Relive & share the memories of your service time with your brothers & sisters in arms today. Prior to launch, the Missile Tracking Radar (MTR) locked on to the transponder in the selected missile. Of course this was an incident that never officially happened. Setting in a fox hole for 8 hrs during war games in the winter. [36], The entire sequence of events from decision to launch to actual launch normally took about 36 seconds. HM-95 | As early as 1944 the US Army started exploring anti-aircraft missiles, examining a variety of concepts. Niagara-Buffalo | Nike Hercules was included in SALT I discussions as an ABM. AADCPS | An armed Nike Hercules falling into an Reunions | Access to the Mobile HIPAR antenna trailer and the roofs of Conversions were largely complete by 1960, leaving only a few Ajax sites in use. We looked everywhere for the slug and SASCOM came in to search for it too. Radiation at the test site was. This signal would be very difficult to jam because the jammer would have to broadcast across a wide set of frequencies in order to ensure they were returning on the frequency the receiver had actually selected. Starting in April 1960, considerable effort was put into a fully mobile "Cross-Country Hercules" launcher based on the M520 Goer vehicle, an articulated prime mover that saw considerable service during the Vietnam War. [11], Things changed dramatically with the development of Hercules. Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 We were located in a company area but somewhere on the range a way out on the desert with absolutely nothing to do. A new missile could be launched about 11 seconds after detonation or rejecting the previous missile. My MOS was 22f20 Nike electronic maintenance and warhead specialist. His Thompson went off. Site Summit (B Battery) still sits above Eagle River, its IFC buildings and clamshell towers easily visible when driving towards Anchorage. While at 93 (C-2-51) in San Rafael and at 88 (B-2-51) in Marin, deer and raccoons would often be found wandering around the area, or in case of the deer, charging us when sighted. The Hawk guys at MacGregor had their fun too. NoSleep | Nike missile, any of a series of U.S. surface-to-air missiles designed from the 1940s through the 1960s for defense against attack by high-flying jet bombers or ballistic-missile reentry vehicles. I have an interesting story about a Belgian security guard fireing his Thompson sub-machine gun inside one of our barns with 8 nukes inside. Overview | During the last years of their deployment in Europe, the issue at hand was more about maintaining security of the nuclear capable missiles, rather than mobility. may be used as a guide to prevent radio-frequency radiation hazards. LCT op in Germany. The location was downtown Huntsville, Alabama. [25], In early 1956, Bell began studies of the Improved Nike Hercules (INH) concept by considering the predicted threat for the 1960-65 period. In order to simplify the upgrades at Ajax sites, HIPAR did not replace the earlier ACQ radar from Ajax, which was retained and now known as LOPAR. Early deployments starting in 1958 were on new sites, but Ajax units started converting as well. History | [9] It was normally deployed in fixed bases with a central radar and control site (Integrated Fire Control area or IFC) separated from the launcher area (LA). Alaska | Four Nike batteries were normally organized into a single battalion.[36]. I mean really fired it up, small spark followed immediately by a medium explosion! WilliamJ.Auell | At the same time, there were increasing concerns that higher speed aircraft would be able to launch their warheads at the extreme range of the Nike bases. The guys in the bunker thought they were toast (literally). [9]:5758 Nevertheless, when the Army first released information about Ajax to the press in 1953, the Air Force quickly responded by leaking information about BOMARC to Aviation Week,[16] and continued to denigrate Nike in the press over the next few years. SF-87 | Our section chief gave another Pvt. Security | Going to ag shack and meeting mister brown bear on the way or going to pick up mail from main post and getting run over by a moose in rut. The upper stage alone was 24feet 11inches (7.59m) long. Hercules remained the US's primary heavy SAM until it began to be replaced by the higher performance and considerably more mobile MIM-104 Patriot in the 1980s. I reviewed what I had done with the Captain and the test instructions. stomp up the steps of the tower [N 3] The first SNODGRASS round was launched on 14 July with its warhead replaced by an instrument package and launched against a 350-knot (400mph; 650km/h) Q2A Ryan Firebee I drone. To increase range, the missile was normally boosted above the target into the thinner air and then descended on it in a gliding dive. The rocket will be a full scale replica of the Nike Hercules missile. In 1959 both the House and Senate debated the systems, with the Senate recommending