"The SAC Alert System 1956-1970" says:
"When operating at peak strength during the [Cuban] crisis, approximately 65 airborne B-52s and 240 nuclear weapons were 'target effective' at any given time."
In "Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis of 1962" the censors blotted out the nuke count, but also let through some other information saying that on 27 October; there were 22 HOUND DOGS and 48 QUAILS airborne along with [DELETED] internal weapons over 65 aircraft.
The B-52F SAC of July 1964 (also backed up by the B-52G SAC of July 1964, albeit with slightly different weight loadings) says that the design missile load mission is:
2 x AGM-28 HOUND DOG (18,886 lbs)
4 x ADM-20 QUAIL (4,840 lbs)
Droppable Racks (590 lbs)
TOTAL: 24,316 lbs
If we assume this is "standard" then it means that the majority of the missiles airborne that day were being carried by just 11 aircraft; meaning that the remaining 54 aircraft were carrying 218 free-fall bombs; or an average of 4.03 weapons per plane.
That's high enough to suggest that quad packs of B28s and B43s at 1 MT each would have been the basis of the alert force's attack.
This is backed up by the 1966 Palomares incident where a CHROME DOME B-52G crashed with four B28s onboard.
Thinking some more, it's looking to me that the 1960s SAC Airborne Alert plans were:
The "missile force" of about 12 aircraft launch their HOUND DOGS at key Soviet Air Defense (Radar + Missile + Fighter Airfield) locations in a designated sector; and then about 40 minutes after launching the HOUND DOGS, they drop their QUAILS.
This on paper, would mimic a SAC main force attack roughly equal to the airborne alert force with the intention of drawing the interior interceptor force away from the actual intended axis of attack.
Meanwhile, the actual airborne alert force is headed down an axis of attack roughly 500-600 miles west or east of the "mock" attack.
The image below is from a paper written in 1961; you can see what I mean by "feinting" with the HOUND DOG force:
Evaluation_1969_Compositions_16-MAR-1961_FIG-1.gif
For this concept of feint/diversion to work; you'd have to be flying "low".
Radar Horizon for a target at 30,000 ft is about 240~ miles. If you fly at 2000 ft the radar horizon is 60~ miles.
Low altitude capability for SAC in the 1960s was never about escaping SAMs -- it was all about obfuscating the location of the force from the associated IADS that the SAMs were part of.
From the northern coast of Russia to the latitude that Moscow, Kazan and Yekaterinburg are at; it's about a thousand miles; or about two hours at cruising speed.
That's plenty of time for the interior defenses to reorganize; and Soviet interceptors have almost always been heavily dependent on GCI.
Deny the interior defenses accurate tracks, and their interceptors will be hundreds of miles away when a piece of the sun visits the Motherland.
I've thought some more about this; and it means that the alert force will have to avoid striking targets for the first hour of penetration, to avoid "tipping off" the Soviet defenders as to where the main force is actually attacking.
This led me down a further line of thinking -- have we been carefully misdirected over the decades as to just how much low altitude bombing would *actually* be done in the 1960s?
Consider:
1.) Not every target is Moscow, with 40+ SAM sites defending it from all axises of attack.
2.) The US knew where a large proportion of Russian ADA radars were from the 1960s onwards via Space Based ELINT:
sigint-targets-ussr.jpg
That's a map of Russian radars detected by GRAB, which ran from 1960-1962; followed by POPPY (1962-1971), and AFTRACK (1960-1967).
3.) The B-47's famous LABS toss bombing was because the Stratojet didn't have the room for modern ECM -- it was the only way the B-47 could get near some of the more heavily defended targets.
4.) Once you start nuking targets, it's going to provide a flaming datum as to where you really are; whether from the mushroom clouds or the holes in the radar network.
So why *begin* the attack at low level if:
1.) You've got the ECM payload to support a medium altitude (25,000 ft) attack.
2.) You're still relying on gravity bombs -- low altitude attacks rely on either LABS (inaccurate) or parachute retardation (may or may not actually work).
I also just realized a counterpoint to the above.
The entire concept of the Airborne Alert Force seems to be centered around carrying a large number of relatively low yield (megaton class) weapons; intended not to totally obliterate enemy cities; but to shotgun holes in the enemy's defenses.
If you reveal SAC medium-high altitude techniques and tactics to the Soviet defenders with the Airborne Alert force; then the Soviets are going to have an idea of how the SAC Ground Alert forces will fight when they arrive nine hours after the start of WW3, carrying the heavy, very high yield Class B "crowd pleasers".
This in turn is making me understand why General Power had no patience for RAND's 'counterforce' briefing by Kaufmann in 1960...because SAC's portion of the SIOP was already oriented towards that, especially in responding to a Bolt Out Of The Blue (BOOB) scenario!
The first round of attacks by SAC's ICBMs and Airborne Alert Force are going to be primarily counterforce strikes aimed at defense suppression by targeting enemy airfields and radar sites; the yields of the devices on the Airborne Alert force hint heavily towards that.
Yes, Moscow and Leningrad are going to be trashed in the process -- but the majority of Russian cities are going to be mostly untouched and it's going to take nine hours for the Ground Alert Force of the time (200+ bombers) to arrive over Soviet targets to finish the job with multi-megaton party favors.
That's plenty of time for war termination negotiations, etc etc.
So Power blowing his top at Kaufman is starting to make more sense; because Kaufman was telling Power obvious stuff - i.e. the sky is blue - and acting like it was some stunning insight.
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