Nike Site B63

USA / Massachusetts / Dover /
 military, Cold War 1947-1991, nikemissile, missile launch facility
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The ruins of a Nike antiaircraft missile battery can be found off of Charles River Rd. and Pine St. in Needham just over the Natick town line. (Called Dover Rd. on the South Natick side.) The Nation's Nike sites operated for several years until they were decommissioned as required by the SALT I treaty with the former Soviet Union.

Site B-63 in particular was closed after the deployment of longer-ranged Nike Hercules missiles began in the area. B 63 itself replaced the last of the big guns, the Stratosphere gun which had a range of up to 60,000 ft. and a muzzle velocity of 3000 feet per second; and its smaller predecessor, the Skysweeper AA gun. The more powerful Nike Hercules missiles which replaced the Nike Ajax at Needham had enough range to allow a reduction in the number of sites without losing effectiveness. The Nike Battalion HQ was on Speen St. in Natick.

Like many other NIKE sites, B-63 is about to dissappear due to local development.
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   42°16'24"N   71°16'21"W

Comments

  • Nike Ajax/Hercules missile systems were used by the US Army from 1952 to 1979. All CONUS sites had been shut down by 1974. The SALT agreements did not affect these systems because Nike was not a strategic system and it did not have anti-ballistic missile capability. What killed the Nike system was advancing technology, Russian substitution of manned bombers for ICBM/SLBM systems, and the huge financial cost of maintaining and manning such a large system. Site B-63L had 3 magazines with 30 Ajax missiles and 12 launchers. It was active from 1955 to 1963. It was not converted to Hercules.
  • As a cub scout in about 1958 our den mother took us to the Nike site atop North Hill. I remember someone telling us to stand behind the yellow lines at which point two steel doors opened and they raised one of the Apache missles for us. I was impressed, I guess. That, and meeting the Lone Ranger at Shopper's World, hehe.
  • The north Hill was actually where the radar control was. Off Pine Street was where the actual missiles were. In the early 70" we mini biked the heck outa that place.
  • were the missiles there actually nuclear tipped ?
  • (to Chuck:) No. The Ajax missile (MIM-3) carried only high-explosive warheads. As mentioned in the top comment, the B-63L site was Ajax only.
  • No, they were designed to supposedly shoot down incomming missles but weren't nuclear.
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This article was last modified 13 years ago