Watch World War III on pay TV
Before your television melts away
- The Crown City Four,
Watch World War III on Pay TV, 1960
This is the final part in a series about M-74, the Nike nuclear missile site in Waukesha. [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
While there are remnants of the former M-74 Nike missile site at Hillcrest Park, there seems to be little at Missile Park except a meadow. The former launch pads are either gone or covered by weeds. It would take more digging (metaphorically and perhaps literally) to determine the fate of the underground silos.
Plans to close M-74 were announced in May 1969. [1] The closure came in June 1971, putting 98 technicians out of work. As they were national guardsmen, not regular army, employment prospects were dismal given the highly specialized nature of the training they had received. [2]
In 1972, the US government announced that it had no use for the former missile site, declaring it government surplus. It offered it to the county and city. The city considered the site for a local park, an underground water reservoir and future high school expansion. [3][4][5] After a successful proposal to the General Services Administration, the site – valued at $350,000 – was gifted to the city in October 1972 by a Nixon administration official. Picketers at the official ceremony complained the act was election-year pandering. [6]
Plans for the park evolved over time. In June 1973, a master plan developed by three Waukesha High School students was accepted by the city’s Park-recreation Board. The plan included converting the mess hall into a picnic shelter and developing skiing, snowmobiling and hiking facilities. [7] A five-million gallon underground reservoir was later built.
A short time later, a local gun club requested that they be allowed to rent the missile storage silos in Missile Park for an underground shooting range, offering $1 per year for fifty years. [8] This proposal does not seem to have been successful. The park names – Hillcrest Park and Missile Park – were bestowed in November 1974 by the Waukesha Parks-recreation board. [9]
By the mid-70s, all of the nation’s Nike sites had been decommissioned, although the US continued to supply Nike missiles to its allies. The Waukesha site is one of only a handful of former Nike sites that retain some of their original structures. Most have been obliterated.
One question that does linger, however, is whether the Waukesha site (and others in the Milwaukee area) housed nuclear-tipped Nike Hercules missiles, versus conventional explosive warheads. A few years before the base closures, in 1969, Lieutenant General A. D. Starbird testified to the US House Appropriations Committee that all US Nike Hercules sites were operational for nuclear weapons. Asked which Nike sites actually possessed nuclear weapons, he gave an answer that was censored out of the reports released to the press. But his comment about timing remained: “The army commenced phasing Nike-Hercules missiles with nuclear warheads into the urban air defense of the CONUS (Continental United Sates) in 1958 and completed installation in 1961.” [10]
The commanding officer of the Waukesha M-74 site, Captain Jimmie D. Nienas, would neither confirm nor deny the existence of nuclear missiles. [10]
For Chris Sturdevant, Midwest chapter chairman of the Cold War Museum, there’s no question that M-74’s Nike Hercules missiles were nuclear-tipped. Interviewed for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2017, he said the reason for introducing nuclear missiles was because they could take out several bombers at once. “The fact that we had nuclear weapons here in southeast Wisconsin is amazing,” he is quoted as saying. [11]
The nuclear warhead on a Hercules missile had the same explosive power as the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, equivalent to 20 kilotons (20 thousand tons) of TNT. The warhead itself weighed only 1,100 pounds.
Sturdevant explained that, given Soviet bombers arriving from the north – the shortest route from the USSR to the US – the Nike missiles would have exploded over Oshkosh or Appleton. Even at 30,000 feet, the exploding nuclear missile (and the aircraft’s nuclear bombs) would have caused massive destruction, including radioactive fallout extending for miles over Wisconsin. It’s important to note that nuclear bombs were designed to explode in the air above the target, not on the ground, as this maximizes the destructive force of the weapon.
Fortunately, with the exception of training exercises, no Nike missile was ever fired from a US base.
Sources:
[1] Say Nike Site Here to Close, Waukesha Freeman, May 13, 1969 (p. 3)
[2] Army Phases out Jobs, Waukesha Freeman, March 27, 1971 (p. 13)
[3] County, City Will Request Abandoned Nike Site: Federal Agencies Don’t Want Parcel, Waukesha Freeman, May 22, 1972 (p. 1)
[4] City May Get Unused Nike Site School, Park or Reservoir May Be Put There, Waukesha Freeman, Aug 26, 1972 (p. 3)
[5] City Will Get Nike Site for Parks, Reservoir, Waukesha Freeman, Oct 18, 1972 (p. 16)
[6] Politicians, Pickets Split on Park Pomp, Waukesha Freeman, Oct 31, 1972 (p. 1)
[7] Student Plans for Nike Site Are Accepted, Waukesha Freeman, June 13, 1973 (p. 1)
[8] Gun Clun Wants to Rent Missile Silo, Waukesha Freeman, Feb 12, 1974 (p. 3)
[9] Former Nike Sites, Now Parks, Named, Waukesha Freeman, Nov 12, 1974 (p. 4)
[10] Testimony Admits Possibility: Are Nuclear Warhead Near City? Waukesha Freeman, Feb 12, 1969 (p. 1)