CHICAGO -- At one time, more than 100 nuclear missiles surrounded Chicago.

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Unit 5's Phil Rogers investigated what happened to the missiles and why they were here in the first place.

Back in the late 1950s, when tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were high, places like Belmont Harbor housed Nike Hercules missiles, Rogers reported.

Gary Huber was assigned to the Nike program and he recalled that the conventional wisdom of that era was that the Soviets could fly their bombers over the North Pole at any time and drop atomic bombs over Chicago and other cities.

"The Russians had the capability of making a hole 20 miles wide in Chicago," Huber said.

With that possibility in mind, the U.S. Army surrounded Chicago with missile batteries. Twenty Nike AJAX bases were converted in the early 1960s to nine Hercules sites.

The Hercules had a range of 75 to 100 miles and could fly three-and-a-half times the speed of sound and each could be armed with a warhead, Rogers reported. That's bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The missiles were placed in very public places. Site C-41, which had 18 Hercules missiles, was just south of the Museum of Science and Industry.

A site on Montrose Beach on Lake Shore Drive was the first site in the United States to receive a Nike Hercules missile. Researcher Christopher Bright said when they were first developed, the missiles were no secret.

"It became, in some cases, a badge of civic honor to be worthy of having your community defended by this up-to-date modern system," Bright said.

Newspapers at the time hailed the Hercules deployment. The missiles' maker, Douglas Aircraft, took out ads promising that the missiles' speed and range would allow it to "intercept and destroy enemy bombers with its atomic warhead."

The Department of Defense issued news releases assuring the public that if the missiles were launched, "the effect of the blast ... heat and radiation on the ground would be negligible."

Bill Ellis was assigned to Chicago site C-46 in Munster, Ind. He said he always believed the presence of the missiles kept the Soviets at bay.

"I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that he knew we were here, and it just scared them off," Ellis said.

The missiles were never fired, but the bases did go on alert on many occassions, once when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Rogers reported. An alert was also issued in 1968 when it was feared that SDS protesters at the Democratic National Convention might try to capture a Nike site.

"The government believed the SDS had the ability to get inside the launch area and launch a missile (at Chicago)," Huber said.

The missiles are long gone and most sites bear no traces of their nuclear past. The base in Munster is virtually intact, with the missile elevators still in place. It is now a storage yard for Salyers Plumbing, Rogers reported.