Nike Missile Site LA-55 IFC, Point Vicente California
Longitude: -118.36876267420000
This location was part of the Los Angeles Defense Area
Site ID: LA-55
Missile / battery configuration: Nike 2B/12H, 20A/8L-U
This site controlled the missiles at the Launch Area located here.
Site Role: IFC
A typical Nike air defense site consisted of two separate parcels of land. One area was known as the Integrated Fire Control (IFC) Area. This site contained the Nike system's ground-based radar and computer systems designed to detect and track hostile aircraft, and to guide the missiles to their targets.
The second parcel of land was known as the Launcher Area. At the launcher area, Nike missiles were stored horizontally within heavily constructed underground missile magazines. A large, missile elevator brought the Nikes to the surface of the site where they would be pushed across twin steel rails to one of four satellite launchers.
Elaboration on how Nike worked here.
Missile Type: Ajax/Hercules
The Nike Ajax was the first in the Army's family of guided missiles, and the world's first operational, guided, surface-to-air missile system. Nike Ajax had a burnout speed of Mach 2.3, a range of 25-30 miles, and a ceiling of 65,000 feet.
Designed to carry either nuclear and/or high-explosive warheads, the Nike Hercules missile could attack supersonic aircraft operating at altitudes in excess of 150,000 feet and at a range of more than 87 miles.
LA-55 guarded Los Angeles from a spectacular edge of the continent. At Point Vicente, Nike crews worked a coastal bluff landscape where radar, missile magazines, city government, parks, lighthouse country, and Pacific views all became part of the same Cold War story.
LA-55 was located in the Point Vicente / Rancho Palos Verdes area on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The battery covered the southwestern coastal approach to Los Angeles, including the ocean approaches to the Port of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and the South Bay.
The Los Angeles Defense Area was one of the largest and most complex Nike air-defense networks in the United States. By the late 1950s, Los Angeles was ringed by sixteen Nike batteries. The defended area included the port and shipyards, Los Angeles and Long Beach industrial districts, aircraft plants, communications and transportation corridors, nearby military installations, and a major share of the nation's aerospace industry.
Nike batteries were the Army's final layer of continental air defense. Air Force warning radars and interceptor aircraft were supposed to meet enemy bombers farther out. If bombers reached the target region, the Nike batteries around Los Angeles would use ground-based radar, analog fire-control computers, and surface-to-air missiles to attempt an intercept.
Most Los Angeles sites began as Nike Ajax batteries. Ajax was a liquid-fueled, command-guided missile with a conventional warhead. Selected sites were later converted to Nike Hercules, a larger, solid-fueled, longer-range missile that could carry either conventional or nuclear warheads. The Los Angeles Hercules-converted sites were LA-04, LA-29, LA-32, LA-43, LA-55, LA-78, LA-88, LA-94, and LA-96. The Ajax-only sites were LA-09, LA-14, LA-40, LA-57, LA-70, LA-73, and LA-98.
A Nike battery was normally a split installation. The Integrated Fire Control area, or IFC, contained radar, computer, command, communications, and generator equipment. The launch area contained underground magazines, elevators, launchers, missile assembly and test facilities, security structures, roads, utilities, and support buildings.
Site Configuration and Decoded Meaning
Recorded configuration: Nike 2B/12H, 20A/8L-U.Decoded meaning: The launch area had two Type B underground magazines. The authorized missile load was 12 Nike Hercules missiles and 20 Nike Ajax missiles. The 8L-U ending means 8 universal launchers suitable for the Hercules-era configuration.
Site History and Setting
The Point Vicente battery was selected for Hercules conversion and stayed active until March 1974. Its long service life shows that the Army considered the Palos Verdes coastal approach important enough to retain in the final Los Angeles Nike layout.The site's post-closure history is closely tied to Rancho Palos Verdes. The city's own historical master-plan background notes that city offices were located on the Nike missile site under an interim lease and that the city intended to acquire the site for civic center and parkland use when federal disposal allowed it.
Public history sources describe the Point Vicente Nike tract as transferred to Rancho Palos Verdes after the Army closure period. The IFC/control area became associated with Del Cerro Park or the civic-center side of the property, while the launcher area became a city storage or maintenance landscape with missile pads still visible in some accounts.
LA-55 is important because it is both a military site and a civic-origin site. The Cold War military tract helped shape the geography of Rancho Palos Verdes public land, civic space, and park planning after the missiles were gone.
Units and Manning
No single unit assignment was found in the sources used here. Use Los Angeles Defense Area, U.S. Army Nike Ajax / Hercules battery, active until the 1974 regional Nike shutdown.Nike duty at LA-55 would have centered on readiness rather than combat action. Crews maintained radar, communications, generators, launchers, elevators, missile test equipment, fuel or missile-handling systems, security fencing, vehicles, and fire-control procedures. The site existed for an emergency that never came, but it had to be able to respond quickly if aircraft penetrated the outer air-defense screen.
Post-Closure and Current Status
The best current-status description is closed and decommissioned, with the control area obliterated or absorbed into Rancho Palos Verdes park / civic-center use and the launch area used for city storage or maintenance purposes with some launcher-pad evidence described in public accounts.The closure of LA-55 fits the broader decline of the Nike system. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet bomber threat had been overshadowed by intercontinental ballistic missiles, while the cost of maintaining large labor-intensive air-defense batteries became harder to justify. LA-94 closed in 1968, LA-29 closed in 1971, and the remaining Los Angeles Hercules sites were removed from service in 1974. Ajax-only sites such as LA-09, LA-14, LA-40, LA-57, LA-70, and LA-73 had already closed earlier.
Chronology
- Early 1950s The Army and Corps of Engineers selected permanent and alternate Nike sites around Los Angeles while gun batteries still formed part of the regional air-defense system.
- 1953 The Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District was obtaining properties for Los Angeles Nike batteries, using military property where possible and negotiating or acquiring non-DOD sites where necessary.
- 1954 to 1958 The permanent Los Angeles Nike ring came into operation, with Ajax batteries established around the basin, coast, mountains, and inland approaches.
- 1956 LA-55 entered active service.
- Late 1950s and early 1960s Selected Los Angeles batteries were converted to Nike Hercules. LA-55 should be treated according to its specific system type above.
- March 1974 LA-55 was deactivated or removed from active Nike service.
- 1974 The remaining Los Angeles Nike Hercules sites were removed from service, ending the regional Nike mission.
List of all Nike Installations in California
