Audio
Oral History Interview with Ed Peterson
Transcript
Abstract: Ed Peterson was stationed at Nike Missile Base from 1964 to 1969. When he retired, he was first sergeant in four of the batteries of the 52nd Artillery. In this oral history interview he talks about the barracks, the organization of the base, his duties, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Nike Missile program.
NANCY RUSSELL: This is Nancy Russell, Museum Curator at Everglades National Park, on December 16, 2002, conducting an oral history about the Nike Missile Base and related activities at Everglades National Park. Would you state your name please?
ED PETERSON: My name is Ed Peterson.
RUSSELL: Mr. Peterson, when were you stationed here?
PETERSON: I was stationed here ‘64 through ‘69. But a year of that I was oversees, but upon return from oversees, I come back to the Homestead area.
RUSSELL: How old were you when you were stationed here?
PETERSON: I’m not going to tell you that. [Laughs]
RUSSELL: [laughs] Okay.
PETERSON: It’s classified. Aw, I was a young man. I was in my mid-thirties. When I was stationed out here, I happened to be not only with this unit out here in the Everglades, but I served for all five batteries in the battalion, so whichever one you want to know about, I’m glad to talk.
RUSSELL: Okay. And what was your rank and major duties?
PETERSON: When I finally retired, in my [unintelligible] I was first sergeant, and then first sergeant in four of the batteries of the 52nd Artillery, and I also in this particular battery, A Battery, I was chief fire control mechanic. As a chief fire control mechanic, we were responsible for the electronic maintenance of all the radar equipment in what’s called the fire control area.
RUSSELL: So out at the battery, what was the kind of things that you would do on a daily basis, as a fire control mechanic?
PETERSON: Observe whatever the operators during their checks and adjustments of the equipment, be with them in case they run into trouble. Electronic trouble. Then it was our job to jump in there and fix it, repair it.
RUSSELL: Can you tell us a little bit about how the missile base here functioned?
PETERSON: Oh, boy. We can go on tour with that. A missile base has two main areas, a launching area and a fire control area. And as you probably know they are separated from each other. I’d say out there about a mile. And do you know why they are separate?
RUSSELL: Why?
PETERSON: One of the differences, the radar that guides the missile has to look at the missile that’s in the elevated position in the launching area. Now, that radar looking at the missile–I’m demonstrating it for you with my hand–once the missile takes off, it goes so fast. The missile antenna has to track it, and once it’s launched the antenna has to follow it, and if you was to watch it yourself and follow it go up, you’d almost snap your neck as it leaned back. Well, the missile tracking antenna does not have the capability of going up that fast, and at close-up distance, that’s why it has to be separated at a distance. That makes it able to track easier. If it were closer and that missile was launched, the missile tracking antenna would lose it, and then we’d have a moon ball.
RUSSELL: A moon ball?
PETERSON: A moon ball. A missile going straight up, not being guided.
RUSSELL: So that’s what you called it.
PETERSON: That’s the different between the two, launching and fire control areas, mainly because of the distance and the antenna looking down to see the missile. In your fire control area, of course you have your supply. The function of supply in a battery is to take care, make sure that the unit has all the equipment and supplies necessary to accomplish its mission. By that, I mean, they’re responsible that you have the required amount of missiles on hand, the required amount of weapons on hand, individual weapons for the men, the furniture for the administrative area, the bunks the men sleep on. Whatever you can imagine, that’s the function of the supply room, where you’re sitting now. Usually, that’s controlled by a supply sergeant, and he has a couple of assistants. And there’s one officer in the unit that’s designated the supply officer, but that is not his main function, that’s an initial [unintelligible] for an officer. The supply officer has that main function.
If you can move around from supply, then you also have the mess area. Right around the corner. And I looked in there as I come in here, and it’s terrible. [Laughs] I tell you; I wouldn’t eat in there.
RUSSELL: Now, what was the food like then?
PETERSON: The food was terrific. It was great. We had pay rations. They were prepared by cooks who went to cook and bakery school. They were supervised by a mess sergeant who had fifteen, eighteen years experience. Of course, the KP was done by the troops themselves, which they hated it. They had regular duties in addition to the KP. You mention KP or guard duty, they want to run away or go AWOL. From supply, down the hall a little bit was my office, as a unit first sergeant. Looks like the lounge area right now.
RUSSELL: Oh, the lunchroom.
PETERSON: Is that what it is?
RUSSELL: Uh-huh.
PETERSON: Well, that’s where I was. And then the farthest up office here was the commanding officer, the nice looking office I went by.
