American missiles that were to be used during the Cold War are lying underneath a residential area, and US authorities don’t seem to realize the seriousness of the issue
WHEN the wind howled, the front doors banged to and fro, sending the jagged glass crackling and cringing ghoulishly. The windows, paneless and peripatetic after being abandoned to the elements, some three decades ago, hung on to their hinges, refusing to let go. Walking past, as the sun weakened, the shadows would stand sentinel, sending haunting chills to anyone daring to cross their threshold. It was weird.
When snow arrived, the cottages, 32 in all, made a pretty picture with the firs and evergreens dotting the landscape. The snow’s crystals had no footprints marring their virgin beauty. The main street running through the ghost community never got cleared, as layers of snow thickened the pile throughout the long winters.
It was spring that would embolden a peek inside the derelict homes. The new-born leaves and dusty rose wild flowers could fool anyone into believing that there was life here and families still inhabited these homes, bright and beautiful with shafts of sunlight dancing in the corners. Even the wide-open front doors with their craggy glass panes put on a mirage, prompting the person to enter and roam free forever.
Time stood still for me. I would walk and choose at will the home that caught my fancy. Once inside, I would see faces of the people who once lived here — happy families. Some walls had homely decorations from the sixties still hanging, while the kitchens looked as if someone had just been there — cutlery and crockery piled in the draining tray. The odd toy lay scattered. Those were the days when housewives liked sharp pink, ice blue and sunny yellow walls, all under one roof.
I would hear voices of children playing basketball in the open field nearby — the rusted pole with the net stood firm and intact covered only with creeping wild vines that had tiny purple hearts, as did a fence and a shed where kids must have waited for the school bus to arrive.
But it was the grassy raised mound, now home to harmless weeds, that titillated my curiosity most. I knew it had to be the launching site for the missiles ...
Then one fine day, I saw the huge cranes with sharp long teeth bite ferociously into the roofs and walls, sending everything that came their way, crunching into a sorry heap. By evening, operation demolition was over and the last of the Cold War era levelled to the ground. Fifty years ago, Nike Base was born in sleepy suburbia of East Hanover, New Jersey. The year was 1954 and the Americans wanted New York protected from Soviet air invasion. So the US Army built a semi-circle around the city, constructing bases and fortified them with supersonic, surface-to-air missiles that had nuclear warheads. Guided by radar, these missiles were designed to intercept and destroy incoming Soviet air squadrons bound for New York.
Nearly two dozen such missile sites within the adjacent states of New York and New Jersey, located approximately 25 miles from the geographic centre of the New York metropolitan area came up to form a defensive “ring” which would encircle the city.
They were all named after Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.
In 1955, the East Hanover Nike Base was completed. According to Donald E. Bender, the founder of the New Jersey Nike Missile Site Survey: “It had underground bunkers, a diesel generator building for emergency electrical supply; a missile test building; a missile fuelling area and missile assembly building, at the launcher area, both surrounded by high, earthen berms to deflect the force of a blast in the event of an accident; internal roadways; a basketball court; sentry posts; and a special railroad siding.”
At the heart of the base was the launcher area (that very same raised mound that fed my fancy for years) with 20 ‘Ajax’ and 12 ‘Hercules’ nuclear missiles stored horizontally with ‘magazines’ connected to a blast-resistant underground control room designed to shoot down Soviet bombers.
Says Bender, “the entire facility was surrounded by tall steel cyclone type fences topped with barbed wire. Armed sentries patrolled the site day and night, and warning signs indicated that taking pictures or making drawings of the site was not allowed. Security dogs patrolled the area during the hours of darkness.”
But old-time residents remember seeing these missiles when they drove by.
Directly adjacent to the fenced area were the 32 houses where the families of the army lived. The homes were allowed a life for another 30 years, once the base was discontinued in 1974 and the officers told to leave. The Cold War was over. Imagine it took the US Army three full decades to dismantle the homes and sell the land back to the township of East Hanover for $1 to make way for an adult community of baby boomer generation who will soon move here.
You must be wondering what became of the actual base and the nuke heads! Today, sitting on the nuclear missile silos are rows and rows of condominiums, inhabited by people who may not know the real story. I happen to be one of them, and whenever I walked around those forlorn cottages, not only did I feel alone, but also the fear that the place could still be radioactive.
“Once upon a time, in a day when death and destruction might rain down from the heavens at any time, these bases allowed New Jersey bedroom communities to sleep a little easier at night,” says Col Joseph Evangelist (retd), once the base commander.
That may have been so then, but what about now? How does one sleep easy knowing that under the sealed concrete slabs are still standing upright those highly explosive warheads ready to go?
The old colonel’s straight speak to The Weird NJ Inc, an online publication about New Jersey’s history under wraps comes not as cold comfort to one who has nuclear nightmares sleeping atop the silos.
What became of the underground bunkers where the missile were stored?
“Well, measures were taken to ensure that they wouldn’t cave in, then the openings were welded shut. The walls of those pits were eight to 10ft thick, so I suppose that they’re still down there ... You have to remember, the Hercules missiles had a nuclear capability ... they weren’t designed to just take out one aircraft. If you used a nuclear warhead it would be because there was more then one there and you had one missile to take out a fleet. They were underground in the pits, and they had like eight to 10ft thick walls.”
But these missiles didn’t really have nuclear warheads, did they?
“I can’t say anything on that.”
It’s nukes, stupid! The Americans would have exploded their atomic warheads over Manhattan had the Soviets attacked ... imagine the spread of radiation over North America. But the nukes were never fired, instead they stand till today buried under homes that we live in, ready to be deployed.
Here’s a paradox: America was overzealous in protecting Manhattan from aerial attack since 1954, but let down its defence when the USSR disintegrated. There was no nuclear threat anymore. New York was safe.
But fate had other plans. America never imagined in its wildest dreams that 19 hijackers would one day convert commercial airliners into missiles and ram them into the strongest towers of all.
American missiles that were to be used during the Cold War are lying underneath a residential area, and US authorities don’t seem to realize the seriousness of the issue 
