news for Sonoma, Marin & Napa Counties
“Official Newspaper of Infant Centurions�
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2>;3 F0A 6A0E4H0A3 For a little over a decade, the Marin Headlands stored enough nuclear firepower to decimate our portion of the world.
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Marin’s Nike missile site kept as a beloved relic of the Cold War era By Andrea Granahan
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loud buzzing, whirring noise alerted us that something was about to happen. The crowd of onlookers leaned against a f limsy metal barricade, and the horizontal metal panels in what had just a minute before looked like a parking lot parted, and up it rose—a nuclear missile. The crowd gasped. Parents clutched their kids. A louder noise erupted from the secret underground silo, and the 47-foot missile rose from its prone position to point up at the skies majestically. Called Hercules, the missile would have carried a 40 kiloton warhead in the bad old days—that’s twice the power of the bomb that hit Nagasaki. There were three more missiles just like it in the underground silo and a second silo nearby.
“Hop on, and please grab hold of the missile while we lower you into the silo,� Jerry Feight, a Nike veteran, said as he opened a gate. No one waited for a second invitation. Little boys stood clutching a fin as we were lowered to meet the rest of the Hercules family. Called the SF-88 Nike Missile Site, this Cold War graveyard is right here in our backyard. It was established in 1952, becoming nuclear in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was hidden in the hills of the Marin Headlands, along with 11 other sites dotting the San Francisco Bay Area. When the United States signed a nuclear arms agreement with the former Soviet Union, we had to destroy the sites so that the Soviets could verify their destruction from satellite. Years later, a group of veterans appealed to Congress and the U.S. Army Historical
Society to restore one of the sites and create a “living museum.� The Marin site is the only one that’s been restored in the country. “When we opened the restored site,� John Porter, the ranger in charge of SF-88 said, “there were Russians all over the place to make sure it was demilitarized.� “Every so often there’s still a nice Mercedes limo that drives out from the embassy on Green Street in San Francisco to check up on it, “ laughed Alec Gyorfi, another veteran. “And there’s always a smaller American car that follows it to check up on the Russians. Spy versus spy.� According to David Kreutzinger, who was one of the last to serve at SF-88, “we are always fighting the last war. During the Cold War, we were guarding against another Pearl Harbor–type of sneak attack. We had Nike Ajax high explosive missiles first. The idea was that we could hit incoming &&
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THE BOHEMIAN
10.07.09-10.13.09
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