NOVEMBER 2021 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 19
POINT OF VIEW
MISSILE SILOS COLD WAR MEMORIES
BY KARL GROSSMAN
INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, PROFESSOR
As Thanksgiving 2021 comes near,
thanks should be given for something
that never happened decades ago: the
use (as planned) of bases built on Long
Island armed with Bomarc and Nike
Hercules nuclear-tipped missiles.
It was the 1950s and ‘60s, and the U.S.
feared Soviet bombers might strike
major American cities and various strategic
targets. So, a scheme was hatched
to deploy nuclear-tipped missiles.
These were early anti-aircraft missiles
and seen as unable to score direct hits.
Thus, the plan was to have the nuclear
warheads on the Bomarc and Nike
missiles detonate when the missiles
reached a formation of Soviet bombers,
blowing the formation apart.
But these were short-range missiles
and if they detonated near Long Island,
radioactivity would likely drift to Long
Island, and if they detonated over Long
Island, radioactive fall-out would certainly
rain on Long Island.
The nuclear warheads on the Bomarc
and Nike Hercules missiles had massive
power. The tips on the BomarcS had the
equivalent of 10 kilotons of highly explosive
TNT. The atomic bomb dropped
on Hiroshima had the power of 13 kilotons.
The Nike Hercules warheads
ranged up to 30 kilotons.
In a TV documentary I wrote and presented
for Long Island-based WVVH-TV,
titled Avoiding Nuclear Destruction: By
the Skin of Our Teeth, I stood on one of
the missile silos at what had been the
three-missile Nike base in Rocky Point
to explain what had existed. (It’s just
off Route 25A, west of William Floyd
Parkway, and is now used as an Army
Reserve Center.)
Then I went to what had been a Bomarc
base along Old Country Road in
Westhampton.
Each of the 56 Bomarc missiles that
had been in Westhampton had its own
building. The roofs of the buildings
would open, the missiles would rise
and be fired. The buildings remain,
along with the machinery in them to
open the roofs. (What had been the base
is now the property of Suff olk County
government, which utilizes some of the
buildings for storage.)
With the shift by the Soviets to intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBMs),
the Nike and Bomarc bases were closed.
Long Island was not the only place to
have Nike Hercules and BOMARC bases.
Such bases ringed several inland U.S.
cities including Chicago.
The story of the Long Island Nike Hercules
and Bomarc bases is featured in
a book I co-authored with Christopher
Verga, who teaches Long Island history
at Suff olk County Community College:
Cold War Long Island, just published by
The History Press.
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“If they detonated
near Long Island,
radioactivity would
likely drift.”
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