Command and Control (77 page)

sixty-one cities were struck by nuclear weapons
:
For the imaginary attack and the estimated carnage, see Anthony Leviero, “H-Bombs Test U.S. Civil Defense,”
New York Times
, June 16, 1955; and Edward T. Folliard, “Tests Over U.S. Indicate Centers Might Suffer Heavily in Raid,”
Washington Post,
June 16, 1955.

the
corner of North 7th Street and Kent Avenue
:
See Anthony Leviero, “U.S. H-Bomb Alert Today; Eisenhower, Top Officials Among 15,000 Slated to Leave Capital,”
New York Times,
June 15, 1955
.

only 8.2 million people would be killed and 6.6 million wounded
:
Cited in ibid.

the United States would “be able to take it”
:
Quoted in Anthony Leviero, “Mock Martial Law Invoked in Bombing Test Aftermath,”
New
York
Times,
June 17, 1955.

more than half of those casualties would be in New York City
: The casualty estimates for the city were quite specific—2,991,285 deaths and 1,776,889 wounded. And yet those numbers did not dim the upbeat reporting of the drill. Cited in Peter Kihss, “City Raid Alert Termed a Success,”
New York Times
, June 16, 1955.

“we might—ideally—escape”
:
Quoted in “Anthony Leviero, “Eisenhower Hails Operation Alert as Encouraging,”
New York Times,
June 18, 1955.

“great encouragement”
:
Quoted in ibid.

“staggering”
:
Quoted in Betts, “A Nuclear Golden Age?,” pp. 3–32.

A new word had entered the lexicon . . . megadeath
:
According to the
Oxford English Dictionary,
the word appeared in print for the first time on June 21, 1953, in an Alabama newspaper, the
Birmingham News.

“The United States experienced . . . total economic collapse”
:
I read an edited version of this quote in Betts, “Nuclear Golden Age?,” p. 14, and then sought out the original in Robert H. Ferrell, ed.,
The Eisenhower Diaries
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), p. 311.

“It would be perfect rot to talk about shipping troops”
:
At a White House meeting, Eisenhower lost his cool, pounded the table repeatedly, and said, “You see, actually, the only thing we fear is an atomic attack delivered by air on our cities. God damn it? It would be perfect rot to talk about shipping troops abroad when fifteen of our cities were in ruins. You would have disorder and almost complete chaos in the cities and in the roads around them. You would have to restore order and who is going to restore it? Do you think the police and fire departments of those cities could restore order? Nuts! That order is going to have to be restored by disciplined armed forces.” According to Eisenhower's press secretary, the room fell silent, and you could hear a pin drop. Quoted in “Diary Entry by the President's Press Secretary (Hagerty),” Washington, D.C., February 1, 1955, United States State Department,
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, vol. 19, National Security Policy
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990), pp. 39–40.

“You can't have this kind of war”
:
Quoted in Gregg Herken,
Counsels of War (
New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 116.

P
ART
T
HREE
: A
CCIDENTS
W
ILL
H
APPEN

Acceptable Risks

Jimmy Stewart enlisted in the Army
:
For a fine account of Stewart's military service, see Starr Smith,
Jimmy Stewart: Bomber Pilot
(Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2005).

He flew dozens of those missions
:
Cited in ibid., p. 263.

“He always maintained a calm demeanor”
: The officer was Colonel Ramsay Potts, commander of the 453rd Bomb Group. Quoted in ibid., p. 125.

Stewart visited SAC headquarters
:
For the origins of the film, see Hedda Hopper, “General LeMay Briefs Stewart for Film,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 27, 1952. The film is also mentioned at some length in the chapter “The Heyday of SAC: The High Point of the Popular Culture Crusade,” in Steve Call,
Selling Air Power: Military Aviation and Popular Culture After World War II
(College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2009), pp. 100–131.

“Toughest Cop of the Western World”
:
See Ernest Havemann, “Toughest Cop of the Western World,”
Life,
June 14, 1954.

“It wouldn't dare”
:
Quoted in ibid.

a study by the RAND analyst Albert Wohlstetter
:
See A. J. Wohlstetter, F. S. Hoffman, R. J. Lutz, and H. S. Rowen, “Selection and Use of Strategic Bases,” a report prepared for United States Air Force Project Rand, R-266, April 1954 (
SECRET
/declassified).

“Training in SAC was harder than war”
:
The officer was General Jack J. Catton, who served with LeMay for sixteen years. Quoted in Kohn and Harahan,
Strategic Air Warfare,
p. 97.

Rhinelander, Wisconsin, became one of SAC's favorite targets
:
See Thomas M. Coffey,
Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay
(New York: Crown Publishers, 1986), p. 342.

the SAC battle plan called for 180 bombers
:
Cited in Wainstein et al., “
Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,”
p. 257.

the bombardier had aimed at the wrong island
:
See Hansen,
Swords of Armageddon
,
Volume IV,
pp. 160–2.

94 SAC bombers tested the air defense system
:
For the results of Operation Tailwind, see Wainstein et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” pp. 103–4.

