  Little_buddy Member Username: Little_buddy Post Number: 40 Registered: 03-2006 |
I once heard something about it but have wondered if it was true | ||
Hornwrecker Member Username: Hornwrecker Post Number: 1957 Registered: 04-2005 |
 I'm sure MikeG will have better info to offer. | ||
Mikem Member Username: Mikem Post Number: 3530 Registered: 10-2003 |
Another view I think it's now a Chrysler assembly plant, located at Van Dyke and 16 Mile. | ||
Aiw Member Username: Aiw Post Number: 6485 Registered: 10-2003 |
16 & VD isn't that Sterling Heights Assembly or Stamping? | ||
Whithorn11446 Member Username: Whithorn11446 Post Number: 172 Registered: 03-2007 |
16 Mile and Van Dyke is final assembly. The 15 Mile-Van Dyke plant is stamping. If I'm not mistaken 15 Mile-Van Dyke began as a Briggs Plant. | ||
1701 Member Username: 1701 Post Number: 7 Registered: 05-2007 |
It's Sterling Heights Assembly (S.H.A.P.) @ 16 and Van Dyke. Original buildings designed by Albert Kahn and most additions designed by Albert Kahn Assoc. First owner was the US government Department of the Navy. Subsequent owners included Chrysler defense (AeroSpace), Chrysler Corp then Volkswagon who renovated and never used the facility. Sold back to Chrysler in early-mid 80's. I've probably forgot a few other owners in the mix I think Loral and another aerospace company also had a piece of it for a while. It builds only cars now. | ||
Mikeg Member Username: Mikeg Post Number: 1366 Registered: 12-2005 |
Yes, that's the place. I believe that after Chrysler, Ling-Temco-Vought (and its successor, LTV Corporation) had the contract to run the missile plant for the US Army during the late 1960s through the mid 70s. It was vacated in the second half of the 1970s and eventually purchased by Volkswagen of America with the intentions to turn it into their second US assembly plant. However, their sales boom stalled and they never followed through with their plans to assemble cars there. It was eventually turned into a car assembly plant by Chrysler, who bought it from VW in the early 1980s. | ||
Mauser765 Member Username: Mauser765 Post Number: 2252 Registered: 01-2004 |
I grew up near there - they used to have missiles on the front lawn, showing off their product. It was across the street from "Dykeland Center" Hahahahaha ! Dykeland... | ||
Mikeg Member Username: Mikeg Post Number: 1367 Registered: 12-2005 |
Wipe the drool off your chin, mauser..... BTW, I also remember reading somewhere that at one time there was a NIKE missile battery located on the northeast corner of the missile plant property, approximately where the new Sterling Heights Fire Station is located. | ||
1701 Member Username: 1701 Post Number: 8 Registered: 05-2007 |
Nike base was at Mound and 14 across from GM Tech Center. Also one on Belle Isle. Don't know about any Nikes where the SHFD is on the corner. Do know there is Natural Gas on the property discovered in the late 80's. The Golfcourse north of 17Mi. has a well going for 15 years. | ||
Fareastsider Member Username: Fareastsider Post Number: 749 Registered: 08-2006 |
I was told that there was a Nike Missle Base in Cottrellville Twp at about Short Cut and Starville. Using old Aerials I was able to find a place that looked like such a place. Wierd though today it is houses on the site? Anybody know if there was a site out there? | ||
Flyingj Member Username: Flyingj Post Number: 63 Registered: 08-2006 |
Mikeg, go easy on Mauser-"Dykeland" is still funny...that sign used to end up in National Lampoon's "foto funnies" @ least once a year-that neighborhood in Troy with all the streets named after cigarettes got in there, too I remember the M-1 on the lawn of the tank plant, don't remember the missiles-unless they were hidden like Nike's inside of the Mr F steer down the block? Dad worked on missiles & @ Chrysler... | ||
Hornwrecker Member Username: Hornwrecker Post Number: 1958 Registered: 04-2005 |
Nike sites around Detroit: http://members.tripod.com/nike hercules/sitemenu.html | ||
1701 Member Username: 1701 Post Number: 9 Registered: 05-2007 |
To Hornwrecker: Great link on the NIKES. Do you know what the heck was on 14Mile and Mound by the Tech center? I clearly remember seeing a photo of a field of in-ground installations there from the late 50's -early 60's. Of course my memory ain't quite what it used to be <g> | ||
Stinger4me Member Username: Stinger4me Post Number: 127 Registered: 08-2007 |
Does anyone remember a radar or tracking station on 7 Mile Rd. est of Hayes and west of St. Jude School? | ||
Mikeg Member Username: Mikeg Post Number: 1369 Registered: 12-2005 |
