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Posted: 12/30/2015 7:52:23 PM EDT
Here is an interesting document for those interested in Cold War history. It is the declassified version of SAC's targeting thoughts circa 1959, and was posted online on 22 Dec 2015.
Available at the GWU National Security Archive 
From the reviewers' summary on the National Security Archive webpage: "The SAC study includes chilling details. According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and “friendly forces and people” to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout. Moreover, the authors developed a plan for the “systematic destruction” of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted “population” in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw. Purposefully targeting civilian populations as such directly conflicted with the international norms of the day, which prohibited attacks on people per se (as opposed to military installations with civilians nearby). The National Security Archive, based at The George Washington University, obtained the study, totaling more than 800 pages, through the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) process (see sidebar). The SAC document includes lists of more than 1100 airfields in the Soviet bloc, with a priority number assigned to each base. With the Soviet bomber force as the highest priority for nuclear targeting (this was before the age of ICBMs), SAC assigned priority one and two to Bykhov and Orsha airfields, both located in Belorussia. At both bases, the Soviet Air Force deployed medium-range Badger (TU-16) bombers, which would have posed a threat to NATO allies and U.S. forces in Western Europe. A second list was of urban-industrial areas identified for “systematic destruction.” SAC listed over 1200 cities in the Soviet bloc, from East Germany to China, also with priorities established. Moscow and Leningrad were priority one and two respectively. Moscow included 179 Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs) while Leningrad had 145, including “population” targets. In both cities, SAC identified air power installations, such as Soviet Air Force command centers, which it would have devastated with thermonuclear weapons early in the war. According to the study, SAC would have targeted Air Power targets with bombs ranging from 1.7 to 9 megatons. Exploding them at ground level, as planned, would have produced significant fallout hazards to nearby civilians. SAC also wanted a 60 megaton weapon which it believed necessary for deterrence, but also because it would produce “significant results” in the event of a Soviet surprise attack. One megaton would be 70 times the explosive yield of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima." ... "SAC’s top priority for destruction, the Soviet bloc’s air power, was a complex target system. Before the Soviet Union acquired the atomic bomb and significant capability to deliver nuclear weapons at long distances, SAC’s priority had been the destruction of the Soviet urban-industrial complex, but during the mid-1950s the “greatly compressed time factor” produced a reversal. In the SAC Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, SAC broadly defined the “Air Power” target: air and missile bases for strategic and tactical forces, defensive and offensive, but also government and military control centers that would direct the air battle and nuclear weapons storage sites, air industry, atomic industry, and petroleum-oil-lubricants (POL) storage areas. To this extent, the Air Power category cut across some of the major categories of target systems that Pentagon planners had developed in the early 1950s: strategic nuclear (BRAVO category), conventional forces (ROMEO category), and urban-industrial (DELTA). Given the expansive definition of Air Power, this suggested that targets in major cities such as Moscow and Leningrad could be subjected to H-bomb attack because both were rich in air power targets. For example, according to the SAC study, the Moscow area had 12 airbases. None of them were even in the top 400 airbases on the list so they may not have been attacked immediately, but Moscow had other potentially higher priority targets: 7 Air Force storage areas, 1 Air Force military control, 1 government control (presumably Kremlin and vicinity), 4 guided missile entities (R&D, production), 5 atomic energy research centers, 11 airframe entities, 6 aircraft engine entities, 2 liquid fuel plants, and 16 liquid fuel storage areas, including refineries. Moreover Moscow had a variety of other non-air military objectives, such as an Army military headquarters, Army and Navy military storage areas, and biological warfare research centers that might have been deemed worthy of attack at the opening of the war. " |
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Posted: 12/30/2015 7:58:54 PM EDT
[#1]
Loring, AFB.. Maine was one of the finest SAC bases ever.
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Posted: 12/30/2015 7:59:50 PM EDT
[#2]
Purposefully targeting civilian populations as such directly conflicted with the international norms of the day, which prohibited attacks on people per se (as opposed to military installations with civilians nearby). The only 2 uses of nuclear weapons were uses exactly like that. How else? |
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Posted: 1/3/2016 3:58:13 PM EDT
[#3]
The men who wrote that report had got done fighting probably the largest unrestricted total war in the history of mankind.
I'm sure if cigarettes, red meat and carelessly handled fissile material hadn't killed them, they'd whip the shit out of their whiny, cowardly grandchildren for complaining about what real men did to keep them safe. |
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