Here are some photos from San Francisco Reunion 2013
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Saturday started with a meeting of your reunion committee with Jim Renkert Director of Friends of Nike Site Summit & Barbara Propes Deputy Chief off Staff for the Lieutenant Governor of Alaska. Here is our group waiting for the bus to take us to Site SF-88.
Waiting to ride out to SF-88 are left to right Richard Lennon Ed Thelen and James Earnest. Ed is the webmaster for "Ed's Nike Site" the site is the most complete collection of information on the Nike System and other air defense units / hardware deployed during the cold war and has a ton of other information what is unique here Ed has assembled names from a lot of the Nike units of vet's who have logged into his site and registered with him the link to it is below.
www.ed-thelen.org Check it out you will be amassed of the amount of information posted there.
Shot of the Golden Gate bridge as we are on our way. Site SF-88 is just past the end of the bridge seen in the center of the photo and then out to the end of the land mass there.
First order was our box lunch after we got off the bus. Then we toured on our own so we could spend time at what ever we were interested in seeing.
Shot of the vans BC van on the left and tracking van on the right. The vans are powered up to the point of console lights are on and the LOPAR radar is turning. which gives some sort of indication the system is actually running.
Your webmasters seat for 18 months served as the HIPAR Acquisition radar operator in the BC van.
Here is the missile assembly building. Out front to the right is a Nike Ajax missile and in the center of the photo the front guidance portion of a Nike Hercules missile.
Missile raised on the launcher watching the process is Jim Renkert from FONSS.
Shot of the launcher control console.
We are now down in the missile storage area notice the close-up insert of the red strip on the missile. Red denotes this missile would have carried a 40 Kiloton warhead. Little Boy which was dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 16 kilotons of TNT. The green strip on the missile in the main photo denotes a smaller yield warhead, no paint stripe would be a conventional high explosive warhead.
Another view on the missile storage area the red object on the missile nose is a "baro-probe" they were uses on all nuclear warheads .
This will give you a idea of the close quarters in the bunker area. Launcher guys had to be careful moving around as head clearance was also very close.
This is the second launching pit area which is used for storage of extra equipment. the large white tubes are missile shipping containers. Some of these have "new" missiles in them (without warheads). The missiles cost at time of production was about $ 55,000 but a Nuclear warhead could cost upwards of $ 980,000.
More items in storage several boosters 2 acquisition antennas and launcher carriages. Interesting note on the carriages we were told as part of the Salt Treaty Russia sent over technicians to make these "non operational".
They even have 2 sets of doors for the missile elevator sections.
This is our tour group photo.
Quick shot of Alcatraz on our way back to the hotel.
Our Banquet room Standing in the rear of the photo right side of the projector screen is the nights MC Ezio Nurisio and his wife Judy. Judy was our contact person through all of the planning stages and did a great job keeping us informed on the event. Ezio is the Society Secretary. Also at the dinner we did a drawing for some door prizes a group of watercolor prints done by the Society President Al Kellogg were given away along with some item furnished by the " Alaska Nike Vets". Al's work may be viewed at the following web site www.almerx.com
Page 3 coming soon!!!