Lee - Thanks for the peek and for the comment. Always a pleasure to have you stop in
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There’s one in the headlands in Marin that is raised out of the ground and made launch ready, once a month. There’s the remains of the complexes all over the area, the most creative use of one silo which is really a big rectangular room; is the Marine Mammal Centers seal hospital.
Ahhhh…
Mike I agree, although the thought of nuclear warheads going off ten miles down range from San Francisco is only slightly better than the ones dropping out of those incoming Bears.
Very happy to have survived that era.
West of downtown Dallas, on the west side of the Trinity river, there was a battery complex for Nike-Ajax, which was upgraded to Hercules. About due for yet another marginally-useful renovation/adaptive reuse of the complex. This remains complicated due to compliance with one or more of the STARTs (which is a different discussion for another forum).
Yet another reason we need a 1/35 GOER kit.
First kit manufacturer to get one out reaps great rewards, since, if memory serves, there’s the cargo, tank, recovery, and the missile carrier variants that could be made.
G - I agree, the idea of a nuclear warhead going off that close!!! Then again we all survived and considering all the strange thing we did in the 50s and 60s, that’s amazing.
Capt - The M520 would be interesting. I do have the Commanders Models 1//35 resin kit. Yep there was a cargo version and a tanker version for fuel as standard built versions. Like the picture above, there were many other one offs and special uses.
Thanks guys for stopping in.
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Excellent job on your Nike. Here in Alaska, they were mounted under a steel clamshell launcher. There are several sites that still exist here. One is C battery outside of Eielson AFB, and another is close to JBER (Elmendorf, Ft Richardson). I have gone through C battery many times. There is a picture of it on Wikipedia.
Richs - Thanks. Many of the were in those type of launchers were also down here in NJ.
Ahhh…Ft Richardson…Northern Warfare School…memories!!
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Hey wow, another winner there! I love seeing those old kits we slammed together as kids built by someone as skilled as you, real demonstration what you can do with one of these gems in the rough.
Funny, I’d always assumed the missile was a lot bigger too.
Gamera - Thanks, I love the old kits. Yes the take some TLC but can turn out to be a nice finished build.
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Of course the army was able to move rounds (missiles) even whole Batteries, this was (mid 60 s) as part of our shoot and scoot theory
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Re transporting: Technically Nike herc was mobile; in Germany we had “mobile” launchers and “round ready transporters” . for in battery movement .
for movement inside the launcher area (down range)
For open road everything was put into their proper containers and shipped using several 5 ton and 2.5 ton trucks
Think of moving your house, possible but you don’t like to do it too often.
Steve - Thanks for the peek and the note. Love the old pictures. The EU installations being mobile makes sense. Not too many pictures of the the launchers. Still like the Goer launcher, looks cool. Moving it in 5t and 2.5t trucks would be a convoy of parts!!
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