many overseas locations, mobile Nike Hercules batteries increased the flexibility and usefulness of this system, permitting the powerful capabilities of this versatile missile system to be extended wherever this could prove useful. Trucks and trailers were used to transport Nike Hercules system components to the desired field locations. In this mode, a single missile was mounted upon a truck-drawn trailer/launcher unit which also served as a firing platform.
Guidance & Control
Unlike some modern missile systems, Nike was guided entirely from the ground, from firing to warhead detonation. The electronic "eyes" (radar) and "brain" (computer) of the Nike system were located on the ground, within the Intergrated Fire Control Area.
At the IFC area, hostile aircraft were first identified by means of an acquisition radar (AR). This radar was manned 24 hours per day, scanning the skies for indications of any hostile aircraft. "Friendly" aircraft were automatically identified by means of electronic signals generated by IFF ("Identification Friend or Foe") or SIF ("Selective Identification Feature") equipment.
In practice, this target information would normally have been received from Air Force long range radar sites, by means of the Air Force's SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment) system and other sources including Army "Missile Master" and related facilities, in order to provide an advanced warning for the missile batteries.
Having acquired and positively identified a hostile aircraft, a second radar, the Target Tracking Radar (TTR) would be aimed at and electronically "locked onto" it. This radar would then follow the selected aircraft's every move in spite of any evasive action taken by its pilot. A third radar, the Missile Tracking Radar (MTR) was then aimed at and electronically locked onto an individual Nike missile located at the nearby Launcher Area.
Both the TTR and MTR were linked to an "intercept computer" located at the IFC Area. This analog computer continuously compared the relative positions of both the targeted aircraft and the missile during its flight and determined the course the missile would have to fly in order to reach its target. Steering commands were computed and sent from the ground to the missile during its flight, via the Missile Tracking Radar. At the "moment of closest approach" the missile's warhead would be detonated by a computer generated "burst command" sent from the ground via the MTR.
For surface-to-surface shots, the coordinates of the target were dialed into the computer and the height of burst was set. At the precise moment calculated by the computer, the warhead would be command detonated via a signal sent via the MTR. Alternately (and, presumably as a back-up system) the warhead could be exploded via "contact fusing" when striking the selected target or target area.
End Of The Nike Era
Although Nike was created in response to Russian efforts to design and deploy long-range bomber aircraft during the early years of the Cold War, Russian military strategy soon changed. Fearing that their manned aircraft would be too vulnerable to attack by supersonic American interceptor aircraft armed with rockets and missiles, the Russians decided to focus their attention on developing ICBMs -- Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles -- against which there existed no effective defense. As a result, the Russians never deployed a large and capable strategic bomber force comparable to the Strategic Air Command of the United States Air Force.
The shifting nature of the Soviet threat meant that the air defense role, for which Nike was originally intended, became relatively less critical as time passed. Defense dollars were needed for other projects (including the development of American ICBMs and potential missile defenses) and to fund the rapidly growing war in Vietnam. Accordingly, beginning in the mid 1960s, the total number of operational Nike bases within the continental U.S. was steadily reduced, almost on an annual basis. During 1974, all remaining sites within the nationwide Nike air defense system were inactivated. Army Air Defense Command (ARADCOM) which administered this system was closed down shortly thereafter. One of the nation's most significant Cold War air defense programs had come to an end.
In spite of the termination of the nationwide Nike program, Nike missiles remained operational at sites in Florida and Alaska for several more years. Others remained operational with U.S. forces in Europe and the Pacific, and with the armed forces of many U.S. Allies overseas. Although no longer in the U.S. inventory, more than four decades after the first Nike missile became operational in the U.S., Nike Hercules missiles are today deployed by the armed forces of U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, and are likely to remain in service well beyond the year 2000.
Nike Ajax missiles first became operational at Fort Meade, Maryland, during December, 1953. Dozens of Nike sites were subsequently constructed at locations all across the continental United States during the mid fifties and early sixties. Roughly 250 sites were constructed during this period. Nike missiles were also deployed overseas with U.S. forces in Europe and Asia, by the armed forces of many NATO nations (Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Greece and Turkey), and by U.S. allies in Asia (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan).
***the information on this post was from Don Benders very informative
website and for more information visit http://alpha.fdu.edu/ his area of expertise is Cold War History and Weapon systems the amount of information he has ammased is incredible.
also check out christopherjohnbright.com for more information He also has a book entitled
"Continental Air Defense In The Eisenhower Era' Nuclear antiaircraft systems and more, a very informed look at our country's cold war defense and civil defense and a lot more.
