Col. William Lawrence shares experiences at northwest Indiana Nike sites

Subj: Info on Northwest Indiana Nike Sites
Date: 8/23/99 1:56:09 PM Central Daylight Time
From: wmjlrnc@erols.com (William J. Lawrence)

I was assigned to HQ, 79th AAA Missile Battalion (soon to be redesignated
HQ, 1st Missile Battalion, 60th Artillery) at the Gary Airport in July of
'58. I had just finished both the Nike Ajax and Hercules Maintenance
Officer Courses in the preceding eighteen months. As the Battalion Missile
Officer, I stayed at Fort Bliss to attend Nike Hercules Package Training
with B Battery, Site C-32. I actually arrived in Gary in late October. I
stayed at the Gary Airport site, C-45. The following spring, after a six
week stint as an evaluator at the Red Canyon Missile Range, I was sent to A
Battery, Site C-47, the Wheeler site, to take command. Halfway through the
process, our higher Hq, 22d Air Defense Group in Orland Park, IL, decided
that they needed the D Battery CO on their staff, so I detoured to C-48, the
Glen Park site, and took it over, leaving C-47 to be commanded by its XO.
In November of '59, I was given command of C-32, the Porter Nike Hercules
site. I left there in September of '61 to attend the Artillery Officers'
Career Course.

Given the above experience, I feel that I can make some relevant
observations about operations at these sites.

Site Location

Site C-45, the Gary Nike Site, was located near the Gary Regional Airport.
Its largest area, the administrative area, was at the southwest end of the
airport. It could be reached by an unimproved road leading southwest from
U.S. 12 next to a railroad embankment. The area was originally built to
house both a firing battery and a full HQ & HQ battery. By the time I
joined the battalion, however, the headquarters had been downsized and most
of its administrative functions moved to HQ 22d ADA Group at Orland Park,
IL.
This left a fair bit of extra room for billeting, recreation, and such
requirements. The site consisted of prefabricated metal buildings, some
connected by unheated corridors. Latrines were in separate buildings, which
made night trips there through unheated corridors a brisk walk in winter.
The launcher area, consisting of two underground launching sections, was
about a half mile further down the road away from U.S. 12. The fire control
area was about a mile further down that same road, which had turned directly
south. It had no radar towers.

Site C-48, the Glen Park Nike Site, had two areas just off Grant Street.
The fire control system was in a small, fenced in area on the east side of
Grant
Street, I think about halfway between W. 36th and W. 37th Aves. It was
right behind a Midas Muffler Shop. This site also had no radar towers.
This caused the Missile Tracking Radar some problems as it attempted to hold
lock on either a missile or the test responder located directly across the
line of traffic which ran along Grant Street. We hoped that the traffic
would stop when
the war started. The administrative and launcher area was located off of W.
37th Ave. to the west of Grant Street and behind a large shopping center
containing a Montgomery Ward store. The construction was the same as C-45,
and it too had only two launching sections.

Site C-32, the Porter Nike Site, had its administrative and fire control
area just north of U.S. 20 on Mineral Springs Road. It was of cinder block
construction, and had 40 foot radar towers. The launcher area was on Wagner
Road, also north of U.S. 20 and across the street from a VFW club. I
visited the site in the summer of '98 and found the administrative area in
excellent shape under the ownership of the National Park Service. Its
buildings had all received new siding and were in an excellent state of
repair. All were in use, except the towers, which had been razed. Even the
lawns were newly mowed, always a problem for us. When I journeyed to see
the launcher area, however, I became as depressed as I had been elated at
the sight of the other area. The above ground buildings had all been
vandalized. The cyclone fences all had weeds growing up their entire
height. I suddenly felt like I had come upon a jungle.

Site C-47, the Wheeler Nike Site, is where Mr. Hedges described it. I
attempted to locate it from memory using a current map, but simply could not
recall the roads that I used to get there in the old days. I note the
efforts to keep C-47 as a tribute to the Nike program, and I hope they will
be successful. I'll check that out when I'm back that way next. My late
wife was from Gary, and her brother and his family run a car dealership in
Chesterton, so I still visit.

