Long before it was a shoe with a swoosh, Nike was the Greek goddess of victory. And two decades before Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman stuck rubber to a waffle iron in Eugene, Ore., Nike was an air defense missile system protecting America with high-tech, 35-foot-long lethal javelins.

In November, with the help of Carvel Bass from the District’s Operations Branch, the last of an underground Nike site was moved from an Air National Guard (ANG) base in Van Nuys to become an exhibit at Fort MacArthur. The fort also houses an original Nike site.

The ANG leases the San Fernando Valley site from the Corps and allowed the Los Angeles Air Defense Museum Assn. to ferry equipment from the old Nike magazines down to San Pedro. “These sites played a significant role in deterring any aggression from the Soviet Union and China,” says Frank Evans, president of the museum association.

In 1954, the first Nike battery was built in the Malibu mountains, according to the Fort Mac Web site. (The first generation of missiles, loaded with conventional explosives, was called Nike Ajax; the second was nuclear-armed and called Nike Hercules.) At the peak of the Nike period, 16 missile launch sites guarded the greater LA area, “protecting an area of some 4,000 square miles with ‘a ring of supersonic steel.’” Missiles were ultimately deployed at 250 to 280 sites nationwide.

The Los Angeles District engaged in hands-on construction of several southern California sites. “In February 1955 the office of the Chief of Engineers praised the District for the zeal and effort displayed in the expeditious prosecution of the Nike program for the Los Angeles Defense Area,” according to Dr. Anthony Turhollow’s history of the District.

For the next two decades, as the Cold War refrigerated relations between the West and Communist bloc, the Nike surface-to-air system was targeted mainly at the threat from Soviet bombers. But as both sides began spending trillions to close the “missile gap,” they developed ever-faster intercontinental ballistic missiles that gradually rendered the Nike system, with aircraft as its targets, strategically useless.

In addition, the terms of several multi- and bilateral treaties by the U.S., Soviet Union and their allies required that certain military equipment be stood down by the signatories. Nikes were among the deactivated casualties. “Consequently,” Dr. Turhollow’s history states, “the District had to dismantle these defenses and dispose of the sites.”

“All Nike Ajax sites in the continental United States were closed down by 1964,” says the Web site www.alpha.fdu.edu devoted to a history of the Nike system. “Closures of select Nike Hercules sites began during the late 1960s. During 1974, all remaining operational sites within the nationwide Nike air defense system were inactivated….[signaling] the end of one of the nation’s most significant, highly visible and costly Cold War defense programs.”

Despite becoming obsolete in the U.S., the Nike system continued to be used into the 1990s by several American allies, including Turkey, Greece, South Korea and Taiwan.

Moreover, as Evans of the museum association points out, developing the system led to several technological breakthroughs. “When they were doing research and development on this system, it was necessary to be able to monitor certain functions of this missile in flight,” he says, “and they developed telemetry to remotely monitor them. It helped advance missile propulsion and guidance technology.”

Launching the missiles was a hybrid caveman-spaceman effort. The weapons were stored in underground magazines until needed; then they were carried to the surface by a large elevator. Crewmembers would then physically push the missiles on two steel rails to a nearby satellite launcher. The missile was attached to the launcher before it was raised to a near-vertical angle for firing, according to the Alpha Web site.

Evans was first an enlisted man, then an officer, in the Army field artillery. He was stationed at three Nike batteries—one in Thule, Greenland; Pittsburgh, Pa., and Fort Bliss, Tex. Afterwards, in civilian life, he didn’t think about the Nike system for many years. Then a neighbor in the California National Guard told him about the Fort MacArthur Museum.

Evans visited the Nike battery there, became hooked on history and ever since has tried to preserve Nike lore and gear for future generations. “The 20-year-olds of today need to know the historical side of how air defense protected the country from attack,” he explains.

The Van Nuys site was located in San Vicente Mountain Park and, until recently, was used for training by the California Air National Guard and the Army National Guard. In his word, the LA District’s Bass “facilitated” Evans’ efforts to dismantle Nike equipment from buildings that are being demolished and haul the gear to San Pedro.

Today, thanks to the efforts of Evans and others, visitors to Fort MacArthur can now see how, for many years, Nike just did it.