Anyone out there in FFX UG land have experiences with the missle bases in FFXCO? Also se recent posts in Remy Crypts thread.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nike+missile+sites+in+Northern+Virginia

I use to go to the control site off popes head road ( that controlled the missle battery at current day popes head park)up to about 1992 and mabey a few years earlier and tresspass like any good 13 year old kid. I remember the site was abandonded and nothing more than shitty building or two, I do remember that one building still had a old cigarette machine in it, not much than that....i think they tore down all that shit

is the Nike site on Popes Head abandoned or have they built houses on it?
Who owned the land the Nike site was on?
Isn't there another Nike site in the Great Falls area?




















w

Thank goodness we finally have a thread on this, bravely posted.

I was able to go into the Popes Head missle storage bunkers in the early 1980's. They were just large underground bunkers partially filled with water. The park Authority built Popes Head Park and built soccer fields over them. The last time I was there you could see a few of the tall concrete fence posts in the brush that surrounded the facility with barbed wire.

There was/is an historic marker on the northbound side of the FFXCO Parkway
so any secrecy an/or bravery related to the posting of this subject is
minimal. Also, anyone here visit Dranesville or Falls church sies? See also
postings on "Remy Crypts " thread on FFX this site. Anyone here go there?
Same time frame. Also how about "Old VA. City" and Hunters Lodge on Lee Hiway,
Vienna Midgetville or abandoned W&OD railroad tracks?

Poops Head?

-----------------------------------------------

"...your suffering will be legendary even in Hell!"

The remains of the Missle silo's are still there. Popes Head Rd & Ladue La/Ffx Co Pkwy area. My home was constructed in 1960 and has a bomb shelter in it. Likely, that it will not be needed for that reason, but who the heck knows anymore! We are about 1.25 miles away from that site.

The Gt Falls Site (Springvale Rd & G.T.Pk.) was converted/ renovated into some sort of star viewing site/it now appears as if it is a space~telescope, next to a Ffx Co Park owned area & Turner Farm fields.

Dismantled in the late 1960's Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The remains of the Missle silo's are still there.
> Popes Head Rd & Ladue La/Ffx Co Pkwy area. My
> home was constructed in 1960 and has a bomb
> shelter in it. Likely, that it will not be needed
> for that reason, but who the heck knows anymore!
> We are about 1.25 miles away from that site.
>
> The Gt Falls Site (Springvale Rd & G.T.Pk.) was
> converted/ renovated into some sort of star
> viewing site/it now appears as if it is a
> space~telescope, next to a Ffx Co Park owned area
> & Turner Farm fields.

The Great Falls one has two sites - the Turner Farm site and the one at Nike Park, which are about 3/4 mile apart. There are remnants of each at both park - the dome for the radar is behind one of the ball fields at Nike Park.

Utterback Road in Great Falls. I forgot the name of the school it is next to. There's still a dome there with what used to be a site and a marker

There is also the site near the Lorton prison (Between SIlverbrook and Lorton Road) that was a Nike missle site.

Nike missile sites had two separate areas located about a mile apart from each other. The launch area is located off Popes Head Rd and the end of Quiet Brook Rd. The perimeter fence is still mostly intact but everything else is plowed over for sports fields. There are still two bumps that I think were the entrance to the underground facilities. Not sure though. The other that was the command and control center is located on the other side of the FFC Parkway off Popes Head at the end of LaDue. It's still fenced in an is used by Fairfax Co to store road materials. Nothing much to see at either location today though. The Lorton site off Furnace RD is still very much intact. The launch area has been concreted over but the command and control area buildings are still intact and in good shape. There are no trespassing signs but sometimes the gate is left open.

LOrtonguy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There is also the site near the Lorton prison
> (Between SIlverbrook and Lorton Road) that was a
> Nike missle site.


Is this it? Looks like it "goes underground":


View Larger Map

Missilefan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Utterback Road in Great Falls. I forgot the name
> of the school it is next to. There's still a dome
> there with what used to be a site and a marker


Forestville Elementary School.

Hey Blake Lane 73.
If your just looking for old places to check out, Try walking the woods a long rt 28 near Dulles and go north from there. Alot of old wells and stuff. Found 2 old mason jars that were still filled with fruit. Theres also a pair of hawks living in a old farm silo. Theres a trick to finding these old places, but I wont post it for the public.