RUSSELL: That would be Jan’s office, the computer office.
PETERSON: And as I come and rounded the corner, that first office there, was our aid station, and there we had one medic assigned to the unit, and that medic he was medically trained. His job was anybody wanted to go on sick call reported to him by seven o’clock in the morning. He entered his name in the sick book, and from then on, he took him in to the hospital. If he couldn’t take care of him at the site here–like the guy comes in, I got a headache, or something, he may have to call a doctor at the base and talk to the doctor, the doctor may say, give the guy some APCs [phonetic] and let him rest for five hours, or bring him in. That would be his responsibility. As well as other things I may find for him to do in the area of hygiene or cleanliness, like go check the latrine or something like that. We had one of them assigned to the unit. Of course, that was his only job. And he, normally, our medic lived on the site, didn’t live off the base.
In a Nike unit, you have a communications section. This particular one didn’t have one because all the communications, the telephone equipment, stuff like that—Matter of fact, part of this room was the exchange room, and that was maintained by a civil contractor. We never went in that room. We had a key to it. I’d look in it every now and again for fire hazards, and then lock it up. But in a regular unit you would have a section of men who would take care of your phones and signal work and stuff like that. And of course, you have your fire control operators themselves and your maintenance people. They were what we called “on the hill.” That was out the back, all the towers and the vans were out there in the back. Their job was to operate and maintain that equipment out there. On a twenty-four-seven-hour basis. Their different time, different statuses varied. Like, they would say, A Battery, you’re on a fifteen-minute status. That means if you get a call from the area defense command post, okay battle stations, within fifteen minutes we want a missile in the air. That gives the men time to get up there, make the final checks and adjustments on the equipment, then be seated and ready to, you know, get the missile out, roll it out, in a launch position, get ready to have that baby flying at anything coming in.
What did they do when they weren’t doing that? They’d sit around and play cards, they’d drink beer, they’d watch TV, they’d call a girlfriend. Couldn’t go to town ‘cause they didn’t have no way to get in there. Some of them would pitch their money together and buy a car, an old junk car, might run for two or three weeks and then crap out on ‘em. And then they’d be looking for something to do. This wasn’t bad because they were living in a permanent type area, but initially when I come down here–I didn’t get here till sixty-four–A Battery was co-located with B Battery outside the main entrance.
RUSSELL: In the tents?
PETERSON: Yeah, in the tents. And that was pretty rough on those troops. We had about a third of the unit lived off the base. They was married, had families. I was one of them. We didn’t live in the tents. During my career in the service, I did live in tents, so I know what they went through, and of course, I seen them day to day, I was with them. Ate out there, slept out there, worked out there. Whatever. What it was like working in here, you know. You work here in this building, so you know what it’s like. The launching area, I never got down to the launching area because I didn’t have to go down there. There was enough sergeants down there and warrant officers to handle whatever had to be done down there. So as a fire control mechanic, my responsibilities of taking care of radar equipment there was nothing down there for me to do. But as a unit first sergeant, my responsibilities to my commander so far as the welfare of the men, certainly, there was things down there that I was concerned with. For example, the ready room—they called it the ready room, where they would gather together when they weren’t actually working on the missiles. That’s where they would stay and sleep, and if that siren went off, then boom they were down at their section, getting their missile ready, getting it moved out off the rails, on the launcher, final checks and adjustments, and up in the air ready to shoot. Had dog handlers down there at the kennels. Military police what they were. Trained military police. Trained dog handlers. Trained at Lackland Air Force Base. Which is the best dog training school in the world, still going today. I think that’s about it.
RUSSELL: How many people did you supervise on a daily basis?
PETERSON: Oh, direct supervision maybe a couple of quirks in what I call my orderly room. But anybody I saw within the area who might be doing something he should be doing, on their rights [phonetic], it was my responsibility to correct them. I didn’t go around looking for things for these guys to do ‘cause some were on duty, some were off duty. Their duty hours were controlled by their platoon sergeant, platoon leader, their section teams. There are certain unit duties that I was responsible to make certain they got filled, and I had to draw men, resources from these different platoons, like for example guard duty, kitchen police, charge of quarters. I would say to fire control, furnish me one man grade of B4, for example, to be charge of quarters for the next week. And then, of course, I would supervise.
