Abstract
The Nike-Hercules was first publicly displayed on May 18, 1957. The occasion was the national commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Defense Department. The location was downtown Huntsville, Alabama.
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Notes
John A. Giles, “244 Revamped Nike Sites to Cost $200,000 Each,” Washington Evening Star, March 20, 1957; Memorandum to Assistant Chief of Engineers for Military Construction from Chief, Missiles Branch, Engineering Division, July 18, 1957, in Box 33 “Anti-Ballistic Missile, Nike and Related Programs,” Folder 3 “NIKE Const Progress”; and Memorandum to Chief of Engineers from DCSLOG, May 3, 1957 (and attachments) in Box 34, both at History Office, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Belvoir, Virginia (hereafter USACE). Early construction to accommodate weapons with W-7 warheads may have required tritium detectors and alarms to warn if a concentration of the noxious gas leaked from a warhead. See Memorandum to Assistant Chief of Engineers for Military Construction from Chief, Missiles Branch, Engineering Division, July 18, 1957; Letter from M.F. Roy to Commander, Field Command, Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, March 23, 1956, in Box 22, Folder 2, Hansen Collection; and A.R. Luedecke memorandum to Chief of Staff, Department of Army [et al.], May 2, 1956, in Box 22, Folder 3, Hansen Collection.
Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983), pp. 85–86, 92–93, 97–110, 117–121; Gregg Herken, Counsels of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), pp. 88–94; Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (London: Macmillan Press, 1983), pp. 134–136. The RAND Corporation, the private think tank organized to assist the Air Force with such evaluations, studied SAC vulnerability periodically, starting in 1951. Among the solutions proffered was the construction of additional bomber bases to offer an attacker a greater number of more widely disbursed targets. For the Killian Committee, see “Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack: Technological Capabilities Panel of the Science Advisory Committee,” vol. II, February 14, 1955, p. 68, DDRS no. CK3100218088.
John G. Norris, “Army Fights AF Missile Base Plans,” Washington Post and Times-Herald, March 21, 1956, p. 1; Kenneth W. Condit, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs and National Policy, Vol. VI, 1955–1956 (Washington: Historical Office, Joint Staff, 1992), pp. 61–63. Talos warheads were tested at Teapot. See Hansen, Table A-1, pp. V-55 to V-56, VII-61, VII-64 to VII-65, VII-187 to VII-188; and “The Final Teapot Tests,” March 23, 1955–May 15, 1955, DNA 6013F, p. 14, in the files of the Office of Corporate Historian, Sandia National Laboratories.
For a thorough treatment, see David L. Snead, The Gaither Committee, Eisenhower, and the Cold War (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999) (quotation p. 47); and Valerie L. Adams, Eisenhower’s Fine Group of Fellows: Crafting a National Security Policy to Uphold the Great Equation (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2006). A slightly different interpretation is provided in Kaplan, pp. 125–154. A central aspect of Kaplan’s account is the purported declaration by SAC commander Curtis LeMay of his intention to launch an unauthorized preemptive strike if he believed the Soviets were preparing an attack. This exchange is engaged in Richard K. Betts, “A Nuclear Golden Age? The Balance Before Parity,” International Security 11, no. 3 (Winter 1986–1987): 19–20; and Peter Roman, “Ike’s Hair-Trigger: U.S. Nuclear Predelegation, 1953–60,” Security Studies 7, no. 4 (Summer 1998): 151–152 (note 88).
Quoted in David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy,” in Norman A. Graebner, ed., The National Security: Its Theory and Practice, 1945–1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 157. Ike furthermore argued that “we have the capability of delivering the greater blow.” (p. 157.)
James R. Killian, Jr., Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower: A Memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), pp. 97–100.) The leak spurred Senator Lyndon Johnson unsuccessfully to seek copies of the Gaither report and the earlier product of the Killian panel. As a result of Johnson’s request, Eisenhower asserted executive privilege after aides asked Sprague about the manner in which the report of the Technological Capabilities Panel had been handled. (See “Memorandum for the Files,” by James S. Lay, Jr., December 9, 1957, in Folder “Sprague Report [re continental defense],” Box 18, Executive Secretary Subject File, WHO, NSC Staff, Papers, 1948–61, DDEL.)
John Prados, Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1991), pp. 92–94; Challener, pp. 10–12.
John G. Norris, “New and Faster Nikes Replace Ajax in June,” Washington Post and Times-Herald, January 29, 1958, p. A1 (first quotation); Jack Raymond, “New Atom Missiles Will Guard 4 Areas in Nation This June,” New York Times, January 29, 1958, p. 1 (second quotation).
Jeffrey T. Richelson, American Espionage and the Soviet Target (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1987), p. 177. An overflight of a nation conducted from space was not considered equally violative of national sovereignty as an aircraft overflight.