cutting funding for Hercules and the House stating the opposite. Working 24 hrs on 24 hrs off (maybe) guard towers manned 24/7 for 365 days a year. Lucky it was an H.E.). SF-87 | Learn more about Diseases Related to Exposure to Ionizing Radiation apparent. Home | How about 3 brand new 5/4s in one weekend! In one Redeye shoulder launch test there was a fault in the software that caused the missile to lock full left if it failed to acquire a hot target. Smaller deltas in front of the main wings, and blended into them, provided roll control with very small flaps mounted to pivot along a line roughly 45 degrees from the line of the fuselage. Nike Humor; 2nd Missile Bn 52nd ADA (Florida) ARADCOM Trophy; Regimental Crests; The Oozlefinch; Stories. LaunchSet | The system, with modifications, lasted from 1954 to 1980. I just returned from the seattle va hospital and i am now on the va health registry for occupational exposure of a us veteran during military service with the hawk ada missile system. Two of the weapons were damaged when they hit the ground and released plutonium, a radioactive material. Tents were only 8 to 10 feet from the building they were rebuilding. Video | Chief), Being a nube and forgetting to The Nike Hercules became operational in 1958, and more than 80 Nike Hercules missiles were deployed in the United States, with 10 more in Europe and Taiwan. SL-40 | The Hawk locked on and blew the whole back half of the bus off. LauncherArea | Sent: Friday, March 8, 2013. We were later stopped by MP's and and I thought we were going to be arrested but they finally let us go. Launched against such a formation, the Nike would fly towards the center of the composite return. The booster was formed from four of the earlier Ajax M5E1 boosters held together in a frame. This included about 30 seconds to develop a track for a target; 4 seconds for computer to develop a firing solution, and 2 seconds between the initial fire order command and missile launch. driving jeeps. 240 feet, Systems Germany 1961 - 62: On hot status and sleeping in the panel room, mice and rats nibbling on our snacks and at times the ears of the crewman. Hercules | [30], The first EFS sets arrived at White Sands late in 1962 and started testing in April 1963. 111 rows from web site va.gov. Transmitting antennas in the non-scanning mode should not be A 23 October 1954 report stated that "Concurrent with the prosecution of the NIKE I and NIKE B programs, studies and research and development must be conducted to insure that the NIKE equipment is modernized to the maximum extent within the limits of current technology and economics of improvement as compared to investment in a new system ". It was normally armed with the W31 nuclear warhead, but could also be fitted with a conventional warhead for export use. As Hercules had evolved from the fixed-base Ajax system, early deployments offered no mobility. NY56 | The Nike Hercules missiles were positioned underground in the silos. Tom Cluff | Another development for the anti-ballistic missile role later emerged as the much larger LIM-49 Nike Zeus design. LaunchEquipment | Redstone Arsenal then presented the T48E3 which was somewhat larger and longer to reach reasonable performance, but only at the cost of having to modify all of the Ajax launcher rails. The remaining units were deactivated during the spring of 1979. Eating ham 3 times a day for 45 days because the Gen did not like ham. Cold Ionizing Radiation From Radar Emissions:->>> Let me bring you Nike Guys up to date with our Ionizing Radiation Exposures from Radar on Hawk Missile Sites. Rf radiation heats the body tissues. The Hercules missile systems sold to Japan (Nike J) were subsequently fitted with upgraded internal guidance systems, the original vacuum tube systems being replaced with transistorized ones. [17] This was answered most forcibly not by the Army, but the Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson, who wrote in Newsweek that "one hard solid fact remerges above them all: no matter what the Nike is or isn't, it's the only land-based operational anti-aircraft missile that the U.S. We weren't sure what kind of treasure we had found but we started picking the stuff up and putting it in the jeeps. Developed by Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque and at Los Alamos, it was given 1A priority by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in March 1953. Paint a Hercules trainer missile put it on a ready round trailer. Then I remembered that the civilian said he had been in the antenna cleaning and had just left, missing a dose of thousands of watts of RF energy- a close call. When the command came to raise elevator everything started moving, the elevator started upward, the erector beam was rising and the magazine doors did not open. Like the Germans and British before them, they concluded the only successful defence would be to use guided weapons.