Nike Missile Site LA-98 IFC, Magic Mountain / Lang / Saugus California
Longitude: -118.32926299800500
This location was part of the Los Angeles Defense Area
Site ID: LA-98
Missile / battery configuration: Nike 1B, 2C/30A/12L-A
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
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-98 was associated with Magic Mountain, Lang, and Saugus in the Santa Clarita Valley / Angeles National Forest edge. The control area was in the mountain terrain, while the launch area was tied to the Lang / Saugus side of the valley and the Soledad Canyon / Santa Clara River transportation corridor.
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. The two areas should be mapped separately, but historically they functioned as one battery.
Site Configuration and Decoded Meaning
Recorded configuration: Nike 1B, 2C/30A/12L-A.Decoded meaning: The launch area had three underground magazines total, one Type B and two Type C. The authorized missile load was 30 Nike Ajax missiles. The 12L-A ending means 12 Ajax launchers.
Site History and Setting
LA-98 opened in 1955 and remained active until December 1968, but it was not converted to Hercules. It therefore represents a long-lived Ajax-only site in the Los Angeles Defense Area.SCVHistory identifies Magic Mountain-Lang as one of the Santa Clarita Valley's Cold War Nike bases and notes that these Nike bases involved multiple physical locations, including IFC and launch components. This is important for LA-98 because its landscape is not a single compact parcel.
The site helped cover the northern approaches to Los Angeles through Newhall, Saugus, and the Santa Clarita Valley. Its mission overlapped conceptually with LA-94 at Los Pinetos, but LA-98 remained Ajax-only while LA-94 was converted.
Sources describe the current control-site condition as microwave relay use and the launch-site condition as private owner / construction use, with much of the launch site turned into a quarry. That post-closure condition makes LA-98 a heavily altered industrial/reuse landscape rather than an intact public-history site.
Units and Manning
Nike duty at LA-98 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 status is closed, decommissioned, Ajax-only, with the IFC reused or altered as a microwave-relay site and the launch area heavily altered by private construction or quarry use.The closure of LA-98 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.
- 1955 LA-98 entered active service.
- Late 1950s and early 1960s Selected Los Angeles batteries were converted to Nike Hercules. LA-98 should be treated according to its specific system type above.
- December 1968 LA-98 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
