The Good Friday Earthquake zone.
A painting by Anchorage artist Duke Russell shows the soldiers of A Battery, 43rd Air Defense Artillery, opening the doors of the launch bay to find chaos. The art was commissioned by nonprofit organization Friends of Nike Site Summit. It hangs in the ski bunker.
During the Good Friday earthquake on March 27, 1964, the U.S. was in the middle of the Cold War, and what is now Kincaid Park was one of eight Nike-Hercules missile sites that defended the country against Soviet bombers. A magazine which held nuclear warheads is now a ski bunker.
On the evening of March 27, 1964, soldiers assigned to Battery A of the 4th Battalion/43rd Air Defense Artillery (ADA) Regiment had just finished dinner. Members of the 6–Midnight crew were preparing for shift while off-duty soldiers were starting the nightly games of spades or finding other activities to avoid the 28-degree weather.
Duty logs indicate that planned activities were interrupted at 5:36 p.m., by seismic activity of magnitude 9.3 and that aftershocks lasted for at least five minutes. The event is now known as the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964, and 139 people died in the aftermath.
The biggest earthquake in North America coincided with the Cold War, when Anchorage and surrounding sites housed nuclear warheads. So rapid responses from military personnel were key in the moments after the shaking stopped.
The Cold War that started in March 1947 ushered in military construction to counter the high-speed, high-altitude threat of jet-age aircraft. Between 1951 and 1959, the joint venture between the U.S. and Canada constructed the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) system. In Alaska, the NORAD system of the era consisted of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line of radars, the White Alice Communications System (WACS), four air interceptor launch locations, the USAF 626th Airborne Control and Warning Squadron, and the new state-of-the-art, U.S. Army Nike-Hercules surface-to-air missile (SAM) system. The Army Air Defense Command Post (AADCP) at the Fire Island Air Force Station replaced the observation point that had been in use by the 75th Coastal Artillery (AA) Regiment since 1940. Battery A (Site Point) was located at Point Campbell (aka Kincaid Park) and was one of the eight missile batteries built to repulse Soviet bombers. The layered defensive strategy dictated that interceptor aircraft were preferrable for incursions by individual aircraft. The Nike Hercules batteries were reserved for incursion by a large sortie. One Nike-Hercules missile could be armed with a nuclear warhead that theoretically, could damage three hundred aircraft in a single blast.
As the aftershocks subsided, soldiers donned their cold-weather gear and dispersed to perform damage-control inspections at their duty areas. As several launcher crewmen pried open the blast door for one of the magazines, they could hear the whine of a spinning gyroscope, an indication that a warhead was in the "armed" status; and the smell of highly flammable ammonium perchlorate filled the air, an indication that a rocket engine had been perforated. The magazine was home for 16 missiles. A spark from a light or a heater could set off a chain reaction of explosions. Three crewmen made the decision to enter the dark magazine to assess the situation: How many missiles were safe? How many missiles had been damaged? How many engines were compromised? And the most important question was how many, and what type of warheads were armed? Meanwhile, three soldiers evacuated the site after learning that at least one of the missiles had a "hot" warhead and were later charged with going AWOL (absent without leave).
The soldiers at Battery A mitigated the danger within three days and the Battery returned to operational status within two weeks. If one of the conventional munitions had detonated, Kincaid Park would have a lake. If one of the nuclear munitions had detonated, Anchorage would not exist. Good Friday of 1964 could have been a double disaster day for Alaska; but it was not, thanks to the courage of a few Cold War-era veterans.
The Remember Everyone Deployed tradition of wearing red on Friday is a visible appreciation for the sacrifices made by servicemembers. I challenge readers to wear red on Friday, March 27, to commemorate the contributions that servicemembers and veterans have shared with Alaska.
A plaque identifies the magazine that now serves the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage (what skiers call the wax bunker) and a mural inside depicts the events from that day. For more information on this historic event, education on the Cold War in Alaska, and tours of preservation sites, contact the Friends of Nike Site Summit at http://www.nikesitesummit.net. Additionally, the Anchorage Museum at and the Alaska Veterans Museum offer visual histories on NORAD in Alaska.
C. Kelly Joy, the executive director of Older Persons Action Group, is a former U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery officer who trained under the supervision of seasoned Nike-Herc Veterans prior to deploying to West Germany and guarding the Fulda Gap under similar Cold War circumstances as Battery A.
