[Milsurplus] (OT) SIOP-ESI - Nuclear War Fear

[Mike Morrow]

Mark wrote:

> Far more impressive than the movie however was
> when the highest ranking officer spoke: “I and
> my men give you our personal promises that NOT
> ONE Russian bomber will cross our coastline. WE
> WILL TAKE DOWN ALL OF THEM.”

I'm sure the Soviets were saying the exact same to their people.  It's almost a certainty that BOTH were correct.  Manned bombers were the most uncertain leg of the Strategic Triad by the mid-1960s...not the fault of their excellent crews, just the advance in the other two Triad legs and in air defenses.  Recall the major B-52 losses in December 1972 caused by North Vietnam's air defense (which was NOT using the latest Soviet SAM technology) and by very mission-inappropriate SAC Headquarters tactics.

> These were tense times. Home fallout shelters
> were being installed. Fear of a Russian attack
> was widespread. That unequivocal speech, and
> especially the personal promise, truly comforted
> a few hundred anxious school kids.

I would not say "fear was widespread" in my close experience.  That seems to me a popular myth and cliche of that era.  In the 1950s and 1960s I grew up a couple of miles away from Blytheville AFB's SAC B-52 force, in Arkansas, which also had many Titan II ICBMs sites.  Neither I nor anyone I knew gave a threat of nuclear war any real worries at all, outside taking some increased interest during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.  (I enjoyed "Dr. Strangelove" and "Failsafe".)

A few years later I made my living in the USN as an officer on a ballistic missile submarine (SSBN-629) with its 16 Poseidon SLBMs (160 MIRVs).  Many of the crew were periodically screened under the DoD Personnel Reliability Program (PRP) to ensure that duties would be performed as required for launch.  I knew of only two people who were permanently removed from all duty related to nuclear weapons, both officers who claimed some sort of intellectual moral objections.  (I believed their claims were bogus and self-serving.)  I have absolutely no doubt that in the SSBN fleet of 45 years ago if the Emergency Action Message came the weapons would have launched.  Only the SSBN leg of the Strategic Triad (until the 1990s) required no external Permissive Action Link for launch...all necessary personnel, knowledge, codes, and controls were on board every SSBN.

The technolgy required to make the SSBN and SLBM practical was extremely broad and magnificent...but the duty was usually boring.  I never wasted a minute worrying about ANY part of it from either the delivery end or the reception end.  My deepest respect and admiration went to the ground pounders in real combat and danger in SE Asian jungles...better men than I.

Mike / KK5F