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NIKE Missile Site in Nebraska


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Building on the Atlas sites, here is a NIKE site. This site is located about 20 miles SW of Lincoln. I grew up in Crete, so drove by this site for years. The Admin. building and barracks are located on the North side of Highway 33. The buildings have been apartments / housing since at least 1985. The base for the radar is still there (lower right side of the photo).

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I live in Missouri in the KC area. MO had 100's of minute men missile silo's all over the state. the movie the day after (1983) was based on a nuke attack of kansas City and televised nationally

 

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I love Nike sites. in the height of the cold war I went to an elementary school about 200 yards from one. Now its all gone and replaced by an old folks home. Sigh. But I have memories of a tour in which I got to see the missile rise up out of the ground!

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Charlie Flick

Neat. I remember as a kid growing up in South Florida that the Cuban Missile Crisis was a really big deal. We were having nuclear attack drills every day. ("Duck and cover." Not much good against a 50 megaton device.) Due to our proximity to Cuba we had mobile Hawk batteries and Nike missile batteries scattered about.

 

One of the Nike sites is now part of the Everglades National Park. Abandoned for many years the Park Service is slowly moving to give the site some care. See the link: www.nps.gov/ever/historyculture/hm69.htm

 

Regards,

Charlie

 

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Yep there is a lot of history laying around the country. I enjoy all the old military sites. We have a hotel on Galvestion built on an old coastal battery that when you look close and know what you are looking for can be seen.

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  • 6 months later...

"I was stationed at the Crete missile base 1963 to 1966 as a radar tech. I look back on my service and remember the Crete base as a good assignment. I really liked working on the AN/FPS-75 ABAR radar. We could pick up targets out to 200 miles. For readiness drills we would "lock on" commercial aircraft."

 

That reminds me of a little incident I remember from Germany in the 1980's. The 32nd AADCOM was still running NIKE sites over there, along with some HAWK sites.

 

One afternoon some of the local USAF F-16's thought they would have some fun by taking bombing and strafing runs on one of the hilltop NIKE radar sites. They were buzzing the site incessantly, much to the displeasure of those below. Finally they had enough and painted the intrusive birds with their target acquisition radar. Apparently this rattled the F-16 pilots enough that they actually called in on an emergency radio channel to identify themselves as friendly. The guys on the site could plainly see who the were, but had the last laugh that day as they watched the F-16's break and head for their home location.

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