A first [unintelligible] more or less, and in between, all in enlisted men and the unit command. If there’s any problems, these men would go to their sergeants, and then we’d step up the chain of command to me, and then I would go to my commander. If there was times that–maybe that shouldn’t be on the record–if there was times that we didn’t want our commander to know because, we say today, we sweep them under the rug, I have superiors called a sergeant major, and usually you have one in a battalion. Otherwise, the four batteries, the four first sergeants answer to a boss who was a sergeant major, and all of us met once a month. And we’d say, okay, these are our particular problems we’re having with the men with our area. There’s too goddamn many mosquitoes down in there. We need screen on the sides of the tents. This, that and the other. Guy says, I got the same problem over here. The old man don’t want to be bothered–the old man is the captain–he don’t want to be bothered with it because he’s got missiles coming in from Cuba that he wants to shoot down. It’s our problem. So, these are the things that we would handle. The old man didn’t have time for that crap. Stuff like that.
RUSSELL: So, the mosquitoes were problematic then as today?
PETERSON: Oh, yeah. No change.
RUSSELL: What about other animals? Alligators and those kinds of critters? Any problems?
PETERSON: You heard stories of them. We had—
RUSSELL: Do you want me to turn it off?
PETERSON: Yeah. [Tape recorder turned off.]
[Tape recorder turned back on.]
RUSSELL: So how did the different batteries interact with each other?
PETERSON: Like how?
RUSSELL: Well, did you guys exchange personnel if somebody was short–?
PETERSON: Oh, yeah. Once a year they had what’s called annual Snap, S-N-A-P. That’s when the commander gets a call that says: Your men will leave at O five hundred tomorrow morning. You’re going to Fort Bliss, Texas. For your annual test. That’s when you’d take your crews to Fort Bliss, and they would actually go through a series, an actual shoot. They’d fire a missile. That was to test their proficiency, their capability, their training—this, that, and the other. During that period that they were gone, ‘cause you was short, your battery was short personnel. In a defense condition overall, requiring all batteries in the battalion be on fifteen-minute status, you would have to have manning requirements for that. Now, are you going to push your men to be there on duty forty-eight hours straight? Can’t do that. They need some rest. So, you may have to call some help from another unit. Say hey, all your men are here. I need a computer operator, I’ve only got one. I’ve got an elevation operator got sick. The only guy I had. So, send me a spare if you got one. [Laughs] And you’d swap back and forth like that. Cooks, you never worry about that, you always got enough cooks. You haven’t got cooks, you grab a guy, say go fry some eggs. Anybody could pull guard duty, so you weren’t short there. But with the people gone, and you need the man a post with a guard, and you’ve only got one computer operator, you can’t pull him out for the guard. You need some help from somebody else.
Then, of course, you’ve always got what I call the “lazy guys” sitting at battalion headquarters. They’re sitting in a nice, air-conditioned office, smoking cigarettes, nothing to do, waiting for five o’clock to come along so they can go get a beer. Send them out here. Put them to work. And, of course, the commanders up there would say, any batteries need help, send them some men. When we moved from the main, from out in the field to the permanent site—I was then first sergeant B Battery–and we moved out to Key Largo, our unit happened to be at Fort Bliss. And I thought to myself, what a hell of a time for them to give us orders to pack up this site from the field and move to a permanent location in Key Largo, when the best of the unit is at Fort Bliss, Texas. So, at that time, we had to get all the help we could from other units to move the missiles and move the men’s equipment. But that’s [unintelligible] I don’t know who the hell it was. Somebody come behind and picked it all up, but the men had to move their own lockers, their own equipment, their own bunk, stuff like that and get out to the new site, get set up, and again, get the battery ready to fire a missile. Even though this was in ‘64 and ‘65, we never knew what the hell Castro was going to do. The missile crisis was over in ‘62, but this was a couple of years later.
RUSSELL: So, there was still that feeling of having to be ready for anything at any moment?
PETERSON: Oh, yeah.
RUSSELL: Did that create a lot of tension among the men, or is that just how they felt they were trained?
PETERSON: It’s just, it’s like they were trained, and it just became second nature to them. They’ve been through so many drills, that siren they heard in their sleep—When that siren went off, they just reacted immediately, and they’d be at their position. Of course, if there was an enemy bomber coming in or an enemy missile coming in, and we launched a missile at it, they wouldn’t see it, they wouldn’t—they would know it because they’d be told, but there’s the difference. Most of those guys never been in combat. We had some older soldiers in the unit who had been in combat, so they knew what it was like, but some of the younger ones that—they’re sitting in the van, they [unintelligible] “Boom! I hope we get that guy!” That kind of attitude. Like a bunch of kids at a high school football game.
RUSSELL: They were distanced from it.
PETERSON: Yeah.
RUSSELL: Now, what about any remembrances you may have about how the military was treated by the community? Were you all embraced by the community as being here, you know, as part of the defense of south Florida?
