January, 2019

My name is Tim Jordan, I have been enjoying this trip back in time [NikeMissile.org] to my days from 1971 until 1974 at Nike Site C-50, Chicago Defense. I have in recent weeks came upon photos of my old Site C-50 located in Homewood, IL. These were great days for me, I was just 20 years old when assigned, and 23 when we shut the gates and turned over the site to the USAR in late November, 1974. I have some good overhead photos of the site taken around 1972 and 1973. Most photos were taken during the equipment upgrade of the IFC Area in early 1972. Let me know if you are interested in adding them to your web site. Thank goodness to the historical people at the city of Homewood for obtaining these photos from several of my former site personnel, and forwarding them to me. I will attach one with myself in the photo. Thank you and take care, hope to hear from you.

Nice picture of your IFC. Is that a HiPar antenna in the background?

Yes we had a HIPAR. I will attach some additional photos taken in 1972 and early 1973. I was assigned to the IFC area, though I was with the Security MP Detachment. There were 11 of us to include the four K9 handlers. We all had to have a secondary MOS, so some of us were trained on the MTR, or TTR, but I was one of the four primary entry controllers, so my secondary was operating the generators. 90% of my time was working the main entrance gate into the Admin/IFC area. Attached are photos of the entire Admin/IFC area, and of our launching area. Note it was off of Halsted Street in Chicago Hts, in the middle of a corn field. It was a 1B2C magazine setup with 11 launchers. You can contact me anytime, I am retired now. I am also a volunteer with the NPS at old Fort Rosecrans located at the Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma. We do the living history of Battery Ashburn, of the 19th Coast Arty. Take care and let me know, all of the photos are of Chicago site C-50.

Also I would like to submit some some old days stories about routine times at the site, and during certain headline events. It would be nice to talk about the guys I served with, so many of them came from long military backgrounds going as far as WWII, my Platoon Sgt was a former Officer and Tuskeegee Airman, who flew the B-25. We had a 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldier, and guys who fought in the Pacific and ETO during WWII, as well as veterans of Korean and VN. Some great friends I will always remember, as we had some very humorous times as everyone was given a nickname by our Battery comic, SP6 Russell, mine was the Shadow as I was so skinny back then. My wife and I enjoy taking trips to the Bay Area, and would like to come up during the summer. Stand by for more photos in about a month, I had some of the guys contact me and decided to send some photos from the site, and some photos of Site C-72 in Addison, IL and C-32 in Porter, IN, and a couple from the ADCP located in Arlington Heights.

Tim Jordan, MSgt Ret.