Boatanchors in Spaaaaaace......
 

Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."

Thanks,
Dave S.

Wow! My uncle worked on the Nike program back in 1953 (I think). I
was 7 at the time. We drove from Syracuse to White Sands Proving
Ground, NM, to see him. We even got to see the missiles being
tested....



On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 06:17:35 -0500, David Stinson
wrote:

Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."

Thanks,
Dave S.

Larry

Extremely intelligent life must exist in the universe.
You can tell because they never tried to contact us.

"David Stinson" wrote in message
...
Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."


Not sure about that particular item, but there was a Nike missle base just a
couple miles from where I grew up. That area has since become a municipal
park but they still have one of the actual Nike missles on display in front
of the public library.

I could swing by and get a photo if you would like to see the missle that I
presume that piece of gear was installed in.

Regards .. Larry Fowkes

In article , wrote:

Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."


Sorry, I can't help ID that, but it sure is a neat gadget, and I would
love to hear more about it if anyone knows? With all those "submini"
tubes, it looks a little like one of Robert's "Engineering what ifs" gone
awry. Did the "NIKE AJAX" actually use a "seeker head", or was it steered
to the target by control signals from the ground? I know there were
several very different incarnations of the "NIKE" missile, but I have no
idea what the operational differences were?

Brings back memories of the 1950s, when "NIKE" missile bases ringed many
of our larger cities. I wonder when they were decommissioned, seems like
they were gone by the mid 1960s at the latest?


Regards,

John Byrns


Surf my web pages at, http://users.rcn.com/jbyrns/

Looks like a fine piece of equipment, but rumored to fail after the first
use.

Phil

John Byrns wrote:
Brings back memories of the 1950s, when "NIKE" missile bases ringed many
of our larger cities. I wonder when they were decommissioned, seems like
they were gone by the mid 1960s at the latest?

" Its predecessor, the smaller Nike Ajax, was in service from 1954
through about 1965. It had a range of 25 miles and a speed of mach 2.5."

http://www.ed-thelen.org/

http://www.boeing.com/history/mdc/nike.htm

http://alpha.fdu.edu/~bender/nikenws.html

Jeff


--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
"A life lived in fear is a life half lived."
Tara Morice as Fran, from the movie "Strictly Ballroom"

nah, the warheads could be reused ;)

PJ wrote:

Looks like a fine piece of equipment, but rumored to fail after the first
use.

Phil

-- If it's a "new economy," why do they want my obsolete old money?

"David Stinson" wrote in message
...
Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."



"Nike Ajax" was one of the first anti-aircraft city defense systems ever.
It was ably designed by Bell labs to act like a short-range detection,
tracking, and interception system.

But if you do the math of coastlines vs radar vs missle range vs costs, you
quickly discover you'd need about 600 times the GNP of the USA to put up
enough of these to intercept 75% of the bombers. Oh, and they knew that
very soon the bombers would be obsoleted by ICBM's, which would completely
obsolete the whole Nike shebang.

Even in the free spending 1950's there was only enough spare $ to put up a
miniscule shield. Many of the Nike sites were put up in full view of major
public thoroughfares, to reassure the public that the US govt was on the
job!

When the Nike sites were tested against actual "attacking" bombers (ours),
the results were less than stupendous. No problem, the results were
classified.

To further boondoggle things, the Feds didnt want to run the sites, so they
somehow delegated the job to each state's National Guard. Mild
contradictions with the US Constitution, quickly fixed by a flurry of
individual "treaties" between the State Dept and the 50 states. Now you try
scheduling the part-time NG troops to man these sites 24/7 with any kind of
effectiveness.

My neighbor was a programmer on Nike-Ajax. IHRC they had a custom-designed
computer that tried to track targets in real-time. The computer had some
parallel-processing capability designed in by the Lab wizards. But the
programmers quickly found out that all that extra parallel hardware was
almost impossible to harness. (Much like the discoveries of later
generations!). So the computers couldnt keep up with a typical target mix,
much less with jamming or bad weather.

Count yourself lucky, you're one of the few people that have benefited from
Nike (the system, not the shoe) !

"David Stinson" wrote in message
...
Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."

Thanks,
Dave S.

Here's the tech manual:

CHAPTER 3. SIGNAL DATA CONVERTER CIRCUIT OPERATION
Pulse stretcher 18 20
Cathode follower driver 19 21
Filter unit 20 21
AGC amplifiers 21 22
P- and Y-discriminator 22 23
Command burst circuit 23 25
Fail-safe burst circuit 24 27
CHAPTER 4. CONTROL SECTION OPERATION

John Byrns wrote:
In article , wrote:


Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."



I would
love to hear more about it if anyone knows? With all those "submini"
tubes, it looks a little like one of Robert's "Engineering what ifs" gone
awry. Did the "NIKE AJAX" actually use a "seeker head", or was it steered
to the target by control signals from the ground? I know there were
several very different incarnations of the "NIKE" missile, but I have no
idea what the operational differences were?

Three - Ajax, Hercules and Zeus. All were ground directed (by RADAR) to
target. The electronics on board received the radio control signals and
used that to actuate the control surfaces as directed. The various
versions were all similar - with improving speed, range, accuracy, etc.


Brings back memories of the 1950s, when "NIKE" missile bases ringed many
of our larger cities. I wonder when they were decommissioned, seems like
they were gone by the mid 1960s at the latest?

More like mid 70's. Here is a picture of one (Hercules version) from
Lynwood, CA - Memorial Day 1963 (right in your back yard, Jeff!). A
friend of mine (still living) was in the parade - as he was in the
National Guard at the time - and his unit was one of the units in the
parade that day. A few years later he took us to Camp Roberts - where
we got to ride in jeeps, tanks, and all manner of neat stuff- neat guy!

Link: http://www.mississippi.net/~comcents/nike.jpg

best regards...
--
randy guttery

A Tender Tale - a page dedicated to those Ships and Crews
so vital to the United States Silent Service:
http://tendertale.com