PETERSON: Not being here initially during the crisis, I couldn’t answer that. But all the time I was here, after I was here, late ‘64, ‘65 to ‘69. [Laughs] Nah, they—They really didn’t—I didn’t get the feeling that they felt they were more safe than they were before. Maybe they were. I don’t know. It’s being associated with the military personnel. [A phone rings.] We was talking about the community. Hey, the army’s here. Big deal.
RUSSELL: So, it was like being a military base anywhere else? PETERSON: Yeah. Hey, Castro invades, good. We got the army to help us. Homestead Air Force Base was a SAC base. Today it’s a fire base. The difference was, they had the SAC bombers out there. That was, I would say, a bigger target. If Castro had any missiles in Cuba. Well, you’re too young, you wouldn’t remember.
RUSSELL: I am young. Yes. So, you think that strategically, the Homestead Air Force Base would have been a bigger target than the base out here?
PETERSON: It would have been one of them. It would probably have been one of the number one’s on their target. On the enemy, you know, let’s take out Homestead Air Force Base. And then where would they go from there? What the hell would they care about Homestead itself? Or Florida City? Or even Miami? Economically maybe Miami.
RUSSELL: And Miami would have a bigger population, I suppose. Now, when you were out here in these buildings, were they still doing the farming in the area? The tomato farming?
PETERSON: Yeah.
RUSSELL: That building across the street, what we now call the Robertson Building, but it used to be called the Iori [phonetic] building. That wasn’t part of the missile base, was it? It was part of the tomato—
PETERSON: No, it was an old, abandoned barn. There wasn’t anything in it.
RUSSELL: Oh, really. So, it wasn’t being actively used when you were out here?
PETERSON: No. I’m surprised [unintelligible]. Even this building here–you’ve probably heard this before–this used to be pink.
RUSSELL: Oh, did it used to be pink?
PETERSON: Outside. All this big building. All of them. All the batteries used to be pink.
RUSSELL: Now, why pink?
PETERSON: Beats me. Probably some colonel’s wife liked pink.
RUSSELL: I guess it could be like the Cary Grant movie, with the submarine when they had the white and the pink paint and they mixed it [laughs].
PETERSON: We had a little mess hall there, and a little PX. The PX is a post exchange, that’s where they have beer and soda, cigarettes, et cetera. Next to that was a day room.
RUSSELL: So, there was a PX in this building?
PETERSON: Yes, small one.
RUSSELL: And that would be just down the hall there on the right.
PETERSON: Right across from uh— You want to take a little walk?
RUSSELL: I think that’s our GIS lab. [sounds of motion] Right. Here in the Beard Center. The prep lab was officers’ quarters. And then a bathroom. And then another—
PETERSON: Well, there was adjoining bathrooms. These two rooms used it.
RUSSELL: Right. So, this was the other officers’ quarters, which is now our wet specimens storage for the storage.
PETERSON: Why do you have wet specimens for a museum?
RUSSELL: You know, the specimens in alcohol, the snakes and–they’re preserved.
PETERSON: Oh. [Unintelligible] the arms room.
RUSSELL: Now, I understand this was a Dutch door here into supply? So, you could bring your requisition in and not actually come in. Do you remember it that way?
PETERSON: Yeah, but I remember it being over there.
RUSSELL: Oh, really?
PETERSON: Wait. Some of it here and some of it there.
RUSSELL: So, there was another door?
PETERSON: Now, wait a minute. We had uh—This was the arms room, but—
RUSSELL: This is my supplies right now. It was, in fact, a space over there, or was it all one space?
PETERSON: This was the arms room. That was the mail room. The mail room had a Dutch door also. And this, of course, is the mess hall.
RUSSELL: And it’s now our park-wide training room. It’s the only big enough space.
PETERSON: Nice room.
RUSSELL: Doesn’t smell very good in here. How many men were fed in here at a time?
PETERSON: Uh, let’s see. Oh, we’d feed a hundred men. Easy. Yeah, they’d come through there, form a line, come right up here [unintelligible]. This wasn’t there. Rat traps over here—We wouldn’t allow that. Oh, that’s nasty. If I found a rat trap around, the mess sergeant would be hanging.
RUSSELL: Now, did you have a lot of problems with rodents?
PETERSON: No.
RUSSELL: Everything was kept so clean?
PETERSON: We controlled them. Yeah. [Sounds of footsteps] Now, this was uh—
RUSSELL: This was more the kitchen area?
PETERSON: Yeah, the dishwasher here. [Sounds of footsteps] [Unintelligible] stones all along there.
