US Army - 19th Artillery Group Color
ZFC2413 US Army - 19th Artillery Group Color
This is the organizational color for the US Army's 19th Artillery Group. In the U.S. Army groups are similar to brigades but generally control less and smaller subordinate units. They are typically a mix separate companies. Almost without exception, groups are organizes around the combat and combat support branches.
In the case of the 19th Artillery Group this was the Nike Missile Site, NY-55DC, at the Army Air Defense Command Post Highlands, NJ where they were headquartered from 1961 to 1968. Highlands, New Jersey, is aptly named, as it is one of the highest elevations of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The site had previously been the site for a Coast Artillery battery that was abandoned after the end of WWII.
In 1948 the newly formed United States Air Force established an early warning radar site on the Highlands. In 1960 the base was returned to the U.S. Army. In the 1960s Cold War tensions were running high and the fear of a Warsaw Pact attack was feared, the U.S. Army was given an air defense mission. Accordingly the 19th Artillery Group established hardened master missile operation at the Highlands base.
It was a semi-automated, and could both track and respond to enemy aircraft. It commanded and assigned Nike missile batteries in the tri-state area (NY, NJ & PA) to intercept them. The base also served as the headquarters for other Army Reserve air defense organizations. Although the 19th Group departed in 1968, the Army's facility remained functional until the missile batteries were inactivated in 1974.
In 1969 they were transferred to Fort MacArthur, Los Angeles The previous year the US Army established the Air Defense Artillery as a separate branch of the service and in 1972 they became the 19th Air Defense Artillery Group. That same year they established a detachment on San Clemente Island, California adjacent to the US Navy's Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility (FACSFAC) radar installation. The 19th Group's detachment utilized the FACSFAC radar to cover a blind spot to the west of San Clemente Island for air defense radar at Fort Macarthur. In 1974 all Nike Missile Site were inactivated.
This Cold War era Group Color was made in the 1960s at the US Army's Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot for the 19th Artillery Group.
Sources:
Nike Site NY-55DC , Army Air Defense Command Post, 21 ) October 2012, from: http://alpha.fdu.edu/~bender/NY55.html
Army Flags, US Army Groups, Group Colors, 21 October 2012, from: http://www.212warriors.com/army_flags.html
Introduction, San Clemente Island, 21 October 21012, from:
http://www.scisland.org/aboutsci/history/SCI-History.pdf
CSG
USAC
4March1921
