Guided Missile System
Mission Responsibility), 30 Apr 60
Development of Antiaircraft Capability, 1917-1958
Ed’s conversion notes:
Freedom of Information Act Officer Ms Vickie Weatherman US Army Aviation and Missile Command AMSAM-CIC Redstone Arsenal, AL 35898 256-876-5763 fax 256-876-2057
We do not retain security classification on the M-1 Garand rifle, still an effective weapon - but like the NIKE System - distributed world wide for all to see.
Project Number: AMC 75 M
HISTORY OF THE
NIKE HERCULES
WEAPON SYSTEM
U.S. ARMY MISSILE COMMAND
Redstone Arsenal, Alabama
MARY T. CAGLE
Issued by: Helen Brents Joiner
Chief, Historical Division
Army Missile Command
19 April 1973
Historical Monograph
Project Number: AMC 75 M
During the final stages of World War II, a critical need emerged for the development of a radically new air defense system to counter the threat posed by advances in offensive aircraft technology. In February 1945, following a 12-month exploratory study of a surface-to-air guided missile system, the Ordnance Department awarded the Western Electric Company a contract for further research studies and development work leading to an antiaircraft guided missile system that would be capable of engaging high-speed, high-altitude, maneuverable bombers far beyond the effective range of conventional artillery. Code named project NIKE for the Greek goddess of victory, this work paved the way for development of the renowned family of NIKE weapon systems which have served as the free world's primary air defense for nearly 20 years.
The NIKE AJAX weapon system, which became operational in 1953, was the first land-based air defense guided missile system to be tactically deployed in the United States and other allied countries. The transition from antiaircraft artillery guns to guided missiles began with deployment of the first combat-ready NIKE AJAX battalion in March 1954 and was essentially complete by mid-1958. The NIKE AJAX served the purpose for which designed; however, even before its deployment, feasibility studies were in progress on an improved air defense system to cope with the rapid advancements in aircraft altitudes, speeds, and nuclear payload capabilities. From these studies evolved the second-generation NIKE HERCULES air defense system, which began replacing the NIKE AJAX in June 1958. The NIKE AJAX system was phased out of U. S. Army units in 1964, after a full decade of active air defense service. The NIKE HERCULES system, with updated ground guidance equipment to counter the changing air threat, completed its 14th year as an operational air defense weapon in June 1972.
A historical monograph on the NIKE AJAX guided missile system was published on 30 June 1959. The present volume traces the evolution of the NIKE HERCULES weapon system from its inception in FY 1953 through FY 1972, and deals with significant NIKE AJAX developments not previously recorded.
19 April 1973, Mary T. Cagle
(U) ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF ARMY AIR DEFENSE ROLES AND WEAPONS
The Advent of Aerial Warfare
Throughout the countless centuries of warfare the development of weapons has been characterized by an eternal duel between the offensive and the defensive, the latter historically following the former. With the introduction of each new offensive weapon affecting the strategy of warfare, these invariably follows a parallel defensive weapon to counter the potential threat to a nation's security. A historical yet contemporary example of such changes in military tactics and equipment took shape in 1914, when the airplane emerged as a powerful weapon against the Allied powers in France. On 30 August 1914, just 27 days after the war began, a single German plane bombed Paris. German air raids on London followed as early as October, and there were frequent attacks on Allied troops and supply lines in France.
Although the first military use of the airplane had occured
during the Tripolian War in 1911, the development of antiaircraft
artillery did not begin until after the first bombing attacks
of World War I. The United States developed and produced some
artillery pieces and small arms, but the air defense weapons used
by the American Expeditionary Forces were acquired in large part
from France and Great Britain. On 10 October 1917, some 6 months
after the United States entered the war, the first U. S. Army
antiaircraft units began training at Langres, France, and the
first tactical batteries moved to the front in April 1918. At the
end of World War I, there were about 12,000 men with antiaircraft
artillery forces. American units, in action less than a year,
destroyed a total of 58 enemy warplanes.l
In the years between the two world wars, antiaircraft artillery
grew up as a part of the Coast Artillery Corps, at that time a separate
branch of the Army. The War Department had assigned the new antiaircraft
mission to the coast artillery rather than the field artillery largely
because the coast artillerymen had training in firing on moving objects.
Although handicapped by meager appropriations for research and development,
Army arsenals and laboratories managed to devise some new items of equipment
and to improve old ones. But very little new equipment was forthcoming for
the ground combat units until after Army appropriations began to rise in 1936.
The successes of Germany's Luftwaffe in the invasions of 1939 and 1940 spurred
the rapid expansion of U. S. antiaircraft artillery.