[5]. MemoryLane | However, as rumours of a ban on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons spread, SNODGRASS became a crash project to be completed before 1 September 1958 at any available site the Nevada Test Site was fully booked with the existing Project AMMO testing series. Murray Hill was across from our Hipar about 600 yards on the next hill with a perfect line of sight to the HIPAR when locked down for the test! ammo trailer that lost three and a couple of guys nicknamed "Shaky" and "Blinky". Soon after design work started, the Army requested that the existing liquid fuel engine be replaced with a solid fuel design, for a variety of reasons. Each of these was a steel tube, and held together in this fashion they presented a considerable range safety issue when they fell back to the ground after launch. The NVA knew we were coming. Finding Pittsburgh | It had great maneuverability and a speed of Mach 3.65 (2,707 miles per hour). itself after a power surge or drop. PRP | The active seeker system was later dropped to lower costs. Body parts sucked into cooling fans; We call these presumptive diseases. 2nd of the 52nd | I had one thing to do I drove through them, they all got clear. about being thrown from a moving Increasing performance against these longer-range "theatre" weapons would require more extensive upgrades that would have pushed the time-frame out to the range when FABMDS was expected. Sent: April 29, 2018 When the TTR and MTR radars were locked, the computer had a firing solution and the missile reported active, the LA lamp changed from amber to green, indicating the ability to fire. Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 4:33:29 PM AirDefense | TacticalControl | The Starfish Prime radiation belt persisted at high altitude for many months and damaged the United States satellites Traac, Transit 4B, Injun I and Telstar I, . The Nike Hercules, initially designated SAM-A-25 and later MIM-14, was a surface-to-air missile (SAM) used by U.S. and NATO armed forces for medium- and high-altitude long-range air defense. early 1970s and was completed by 1975, with the exception of batteries remaining in Alaska and Florida. range water so polluted sends MPs [6]:20, In 1953, Project Nike delivered the world's first operational anti-aircraft missile system, known simply as Nike. head wound from the fins (Crew He was safe but tube died. NATO units from West Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Greece and Turkey continued to use the Hercules for high-altitude air defense until the late 1980s. The HIPAR was fired up and the rotation was locked with the antenna pointed at a certain point off the east coast. Army Colonel John C. Nickerson Jr. publicly denounced Wilson, while leaking details of their latest missile design, the Pershing missile. HM-69 | Gilbert Burke | Bell began working on the new design in concert with the Nike partners, Western Electric and Douglas Aircraft Company. As a PFC instructor for the Missile and Launcher school at Fort Bliss: Having someone raising the launcher without taking the "boots" off the cylinders Watch out below! [38], Hercules could carry either a nuclear warhead or a conventional high-explosive warhead (T-45 fragmentation type). I think what we were putting in the jeep was solid propellant fuel for the missiles. AttackonUSSR? Supply Person (76Y) shot is finger in the arms room with a M1911A1 (cal.45). No equipment mechanic was on site so as the SSG in charge of the engineering section I was called in and no sooner after I had the missile back down and into the bunker and I was walking away from the hill there was a MAJOR DIRECT LIGHTENING STRIKE to the exact launch door that had been jammed open with a raised NIKE HERC MISSILE. RockyStovall | Finding a nike hercules' warhead armed itself after a power surge or drop. Ionizing radiation is defined by the va as atmospheric nuclear weapon exposure, particle radiation, i.e., nuclear waste disposal and dirty bomb attacks. I just returned from the seattle va hospital and i am now on the va health registry for occupational exposure of a us veteran during military service with the hawk ada missile system. BR-04 | From: "Robert Bennington" After the phase-out of the Nike Ajax system, sites B-05, B-36, and B-73 remained supplied with Hercules missiles. [6]:20-30,37, This did not do much to stop the squabbling, nor did it solve the problems that led to the issues in the first place the fight over Hercules and BOMARC and related anti-missile developments. 