I can only imagine that when artist Elizabeth Demaray saw a Nike-Hercules nuclear warhead sitting on its launchpad, she thought "hm, it looked kinda cold." So she created a "cozy" from 88 yards of quilted satin!
Louise
This must be some kind of Christos-type art. How many objects get a “cozy”? Teapots. That’s it.
The “Gates” in Central Park were better.
A.Non.E.Mous
Great, when this thing is actually needed it will spiral off course and land who knows where.
Sid Morrison
Not too pick too small a nit, but the Nike-Hercules was the missle which could (optionally) *carry* a nuclear warhead (model W31 typically), not the warhead itself. While they could be used as a short range nuclear ground-ground system, they were probably much more frequently fitted with conventional payloads (fragmentary explosive) and used for surface-air defense — taking out Russian bombers or even incoming missles. In this role, it’s been replaced by the Patriot system, which is a lot more portable.
The ones shown here are probably museum pieces as I’m pretty sure they’ve been deactivated. Maybe a retired military guy can comment more on the specifics of the ones shown here?
Sid Morrison
yep… I just got the link to finally work… must have been too many Neatorama readers headed there at once. It’s at Headlands Historic Missle Site near San Francisco. She calls them “warheads” too, but that’s only because she is an “artist”.
ROGER COTE'
WHAT IS PICTURED IS THE BODY OF THE NIKE HERCULES MISSLE, THE FRONT PART IS THE GUIDENCE SYSTEM NEXT WOULD BE THE WARHEAD WHICH COULD BE A HIGH EXPLOSIVE OR A NUCLEAR WARHEAD FOLLOWED BY THE ROCKET MOTOR.
NUCLEAR WARHEADS WERE COLOR CODED WITH A GREEN OR RED STRIPE. THE HIGH EXPLOSIVE WARHEADS HAD A YELLOW YELLOW STRIPE. ALSO THE NUCLEAR WARHEADS HAD A DIFFERENT NOSE PIECE CALLED A BARO PROBE WHICH WAS BLACK IN COLOR. THE HIGH EXPLOSIVE WARHEADS HAD THE REGULAR NOSE PIECE AS PICTURED.
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