Woods along Dulles area of rt 28 encompasses lots of land and rt 28 runs north and south through Dulles? A little more info. would be helpful for what you describe. There were no Nike/Ajax missile sites in that area but- lots of old farms with abandoned wells and former grain silo foundations. Very cool for your finding the old mason jars. Check this nice link for some interesting history that will interest anyone already reading this thread. http://dullesareahd.50webs.org/farms.html

http://www.hmdb.org/results.asp?Related=2093

To sully 28, Walk north on the south bound side of rt 28, start north of the airport. I just walk threw the woods with my eyes wide open, never noticed how deep into the woods i was. Did once walk in a circle for 2 hours. Heres a link to the nike site i grew up near.
Thanks for your link, I'll see where it leads me and grab a few photos along the way, might even do alittle metal detecting.

http://alpha.fdu.edu/~bender/NY73.html

Just thought I'd mention to anyone walking around the area of the nike sign on the FFpwy, wear boots, that area has a large supply of snakes.

Also see these threads for more on NIKE missile sites in Northern Virginia:
Nike Missil sites
NIKE MISSLE SITE
Lorton Nike Site Scheduled for Demolition (Almost)
MISSILE SILO

To Stephen- Ok on woods clarification near Dulles. For my link- never done any metal detecting. Check out the Horsepen Farm property at NE side of 28 where Frying Pan Rd meets 28. The property is vacant and been for commercial sale for a long time. Was still being farmed into the early 90s at least. Farm house and silo are gone. Haven't been there in a while but no one around to run into. Thinking that goes well for metal detecting.

Easily accessed from parking lot at NEC Corp. near Dulles Hilton at the end of Park Center Rd. Suggest metal detect around the permimeter of the property and especially around the old pond that sits adjacent to corner of 28 and Frying Pan Rd and along a small stream that runs through the land. The ground close to those areas should be mostly undisturbed for many years and certain to have some interesting hits. Sorry for moving off topic from the Nike Missile thread and wanting to share additional.

Thanks Sully 28, will check on it, is the pond the one across from Airport fuel tanks. I walked around an old dairy farm there before it was torn down.

The underground facilities are slightly NW of the aerial view you provided near left of the two ball fields and in the "couryard" formed by the newer prefab style buildings. You can see the 6 elevators (shaped like rectangles)there.

cold war bomber Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The underground facilities are slightly NW of the
> aerial view you provided near left of the two ball
> fields and in the "couryard" formed by the newer
> prefab style buildings. You can see the 6
> elevators (shaped like rectangles)there.


Wow - lot bigger facility than I ever imagined - thanks for the pointer.

The Nike Zeus A and B were armed exclusively with small nuclear warheads to increase kill probability.. Does anyone know if the local Nike sites were armed with conventional warheads or with the nuclear warheads?

 

Negative they were not. None were ever fired except in training. One accidently lifted off, in NJ I believe, and took out a couple buildings but there was no warhead on it.

oops Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> One accidently lifted off

Good gried, how could HTAT happen!?

They'd have to, among other things, turn on a gajillion switches, open a massive door or three, and push at LEAST one button.

> ...gried, how could HTAT...

[pardon dyslexic typing - daughter wants the lights off so she can watch some stupid Japanese-language anime on the "fast computer" behind me...I do better when it's light...]

Point of accuracy, I believe that 20 kt special warheads were incorporated
into the later NIKE/HERCULES series. It is my understanding that no NIKE/AJAX
weapons utilized anything other than HE ordnance.Up to 75 kt yeild were utilized in subsequent systems. Surprise! EMP emissions proved destructive to all local
electronics and guidance sytems -friend and foe. Also thermal, atmospheric shock and fallout effects would have been unpopular had these systems been utilized .
In summation, this entire concept turned out to be the equivalent of the the
nuclear hand grenade which was fortunately rejected in the prototype testing phase of development.Somebody had a good salesman and/or political clout to sell such expensive folly.

To answer a couple question that came up here. My understanding is that only the Lorton site had nukes and the other two sites used conventional warheads. Sometimes the gate is open at the Lorton facility. If I go it's usually M-F during the morning. Walk in the gate and turn right to walk around the perimeter in between the fence and the buildings to avoid calling attention to yourself. I don't think anyone really cares if you go in there though if the gate is open. The Nike missiles were a last ditch effort to stop incoming Russian planes that somehow might have gotten past the outer defenses. According to one of the films the fallout would have killed about 25% of the cities population. I guess that beats 100% anhiliation though.