Evolution of the Chicago-Gary Defense.

Nike sites are deployed in a ring around the defended area, to the extent
the terrain warrants. Obviously, the planners did not want to build sites
offshore into Lake Michigan, so the plan was modified. Originally, the
defense consisted of 24 Nike Ajax fire units, organized into two groups of
three battalions each. When the Nike Hercules missile system was deployed,
its greater range and lethality permitted the area to be defended with less
sites. I believe that the 24 sites were downsized to seven prior to their
final inactivation. The sites were inactivated when it was determined that
the major threat to the Chicago-Gary area was no longer air-breathing
aircraft but rather InterContinental Ballistic Missiles. A logical
progression would have been to replace the Nike Hercules system with an
Anti-Ballistic Missile System: the Nike Zeus or its successors (Sentinel,
Safeguard), but these systems had not yet reliably solved their technical
problems. Later, a treaty was signed with the USSR which limited such
deployments, effectively killing the initiative. Hawk, the Army's other
major ADA missile system, was kept as a defense of tactical forces in the
field in such places as Germany and Korea, with one exception, the Homestead
AFB, FL defense which was installed after the Cuban missile crisis..

The Life of a Nike Missileman

There is no doubt about it. Life was tough for the officers and enlisted
men assigned to the Northern Indiana Nike sites. The major reason for that
was the tremendously long hours that they put in. Work weeks of eighty to
one hundred hours were not uncommon. Of course there was the normal work
day, spent training to increase teamwork and proficiency and maintaining the
equipment to keep it at a high state of readiness. Beyond that, a number of
the defense's sites were maintained on 15 minute status. That is to say,
the site should be able to launch a missile at a hostile aircraft within 15
minutes of being put on battle stations. It was common that at least one of
the sites of 1/60 would be on 15 minute status at any given time.
Unannounced drills were performed frequently to determine if this state of
readiness was achieved. As a matter of fact, that was my major job during
my first months there, to run the battalion's Operational Readiness
Evaluation (ORE) team. My orders were simple: to run the most firm, fair,
and chicken---- evaluations there were. We did.

The 15 minute status requirement applied to all defenses on the periphery of
the United States. Since the expected direction of aircraft attack of
Chicago was from the north, we were included in that requirement. The
distinction between 15 minute status and 30 minute status for a Nike site is
significant. On 30 minute status you can have your equipment off while on
15 minute status, not only must the equipment be on, but maintenance checks
must be run on it every four hours. (Incidentally, at C-32 we never turned
off our fire control equipment, never. We discovered early on that the DC
power supplies were much more stable if they were just left on.)

Beyond staying operationally ready, much of the rest of the time was spent
in housekeeping chores. There was grass to keep cut in the summer and snow
to shovel or plow in the winter. Eventually, some of the sites got help
from John Deere-like tractors, but not all were so equipped, I think. That
was a big help at C-32 especially in the winter, as we were in the area that
got hit frequently by lake-effect snows. I can remember one time in
particular when we were undergoing an ORE, that ice was forming on the
sideways launcher rails as fast as the crewmen could scrape it off. The
drill was cancelled due to safety considerations, but only after giving it
the old try.

Additional time was spent participating in community affairs. While the
Nike Ajax sites could hold periodic open houses, such activities were not
allowed on the Hercules sites.

When a unit was on 15 minute status, there was a minimum manning level
specified by numbers of each specialty. Early on in my command period, I
decided that I needed more personnel on duty than were on the minimum
manning list.
Specifically, I added a driver, a cook, and a duty officer for the launcher
area, plus a couple of others. In those days, none of my launcher officers
or WOs were really qualified to be battery control officers (they later were
required by regulation to be), so they split the duty, acting as launcher
control officers during drills, a job the manning level allowed to be filled
by an NCO. I thought it worked well, and our results showed that the extra
effort was worth it. But then Brigade HQ liked the idea so much they
one-upped me and the rest of the defense in a big way. They decreed that
when a battery was on 15 minute status that all of its present-for-duty
strength, officers, WOs, NCOs, et all, be on site. That arrangement lasted
for two months, with great instant improvement in ORE scores at first but
followed by rapidly decreasing returns. Fortunately, no one ever called it
the Lawrence plan, because it wasn't.

