1962 Ground Zeros

Here is another question about my favorite PoD, the Cuban Missile War.
What would the targets have been?
For the US nukes, I pretty much know that they would include every Russian city, town, village and hamlet. But would we have also attacked East Europe? What about China?
Russia had a much smaller arsenal. What would they have targeted in Western Europe? What about the United States? Would they have gone counterforce, countervalue or a mixture (like Amerigo Vespucchi's ATL)? How many cities would they have hit? The End of the World as We Might Have Known it has 40 American cities obliterated, is this plausible or ASB?
Would Britain have used any of its nukes?
 
I remember the Cuban Crisis. I've mentioned this in other posts, but...
{Shiver...}
Where I lived then was in the eye of a thermo-nuke Venn diagram of strategic targets. Liverpool docks, Cammel-Laird shipyards in Birkenhead, Stanlow oil refineries, Runcorn-Widnes Mersey bridges, Capenhurst near QueensFerry bridge over Dee...

We cleared the cubby 'under the stairs', 'eased' several floorboards, made a nest of sleeping bags, quilts etc etc. We angled ladders against the doorway to keep it clear, brought in garden tools etc, arranged camping equipment, water and food, lidded buckets etc etc. Dad clanked home with bottles of meths and cheap vodka, for 'trade goods', disinfectant and fuel. Mum went around a dozen pharmacies buying little brown bottles of 'Collis-Browne Mix', a then-respectable Victorian opioid / chloroform mix that would 'stop' the runs, blunt serious pain, allow invasive operative procedures or, in extremis, ease out the terminally ill. She explained the dosages, wrapped each very, very carefully...

A little transistor radio and spare batteries went into nested biscuit tins as a 'Faraday Shield'. We had a box of 'useful' and 'fun' books...

Our extended family's youngsters thought 'camping under the stairs' was great fun. I was just old enough to 'do the math', to realise dawn might arrive with a bang and the house disintegrate above us, then we'd have to live like rats in the 'crawl space' until we died, were evacuated and/or conscripted...
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IIRC, the RAF's V-bombers would have scrambled on warning, done their best to nuke targets in Eastern Europe and USSR. They had scant hope of returning home, nor of having a home to return to...

Fortunately, East & West made a deal. The IRBMs were pulled from Turkey, the Cuban missiles re-homed...
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My best guess is that even a middling exchange would have erased the UK, knocked much of Europe back to the 'Dark Ages' and crippled the US. Then, the 'Nuclear Winter' from the soot, plus fall-out, culls pockets of survivors.

I don't know if the USSR and China were planning to target each other, but I suspect only sub-Saharan Africa, South America, Australasia and Oceania would have emerged intact...

A couple of my distant cousins might have survived, few of our local kin stood a chance.
 
*takes a deep breathe*
GO!

What would the targets have been?
I don't know if this "strategy" was vaild in '62, but...
Priority Targets: Missile Silos and Submarine Bases
Secondary Targets: Radar & Communication Centers
Tertiary Targets: Airfields and Naval Bases

But would we have also attacked East Europe?
Definately. No nations in Eastern Europe would be spared, I think.

What about China?
Good question. Maybe.

What would they have targeted in Western Europe?
Look at Quote One.

What about the United States?
The Russians would target the US, of course. See Quote One.

The End of the World as We Might Have Known it has 40 American cities obliterated, is this plausible or ASB?
In the 60s Russia had, what, 2000 nukes? Maybe a lil' more or less...
40 Cities is plausible I think. It is even a downplay.

Would Britain have used any of its nukes?
Probably. It's hard to say.

*huff huff*
 
I grew up across the river from Barksdale Air Force base in Northwest Louisiana. We knew that if we suddenly saw the B52's scrambling that we were out of luck. We assumed that the base would be hit in the first round.
 
How do we know what each side's target lists were?

Is there declassified war planning, or do we just assume based on what each side should hit?
 
In the 60s Russia had, what, 2000 nukes? Maybe a lil' more or less...
40 Cities is plausible I think. It is even a downplay.

Here's a description both sides forces I found online. Do you believe it is erroneous? 36 intercontinental ballistic weapons.

At the time of the missile crisis, the Soviets had 36 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 138 long-range bombers with 392 nuclear warheads, and 72 submarine-launched ballistic-missile warheads (SLBMs). These forces were arrayed against a vastly more powerful U.S. nuclear arsenal of 203 ICBMs, 1,306 long-range bombers with 3,104 nuclear warheads, and 144 SLBMs—all told, about nine times as many nuclear weapons as the U.S.S.R. Nikita Khrushchev was acutely aware of America’s huge advantage not just in the number of weapons but in their quality and deployment as well.
 
