Nike Missile Site

During the 1950’s, in the Cold War era, Nike missiles were stationed at Sandy Hook to defend the New York-Philadelphia corridor against long-range bombers. Missiles emerged from silos beneath the pavement and waited on launching racks while radar tracked the skies. The peninsula provided an isolated location for newly developed forms of radar, and like other batteries in the area these weapons were mounted as a deterrent rather than as an aggressor. Guiding Missiles Radar gave these surface-to-air missiles deadly accuracy: long-range search radar emitted radio waves that bounced off an unidentified aircraft and returned flight-path information to a control computer, which activated tracking radar to lock on the target; if the target was confirmed to be an enemy, the control computer launched the missile and guided it with a command radio. The missile base closed in 1974, and missile defenses for this area are now hidden in the Midwest.

New Jersey · United States