Living conditions on site

I have already touched a bit on the differences in construction that made
sites C-32 and C-47 much more comfortable for the troops than C-45 and C-48.
The metal prefabricated buildings just didn't have as many of the creature
comforts, and that cold walk to the latrine was a real downer. The latter
sites also didn't have as many semiprivate rooms for the single Sp4s and
Sp5s.
And there were a number of single specialists living on site, as the
percentage of those ranks who were married was noticeably less during this
period than it was later when I commanded a Nike Hercules battalion at
Travis AFB,
CA ( '70-71).

Each site had a very small PX and a craft shop. The latter ranged from very
good to great, depending on how dedicated the assigned operator was. There
were also day rooms, equipped with pool tables and TVs, but of the black and
white variety, color having just come on the scene then. In no way could a
site offer its personnel all of the amenities one could find on a full-sized
Army post. The nearest commissary was at Fort Sheridan, IL, nearly a
hundred miles away. Even having our drivers, who went there from time to
time on administrative runs, pick up articles for individuals was not really
feasible. The unit fund was available to improve these facilities, but its
income was not large because the present-for-duty strength of an individual
site was not large.

Many of the personnel were exposed to hazardous materials as part of their
duties. For the Ajax system, bad stuff included the missile's liquid fuel,
its oxidizer (almost pure red fuming nitric acid), starting mix, and even
the electrolyte in the missile batteries. The Hercules was solid fueled,
but early models had a hydraulic system pump operated with a gas turbine
fueled by ethylene oxide. Later models had turbines powered by one shot
batteries. In later fire control systems, the danger from electromagnetic
radiations increased. There was always the danger of injury from mechanical
devices. At C-32, our launcher platoon sergeant was killed when he chose to
bend over a launcher rail to disconnect a phone cable while the missile was
descending above him.

Not all of the danger was to the site personnel. Each site had a booster
disposal area designated, where the empty boosters would land after the
missile was fired. On some sites, an easement had been worked out with the
property owners, but on others the matter was just kept quiet. It was felt
that if the missiles were fired in anger, then falling empty boosters would
be the least to the nearby population's problems.

Manning levels

As time passed, it became harder and harder for the Army to maintain the
sites at their authorized strengths. In particular, to maintain C-47 and
C-32 at close to their authorizations, C-45 and C-48 manning levels were
especially low. This was true both quantitatively and qualitatively. C-47
and C-32 had at their disposal a number of Army Regulations on personnel
reliability that could be invoked to get rid of bad apples quickly. Those
regulations did not apply to the other batteries, though.

It can be argued that the Nike sites should have received additional
personnel to allow for day-in and day-out shift work, but if they had
obtained additional authorizations, then their manning levels would have
been lower for the same net effect. The Army just did not have the
resources to add to the Nike program, or at least it perceived that it did
not. To keep the Army Air Defense Command up to strength as much as
possible in those days, the Army even decided to do away with its divisional
Air Defense Artillery battalions. Fortunately, cooler heads have since
prevailed and the battalions returned to the divisions, this time armed with
newer and more effective weapons.

Retention of good personnel was a problem because of the long hours they
worked and the Spartan conditions in which they lived. Those who enjoyed
the work but not the living conditions, especially young specialists, were
also tempted to leave the active Army and join the National Guard, which
operated a number of sites in the Defense. There they could be paid as a
state employee and work reasonable hours.

In summary

I have a lot of memories of my service with the Northern Indiana Nike sites.
A lot of them are pleasant ones. For example, I met my late wife there (a
Gary girl) and we were married a few months thereafter. I have also some
less than pleasant memories. And I have a lot of respect for the officers,
WOs, and enlisted men who worked their tails off day after day to keep the
systems ready to go to war. And we were indeed ready to do that.

William J. Lawrence, COL (R) ADA.

(C) 1999, Christopher C. Hedges, All Rights Reserved
All images by Christopher C. Hedges unless otherwise noted

Last update: August 25, 1999

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