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| Development of Antiaircraft Capability - 1917-1958 |
It was not until 25 years after the formation of the first units that a separate organization for antiaircraft artillery was established in the United States. On 9 March 1942, 3 months after Pearl Harbor, the Antiaircraft Command (AAC) was organized as an element of the Army Ground Forces. The growth of antiaircraft artillery forces surpassed all other arms of the Army during the war. By the end of 1943, the peak year, there were 431,000 men in more than 550 battalions, for an increase of about 1,750 percent over the pre-war strength.2
Although some antiaircraft rockets were developed during World War II, the U. S. Army continued to rely almost entirely on conventional artillery guns as its first line of defense against aerial attack. These antiaircraft weapons ranged from the .50 caliber machine gun and 37- and 40-mm. guns for protection against low-flying, strafing-type planes, to 120-mm. guns for the defense of large areas against bombers. For defense against aircraft at considerable altitudes, the Army's mainstay was the towed 90-mm. gun with a maximum vertical range of 12,000 to 13,000 yards.
A new threat, the German 650-mile-per-hour (mph) jetpropelled airplane,
appeared before the end of the war, bringing to obsolescence the antiaircraft
artillery fire control systems that had been designed to cope with 450-mph
propeller-driven aircraft. This development, together with the advent of the
guided missile and the atomic bomb in the closing days of the war, marked the
beginning of a new era in the Army's air defense mission.3
Soon after the war, it became apparent that antiaircraft targets of the near
future would include greatly improved missiles of the V1 and V2 types and partially
armored airplanes flying at various speeds up to and including the supersonic and
at heights from near the ground to extremely high altitudes. Mindful of these
conditions, plus the added threat of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic
missiles, the War Department Equipment Board, in May 1946, advocated the development
of improved air defense equipment that would be capable of detecting, destroying,
or nullifying the effectiveness of all forms of aerial vehicles.
Realizing that a flexible, long-range research program would be necessary
to generate new knowledge and achieve the actual design of new equipment,
the board recommended that two parallel courses be pursued: the vigorous research and
development of new or anticipated types of equipment, and continued improvement of
existing equipment as an interim measure. The proposed solutions to the antiaircraft
problem embraced the development of conventional artillery weapons having the greatest
obtainable effectiveness, improved fire direction and fire control equipment, and
guided missiles capable of intercepting and destroying high-speed, high-altitude aircraft
and missiles of the V1 and V2 types.
The Bell Telephone Laboratories had begun, for the Army, exploratory studies of a
surface-to-air guided missile system as early as February 1944. A year later,
following the introduction into combat of the German jet-propelled airplane,
the Ordnance Department awarded the Western Electric Company a contract for the
Bell Telephone Laboratories to perform further studies and development work leading
to a new air defense system that would be capable of engaging high-speed, high-altitude,
maneuverable bombers far beyond the range of conventional artillery. The Douglas
Aircraft Company accepted a subcontract for design studies of the missile and launching
equipment. Code named Project NIKE for the Greek goddess of victory, this work culminated
in the establishment of a formal research and development program for an antiaircraft
guided missile system later to be known as the NIKE AJAX.
While work on the NIKE was in progress, the Ordnance Department focused its
attention on the modernization of existing antiaircraft guns to counter the prevailing
aerial threat. The 90-mm. (medium) and 120-mm. (heavy) antiaircraft guns of World War II
were modernized by addition of the new M33 radar-directed fire control system.
The only light-intermediate conventional weapon developed after World War II was the
M51 SKYSWEEPER, a towed 75-mm. radar-directed antiaircraft gun. Placed in development
in 1948, the SKYSWEEPER was designed to defeat 1.000-mph aircraft flying at altitudes
up to 20,000 feet. The improved 90-mm. gun covered the region up to 35,000 feet,
and the 120-mm. gun altitudes between 10,000 and 80,000 feet.6
As international tensions mounted in 1948, there was a new buildup of
antiaircraft artillery forces. In the fall of 1949, antiaircraft artillery
battalions were moved to training centers near cities they were ultimately to defend.
Several months later they were deployed at their defense sites, and became the first
units to establish Army antiaircraft as an integral part of the
continental air defense team.7
The announcement by President Truman in September 1949 that the Soviet Union had exploded
an atomic bomb (several years ahead of prediction), the outbreak of the Korean War in
June 1950, and the knowledge that most of the United States was in range of Russian bombers,
created an urgency seldom experienced except during all-out war. Faced with the
possibility that the Korean conflict might expand into a global war, the Army
accelerated preparations for assuming its full share of responsibility for continental
air defense.
On 1 July 1950, all artillery units having continental air defense missions
were placed under the newly organized Army Antiaircraft Command (ARAACOM), with
headquarters at Ent Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado.8
At the same time, action was taken to speed the availability of tactical antiaircraft guided
missiles to counter the new air threat. After a review of all guided missile projects,
Mr. K. T. Keller, the Director of Guided Missiles, Office of the Secretary of Defense,
concluded that the NIKE program was the most advanced in the development stage and offered
the best defensive capabilities and growth potential. He therefore recommended that the
NIKE research and development (R&D) and production processes be overlapped in order to get
the missile system out of development and into the tactical weapon stage at the earliest
practicable date. Approval of the Keller recommendations came in January 1951, and
the Chief of Ordnance placed the NIKE program on a crash basis later the same year.