RUSSELL: Stones in the aviation office? Now, we actually have, I think, the original basketball hoop back there. In the basketball court. [a door slams] So, the officers ate separately, even though it was in the same room? They still kept it—segregated.
PETERSON: I used to come by and read the bulletin board, see if they were on KP.
RUSSELL: Oh, so there was a bulletin board out here then, too?
PETERSON: Yeah.
RUSSELL: So, you’d do the short straw for KP?
PETERSON: That was [unintelligible]. That was the commander’s office. This was the orderly room.
RUSSELL: So, our lunchroom/copy area was the orderly room.
PETERSON: My desk was right there. This was the executive office.
RUSSELL: So, the copy room was where the executive officer was?
PETERSON: Uh-huh. This was all the orderly room, me and two clerks. [Pause] Let me see. We used to close off a door here.
RUSSELL: Is this the space you thought might be the PX?
PETERSON: This was the day room.
RUSSELL: The GIS lab was the day room? What happened in the day room?
PETERSON: What happened in the day room? It’s a lounge.
RUSSELL: Oh, just a lounge.
PETERSON: TV. Read.
RUSSELL: Okay.
PETERSON: Officers’ latrine.
RUSSELL: Oh, the supply closet by the water fountain was an officers’ latrine.
PETERSON: Aid station.
RUSSELL: The aid station was where the secretaries are now.
PETERSON: Where our medic was. And [unintelligible] was the chapel.
RUSSELL: This was the chapel?
PETERSON: That was the chapel.
RUSSELL: First door on the right after you enter the office that—Ruth Franklin’s office. [She says “Hi” to someone, sound of a door opening.] And so, these offices down on this end were all living quarters?
PETERSON: These were all two-man rooms. They didn’t have the old GI cots. They had nice twin beds.
RUSSELL: Real mattresses?
PETERSON: Twin size beds. Thick mattress. Also, right here. Two men died in the shower room there.
RUSSELL: Accident?
PETERSON: Yeah. Barracks down here. This was all open.
RUSSELL: Oh, this was all open down this side.
PETERSON: Yeah. They way they died—We had a big shower room. I was not in this unit, I was in D Battery. The first sergeant had a detail two men to go in the shower and scrape off all the paint off the walls. And it was taking them too long to do it. That job was–you can do it until it’s all done. They wanted to get it over with, get it done quick. Scraping was too slow. One guy had some gasoline in his car, a can, and he figured that if they rubbed it on the wall, it would scrape off faster. Right outside the room were two dryers, where they’d dry their clothes. Some guy come in, threw his stuff in the dryer, turned it on. When he clicked on the spot, the fumes exploded. They were in an enclosed room and they got caught in that fireball. They died on the way to the hospital. Stupid thing about it–commander told them take them to Homestead Air Force Base hospital. The medic should have taken him to Homestead, general hospital.
RUSSELL: It was closer.
PETERSON: Yeah. Off the record. Those sort of accidents can happen.
RUSSELL: Oh, sure. [They continue to walk.] And of course, you wouldn’t have had a lady’s room then. [Laughs] So, do they have a separate area out here in the quarters for the officers?
PETERSON: Not here. No. Now, if need be, we would have taken some of the enlisted men out and thrown them out in the area I said was all open, we called that the bay. And they would have doubled up in the bunks. They may have taken some of the rooms here and put officers in them.
RUSSELL: We are back of the Daniel Beard Center looking at some engraving in the sidewalk, which has two circle separated by a line and says “5th Reg ORE, 1st of March 1968" and Mr. Peterson informs us that it stands for—
PETERSON: “Fifth Region Operation Readiness Evaluation, 1 March ‘68.” It was called and exclusion area, limited area. Exclusion area, two men had to be in there. One man couldn’t be in there by himself. And limited area, you could have one man wandering around. But exclusionary, you had to have two, and there was a guard posted there where you couldn’t get it. Here, they may have later come up with something in our defense plan that in the event of certain defense conditions, they want that entire IRC area blocked off. Everybody would—Turn it off.
[Recorder turned off.]
[Recorder back on]
PETERSON: ...the troops may have laid. So, if you followed along here, maybe you’d pick up on—
RUSSELL: There might be some more graffiti in there recording where it came from.
PETERSON: Yeah.
RUSSELL: So, the troops would have laid these little patches of cement through the mud so that they had a little bit of clear way.
PETERSON: Yeah. To come out to the road there. Cutting across the mud. I’m sure at one time this was all sawgrass through here.
RUSSELL: Right. But the athletic court wasn’t here when you were here?
