This build may be a bit unusual as our posts are supposed to be about diecast aircraft WWI and up and there is a section for kit builds but I think it is still perhaps appropriate. I'll let the mods be the judge. The builds will start today and finish up in 2-3 weeks as I have the time beginning with the missiles and finishing with the bombers. Depending on what I can find, I may pick up HM's F-102 and F-106 vs the twin pack Hasegawa kit available from my local brick and mortar shop a week or so back. The entire cold war defense of Philly set up will be mix of scales regardless.
Anyone under 55 will look at you in surprise if you tell them they live within a few miles of a old missile site used to defend their city from Russian bombers. There were jet fighters built and based nearby carrying small nukes just to intercept them.
The military actually planned to use air burst nukes to take down the bombers . Long before subs and ICBM's we lived in a world that looking back, wasn't any safer than it is today.
Aircraft have their adversaries and the baby boomers in the USA especially will remember kiddie dog tags, Bert the Turtles Duck and Cover drills, fall out shelters, atomic toys, cereal prizes, comic books and the science fiction of the times. Some of you will recognize and perhaps enjoy some of these photos.
I've always had an interest in this subject being born in the later half of the 50' s. I remember well the bomb scare of the early 60's, my dad and neighbors digging under the crawl spaces beneath our houses to create our shelters "just in case" the Russians decided to hit nearby Ft Knox to obliterate much of the nations gold reserves during the Cuban missile crisis.
My kids just look at me and say your kidding right? People did not really believed we were going to war and dug fall out shelters. In the 80's people thought Ronald Regan was going to push us into one. Every time you think your living through something uniquely bad you only need to look back a few generations.
When I saw these kits and knowing I have several abandoned Nike missile bases around me I thought give them a go. These are Renwal ( ex Revel's) 1/32 and 1/40 scale reissue of the Nike point defense missile system designed to defend major US cities like Philadelphia and military bases from Soviet bombers like the TU-95.
So you all know how this starts.... Hey I have a missile so I need a bomber :) The bombers are 1/200 in scale and I'm surprised at the size. They were in operation in the late 50's and early 60's and the kids of the pilots of some of these planes fly them still today. Thus begins my slow slide into scales other than 1/48.
The Nike surface to air missile system was named after the winged goddess of victory in Greek mythology. Two versions of this system defended the U.S. and other places from hostile aircraft. The 1st version, the Nike Ajax, was deployed in the U.S. from 1954 to the early 1960s. It had an effective range of 25 miles and a speed of mach 2.5.
Technical Specifications Overall length: 34 ft. 10 in. with booster. Missile only 21 ft.
Diameter: 12 inches
Wingspan: 4 ft., 6 in.
Overall weight: 2455 pounds.
Missile only 1000 pounds.
Fuel: Missile sustainer motor: JP4 aviation fuel and; hypergolic starter fluid 1.) Aniline/furfuryl alcohol. 2.) Dimethyl-hydrazine. 3.) Red fuming nitric acid. Red fuming nitric acid was the last starter fluid used.
Booster: Solid propellant Range: 25 to 30 miles
Speed: Mach 2.3 (1679 mph) Altitude limit: 70,000 feet
Guidance: Command guidance from ground emplacement
Warhead: High-explosive fragmentation. Three separate warheads located in the nose, mid-section, and aft section.
The missile was manufactured by Douglas Aircraft in California. The booster section was manufacture by the Hercules Powder Company, Radford Arsenal Virginia. The missile sustainer motor was manufactured by Bell Aircraft in Buffalo New York. The guidance system was manufactured by Western Electric.
Below is a map showing the rings of Nike sites around major east coast cities. With a range of only 25 miles and a conventional warhead if they did knock the bomber down, the what was then relatively open country side would have been splattered with the radioactive wreckage. Even back then Jersey couldn't catch a break... :)
In some cases these missiles were put on former sites that had held 90MM AA guns that had been removed in the late 40's and early 50's from around major US cities.
Images of the times. Never hurts to put a pretty girl on your fallout shelter and HEY everyone get the facts on surviving ATOMIC WAR . Problem was the bombs we then faced were H-bombs and not the Hiroshima types that may have made duck and cover less of a farce. The average person really could not fathom the impact of the new bombs. The vision of Hiroshima in their minds but feeling many people still survived. The government did all it could to promote this idea. The Hydrogen bomb was more powerful than the A-bombs dropped Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those bombs were the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. The first H-bomb produced the equivalent of 10,400,000 tons of TNT and have also been designed to expel more radioactive material into the air above the drop site. The results, as you can imagine, can be pretty destructive.
The build starts with the launching system. Not bad, very little flash no warping of and parts and the colors are not far from what the actuals were. The entire launch system when finished slides on the rails from one end to the other. Just like in the actual photo of a crew loading a site below.
A typical Nike air defense site consisted of two separate parcels of land. One area was known as the Integrated Fire Control (IFC) Area. This site contained the Nike system's ground-based radar and computer systems designed to detect and track hostile aircraft, and to guide the missiles to their targets. All sites were to provide overlapping cover and have between 3 and 6 missile bays.
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. Nike Battery PH-49 Pitman, NJ 3 Battery system still physically exists in reasonably good shape as do remnants of others. See a few pictures below of the magazine and a period pic of the missile lift. Two sites in the USA have been restored. One site is on Sandy Hook NJ protecting NYC and the other just north of the Bay bridge protecting San Francisco
I used to drive by these sites when i was first transferred By GE in 1990 to help set up their new Aerospace plant in Bridgeport near the Delaware river. I could see the old tower near Swedesboro and the Pitman site was only a few miles from my home.
The Pitman Nike site was yet another 'classic' 3-magazine Nike installation. This site was not converted to use the Nike Hercules missile system, unlike its 'sister' sites at Lumberton, Berlin/Clementon and Swedesboro, and was inactivated during the 1960s. The site now houses a construction firm and the buildings hold a Christian school in the pictures below. The towers are the Swedesboro NJ site still owned by the GSA.
Launcher Area: Pitman, NJ Control Area: Pitman, NJ
Weapons Systems & Missile Load
Nike Ajax / 30
3 Magazines.
1 type 'B' and 2 type 'C'.
Radar Types -ACQR
Finished product
I'd like to hear from my Brit friends on the systems used to protect England in the 50,s and early 60's.
The Sandy Hook NJ Site took a beating in last years hurricane Sandy but I understand they are due to open in April. Any forum member who would like to go visit with Ty and I PM me.
Next the Nike Hercules. Advances were coming fast in the 50's. A missile and aircraft could be obsolete by the time it got into the field. The Hercules had a longer range and a small nuke. These were all designed for high altitude and could not cope with a low level attack that surely would have been tried. None of the cities were protected by a low altitude missile like the Hawk as a supplement to the Nike sites.