Whiting, Robertsdale and the Cold War, Part 1

Ballistic missiles in our back yards

Jerry Banik, March 2024

They’re long gone now, but how did we come to have a U.S. Army ballistic missile launching station on the shore of Wolf Lake, another one in Munster, and two more in Gary?

Only a handful of years after World War II had ended in 1945, our fragile wartime alliance with the Soviet Union had fallen apart.  The Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb.  They blockaded West Berlin.  We and our European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to resist Soviet expansion.  North Korea, backed by the Soviets, invaded South Korea, whom the U.S. supported.

The Cold War was on. The U.S. urgently built up our defenses here at home, and the Army, Navy and Air Force battled over who should have control over what.  The Navy had a brand new, missile launching submarine and a program they called Bumblebee, with its Talos missile (which was manufactured in Mishawaka, Indiana).  The Air Force had a ”pilotless bomber” called the XF-98 Falcon, with the Snark and the Rascal under development.  The Army had its own, new Ajax missile.  President Eisenhower eventually stepped in to settle the fray.

The Army came out the big winner.  Since 1945, with their partners Bell Laboratories and Western Electric, they had been developing a missile defense system to protect major U.S. cities and industrial centers from feared attacks by high flying, Soviet bombers.  What emerged some five years later was the world's first, guided, surface-to-air ballistic missile program, dubbed “Nike.” The program became front page news, locally and all across America.

Nike installations across the country were positioned in areas that were considered to be strategically important.  Because the Calumet Region was the most heavily industrialized area in America, it was vital to U.S. national defense production.  Whiting and Robertsdale, being adjacent to Chicago’s dense population and surrounded by refineries and steel mills, became part of the Nike project’s “Chicago-Gary Defense Area,” a system of twenty missile installations that stretched from the Indiana Dunes at Porter, Indiana to Chicago’s northern suburbs. 

In all, the Army created more than 250 Nike sites in 29 states across the country, and dozens of others in allied countries around the world.

The design plan for each Nike base called for 96 acres of land, in two separate parcels, one for its Missile Launch Area and a second one for its Integrated Fire Control operations.  The launch areas were for missile storage, launch equipment and the buildings needed for maintenance and testing.  The fire control areas contained radar and computer equipment for targeting and tracking.  They could contain administration buildings, mess halls, barracks, and recreation facilities for the soldiers who would man them.

The U.S. had successfully test launched Ajax, the first of three versions of Nike missiles, in 1951. Ajax was designed to defend against conventional aircraft. The Army built our nearest Nike Ajax station due west of Robertsdale’s Water Gardens, at the state line. On the north shore of the Illinois side of Wolf Lake, they created a site by filling roughly a hundred acres of wetlands adjacent to Eggers Woods with landfill, mostly slag.  This would become the site’s launch area.  At the south end of Wolf Lake, they built up a separate parcel for the fire control area.

They designated the installation, “Site C-44, Hegewisch/Wolf Lake”, and, in 1955, stocked with the Army’s new Ajax missiles, it was ready to go.

Thankfully, no missiles ever had to be fired from Site C-44.

With two-stages and computer guidance, the Ajax was lifted off of its launcher by a solid fuel rocket booster, and then powered by jet fuel once the booster dropped off.  It had three, high explosive warheads in its nose, and could reach targets at altitudes of up to 70,000 feet.  Its range, however, was only about 25 miles, which critics felt was too short to do the job it was meant to do.  Still, it was considerably more effective than conventional anti-aircraft artillery, and so began to be deployed in 1953.

Because raising the missiles from their magazines and preparing them for launch was expected to be accomplished in less than five minutes, some of the personnel had to be kept on high alert in case of sudden threats, while others were kept on lower readiness, to work on maintenance and other tasks.  Some 100 soldier specialists were stationed at each site.  Some of them were fed and housed on site, others in off-site arrangements.

In 1957, the Army added a second nearby installation (Site C-46) overlapping the Indiana/Illinois state line where Munster adjoins the Lansing airport, and they built two more in Gary, one at the Gary Airport (Site C-45) and another near the intersection of Grant Street and 35th Avenue (Site C-48).

Even before the Ajax was deployed, work had begun on a second generation “Nike B” missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and designed to defend against supersonic jet aircraft.  Later to be named Hercules, it was able to reach 150,000 feet, with a range of 75 miles.  

Unlike the Wolf Lake site, which throughout its existence utilized only Ajax missiles, Munster site C-46 got upgraded in 1958 to deploy the Hercules.  A young Robertsdale resident and former Clark High School student, Army Corporal Bernie Bernacki served at the Munster site as a missile specialist in the unit’s integrated fire control facility.  Site C-46 was equipped with barracks, but unlike some of the soldier specialists there, Corporal Bernacki tells us he was able to live at his home in Robertsdale and commute back and forth to Munster each day.

In the 1960s, a third version of the Nike missile, “Zeus,” was rolled out.  The Zeus was designed to intercept not only aircraft, but also intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Tactically, the Nike program became obsolete only a few years after it got started.  The Ajax and Hercules missiles were no match for newly developed, enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles that flew at supersonic speeds.  In the 1960s, the Army began deactivating those Nike installations, like Hegewisch/Wolf Lake, that were armed with only Ajax missiles.  Sites with Hercules missiles soon followed.  Not long after the third Nike variant, Zeus, with its supersonic speed and nuclear warhead, was deployed, it, too, was cancelled, and replaced by “Nike-X,” which was also soon cancelled.  Almost all of the Nike sites in the U.S. were closed by the end of 1974, and the few that were left were decommissioned by 1979.

In 1960, the Nike sites in Gary were both taken out of service.  The Hegewisch/Wolf Lake installation was deactivated in 1963.  Its buildings were later demolished, but some of their foundations still remain.  A monument to the installation stands there today, roughly mid-way between what had been the fire control area and the launch area, in what is now the William W. Powers Illinois State Recreation Area. The Munster site, with its Hercules missiles, was closed in 1974.

A 1954 editorial in the Detroit Free Press included these words:

“Our wish is that someday our grandchildren with be showing their grandchildren one of our Nike sites.  By then it will be suitably mossy and perhaps have a commemorative bronze tablet, and that they will be finding it completely impossible to make the youngsters comprehend a time when such things were necessary for people who wished to sleep soundly of nights.”

Coming soon, in part two of our Cold War story, we’ll look at how life here was different in those days, living in the shadows of nuclear missiles, in fear of Russian attacks, listening to our radios for emergency broadcast messages from the government, and hoping not to hear them.