Ten Bisons flew past the reviewing stand
:
The CIA later admitted its error; the ten that flew past were the only ten in existence. See Donald P. Steury, ed.,
Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1953–1983
(Washington, D.C.: History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1996), p. 5.

more than 100 of the planes
:
General LeMay publicly testified that the Soviets already had that many—and he may even have believed it. During a top secret speech to his own officers, LeMay said the Soviet Union would soon be building 300 new bombers a year. For the 100 estimate, see “Bison vs. B-52: LeMay Testifies,”
New York Times,
May 6, 1956. For his prediction about Soviet bomber production, see “Remarks: LeMay at Commander's Conference,” p. 13.

the Soviets would be able to attack the United States with 700 bombers
:
Cited in “Soviet Gross Capabilities for Attack on the US and Key Overseas Installations and Forces Through Mid-1959,” National Intelligence Estimate Number 11-56, Submitted by the Director of Central Intelligence, 6 March 1956 (
TOP SECRET
/declassified), p. 3, in
Intentions and Capabilities,
p. 16.

“It is clear that the United States and its allies”
:
Quoted in “The Nation: Wilson Stands Ground,”
New York Times
, July 8, 1956.

an extra $900 million for new B-52s
:
In this case a Democratic Congress approved a major increase in defense spending that a Republican president didn't want. See “Wilson Raps Any Air Fund Boost,”
Los Angeles Times
, June 22, 1956, and “House-Senate Group Agrees to Hike Air Force Budget by $900 Million,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 29, 1956.

By the end of the decade, the Soviet Union had about 150 long-range bombers
:
In 1958, the Soviet Union had about 50 Bison bombers and 105 Bears. Cited in May et al., “History of Strategic Arms Competition,” p. 186.

the Strategic Air Command had almost 2,000
:
In 1959, SAC had 488 B-52 bombers and 1,366 B-47s. See Polmar,
Strategic Air Command
, p. 61.

such a system would “provide a reasonable degree”
:
Quoted in Wainstein et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 201.

at least two hours' warning of an attack
:
Cited in ibid., p. 203.

a distance of about twelve thousand miles
:
Cited in ibid., p. 207.

almost half a million tons of building material
:
Roughly 459,900 tons were transported into the Arctic by barges, planes, and tractor-pulled sleds. Cited in James Louis Isemann, “To Detect, to Deter, to Defend: The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line and Early Cold War Defense Policy, 1953–1957,” dissertation, Department of History, Kansas State University, 2009, p. 299.

temperatures as low as -70 degrees Fahrenheit
:
Cited in ibid., p. 304.

“The computerization of society”
:
I first encountered the quote in Edwards,
The Closed World,
on page 65. The original source is a fascinating book: Frank Rose,
Into the Heart of the Mind: An American Quest for Artificial Intelligence
(New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

America's first large-scale electronic digital computer, ENIAC
:
The acronym stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.

researchers concluded that the Whirlwind computer
:
It is hard to overstate the importance of the Whirlwind computer and the SAGE air defense system that evolved from it. The historian Thomas P. Hughes described the creation of SAGE as “one of the major learning experiences in technological history”—as important as the construction of the Erie Canal. The historians Kent C. Redmond and Thomas M. Smith have called SAGE “a technical innovation of such consequence as to make it one of the major human accomplishments of the twentieth century.” And yet one of the great ironies of SAGE, according to the historian Paul N. Edwards, is that it probably wouldn't have worked. “It was easily jammed,” Edwards noted, “and tests of the system under actual combat conditions were fudged to avoid revealing its many flaws.” It created the modern computer industry and transformed society—but probably wouldn't have detected a Soviet bomber attack. For these quotes, as well as descriptions of how SAGE influenced the future, see Thomas P. Hughes,
Rescuing Prometheus: Four Monumental Projects That Changed the Modern World
(New York: Vintage, 1998), p. 15; Kent C. Redmond and Thomas M. Smith,
From Whirlwind to Mitre: The R&D Story of the SAGE Air Defense Computer
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), p. 429; and Edwards,
Closed World,
p. 110.

the first computer network
:
See Edwards,
Closed World
, p. 101.

contained about 25,000 vacuum tubes and covered about half an acre
:
Cited in Hughes,
Rescuing Prometheus
, p. 51.

SAGE created the template for the modern computer industry
:
See Redmond and Smith,
From Whirlwind to Mitre,
pp. 436–43; and Edwards,
Closed World
, pp. 99–104.

almost five hours after being sent
:
During a SAC command exercise in September 1950 the average transmission time for teletype messages was four hours and forty-five minutes. See Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 78.

a special red telephone at SAC headquarters
:
See ibid., p. 162.

an automated command-and-control system
:
It was called the SAC 456L System, or SACCS—the Strategic Automated Command and Control System. It was commissioned in 1958 but did not become fully operational until 1963. See ibid., pp. 169–70; and “The Air Force and the Worldwide Military Command and Control System, 1961–1965,” Thomas A. Sturm, USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, DASMC-66 013484, SHO-S-66/279, August 1966 (
SECRET
/declassified), NSA, p. 12.

from an hour and a half to six hours behind the planes
:
See Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 170.

“I don't think I would put that much money”
:
Quoted in “Supersonic Air Transports,” Report of the Special Investigating Subcommittee of the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Eighty-sixth Congress, Second Session, 1960, p. 47.

It extended three levels underground and could house about eight hundred people
:
See “Welcome to Strategic Air Command Headquarters,” Directorate of Information, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base (n.d.).

Below the East Wing at the White House
:
For Roosevelt's bunker and the construction of a new bunker for Truman, see Krugler,
This Is Only a Test,
pp. 68–75.

an underground complex with twenty rooms
:
Cited in ibid., p. 73.

the airburst of a 20-kiloton atomic bomb
:
Cited in ibid., p. 70.

Known as Site R
:
For details about Site R, see ibid., p. 63–6.

enough beds to accommodate two thousand high-ranking officials
:
The actual number was 2,200. Cited in Wainstein et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 232.