PETERSON: No.
RUSSELL: So, it had to be added after 1970.
PETERSON: Yeah. [Unintelligible]...all this stuff out here? Oh, that’s for the museum.
RUSSELL: That’s our scientists doing some kind of research.
PETERSON: Now, those buildings up there, that building there looks like the–[long pause]—that must be new, that one way over there.
RUSSELL: The one with the garage doors?
PETERSON: Yeah. I don’t know what that was for.
RUSSELL: It’s not the most exciting architecture, is it?
PETERSON: Oh, no.
RUSSELL: You can always count on the military for block buildings.
PETERSON: Now, see, this building here looked like that. Flat roof.
RUSSELL: Yeah, we added this roof after Hurricane Andrew.
PETERSON: You been here that long?
RUSSELL: No. “We” meaning the park. I’ve been here three and a half months. [Laughs]
PETERSON: Ah, that’s all?
RUSSELL: So, I’m just getting started with everything.
PETERSON: Well, I was only out here about five months.
RUSSELL: Actually, out here in this constructed space?
PETERSON: Assigned to A Battery. B Battery, I was there over a year and a half. Come to A Battery. While I was here, I got promoted. Then I went up to C Battery, which is in Carroll [phonetic] City—or Opelika. Then I was shipped overseas. To Korea. Went over there, I was with the Hawk Unit. You remember the Hawk? I was with them a year. Then I come back here, and I went to D Battery which is the Krome Center.
RUSSELL: So, you worked at A, B, C, and D? [Sounds of walking]
PETERSON: Yeah. And headquarters. [Walking] That, I believe, was the old ready room.
RUSSELL: To the right of the hangar building.
PETERSON: See we had—Two radar vans were butted up against one building, in between. They sat out—The vans sat on a pad.
RUSSELL: So, the vans were down here?
PETERSON: Yeah. Launching area had one van. What they call a launch control trailer. Here they had two vans. And initially they had three towers, and they added two.
[Sounds of objects moving.]
[Recorder turned off and then turned back on]
It was on the internet. I wanted to buy a little model of a Nike Hercules missile. They used to sell them. I know when I was—Many years ago I know I bought one–built one–for my father. When I first when into Nike Herc. And I wanted to give one to my grandson. Make one for him. I got on the internet, and I’m looking up Nike Hercules missiles. And that’s when I come across this website of Charlie Carter. Have you seen it? The website?
RUSSELL: Yes.
PETERSON: Did you read his bio?
RUSSELL: Yes.
PETERSON: You seen his picture?
RUSSELL: Yes.
PETERSON: When I flipped through that and I seen his picture—Goddamn—That’s the guy who was in my outfit, in B Battery, that we selected a soldier of the month four or five times. He was sharp, good looking kid, knew his military stuff, whatever was required and all. Just an outstanding kid. Gah, Charlie Carter. So, I just shouted off an email to him, “Hey, Charlie, this is so-and-so and so-and-so.” And it come back to me. And I told him what I was doing. And he told me what was going on. And asked me to get ahold of Alan. I emailed Alan. Never got an answer back. But I see—Alan must have forwarded you a copy of my email cause that’s where I got your name. When I saw that, I said, I’m gonna take a ride out to the park. So, I come out and I stopped by the visitor center, talked with Maureen up there, receptionist. And Alan wasn’t in. And I said, “Well, what about Nancy? Where’s she located?” She’s down at the site. I said, “Well, I’ll try later.” Cause I told Alan I would try to get a hold of him. But since I had answered him by email and called him twice and got no response from him, I said well, maybe he’s out of town. I’ll give Nancy a shot.
RUSSELL: Well, I’m glad you did.
PETERSON: That’s why I called here. And after I had talked with Charlie–that was a couple of months back–I got–and I saw his site, and I saw references to other Nike missile stuff, I went to start reading it, ‘cause it was interesting as hell. And I had been out of it for thirty-five years. So, I got back into it. And I downloaded and printed a lot of stuff.
RUSSELL: Well, thank you for doing that.
PETERSON: [unintelligible]. Don’t throw it away.
RUSSELL: No, we won’t. It’ll have so much interpretive use by our park staff because one of the things that we’re looking at, you know—And not only that, as they are trying to develop the National Register nomination, it’s good information to have.
PETERSON: [unintelligible]...the map. Let’s see. This is where we are here. This is B Battery. This is where D Battery used to be, right up there. C Battery is off the map. It was in Opelika. At Carroll City. And of course, this is the Nike family. Here’s the Nike Hercules missile. That’s the first one, Nike Ajax. You can see the difference. One booster. Four of these combined make one booster, and of course, the body is bigger.
