Mar 27, 2009, 10:51 PM
Everglades missile base tour is a trip through the Cold War
BY HOWARD COHEN
President John F. Kennedy loved the James Bond classic From Russia With Love and the fictional Agent 007 and his exploits to outwit his Cold War enemies.
In the real world, however, Kennedy and his military advisors took the threat of a Soviet-armed Cuba seriously enough to build a missile site deep in the Everglades, where projectiles capable of traveling at 2,700 mph were stored and could be launched in 15 minutes.
Known as Nike Hercules Missile Base HM-69, the site in Everglades National Park recently opened to the public. Through April, visitors can take a 90-minute driving and walking tour to see the missile assembly building, the three barns where the 12 missiles were stored, the guardhouse, an underground control room and surrounding berms that still tower as silent sentinels.
''South Florida was unique in feeling that threat,'' says National Park Service ranger Leon Howell, a retired Coast Guard officer who recently led a group of 10 into the former Cold War nerve center.
• • •
The tour begins with a ranger's lecture and photo exhibition at the squat, single-story Daniel Beard Center. Once part of the Army base, it now houses a research staff charged with protecting the Everglades. A bronze plaque honors its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
The missile command center lies about 14 miles into the park, behind a padlocked, chain-link fence. In the distance three hangar-like buildings rise up from the rain-starved scrub.
''The desolate feeling gives you a reflection of what it was like for the men and war,'' says John Talbot, a tourist from Ann Arbor, who found out about the tour at the last minute. ``I had no idea this place existed.''
• • •
Though the radar installations and missiles were dismantled long ago, the concrete barns where the missiles were stored seem impervious to the passage of time -- except for the flecked, blood-orange paint peeling from cinder-block walls.
A label affixed to a dust-encrusted rotary wall phone reads: ''Do Not Discuss Classified Information.'' Nearby, a bolted metal door has a hand-scrawled message in block letters: ''Lock door immediately upon entry.'' A control room about 50 yards away is buried under a thicket.
''This was an integrated defense system here in South Florida, and it was predicated on the Cold War and the threat from Cuba. That didn't happen at other missile sites,'' Howell says.
The base opened in 1964, two years after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It remained active until 1979, when the military turned it over to the National Park Service.
Howell, 61, remembers those stomach-in-your-throat days in the early '60s.
'I remember the fear in my parents' eyes and remember the duck-and-cover drills in school. This takes me back to the day. Everyone reacts differently to this tour. For younger people it's a history lesson.
'For others, it's, `Do you remember the day?' ''
• • •
In October 1962, Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev were on the brink of war over Sovietdirected missile bases being built in Cuba. It was that confrontation that led the Army to build the 40-acre base, located 45 miles or so from Dadeland Mall.
Nike Hercules missiles had a range of 110 miles, leaving them a bit short of striking Cuba, which was 160 miles away, Howell says. Instead, the missiles would have been used to intercept incoming attacks.
''If we had attacked Cuba, these missiles would have played some role in our defense,'' Howell says.
Four missile sites guarded South Florida then. Three are gone -- one is a Publix in Hialeah. Another is the home of Krome detention center in South Miami-Dade. Another has been transformed into Key Largo Hammocks Botanical State Park.
But the Everglades base remains intact. On the grounds are 22 buildings, including barracks, a guard dog kennel, a rec room and the missile assembly, storage and command center facilities. More than 130 military personnel worked and lived here.
The heart of the base was the battery-control trailer, equipped with radar, early-warning systems and control panels to detect, identify, launch and intercept a missile. The battery-control officer would have issued the signal to fire.
Park rangers like Howell are still ''just getting bits and pieces'' about how things worked. One of the goals for opening the base is to encourage historians and former personnel, like Charles Carter, then 17 and a member of the A Battery as an underground console operator, to tell their stories.
• • •
The base was situated in an agricultural area just south of Homestead. Many of the military personnel lived in tents until the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers finished building the barracks.
'Even though we lived in tents to mid-1965, I enjoyed going to my parents' home on weekends, where I grew up off Southwest Eighth Street and 34th Avenue,'' says Carter, 63, who now lives in Atlanta.
Initially, seasonal rains caused the heavy missiles to sink into the muck, Carter wrote in a paper he presented to the U.S. Army Conference of Military Historians in Washington, D.C., in 2002.
''The humidity of South Florida had an entirely different effect on missile electronics and other equipment than . . . the dry climate of Texas and New Mexico. Replacement circuit boards were in constant demand,'' he wrote.
The proximity to South Florida's core areas was ''to ensure an anxious populace that they were being taken care of and missiles were here at a moment's notice to defend them,'' says Melissa Memory, the park's chief of cultural resources.
Most of the missiles had conventional warheads, although each barn held one nuclear warhead. The Army removed the missiles and warheads before turning over the site to the Park Service. Park officials say no nuclear waste residue remains on the site.
The control room and some other structures are closed to the public, however, as the Park Service is removing asbestos and lead paint.
Everglades National Park staffers, meanwhile, are searching for those who lived and worked at the base.
