Cold War memories... [PIC]

I live in the Atlantic Highlands of New Jersey. Across the bay is Sandy Hook which was part of the New York Harbor defense system since the Civil War and was always brimming with coastal gun batteries of increasing levels of sophistication and lethality and many of these systems are still there on display. Fort Hancock was largely abandoned after WWll but once the Soviet Union displayed nuclear capability, a Nike missile defense system was set up there with the code name NY-56. Bell Telephone Labs (a few miles away) developed the Nike Surface-to-Air system beginning with the Nike Ajax. There were two other generations of this system which went to the Nike Hercules (also pictured) and the seemingly suicidal nuclear tipped Nike Zeus. All these were designed to repel wings of nuclear armed Soviet bombers. In the analog era were computers were the size of buildings, the area of and around the Hood bristled with arrays of sweep radar, target acquisition radar and detonation radar as well as other multiple sites around the area. Nuclear weapons storage was also provided for Earl Naval Weapons Station a mile away on the Raritan Bay. There were many accidents during those days and there's a little memorial shown for one event. Further inland, there were two massive underground explosions. One was a fired that detonated all the missile that were on-site. Another event hasn't really been explained, but the area is still radioactively contaminated. The area was closed down in the 70s after the SALT treaty was signed and I remember sneaking into the base and found the gutted remains of the Nike Hercules missiles cut in half and displayed in a maintenance lot so Soviet satellites could verify their destruction. The 1953 GM Firebird l looks quite at home here.