L. Edgar Prina, “Atom Mishap With Hercules is Discounted,” Washington Evening Star, May 23, 1958.
John G. Norris, “Defense Rockets Get Debut,” Washington Post and Times-Herald, July 2, 1958, p. B4. This article inexplicably declares Davidsonville as the first Nike-Hercules site.
L. Edgar Prina, “D.C. Area Rocket Sites Get Atomic Missiles,” Washington Evening Star, July 1, 1958, p. A-10; and Gladwin Hill, “Hercules Tested in Army Display,” New York Times, July 2, 1958, p. 11; Gladwin Hill, “Army Shows Off its Rocket Might,” New York Times, July 1, 1958, p. 4 (quotation). The Nike-Hercules performed satisfactorily despite the fact that its recent problems had led some officials to urge that it not be included in Project Ammo. See Cagle, Hercules, p. 100.
Jeremi Suri, “America’s Search for a Technological Solution to the Arms Race: The Surprise Attack Conference of 1958 and a Challenge for ‘Eisenhower Revisionists,’” Diplomatic History 21, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 417–451 (quotation p. 426).
Robert A. Divine, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Nuclear Test Ban Issue: Memorandum of a White House Conference, 24 March 958,” Diplomatic History 2, no. 3 (Summer 1978): 321–330 (quotation 325–326). For a fuller treatment of the interplay of administration appointees on the topic of a test ban, see Benjamin P. Greene, Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1945–1963 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 134–164 (for discussion of March 24 meeting, see pp. 141–144). For the report of another colloquy between Strauss, Dulles, and others on the prospect of a nuclear test ban, see “Memorandum for the Files of Lewis L. Strauss,” in Box 26A, Lewis L. Strauss Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. For more on this exchange, see Greene, pp. 151–153.
Richard Pfau, No Sacrifice Too Great: The Life of Lewis L. Strauss (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984), pp. 218–219.
Thomas B. Ross, “Air Force Seeks to Abolish Chicago Nike Installations,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 1, 1958.
Robert S. Weiner, “At Ease,” American Heritage 50, no. 2 (April 1999): 50.
John R. Thompson, “Test Reveals Nike Hercules Can Clear Sky; Could Wipe out Entire Attacking Fleet,” Chicago Tribune, September 15, 1958.
Lillian Levy, “Women Important in Nike Work,” Washington Evening Star, November 10, 1958.
Marvin Miles, “Make-Believe Air Force,” Air Force Magazine, December 1958, pp. 114–118. This account argued that “reports from Russia indicate the extensive use of models in the Soviet educational system,” but sought to reassure readers that “in the field of scale models, there is little doubt that the youth of America are far ahead.”
Thomas Graham, Remembering Revell Model Kits (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Company, 2002), p. 147.
Mat Irvine, Creating Space: The Story of the Space Age Told Through Models (Burlington, Ontario: Collector’s Guide Publishing, Inc., 2002), pp. 185, 216, 229.
Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945–1990 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 196–216; Jeffrey T. Richelson, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 279–282; and “United States of America v. William Henry Whalen,” copy of indictment, in author’s possession, courtesy of Linda Hunt.
Steven T. Usdin, Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. xi–xiii. Barr left the United States with his lover, a neighbor’s wife. In a 1992 television interview, Carol Dorothy recalled how their Soviet handler described the technological project on which Barr would be engaged upon their defection. “He said, ‘One of the most frustrating things about the war was that when we shot at a plane, it had moved, and that we didn’t know how to shoot so that we could hit the plane,’ and so they very seldom hit them. He said, ‘If you could invent something that will hit the plane, that would be what we need.’” See transcript of ABC News Nightline (Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.) June 15, 1992, p. 3.
Orr Kelly, “Bay Defense Posts to Get Killer Rockets,” Sun Francisco Chronicle, January 24, 1959.
Reva Cullen, “Nike Bases for Denver Called Nearly Certain,” Denver Post, September 11, 1958, pp. 1, 35.
John C. Lonnquest, To Defend and Deter: The Legacy of the United States Cold War Missile Program (Rock Island, Illinois: Defense Publishing Service, 1996), p. 99.
Elinor Lee, “Cookies Their Target,” Washington Post, December 10, 1959, p. C4, and Elinor Lee, “Cookies Needed for Servicemen,” Washington Post, December 6, 1959, p F14; “Office of the Mayor,” proclamation dated April 12, 1960, in Folder “NIKE Site—Arlington Hts., Illinois,” call no. AAA D96.38.1, ADA Museum.
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© 2010 Christopher J. Bright
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Bright, C.J. (2010). Nike-Hercules. In: Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230112926_6
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