''It's an important site to the country,'' Memory says. ``Everyone had an individual story of what went on here.''
BY HOWARD COHEN
President John F. Kennedy loved the James Bond classic From Russia With Love and the fictional Agent 007 and his exploits to outwit his Cold War enemies.
In the real world, however, Kennedy and his military advisors took the threat of a Soviet-armed Cuba seriously enough to build a missile site deep in the Everglades, where projectiles capable of traveling at 2,700 mph were stored and could be launched in 15 minutes.
Known as Nike Hercules Missile Base HM-69, the site in Everglades National Park recently opened to the public. Through April, visitors can take a 90-minute driving and walking tour to see the missile assembly building, the three barns where the 12 missiles were stored, the guardhouse, an underground control room and surrounding berms that still tower as silent sentinels.
''South Florida was unique in feeling that threat,'' says National Park Service ranger Leon Howell, a retired Coast Guard officer who recently led a group of 10 into the former Cold War nerve center.
• • •
The tour begins with a ranger's lecture and photo exhibition at the squat, single-story Daniel Beard Center. Once part of the Army base, it now houses a research staff charged with protecting the Everglades. A bronze plaque honors its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
The missile command center lies about 14 miles into the park, behind a padlocked, chain-link fence. In the distance three hangar-like buildings rise up from the rain-starved scrub.
''The desolate feeling gives you a reflection of what it was like for the men and war,'' says John Talbot, a tourist from Ann Arbor, who found out about the tour at the last minute. ``I had no idea this place existed.''
• • •
Though the radar installations and missiles were dismantled long ago, the concrete barns where the missiles were stored seem impervious to the passage of time -- except for the flecked, blood-orange paint peeling from cinder-block walls.
A label affixed to a dust-encrusted rotary wall phone reads: ''Do Not Discuss Classified Information.'' Nearby, a bolted metal door has a hand-scrawled message in block letters: ''Lock door immediately upon entry.'' A control room about 50 yards away is buried under a thicket.
''This was an integrated defense system here in South Florida, and it was predicated on the Cold War and the threat from Cuba. That didn't happen at other missile sites,'' Howell says.
The base opened in 1964, two years after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It remained active until 1979, when the military turned it over to the National Park Service.
Howell, 61, remembers those stomach-in-your-throat days in the early '60s.
'I remember the fear in my parents' eyes and remember the duck-and-cover drills in school. This takes me back to the day. Everyone reacts differently to this tour. For younger people it's a history lesson.
'For others, it's, `Do you remember the day?' ''
• • •
In October 1962, Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev were on the brink of war over Sovietdirected missile bases being built in Cuba. It was that confrontation that led the Army to build the 40-acre base, located 45 miles or so from Dadeland Mall.
Nike Hercules missiles had a range of 110 miles, leaving them a bit short of striking Cuba, which was 160 miles away, Howell says. Instead, the missiles would have been used to intercept incoming attacks.
''If we had attacked Cuba, these missiles would have played some role in our defense,'' Howell says.
Four missile sites guarded South Florida then. Three are gone -- one is a Publix in Hialeah. Another is the home of Krome detention center in South Miami-Dade. Another has been transformed into Key Largo Hammocks Botanical State Park.
But the Everglades base remains intact. On the grounds are 22 buildings, including barracks, a guard dog kennel, a rec room and the missile assembly, storage and command center facilities. More than 130 military personnel worked and lived here.
The heart of the base was the battery-control trailer, equipped with radar, early-warning systems and control panels to detect, identify, launch and intercept a missile. The battery-control officer would have issued the signal to fire.
Park rangers like Howell are still ''just getting bits and pieces'' about how things worked. One of the goals for opening the base is to encourage historians and former personnel, like Charles Carter, then 17 and a member of the A Battery as an underground console operator, to tell their stories.
• • •
The base was situated in an agricultural area just south of Homestead. Many of the military personnel lived in tents until the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers finished building the barracks.
'Even though we lived in tents to mid-1965, I enjoyed going to my parents' home on weekends, where I grew up off Southwest Eighth Street and 34th Avenue,'' says Carter, 63, who now lives in Atlanta.
Initially, seasonal rains caused the heavy missiles to sink into the muck, Carter wrote in a paper he presented to the U.S. Army Conference of Military Historians in Washington, D.C., in 2002.
''The humidity of South Florida had an entirely different effect on missile electronics and other equipment than . . . the dry climate of Texas and New Mexico. Replacement circuit boards were in constant demand,'' he wrote.
The proximity to South Florida's core areas was ''to ensure an anxious populace that they were being taken care of and missiles were here at a moment's notice to defend them,'' says Melissa Memory, the park's chief of cultural resources.
Most of the missiles had conventional warheads, although each barn held one nuclear warhead. The Army removed the missiles and warheads before turning over the site to the Park Service. Park officials say no nuclear waste residue remains on the site.
The control room and some other structures are closed to the public, however, as the Park Service is removing asbestos and lead paint.
Everglades National Park staffers, meanwhile, are searching for those who lived and worked at the base.
''It's an important site to the country,'' Memory says. ``Everyone had an individual story of what went on here.''