We Could Have Launched Nukes From Metro Detroit
Boxer Joe Louis's former rural retreat in Utica became a base for missile silos during the Cold War
Utica — There were once missiles all over the Detroit Metro area to protect America’s industrial heart from Soviet air attacks. The remnants of the U.S. Army Nike missile base remain here in Shelby Township’s River Bends Park.
Critical military infrastructure still lines our terrain. You just have to know where to look.
In 1954, the Army leased the land for its Utica D-06 Missile base from Spring Hill Farm, which had been around since the 1830s and served as a stop on the underground railroad. In 1939, it was purchased by boxing legend Joe Louis, who loved riding horses.
He had a riding school, dance hall, restaurant, and lodge. Louis said the farm enabled him to live like a “country squire.”
After he sold it in 1944, the rural oasis fell into disrepair. By 1955, the army placed one of its 15 anti-aircraft missile systems here to stave off Soviet bombers with nuclear payloads. The Utica base was one of 15 bases which served as a “last line of defense” to protect the Detroit industrial region.
A little background: In World War II, anti-aircraft guns would shoot artillery into the sky to damage bombers, but in only a few short years, jets had made these guns obsolete. The government needed a way to target faster aircraft, and guided missiles seemed like the best bet.
In response, Bell Laboratories made the Nike Ajax—the first surface-to-air missile system in history.
The base had four main parts: the missile launch facility, a fuel mixing building, an integrated fire control center and administrative area, and a radar array.
The power building for the integrated fire control center is still used for storage. It’s the only structure still standing. There’s a set of stairs next to it leading up to an octagonal foundation for the old radar tower.
The Burgess-Shadbush Nature Center sits on top of the missile silo and launch area, which was filled by the army when it deactivated the base in 1974. But if you walk over by the replica pioneer cabin, you can still find the foundation of the fuel-mixing for the Ajax missiles.
The Nike base began operation in 1957, with 20 Ajax missiles pointing at the sky. They could go over twice the speed of sound and reach 70,000 feet.
The Army later upgraded them to 12 Nike Hercules missiles, which were larger and equipped with nuclear warheads to eliminate clumps of enemy bombers instead of just one.
Thankfully, these missiles were never fired at the Soviets, but that’s the point: We never needed to use them because we had them. Coming into our airspace would have proved disastrous. It’s just a stray shot away from mutually assured destruction—the defining doctrine of the Cold War.
Is the world any safer today? I don’t think so. It’s just that the nukes are out of sight a little bit more. The jets are even faster, the missiles more advanced. We live our lives and try not to think about political tensions around the Middle East, Russia, and China.
The danger of nuclear war still exists like this old missile base in the fields and the forests of this suburban park—both peripherally and in plain sight.