Here are portions of 1961 aerial photos, courtesy of the WSU/DTE Aerial Photo Collection:  US Army Missile Plant, Sterling Township, MI, May 30, 1961. Clearly, I was mistaken about a Nike battery on that property. What was located on the northeast corner of the property was a large stormwater retention basin. The open area near the GM Tech Center was on the west side of Mound Road, between 13 and 12 Mile Roads (not 14 Mile Road). This used to be farmland and when GM acquired it, they tore down the farmhouses and let the land go fallow (my great-great grandparents owned one of those farms from about 1870 until 1910). The only uses GM made of that land until they sold it a few years ago was for baseball diamonds, soccer fields and storage of out-of-service "Product Evaluation Program" vehicles. Here is a 1961 aerial photo of that area:  GM Tech Center, east and west sides of Mound Rd. between 12 and 13 Mile Roads, May 30, 1961. | ||
65memories Member Username: 65memories Post Number: 497 Registered: 10-2003 |
Wasn't Oakland Community College's Auburn Hills site out on Featherstone Road originally a missile base? | ||
Hornwrecker Member Username: Hornwrecker Post Number: 1959 Registered: 04-2005 |
Yep, look at the link that I posted above for maps and photos. I'm guessing that there might been some 120mm AAA batteries around Warren prior to the implementation of Nike, and its longer range. Mikem has documented a few of them on the Eastside in past threads, but I don't think he got farther west than the ones near 8 and Hoover (WWII) era. I started searching the web, but so far there's been too much to sort through, and need to read up more on them so I can refine the search. | ||
Mikem Member Username: Mikem Post Number: 3531 Registered: 10-2003 |
65memories: Yes it was, from 1955-1963. Fareastsider: Yes there was, 1957-1963, both sides of Short Cut, to the east of Starville. Stinger4me: Yes, that was a gun site in the early 1950s, until the Nikes were deployed. We had a thread about the Detroit-area Nike sites several years ago, but it's no longer in the archives. Maybe one of the moderators could find it for us? | ||
Hornwrecker Member Username: Hornwrecker Post Number: 1960 Registered: 04-2005 |
For those of you interested in the history of 1950s air defense in the US, there's an in depth article on the Federation of American Scientists web site. http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/ usa/airdef/chap2.html So far what I've found is that Chrysler made the Redstone and Jupiter missiles at that plant, and LTV made the Lance. Still searching. | ||
Mikem Member Username: Mikem Post Number: 3532 Registered: 10-2003 |
Here are the maps I made for the Nike thread showing the locations and range of the Nike Ajax and Nike Hercules missiles:   | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 1957 Registered: 12-2005 |
Let's go to film: http://www.archive.org/details /1957-02-14_Redstone_Missile | ||
Lowell Board Administrator Username: Lowell Post Number: 4414 Registered: 10-2003 |
Geez we were so safe back then, blanketed by those AA missiles! Those were the days. I remember the display missiles outside that plant, but they were nothing like the ones the former 8 Mile Artillery Armory's in Oak Park. Cold war Detroit at its best. Great thread. Thanks all. We have had a lot of discussion on Arsenal of Democracy Detroit, but little on Cold War Detroit. | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 1958 Registered: 12-2005 |
Chrysler operated the Detroit missile plant and another plant in Huntsville Alabama. Chrysler built the Saturn and Mercury rockets that began America's space program. | ||
Little_buddy Member Username: Little_buddy Post Number: 42 Registered: 03-2006 |
I asked my dad about it and he said he worked there and that the Army wanted him to go work at some at the time secrect missle base in northern Italy, but he couldn't go because my mom was preg with my brother. Should have asked my dad, but you guy have great info. Didn't know there were missles around the Det. area. | ||
Lowell Board Administrator Username: Lowell Post Number: 4415 Registered: 10-2003 |
In the 'big' picture, I have wondered why the Detroit auto makers, Chrysler and Ford in particular who had a good foot in the door in aeronautics, never stayed more diversified in that direction. Ford, especially, which had built planes including the famous Trimotor, then pulled off the famed Willow Run bomber plant feat mass producing a B-24 an hour. As the economy has moved in that direction with all the associated electronics and cybernetics [especially defense contracting] it is one of those "what if's" I think about as I watch these companies now struggling to survive. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 4695 Registered: 10-2004 |
Designing things, such as state-of-the-art military airplanes, instead of merely building them are two quite different animals. By 1947, with Ford's death, the Ford family was seriously contemplating getting out of the auto/truck business, which was tanking due to excess capacity, even back then. | ||
Mikeg Member Username: Mikeg Post Number: 1370 Registered: 12-2005 |
