Declassified: How Pentagon Planned to Nuke Soviet Union, China During the Cold War

The USAF Strategic Air Command operated B-47 Stratojets (B-47s, EB-47s, RB-47s and YRB-47s) from 1951 through 1965.

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A Permanent Base on the Dark Side of the Moon To Be Built By Russia and Europe

The USAF Strategic Air Command operated B-47 Stratojets (B-47s, EB-47s, RB-47s and YRB-47s) from 1951 through 1965.
The USAF Strategic Air Command operated B-47 Stratojets (B-47s, EB-47s, RB-47s and YRB-47s) from 1951 through 1965. Image via Wikipedia

From an original article of By Thomas Gibbons-NeffStripes.com

In the event of a nuclear war, the Pentagon in 1956 penned a report that listed 1,200 cities and 1,100 airfields spread across eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China that were prioritized for various levels of destruction, should the unthinkable happen. The goals were twofold: deny the former Communist Bloc’s ability to field an effective air force and then destroy its ability to wage a protracted war.The details of the Pentagon’s plans were recently revealed in the 800-page Strategic Air Command Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, “the most comprehensive and detailed list of nuclear targets and target systems that has ever been declassified,” according to The National Security Archive, an organization run by George Washington University that published it last week.

The best way to tell about the performance of the Stratojet is to say that any good crew could have flown it. It took no unusual ability or education. Neither Scott Osler nor I deserve any credit for the flight. Rather, the credit should go to the men who carried out these visions on the drafting boards and the factory workers who made the visions a reality.     — Robert Robbins, test pilot for the B-47, 1949
The best way to tell about the performance of the Stratojet is to say that any good crew could have flown it. It took no unusual ability or education. Neither Scott Osler nor I deserve any credit for the flight. Rather, the credit should go to the men who carried out these visions on the drafting boards and the factory workers who made the visions a reality.
— Robert Robbins, test pilot for the B-47, 1949

The document, written before the age of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, or ICBMs, outlines a main effort to initially destroy the Soviet Union’s ability to field their bomber fleet against NATO countries and U.S. interests in Europe.The first two airbases slotted for destruction, Bykhov and Orsha, are both located in Belarus, while the first two cities targeted are Moscow and Leningrad (modern-day St. Petersburg). In Moscow, the Strategic Air Command picked 175 “Designated Ground Zeroes” or DGZs, while in Leningrad there were 145. The targets ranged from military command centers to “population centers” – such as the suburbs of Leningrad. While each target might not have constituted its own bomb, the DGZs were designed to destroy factories that made basic industrial equipment and medicine. Purposely missing from the recently released study is the amount of nuclear weapons needed to destroy said targets, though the nuclear weapons would have ranged from 1.7 t0 9 megatons to hit “air power” targets (the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, though atomic, was roughly 0.013 megatons). Targets to destroy population centers would have been hit with atomic weapons.

Accordingly to Bpeing The Boeing B-47 was the country's first swept-wing multiengine bomber. It represented a milestone in aviation history and a revolution in aircraft design. Every large jet aircraft today is a descendant of the B-47.
Accordingly to Boeing the B-47 was the country’s first swept-wing multi-engine bomber. It represented a milestone in aviation history and a revolution in aircraft design. Every large jet aircraft today is a descendant of the B-47. Image via Wikipedia.

According to Willaim Burr, the author of the National Security Archive’s summary of the report, the Strategic Air Command (or SAC) placed a very high priority on the weapon’s blast effects. To get the largest levels of destruction, the SAC reasoned, the bombs had to explode at surface level (as opposed to an air detonation). This was due in part that, at the time, the Air Force had decided that thermal damage (the heatwave caused by the bomb) and radiation damage were “relatively ineffective.” Aside from greater damage on the ground, a surface burst would create sizable radiation clouds that would travel in whatever direction the wind was blowing upon the weapon’s detonation.The nuclear weapons would be delivered by aircraft such as the B-47 (based out of the United Kingdom, Morocco and Spain) and the newly introduced B-52 bomber, according to the report. In addition to the aircraft that would use nuclear-loaded cruise missiles, the report also mentioned the Snark, an intercontinental range ground-launched cruise missile that saw limited deployments before being replaced by ICBMs in the early 1960s.

From an original article of By Thomas Gibbons-Neff

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