RUSSELL: So, the Ajax was the earliest, and then it was Hercules.
PETERSON: Then Zeus. Okay, that was designed to take out a ballistic missile.
RUSSELL: So, Zeus was intercontinental ballistic missile?
PETERSON: Yes. [Turning pages] Hawk. Three on the launcher. [Turning page] And that’s the baby that replaced all these, called the Patriot. You’ve heard of it?
RUSSELL: Yep.
PETERSON: It first come up—We’ve seen it in action in the Gulf War in the nineties. Turned out it wasn’t as good as they thought it was really. Cause there’s—[pages turning]—specs.
RUSSELL: Specs. [Turning pages]
PETERSON: Another story. [Turning pages] “Life on A Nike Site.”
RUSSELL: Now that’s interesting.
PETERSON: Yeah. Read that. That’s guaranteed an appeal. [Turning pages] [unintelligible]...sick call. Food. Personalities. [Turning pages] First sergeant: what did he do? Nike training. [Turning pages] We trained at Fort Bliss. [Turning pages] [unintelligible] [Turning pages] See that term before?
RUSSELL: Yep. Operational Readiness Evaluation. ORE.
PETERSON: Now you know I wasn’t fooling you.
RUSSELL: [laughs] I didn’t think you were lying to me.
PETERSON: [turning pages] That’s a good story.
RUSSELL: “The Vigilant and Invincible”
PETERSON: Uh-huh. Basically what—See this is the missile tracking radar. This is the one that guides the missile to the target. These are the acquisition radars that pick up the incoming target. These are the tracking targets, once they pick up a target and designate it—the commander says, okay this is the target I want to shoot now. The operate will designate that target to the tracking operators, target tracking operators. Then they will lock on that target. The missile tracking radar is already locked onto the missile. At the time of fire, missile takes off, drops the booster, and then it’s heading off to the target. As the target moves, its position data is fed to the computer. The computer then re-computes a burst point, tells the missile antenna: Tell that missile to turn east, west, north, south, go up, dive, [unintelligible], and then it just follows in that—Okay, now’s the time to burst, the plane is here. Burst. By the time the blast dissipates, the target is destroyed in the fireball.
RUSSELL: So, it wasn’t so much like the actual impact? It was a burst before an impact?
PETERSON: Yeah. [Turning pages.] That more or less gives you an idea of what’s happening. At the fire command.
RUSSELL: This is a lot of information. Do you want me to photocopy this so you can keep this? You’ve put a lot of effort into this.
PETERSON: You can if you want to, and then I can drop back by and pick it up. I’m going down to Key Largo sometime next month to talk to their historical society ‘cause they had B Battery up in north Key Largo...
[End of Side A]
[Begin Side B]
PETERSON: acquisition operator. Targets are picked up from the scope. That’s where the commander says, all right, that’s the target I want, points to it, the acquisition operator uses it as uh–I want to say a different word than potentiometer,–uses his dials, swings an azimuth line over to the target here, moves his ring [??] circle out here, where they intersect, then he says, “Designate.” The position goes into the next van, electronically to these guys at the other three scopes. They pick up the target, lock on it. They’re in another van. They’re just missile and target tracking radars.
RUSSELL: So, were the two vans a sort of a fail safe? I mean, why did you really need the two vans?
PETERSON: Because of the equipment.
RUSSELL: Different equipment in each van?
PETERSON: Yeah. See. On the other side of this van, behind this van, you have the computer. And also as you come farther in this van you have up in this side here, you have what they call the defense recorder, data recorder, that the computer operator, once at battle station, once he’s completed his checks, he sets up the data recorder, which keeps a record of everything that goes on, all the command the commander gives, all switches and buttons and relays and stuff that have been activated all the way down to the time of burst. These plotting boards–you have another plotting board over here—horizontal and vertical plotting board–they got pins on them. One is tracking where the target is, one is tracking where the missile is going. Let’s relate a comparison. Let’s say you have a moonball–sssshhhhhoo, straight up—In the other van, you have uh, the positioner’s got three scopes on it. At the end of the van here. If the door is, you come in there, you got a position here, you got a scope here, you got a scope here. Okay, you got one guy sitting here, here, here. You got a elevation operator [unintelligible] this is the range operator, an azimuth, that target up here, this way is azimuth, right? That’s range. This is elevation. This guy has already told him what the range and the azimuth is. This guy has to search an elevation. On their scope is a line that goes across the scope, like that. And it has in there a break in the line. We call that the gate. The target appears on the scope, just a little blip, like that. The range operator, then the azimuth operator already have that blip in the gates. Elevation operator doesn’t have it in yet. He has to search. And as he moves the antenna up and down, it—you’ll see that blip go back and forth. And once he gets it in the gate, then he’ll lock it on. Once all three are locked in position, then they’ll give a target tracks, and that command goes into this van, where a little light comes on: target tracks. Commander knows, will say, it’s locked on. The missile operator, he’s doing the same thing. He smooths it–he puts the antenna down, looks downrange. Okay, they got a missile standing up in launch position. He looks downrange, says it’s ready. He pushes his button: locked on. Another little light comes on. Commander’s got two lights, got the ready to fire light. [Unintelligible]
RUSSELL: How often did they launch missiles here in form of a test? Because I know they didn’t ever have to actually intercept.