In a positive effort to expedite delivery of the NIKE I* missile system,
the Chief of Ordnance selected the Western Electric Company (WECo) as the prime contractor
with full responsibility for the design, development, production, and delivery of
the complete tactical weapon system within the limits prescribed by the military
characteristics and technical requirements. WECo retained the Bell Telephone Laboratories
(BTL) as its prime development subcontractor and the Douglas Aircraft Company (DAC) as
subcontractor for the missile and launching equipment. Contractor evaluation tests of
the tactical prototype NIKE AJAX system began in January 1953 and continued through
12 May 1953. The first prototype model of battery equipment was turned over to the
Ordnance Corps at White Sands Proving Ground on 15 May 1953. Service evaluation tests
by tactical Army troops began on 28 October 1953, several months after the
Korean War ended.9
During the years immediately following the Korean War, the "ack-ack" of conventional
antiaircraft artillery guns gradually gave way to the "ack-track-smack" of the NIKE AJAX,
the first landbased air defense guided missile system to be tactically deployed in the
United States and allied countries. The conversion from guns to guided missile artillery
began on 20 March 1954, when the first combat-ready NIKE AJAX battalion was tactically
deployed at Fort Meade, Maryland, in the Washington-Baltimore Defense Area. Although
conventional antiaircraft gun units continued to play important roles in augmenting the
protection provided by NIKE ATAX battalions, they had already been outnumbered by the
NIKE as early as December 1956. By mid-1958, the conversion to missile artillery was
essentially complete, with only two gun units (both armed with the 75-mm. SKYSWEEPER)
left in the U. S. air defense network.l0
NIKE AJAX batteries were installed around strategic sites in the Continental
United Stares (CONUS) and overseas. Each battery was an integrated air defense
guided missile unit that, with its command guidance system, could engage one
aircraft at a time while maintaining continuous surveillance of all targets
within the effective range of the system. Its primary mission was the destruction
of long-range bombers having speeds of up to 1,100 mph. The maximum practicable
range was 45,700 meters against aircraft at altitudes of up to 60,000 feet, but
targets could be identified as far away as 128,000 meters, and a missile could
be launched when its target was 75,000 meters from the battery.
The NIKE AJAX had a command-type guidance system with an acquisition radar
on the ground that detected targets and furnished initial data on their positions
to a target tracking radar, also on the ground. The latter radar obtained accurate
information on the path of the target and transmitted it to the control computer,
while at the same time a ground-based missile tracking radar furnished the computer
with data on the position of the missile. The computer generated guidance-command
signals, which were transmitted to the missile-borne guidance and control system by
way of the transmitter of the missile tracking radar. The AJAX missile was first
propelled by a booster motor that burned a cast, doublebase solid propellant.
The booster was jettisoned after burnout, and flight was sustained by a liquid
propellant motor with jet engine fuel and red-fuming nitric acid for the oxidizer.
The missile carried a conventional high-explosive warhead.ll
The advent of the world's first land-based antiaircraft guided missile system,
coupled with the growing threat of atomic attack by manned enemy bombers, brought
significant changes in both the continental air defense structure and the Army's
antiair missions and organization, The first came on 1 September 1954, when the
Army Antiaircraft Command and its sister elements in the Air Force and Navy were
combined into a single organization, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD),
directed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and located at Colorado Springs, Colorado.
End of Chapter 1
-------------------------
The NIKE AJAX fulfilled the mission for which it was designed and for several
years served as the free world's primary air defense. However, even before deployment
of the AJAX, if was realized that the weapon system possessed certain performance
limitations that would prevent it from engaging formations of the faster, higher-flying
jet aircraft. Though superior to conventional antiaircraft artillery against single
targets at supersonic speeds and high altitudes, the AJAX target tracking radar was
limited in the resolution of aircraft in formation and therefore ineffective against
mass air attack. This radar had a tendency to wander from plane to plane in the
attacking formation, with the result that the missile would pass between two targets
and burst where no damage would be done.17
In view of the performance limitations inherent in the NIKE AJAX guided missile
system and the rapid advancements in aircraft altitudes, speeds, and nuclear
payload capabilities, the Ordnance Corps, in 1952, had begun feasibility
studies of an improved air defense system that would be capable of countering
the new aerial threat. These studies culminated in the second-generation
Basic NIKE KERCULES system, which began replacing the NIKE AJAX in 1958;
the Improved HERCULES system, which became operational in 1961; and the
HERCULES Antitactical Ballistic Missile system, which became available in 1963.