The fall out from a blast 15 miles up would be minimal I guess. Fall out is usually created by dust and debris from the ground that becomes irradiated in the explosion.

 

We're probably talking about 30,000 ft or around 5 miles up and within 40 miles. A formation of enemy bombers coming down armed with nuclear warheads would certainly create a fallout of substantial proportions.

Sully 28 & Stephen-

Thanks for the tips on areas to explore. May have to take a look some afternoon. Your advice makes me wonder if theres a UE (urban exploration) group for the NOVA/DC area?

I remember the site at Pope's Head. That was going to protect us during the Cuban missile crisis. I remember the Cuban rockets were powerful enough to reach D.C. (or maybe fall a few miles short!), but not powerful enough to reach New York.

And Blake Lane 73: Sure I remember Old Virginia City. It was off of 29. I loved going there. (And Marshall Hall. And Glen Echo.) When my son was in pre-school daycare, it turned out that one of the women taking care of him had worked at Old Virginia City.

Only other thing I can contribute here is that there were/are Civil War embankments along the railroad tracks leading into Clifton. (I'm particularly familiar with the ones between Clifton and Burke.) I know people used metal detectors to recover Civil War bullets.

Found this on youtube. Looks just like the Popes Head Site before it was filled in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrpKEap76Lo&context=C36f78f5ADOEgsToPDskJ71dhHrFK5npjvxUwx8y2P

There were three Nike Sites in Fairfax County. The ones at Lorton were the only nuclear tipped ones. The ones at Pope's head and in Herndon were conventional. All three of the sites were composed of two separate facilities. The first was the actual missile site. This housed the interceptors and the fueling facilities. The Rockets were liquid fueled and required fueling prior to launch. You can still see the launch pad at the Lorton facility, the other two were buried to prevent kids from drowning in them as they would fill with water. Ironically the missile launch site off of Popes Head Road is now a playground. It is on the south side of The Fairfax County parkway and still is surrounded by a barbed wire fence. The other part of the facility is the radar station and tracking system. These would guide the remote control missiles into their targets managed by a massive central computer hidden somewhere within the defensive ring. The dirty secret is that the system only had capability to guide one missile at a time. Each of the control facilities was located a half mile inside the defensive ring so that the missiles would not fly over the control center on their way to target.
These missiles had a high failure rate due to the liquid fueling. The planners did not want one to crash into the guidance system and thus open a hole in the defenses around Washington.

This is partially why the Nike Hurc's were created. With only a few missiles being able to intercept in any given raid due to the limitations of the computer tracking system, a nuclear warhead increased the chance of there being multiple target destruction before the radar systems were blinded by the radiation and the remaining missiles became essentially unguided. The Last iteration, the Nike Zeus's were achieving hit to kill ballistic missile protection in the 60's before the military decided to push the spirit/sprint system.

The Spirit/Sprint system fell into disuse before deployment as there was no way to solve the detection problem after a high altitude detonation. The Gorgon/Gazelle system is still in use by Russia. The Nike's were eventually killed off by arms limitations treaties that specified how many nukes each side could have. Given the option, the military decided to keep more offensive nuclear weapons, than defensive nuclear weapons.

Here is the Lorton Site. Google: 38.70862,-77.251809

You can see the launch pads and elevators.

This is the Popes Head site in 64:

http://www.historicaerials.com/api/img-server.php?op=fetchHistoricPhotograph&bbox=-77.3611098320313,38.8188865350696,-77.3495258320313,38.8073025350696&year=1964&stamp=true

Completely unrelated, but awesome bit of similarly abandoned military equipment nearby; Mallows Bay. It is across the river from Quantico. It is the largest shipwreck site in the world. We sank our Navy, specifically our support fleet from WWI there. They were to provide transport and supplies to Europe. We didn't know what to do with them afterwards so we sank them there.

Mallows Bay...cool! You can see the sunken ships with Google (zoom in);


View Larger Map

Are people allowed tour the Nike site in Great Falls VA?

justsayin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thank goodness we finally have a thread on this,
> bravely posted.

bravely posted? You're retarded.