"This material contains information affecting the National Defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws, Title 18, U. S. C., Section 793 and 794, the transmission or revelation of which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law."

Such wording would normally be cause for great concern if you were reading classified material openly on the Internet, but this recently de-classified historical monograph document has been deemed by the United States Goverment to be safe for general consumption.

This document, "Development, Production and Deployment of the Nike Ajax Missile System" written by Mary T. Cagle, is a historical monograph that traces the evolution of the Nike Ajax missile from its inception in late 1945 to 1959.

The once highly-classified document has been captured and converted to Adobe PDF format to share with the readers. 313 pages in length, the article is 12,974K in size. To view the article, click here. You will need Adobe Reader to view the article. If you do not have Adobe Reader, a copy may be downloaded for free from the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/.

Part of the challenge we face in the hobby is the archival and preservation of these old sources of information useful to our hobby. Adobe PDF format makes a great medium for the collection and storage of these types of documents because of its portability and cross-platform approach.

If you have something you'd like to share with the readers, send email to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it  with details on the document you have to share. Previous submissions have consisted of submitting magazines or documents in whole, which were be returned upon completion of the scanning process. While this approach is still acceptable, the preference is toward user-generated submissions scanned by the users themselves.

09-21-2008 12:15 AM  #1
Just Jerry Freeform rockets advocate   Joined: Aug 2006 Posts: 1298	Re: Article: Declassified: History of the Nike Ajax Missile System 300 lbs propellant 1000 lb initial mass 93000 lb thrust for 2 sec 8 motors upper 3000 lb thrust 24.3s analine/rfna Big dumb booster. Here's the launcher diagrams.

09-21-2008 09:14 AM  #2
H_rocket Village Idiot   Joined: Aug 2006 Posts: 598	Re: Article: Declassified: History of the Nike Ajax Missile System How intelligent did it need to be? Its only purpose was to get the sustainer off the pad in a heck of a hurry so the MTR could guide the sustainer to the target.

09-21-2008 09:05 PM  #3
R2K Certified Level Three   Joined: Jul 2007 Posts: 273	Re: Article: Declassified: History of the Nike Ajax Missile System When are we going to get that full scale nike launched? I know the bigger one (the 4 Q to S) is planned for next year balls.