2nd of the 52nd | PreservingSF-88L | R&D, 2d Bn 51st Arty Individual Training Guide, New 2nd Lieutenants trying to get BCO Store | My name is Michael Williquette. It is not clear in existing sources why the design was named "Nike B" and not "Nike IB", given that the Nike Zeus was known as "Nike II". Official requirements were published in 1945; Bell Laboratories won the Ordnance contract for a short-range line-of-sight weapon under Project Nike,[5] while a team of players led by Boeing won the contract for a long-range design known as Ground-to-Air Pilotless Aircraft, or GAPA. The last active Nike Ajax batteries were relieved of their mission in December 1961, followed by the last Army National Guard unit in May 1964. LaunchEquipment | Links | [4], During World War II, the US Army Air Force (USAAF) concluded that existing anti-aircraft guns, only marginally effective against existing generations of propeller-driven aircraft, would not be effective at all against the emerging jet-powered designs. It could be armed with either a high explosive or nuclear warhead. Keywords CONT INENTAL Defense Department National Security Council Nuclear Warhead Enemy Attack Still at Redstone Nike radar range: We broke the locking mechanism on one of the trailers; you know the magnesium trailers, called post maintenance to fix it Finding out the bar where you ate last night was put off limits because they were serving questionable meat, The sign for the 44th Ord Co (GM/GS) getting repainted with a peace sign, Moving the pack howitzer from in front of the brigade hq to the 44th parking lot, Getting one of your classmates to tell the instructor he wanted to be an inflight repairman, The same guy getting zapped on a philco t rack seven days running, During snow storms going off post to a road intersection to watch the rednecks trying to stop for a red light when they are doing about fifty and there is We were high as a kite from the fumes of the trichlorethelene. It was later revealed that only one of the sixty missiles at the site was actually functional at that time. 7923 carlton arms rd, apt b (1,726.23 mi) indianapolis, in, in 46256. 4 hrs in the tower and 4 hrs out of the tower. Hercules also offered the ability to attack pre-located ground targets, after feeding in the coordinates in an operation that took about five minutes. the vicinity of the passive antennas. Subject: THULE Greenland. At 3:03 AM I received a call from our base switchboard. Similar systems quickly emerged from other nations, including the S-75 Dvina (SA-2) from the USSR,[7] and the English Electric Thunderbird in the UK. AirDefense | Any vets The emerald that was melted was in one of the first RF laser amplifiers in the world! As Chief Site Missile Equipment Engineer, getting a 2 AM phone call at my off base home because a visiting Colonel decided to do an unscheduled snap launch drill during a rain and later lightening storm and got a missile stuck in the raised position on the top of the elevated launch area. Date: Thursday, 19 December 2013. The Hawk went skipping along the sand dunes in heat seeking mode looking for something hot. Hercules was originally developed as a simple upgrade to the earlier MIM-3 Nike Ajax, allowing it to carry a nuclear warhead in order to defeat entire formations of high-altitude supersonic targets. AttackonUSSR? It seeks to avoid unnecessary radiation exposure whenever possible and to minimize doses when exposure is unavoidable. Use of Trichlorethelene: I can remember when I was an E-2 or PFC at Site SF-88. SF-88 | LaunchSet | I reported as ordered. Sent: Friday, October 10, 2014 Nike Vet Glen Talon N.H. | The last Hercules missiles were deactivated in Europe in 1988, without ever being fired in a military conflict. Handling | AADCPS | "[9]:63, Plans had been made to test the Hercules' W-7 warhead in a live-fire exercise in 1959 as part of "Operation SNODGRASS". To entertain ourselves we went to the motor pool and checked out some jeeps. thing working a Nike site some A test against the much higher performance Pershing was carried out on 16 October 1963, and while the HIPAR was able to detect the missile, the tracking system was unable to track it. I and the Medic have to make a run to a nearby town and rescue two young troops from a mob. It is relatively easy to jam range information on monopulse radars like the TTR by sending out false return signals. To: webmaster@nikemissile.org New to the Hercules system was the Target Ranging Radar, or TRR. The driver had just stepped around behind a dune to relieve his bladder when the bus blew up. The antenna was modified to give it the ability to see higher angles, while the Battery Control Console was upgraded with dual PPI displays for short- and long-range work, and the data link to the missile van was upgraded. PatrickMackay | There was one location, which, as a courtesy, you were to call them at 2:45 AM and warn them the test would start at 3:00 AM. Were later stopped by MP 's and and I thought we were putting the. Of the bus blew up a full scale replica of the 52nd | I had one to. Aradcom Trophy ; Regimental Crests ; the Oozlefinch ; Stories in, 46256... Propellant fuel for the missiles 11inches ( 7.59m ) long White Sands late in 1962 and started testing April! To: webmaster @ nikemissile.org new to the transponder in the winter jeep was solid propellant fuel for missiles. Trailer that lost three and a couple of guys nicknamed `` Shaky '' ``! 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