Missile Master was a type of

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

Missile Command ''Missile Command'' is a 1980 shoot 'em up arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and licensed to Sega for Japanese and European releases. It was designed by Dave Theurer, who also designed Atari's vector graphics game '' Temp ...

military installation for the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...

Project Nike Project Nike (Greek: Νίκη, "Victory") was a U.S. Army project, proposed in May 1945 by Bell Laboratories, to develop a line-of-sight anti-aircraft missile system. The project delivered the United States' first operational anti-aircraft mi ...

, each which were a complex of systems and facilities for

surface-to-air missile A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft syst ...

command and control. Each Missile Master had a nuclear bunker (except for the initial Ft Meade site) housing the

Martin AN/FSG-1 Antiaircraft Defense System The Martin AN/FSG-1 Antiaircraft Defense System, better known as Missile Master, was an electronic fire distribution center to computerize Cold War air defense (AD) command posts from manual plotting board operations to automated command and con ...

, as well as additional "tactical structures" for "''an AN/FPS-33 defense acquisition radar (DAR) or similar radar, two height-finder radars,''" and

identification friend or foe Identification, friend or foe (IFF) is an identification system designed for command and control. It uses a transponder that listens for an ''interrogation'' signal and then sends a ''response'' that identifies the broadcaster. IFF systems usua ...

secondary radar (e.g., AN/TPX-19 radar interrogator). The radars, along with Automated Data Links (ADL) from remote Nike firing units, provided data into the AN/FSG-1 tracking subsystemCh. 2, p. 17
/sup> NOTE: The p. 36 image with scrub brush ("Figure 34") titled "Missile Master" is identified differently in the text as "SAGE (fig 34)" (Texas had 3 BIRDIE command posts: Austin, Duncanville, & Sweetwater.) with the DAR providing surveillance coverage to about .

Siting

Missile Master radars were usually at a single area with the nuclear bunker (e.g., co-located with a USAF radar station) such as the purchased for the Arlington Heights Army Installation. Conversely, the

Fort MacArthur Direction Center A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere' ...

used radars ~ away at

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. The single-site Camp Pedricktown Army Air Defense Base was later reconfigured to use radar data from Gibbsboro AFS away —then closed when the Philadelphia Defense Area was consolidated with the

New York Defense Area The following is a list of Nike missile sites operated by the United States Army. This article lists sites in the United States, most responsible to Army Air Defense Command; however, the Army also deployed Nike missiles to Europe as part of the ...

Nuclear bunker

The Missile Master's two-story fallout-proof & blast-resistant "main building" housed the AN/FSG-1 crew consoles in the "Blue Room" (tiered Antiaircraft Operations Center, AAOC). Additional rooms in the nuclear bunker included an entrance room with decontamination shower, commander's office; separate rooms for the AN/FSG-1 computer (rows of racks/boxes), storage, ADL, and other system equipment; utility rooms for

HVAC Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. ...

and other support systems, and a decontamination water storage room under the AAOC. "''Our radar must be kept above ground. If that goes, we are out of business anyway''" (BGe
Robert A. Hewitt)
so a less expensive and more vulnerable partially exposed bunker was acceptable for the AN/FSG-1. "Autonomous Operations" allowed remote missile batteries surviving a nuclear strike to launch without AADCP inputs. (photograph caption).

Construction

Installation of a Missile Master took approximately 18 months and required an AN/TSQ-8 Fire Unit Integration Facility (FUIF) be installed at each Nike fire unit to provide the ADL interface between the AN/FSG-1 and the fire control system. The Highlands Army Air Defense Site was completed at an existing SAGE radar station and cost ~$2 million for the new equipment and ~$2 million for the structures: bunker, power building, and 4 radar towers (a Missile Master at a new radar station was $9 million). Additional equipment and facilities included tankage for electricity generator fuel, storage for drinking & decontamination water, telephone lines, etc. In addition to the Martin Company's AN/FSG-1 subcontractors, the Corps of Engineers hired local construction contractors for the facility structures, e.g., Kirkland Construction for Ft Heath and Rust Engineering for the Oakdale Army Installation (the Corps tailored the bunker to each site from the "baseline standard drawings".) "''The power building at Highlands was "in a 25' x 17' cinderblock building, designated on the plans as "Switch Gear Room Bldg. 118." The equipment in this small building permits the missile site to switch back and forth from external commercial power to its own internal power from diesel generators. …van housing the computer''" Each Missile Master had 200 total personnel, and maintenance of the AN/FSG-1, the radars, and other systems was provided by an Army "Signal Missile Master Support Detachment" of 10-15 soldiers. All of the vacuum tube AN/FSG-1 computers were replaced prior to the end of

Closure

Army Air Defense Command Posts (AADCPs) were still at 5 Missile Masters on July 1, 1973 (CA IL MD NJ WA—all with AN/TSQ-51 CCCS except the Ft Lawton

BIRDIE Birdy or Birdie may refer to: Places in the United States * Birdie, Georgia, an unincorporated community * Birdie, Mississippi, an unincorporated community People with the name * Birdie Blye (1871–1935), American pianist * Birdy (sing ...

) prior to the Army's February 4, 1974, announcement to end

. The Camp Pedricktown site was designated an historic site in 1998 by the Salem Historic Preservation Office, and documents regarding the Selfridge site have been entered in the Historical American Engineering Record. NOTE: The labels on one of the HAER floor plans are for after the AADCP when the bunker was used for

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(rooms for RAPCON, ATCALS, etc.) In 1999 a romantic comedy set at a midwest US Army missile post was published as a paperback with the name ''Missile Master'' (the

Kansas Kansas () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its Capital city, capital is Topeka, Kansas, Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita, Kansas, Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebras ...

and

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the sout ...

AADCPs had BIRDIES and never had bunkers.)

Siting

Nuclear bunker

Construction

Closure

References

External links