[Milsurplus] NEEDED!!! Nike Ajax manuals most needed is one that shows guidance platform. We have one at the SMECC museum but alas someone detached and de-wired a few of the gyros

[David I. Emery]

On Mon, Jul 01, 2019 at 10:52:32PM +0000, howard holden wrote:

> Ajax was conventional, and the first in the Nike series. Hercules and
> Zeus were capable of carrying a small nuke warhead. We had a Nike base
> near where I grew up in NJ, and I toured it once or twice as a kid.
> Think the base came in three widely separate sections- a launch site, a
> radar site, and a command site.

	I grew up in a Mass town (Wayland) with a Nike launcher site -
the guidance and target tracking  radar and another associated launcher
was nearby in the next town over (Lincoln).

	The high power long range search radars for these sites were on
hills around us... the nearest in Needham.

	It was common for one guidance and tracking radar site to
support two launcher sites... each  a couple of miles away...

	IIRC ours was originally a Nike Ajax site, but before it was 
decommissioned they converted it to Nike Hercules and *MAY* (they would
never exactly say, but the signs were there) have had the nuke version
there for a while.   Most folks in town never knew there were nuclear
warheads  just a couple of miles from the center of town.

	After the sites were decommissioned in the early 70s some of
the control and indicator panels from the sites showed up
at a local surplus store... and I'm sure made entertaining items
in college dorms in Boston/Cambridge - with a series of bright
multicolored progress lights ending in "Detonate" and all sorts
of neat switches and other indicators.


-- 
  Dave Emery N1PRE/AE, die at dieconsulting.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493
"An empty zombie mind with a forlorn barely readable weatherbeaten
'For Rent' sign still vainly flapping outside on the weed encrusted pole - in 
celebration of what could have been, but wasn't and is not to be now either."