The Detroit automakers' strength was in the mass production of complex transportation products. They were also strong in the design of passenger cars, trucks, busses and in the case of GM, also diesel locomotives. During the war, they geared up to mass produce airplanes, but they were using designs that had been provided to them by the government. For example, the B-24 was designed by Consolidated Aircraft and built at their plants in San Diego and Fort Worth, in addition to the Willow Run plant that was built and operated by the Ford Motor Company. It is one thing to build heavy aircraft, and quite another to design them, especially in a field such as aeronautics with its much more rapidly developing technologies. It was that inability to stay ahead of technological obsolescence that convinced Henry Ford to get out of the business after building only 200 Tri-Motors over a seven year period. I also think that while the automotive industry was cyclical, the aircraft industry was even worse and therefore not a good candidate for diversification. | ||
Livernoisyard Member Username: Livernoisyard Post Number: 4696 Registered: 10-2004 |
Besides, during the late 1940s, the aircraft industry was fully into jet propulsion and supersonic designs. In all seriousness, Ford was no GE or Allison. How many heat-transfer experts did Ford have in its employ (or could even find back then)? | ||
Mauser765 Member Username: Mauser765 Post Number: 2256 Registered: 01-2004 |
The missiles were on the lawn in the mid-early 1970's, I remember two different types were displayed. The tank plant also used to have some product out front, I remember driving by as a kid - waiting to catch a glimpse of the tanks. And yes - "dykeland" is funny, and no, I personally dont find the phrase appetizing. It just seems hilariously inappropriate, even for its day. | ||
Mauser765 Member Username: Mauser765 Post Number: 2257 Registered: 01-2004 |
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Little_buddy Member Username: Little_buddy Post Number: 43 Registered: 03-2006 |
My dad said that during WW2 they tested tanks in a field by Michigan Ave. and Wyoming in Dearborn. | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 1961 Registered: 12-2005 |
Probably true--Cadillac made tanks at their nearby Clark street plant. Those tanks were powered by two Cadillac flat head V-8s, hooked to the (then) new hydramatic transmission. The tanks was driven by shifting the two transmissions into either the same forward or reverse gears for straight-line travel or one would be shifted into forward and the other into reverse to turn. The three years of war service saw many "cost-be-damned" improvements to the Hydramatic trans, 15 years of R&D in 3, plus no bean counter telling you how much you could or could not spend. After the was the GM hydramatic was the ONLY automatic transmission worth a damn until the Chrysler Torqueflite made its debut in late 1956, followed later by GM Turbo-Hydramatic, suspiciously like a Torqueflite. Ford didn't even know how to make an automatic trans--they bought from Borg Warner until '53 or so. They bought GM Hydramatics for Lincolns, Hudson also bought Hydramatics. | ||
Hornist9 Member Username: Hornist9 Post Number: 70 Registered: 05-2005 |
56packman, My dad worked in the gear research lab as an experimental gear cutter at Hydramatic in Ypsilanti, he retired in 1969. He used to speak that Rolls Royce bought Turbo Hydramatics for use in their cars. He told of one particular instance where Rolls engineers took a Turbo Hydramatic apart, and seeing a gear that did not have a real smooth finish on it, they put it on a shaper and smoothed it. When they put the transmission back together it wouldn't shift due to them monkeying with that gear. My dad used to tell stories and bring home scrap gears once in a while. I remember seeing a nylon gear that he brought home. He was proudest of the fact that he cut the pilot gears in 1961 for the front wheel drive Olds Toronado. I'm sure everyone remembers that the Toronado made it's debut in the fall of 1965. When the Livonia Detroit Transmission plant burned to the ground in 1953, my dad was part of a team that went into the B24 Plant in Ypsi and got it ready to make Hydramatics. Dad said that when they first got there, there were B24 fuselages still sitting on an assembly line. Hornwrecker and I were talking on our way to our Orchestra rehearsal last night, and we both know a gentleman that was a machinist at that Chrysler Missile plant. This gentleman is now retired and is the bass drummer of the Warren Concert Band. | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 1963 Registered: 12-2005 |
I forgot about Rolls, even after having worked on them (never had to touch the Hydramatic trans). RR also used GM Harrison air conditioning and Yale locks from the good 'ol US as late as the 80s. | ||
Jaja Member Username: Jaja Post Number: 19 Registered: 12-2007 |
Here's a 2004 blog entry about the shopping formerly called DYKELAND CENTER Posted by: Melissa | 2004.05.21 at 04:06 PM My ex boyfriend told me a story of being on the west side, on Van Dyke. There was a grocery store in a corner strip mall, called the Dykeland Center, or some such, and they were advertising gallons of milk on a sign in the window. I wish he'd had a camera. "Homo Gals $.99" Now who's the Einstein that posted that sign? Couldn't resist posting that one..... |
