Nuclear Missiles

SF-88 is a former Nike Missile launch site at Fort Barry, in the Marin Headlands to the north of San Francisco. Opened in 1954, the site was intended to protect the Bay area from attack by Soviet bomber aircraft.

 The antenna picked up the enemy aircraft and the information was sent to the small huts behind, known as the IFC (Intergrated Fire Control)

 This equipment acquired and tracked the range, azimuth (direction), and elevation of targets

 The site was originally armed with Nike Ajax missiles, and modifications were made to the site in 1958 to allow it to also be armed with Nike Hercules missiles.

 In 1974, SF-88 was closed but was not demolished.

 In the second hut, the soldiers guided missiles to targets, and commanded the burst of the missiles.

The operators needed to line up the target, known as "in the grass" because of the green colour, and then the computor took over. The nuclear missile was designed to explode just before hitting the aircraft, and create a cloud of shrapnel that would destroy the bomber aircraft.

 The nuclear devices on the missiles were twice as powerful as the bombs that were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WW2.

 During the Cold War, there was alway one missile "at the ready".

 The other missiles were stored underground in this bunker.

 We watched the missile being lowered into the bunker.

 The hydraulic door worked fast.

It took about 9 minutes to reload with a new missile, so there were lots of these sites in the Marin County, so the Bay Area wasn't vulnerable to bombing attack.

 The expected flight path of the enemy bombers was North East. If the nuclear missiles had to be used, they would have exploded over the city of Sacramento. Somehow, I don't think the residents knew that.

 The launch door from bottom view, and top view.

Now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and is open to visitors. Normal visiting days are Saturdays 12:30 - 3:30 PM. A special tour with Nike veterans occurs on the first Saturday of each month. The urchins especially enjoyed talking to Don, an operator in the IFC, and how all the equipment worked, and his experiences of his time there, as a 19 year old. Yep, 19 year olds were in charge of firing nuclear weapons.