Washington, D.C., November 16, 2010 - To counter a Soviet bomber attack, U.S. war plans contemplated widespread use of thousands of air defense weapons during the middle years of the Cold War according to declassified documents posted today at the National Security Archive's Nuclear Vault and cited by a recently published book, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War (Palgrave Macmillan) by historian Christopher J. Bright. The U.S. government publicly acknowledged the facts of the deployments in the 1950s, yet they garnered surprisingly little public opposition, Bright concludes, in disclosing for the first time that air defense weapons comprised as much as one-fifth of the US nuclear arsenal in 1961. Still, nearly 25 years after the United States retired the last of them in 1986, their exact number remains secret.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most perilous crisis of the Cold War, Bright shows that top Defense officials wanted to limit a response to a bomber attack to conventional weapons, not realizing how much plans and deployments rested solely on nuclear weapons. Bright's work also raises the possibility that air defense weapons may have been among the most dangerous nuclear arms because of their widespread deployment and the predelegated use arrangements that could have led to inadvertent nuclear use during a crisis.
Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era is a reminder of the extent to which nuclear weapons were integral to Cold War American military strategy. It comes at a time when U.S. policy makers are giving renewed attention to nuclear arms, occasioned in part by President Barack Obama's support for their ultimate abolition, and the suggestion by others that existing U.S. nuclear warheads should be replaced or refurbished, along with continuing political disagreement about the necessity and adequacy of a New START arms control treaty with Russia.
Bright's book recounts many other formerly secret details about the thousands of Army and nuclear air defense weapons built during the Cold War, the plans and procedures for their use, and their eventual withdrawal. Drawing upon declassified documents held by the National Security Archive (including material in ninety boxes of files donated in 2003 upon the death of nuclear researcher Chuck Hansen) and other once-secret information originating at the White House, Pentagon, Atomic Energy Commission and elsewhere, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era discusses the development and deployment of:
- 3155 Genie air-to-air rockets (with two kiloton nuclear warheads) estimated to have armed scores of Air Force interceptor aircraft at 31 bases in 20 states starting in 1957
- 1900 Falcon guided air-to-air missiles (with a half kiloton warhead) which later also equipped some of these and other airplanes
- 2500 Army Nike-Hercules surface-to-air missiles (carrying two or 22 kiloton warheads) that the Army positioned at 123 launch sites around 26 cities and 10 Air Force bases in 25 states
- 409 Air Force BOMARC long range surface-to-air missiles (each with six and one-half kiloton warheads) located at eight launch sites in seven eastern and northeastern states (in addition to two locations in Canada)
Before the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the fear of a surprise mass Soviet bomber attack spurred defense planners and government scientists to compensate for technological limitations of antiaircraft arms of the era. Recognizing the difficulty of targeting relatively high-flying, fast-moving airplanes, proponents of nuclear air defense believed that relatively small defensive nuclear warheads compensated for inaccuracy by producing comparatively large lethal blast zones. They further argued that nuclear warheads would assuredly destroy attacking planes and the bombs they carried, while posing minimal risk to those on the ground. Policy makers, including President Dwight Eisenhower, military service leaders, and members of Congress, agreed. Defense officials announced the deployments to the public; arms manufacturers and the news media also publicized them. There was little public dissent. Even members of the nascent anti-nuclear movement at the time devoted almost no attention to these arms. While this does not indicate their assent to the weapons, it suggests that they did not see nuclear air defense weapons as especially worrisome.
Among the related topics addressed in Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era:
- Eisenhower authorized in advance (or "predelegated") the use of these arms in the event that an aerial attack upon the US was known to be underway but the president could not be contacted. Although intended to be secret, a senior U.S. Air Force officer, General Earle Partridge, disclosed this publicly in 1957 and 1958.
- In February 1958, an Air Force publicist revealed the cost of the Genie's W-25 nuclear charge, one of only two occasions in which the expense of a U.S. nuclear warhead has been revealed.
- The Genie rocket was test-fired from an Air Force plane over Nevada in July 1957. Five officer volunteers stood below in an attempt to demonstrate that the weapon could be utilized without endangering those on the ground.
- In July 1958, extensive preparations had been made to test-fire additional Genies as well as Nike-Hercules missiles over the Gulf of Mexico. Days before the operation was scheduled to be conducted, Eisenhower canceled the test, in an Oval Office meeting with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and others.
- The Soviet Union was interested in the details of American nuclear antiaircraft arms. In 1958, the USSR's military intelligence agency apparently recruited an Army lieutenant colonel (one of the highest-ranking US officials suspected of having engaged in espionage on behalf of a foreign power) to provide classified information about the Nike-Hercules. This alleged activity was not uncovered until several years later when Soviet colonel Oleg Penkovskiy, an American agent, reported that the Army missile information was in the USSR's possession.
Despite the ubiquity and visibility of air defense nuclear weapons to Americans a generation ago and the importance of many of these and other related issues, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era marks the first book-length scholarly examination on the topic. Coinciding with the publication, the National Security Archive is posting thirteen documents which highlight many of these and other important topics covered in the book.
Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era is based upon a dissertation written at The George Washington University under the direction of Leo P. Ribuffo, the Society of the Cincinnati George Washington Distinguished Professor of History. Further guidance was provided by GW historians James G. Hershberg and William Becker; the National Defense University's David Alan Rosenberg; and William Burr, a senior analyst and director of the nuclear history documentation project at the National Security Archive.
Further details about Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era are available at www.ChristopherJohnBright.com.
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