PETERSON: Nah, they didn’t have to shoot anything. They would–not being here is ‘62–the first units that hit here were Hawk units. Now, I showed you the Hawk missile. Those units were strung up along the keys and in Key West. The Hawk missile primarily was designed to take out a low-flying aircraft. Now, we not only knew that Castro was putting in missiles down there; we knew that he had–bringing in bombers and fighters. One of the nice things to do, for him, would be to probe our defenses, send in some fighters, see if they could get by our radar installations. Well, if he tried that, that was the purpose of the Hawk missiles, to knock them out of the sky. If he tried to come in with bombers. The Hercs come in later. We come in within a week of the Hawks. I can just see these guys struggling like hell to get the launchers set up in these muddy fields, get them leveled and positioned, aligning their radars and everything, getting the missile ready to fire and–they send bombers over. Okay. [Unintelligible] struggling every day, believe me, struggled. All four batteries. There may have been periods of time when one battery, for one reason or another, they were having problems. Then you got a defense commander sitting in there, say maybe President Kennedy, is he going to launch? If he launches the missile, are we going to be ready down there in south Florida? And your commander here in south Florida: we have to be ready.
So, these guys are busting their hump [??] to get these missiles ready. After things slacked off, you weren’t under that kind of pressure, but everybody [unintelligible] about their work. [Turning pages] [unintelligible] in the launch area. Certain commands go from where the battery commander was, down electronically, through this man. He got a panel there that tells–all three sections, each section’s got three missiles and they’re telling the operator in here, all three are in condition to be launched. Or we have one that’s nonoperational, I’ve only got two I can fire. He relays that information back to the commander: Hey, I’ve got one section that’s only got two missiles. Or, I got one section that’s completely out of action. What do you want? And then command, he’ll designate I want–Give me a missile out of C Section, give me a missile with a [unintelligible] warhead. Or give me one with a non-explosive warhead. It depends on the target. You get a whole fleet of ships coming in, an invasion coming in? We had the capability of launching a missile, surface missiles, not only surface to air but surface to surface, and the idea there, if we had a fleet coming in, take a ship in the middle, which is usually an aircraft carrier, surrounded by battleships and cruisers, knock it out. The fireball will take care of the rest of them. So, the commander would say, okay, give me a high explosive or a nuke. [Turning pages] And you wouldn’t want to waste a nuke on a little piper cub coming in. [Turning pages] There you go. There’s a bunch of people [unintelligible].
RUSSELL: [laughs]. Thinking of purchasing a contaminated Nike site.
PETERSON: Now, there’s a—[pause]. I don’t know, you’ll find the answers in there. The questions and answers are right in there. But I ran across–in San Francisco, in 88, San Francisco site 88, which is a historical site–and the guys that put it together were people like me. And willing to fund it? People like me. Who maintains it? People like me. Getting no outside support from anybody. So. That’s what I wanted to tell you. How is it looking? Are you actually going to get the funds for this thing?
RUSSELL: It actually looks like the National Register nomination will be successful at this point. Like I said, the people who were down here on Friday from our regional office were very impressed with the site, with the integrity, and they are actively working on submitting the nomination. And then, it goes on the National Register then if the nomination is accepted. And then we’re looking at some of the bigger issues of what are we going to do with the site. I mean, obviously, we use a lot of it.
[End of Interview]
Description
Ed Peterson was stationed at Nike Missile Base from 1964 to 1969. When he retired, he was first sergeant in four of the batteries of the 52nd Artillery. In this oral history interview he talks about the barracks, the organization of the base, his duties, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Nike Missile program. Interviewed by Nancy Russell on December 16, 2002.
Credit
Everglades National Park
Date Created
12/16/2002
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