Declassified: History of the Nike Ajax Missile System

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From The Archive by U.S. Department of Defense

Saturday, September 20, 2008

"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.

Reader comments:

#1 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.

Just Jerry on 09-21-2008 12:15 AM

#2 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.

H_rocket on 09-21-2008 09:14 AM

#3 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.

New Ocean on 09-21-2008 09:05 PM

#4 Re: Article: Declassified: History of the Nike Ajax Missile System

Has anyone ever built a full scale Nike Ajax?

*edit* The above posts were not visible at the time of my posting...hmmm...

bigone5500 on 06-28-2009 01:48 PM

#5 Re: Article: Declassified: History of the Nike Ajax Missile System

This one is about 6 miles from my house..