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FREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS
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Table of Contents
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Are these all the Nike sites in the
Boston and Providence Areas?
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How accurate is the information
on units and sites?
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How were Nike Sites Designated?
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How Far Could Nikes Shoot and What
are These A, B, and C Magazines listed on the Site Pages?
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Which Nike sites stored nuclear weapons
?
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Why did all the Nike units change
designations in 1958-59 ?
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Where can I find information about
Nike sites in my area ?
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What was the role of the Army National
Guard in the Boston Nike sites ?
Are these all
the Nike sites in the Boston and Providence Areas ?
This site is a comprehensive listing of the former Nike
missile sites in the greater Boston and Providence areas. It includes minor
radar sites, headquarters sites and a maintenance shop. Since there were
also local active Army and Army National Guard anitaircraft gun sites in
the same areas between 1950 and 1963, these are frequently confused with
Nike sites. The keeper of this website is working on developing a list
of these locations. One such site, located in the Medford
Fells Park, is included in the site. The unit stationed there,
an ARNG gun battery, was actually redesignated as Nike while still assigned
there but did not convert to the missile system until it moved to the Reading
site. An additional section on the AAA gun sites around Boston is under
development and can be reached by clicking
here.
How accurate
is the information on units and sites ?
Most of the information found on this site is based
on official Army records. Unit locations are based on Army stationing records
with modifications when obvious errors have been found [such as the mixing
up of Burlington and Blue Hills sites]. Army rolls sometimes carried "phantom"
units [units organized with zero strength and no equipment]. Nike battalions
sometimes had one or two batteries of this type, particularly in the latter
days of the Ajax era. Site locations have sometimes been more difficult
to pinpoint. Topographical maps and other sources have been used. Several
sites were hard to pin down. Most, such as Fort Banks and Reading, have
been ironed out. Recently, the launcher site for North Kingstown was firmly
located by a reader. The site of the ARNG battalion headquarters in Natick,
MA, and the location of Nike radar facilities a Fort Devens, however, are
still not located firmly.
How
were Nike Sites Desigated?
Nike sites followed a site designation saystem which
had originally been adopted for AAA gun sites. The site designation was
in two parts. The first part indicated the vital area being defended (B=
Boston, PR= Providence), the second part indicated the direction of the
site from the vital area in a circle made up of 100 subunits. A detailed
description may be found at the Nike
Technical Characteristics page.
How
Far Could Nikes Shoot and What are These A, B, and C Magazines listed on
the Site Pages?
This technical data may be found at the
Nike
Technical Characteristics page.
Which Nike sites
stored nuclear weapons ?
Only Nike Hercules had the capability to fire a nuclear
warhead. Therefore only sites which deployed Nike Hercules missiles would
have stored nuclear warheads. These were stored under strict security in
the magazines of the launcher areas. The sites in the Boston-Providence
area which stored nukes, therefore, were Danvers, South Lincoln, Fort Duvall,
Bristol, and North Smithfield. Specific
information on when and if these sites actually store nukes is not available.
Sometimes the Army would keep nuclear munitions at certain centralized
locations and have special teams which would issue them to units on order.
Why did all
the Nike units change designations in 1958-59 ?
From the middle of World War II until 1958, Army antiaircraft
artillery, originally part of the coast artillery corps, but later its
own branch, was organized into separate battalions. Before that, the coast
artillery corps had been organized into regiments with subordinate battalions.
In the late 1950s, the Army adopted a new organization called pentatomic.
As part of this reorganization, both field artillery and antiaircraft artillery
were reorganized into a new "artillery" branch. This branch contained a
series of nominal regiments, each containing the lineage, through a convoluted
process, of both the former battalions and the previous regiments. Each
artillery battalion was redesignated to become a component of one of the
regiments. The regiments did not exist as an organizational unit, but only
as a component of the unit designation. This system is still in use to
the present day. Air Defense Artillery and Field Artillery became separate
branches in 1972. In 1958 all the active Army Nike units were redesignated
under the new system. The Army National Guard units followed in 1959. In
Army records the old unit is inactivated and the new unit was activated
at the same location. In actuality, the unit in place merely changed its
name, and in most cases, it's distinctive unit insignia.
Where can I
find information about Nike sites in my area ?
This site specializes in the Nike sites from the area
the site designer is from- Boston. It was created because of a void on
the Internet covering the Boston sites. Most other areas are covered to
some extent by other web sites and can be reached via the Links
page.
What was the
role of the Army National Guard in the Boston area Nike sites?
The Army National Guard of both Massachusetts and Rhode
Island participated in the Nike program, providing six Ajax batteries and
later three Hercules batteries and three, later two, battalion headquarters.
The National Guard had had a long history of coast artillery and antiaircraft
units. After the Korean War, Guard gun AAA units assumed adjunct
roles in support of the active Army AAA units assigned to the Boston-Providence
areas. When Ajax was deployed, it had long been planned that the Guard
would assume a pecentage of this role. However, the first ARNG units weren't
ready until 1959. In the interim, guard 90mm gun units occupied AAA gunsites
around Boston. Mass
Army National Guard AAA Organization. In 1958 the guns were
phased and the guard assumed a role in the Nike-Ajax program. The designated
units were reorganized and took up to a year to train. The reorganization
included the assignment of a large proportion of fulltime civilian employees,
called technicians. As the active Army phased out Ajax, all the remaining
Ajax sites in the Boston-Providence area were ARNG batteries. When these
were phased out, the Guard received the Hercules mission too. In the Boston
area in 1974 two of the three remaining Nike sites were manned by
the Massachusetts ARNG. In both
the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Army National Guard Nike units, only
certain batteries of each battalion were part of the Nike on-site program.
The remaining batteriers were stationed at armories and were training and
fill-in units for the on-site batteries.
