Date

Mar 18, 1954

Description

An exemplar of the state of U.S. nuclear war planning in the mid-1950s, with the U.S. Navy’s perspective, can be found in this extraordinary record of a Strategic Air Command briefing first published in International Security, Winter 1981/1982, by David A. Rosenberg in "A Smoking Radiating Ruin at the End Of Two Hours": Documents on American Plans for Nuclear War with the Soviet Union, 1954-1955.” The briefing at SAQ Headquarters in March 1954 was attended by Captain William B. Moore, the executive assistant to the director of Op-36, Atomic Energy Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, who later prepared a detailed account of the briefing. As Rosenberg observed, “Like many other naval officers involved in war planning and nuclear weapons matters during the early post-war period, Moore was clearly skeptical regarding the wisdom of SAC's priorities and plans, as well as its claims about its capabilities,” but “his recounting of the briefing [was] careful and accurate.”

Rosenberg’s evaluation of the SAC briefing and related documents remains highly valuable. One his major points was that Moore’s account captured the most essential features of the SAC “optimum” plan for a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Although SAC had specific target priorities (“BRAVO”: Soviet nuclear capabilities; DELTA: Soviet war-making capabilities; and ROMEO: Soviet armies heading into Western Europe), the planners allowed “operational considerations [to] blur the distinctions between different types of targets.” SAC’s optimum plan sought to “strike the entire target list in a single massive blow,” thus enabling bombers to enter and exit Soviet air space rapidly so as to “maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the nuclear offensive, and to reduce U.S. losses to a minimum.” Moore wrote that his “final impression” of the SAC offensive was that it would have a calamitous impact on the Soviet Union.

Plainly impressed by the briefing, Moore suggested that SAC was “in a higher state of combat readiness today than any other U.S. military command.”

But he also observed that SAC commanders were “optimistic” about their capabilities to implement complex war plans, which among other elements, assumed that air defenses could not deflect a mass bombing raid that approached Soviet territory from many directions. And Moore further noted that during the briefing and the Q&A afterwards “no questions” were raised about the morality of the war plans or their impact, whose effect would be to annihilate huge numbers of Soviet civilians. Plainly he found that disturbing but said no more about it.

Source

U.S. Navy Heritage and History Command, Navy Archives, Records of the Strategic Plans Division (Op-30), folder A43 (l), Status of War Plans; Operation Plans, 1954 [copy courtesy of David Alan Rosenberg]

Document published in following posting(s):

"How Much is Enough?": The U.S. Navy and "Finite Deterrence"

Oct 14, 2021

“A Smoking Radiating Ruin at the End of Two Hours”Op-36C to Op-36 Via: Op-36B3 Subj: “Briefing Given to the Representatives of all Services at SAC Headquarters, Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, on 15 March 1954,” signed by W.B. Moore, Captain, USN, 18 March 1954, Top Secret