Don't forget that Soviet ICBMs were fairly unreliable and inaccurate, Soviet missile submarines had to surface for roughly 30 minutes before firing and we're generally shadowed by US subs, and that NORAD had air defenses far superior to the Soviet bomber force.

The Soviets know this. They know they have to Target multiple weapons to guarantee a hit on a single target, and they aren't going to waste there few deliverable weapons on purely civilian targets absent a political objective - in other words, DC yes, LA or Chicago probably not.

I doubt more than 10 US and Canadian cities are hit.
 
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-Nuclear-Target-List-Declassified-First-Ever/

The SAC document includes lists of more than 1100 airfields in the Soviet bloc, with a priority number assigned to each base. With the Soviet bomber force as the highest priority for nuclear targeting (this was before the age of ICBMs), SAC assigned priority one and two to Bykhov and Orsha airfields, both located in Belorussia. At both bases, the Soviet Air Force deployed medium-range Badger (TU-16) bombers, which would have posed a threat to NATO allies and U.S. forces in Western Europe.


A second list was of urban-industrial areas identified for “systematic destruction.” SAC listed over 1200 cities in the Soviet bloc, from East Germany to China, also with priorities established. Moscow and Leningrad were priority one and two respectively. Moscow included 179 Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs) while Leningrad had 145, including “population” targets. In both cities, SAC identified air power installations, such as Soviet Air Force command centers, which it would have devastated with thermonuclear weapons early in the war.

According to the study, SAC would have targeted Air Power targets with bombs ranging from 1.7 to 9 megatons. Exploding them at ground level, as planned, would have produced significant fallout hazards to nearby civilians.

...
Moscow, the number one urban target, had around 180 installations slated for destruction; some were in the air power category, but many involved a variety of industrial activities, including factories producing machine tools, cutting tools, oil extraction equipment, and a most vital medicine: penicillin. Other targets involved significant infrastructural functions: locks and dams, electric power grids, railroad yards, and repair plants for railroad equipment. SAC might not have targeted each installation with a bomb but may have used the concept of “target islands” whereby adjacent installations were targeted at a central aiming point. SAC may have assigned more than one weapon to large industrial complexes, however, because they were regarded as several installations.


What is particularly striking in the SAC study is the role of population targeting. Moscow and its suburbs, like the Leningrad area, included distinct “population” targets (category 275), not further specified. So did all the other cities recorded in the two sets of target lists. In other words, people as such, not specific industrial activities, were to be destroyed. What the specific locations of these population targets were cannot now be determined. The SAC study includes the Bombing Encyclopedia numbers for those targets, but the BE itself remains classified (although under appeal). http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-co...om-east-germany-to-china-declassified/5497970
 
When you look at total number of warheads, best to look at delivery systems. Bombers, ICBMs, IRBMs, SLBMs. On the day before the Cuban Missile Crisis starts what is the readiness of these systems - how many are good to go/mission capable, how many in maintenance but can be made ready quickly, and how many won't be ready when the whistle blows. For neither side the numbers work out to nowhere near 100% ready when the fun starts, in general US readiness was higher than that of the Soviets on a daily basis, and would be higher on day one. For SLBMs, generally between 1/3 and 1/2 of US missile subs would be on patrol and most of the rest could probably get to sea before kickoff. For the Soviets this number was smaller, both on a daily basis and surge. Soviet missiles were shorter range than the US ones, and Soviet Subs had to go further to get to launch points, and would be tracked by ASW - not all but most/many. Basically no US boomers were ever consistently tracked by the Soviets, and those few where there was brief contact/tracking were much later on when Soviet gear had improved.

Soviets missiles had a relatively long preparation time to fuel and mount warheads. For the bombers they never had airborne alert, and ALL warheads/bombs were under KGB control which meant they had to be transferred and loaded/mounted (not SLBMs but a KGB person had one of the launch keys).

All of this has been elucidated on other threads, and if the Soviets went for a first strike their preparations would be noted. Furthermore when talking about missiles you need to calculate reliability - how many will fly, not all would and the Soviet numbers at this time were not so good. Then you need to ask will all the warheads go off, again not 100% for either side but close to it for the US and less so for the Soviets. Finally there is CEP -circular error probable. If the CEP is 1 km that means 50% of the warheads will fall in that circle somewhere, and 50% will fall anywhere from 1 cm to waaay far away out of it. CEP for Soviet missiles was much worse than for US.If you are aiming at the Pentagon and hit 5 miles away somewhere in Northern Virginia there will be damage of course, and bad luck for those under it, but the Pentagon won't be destroyed even with a 1.5 MT blast (it is pretty solid). What this means as someone says, is any target the Soviets want to destroy quickly with missiles needs multiple missiles - so not that many to go around. As far as bombers go, those that get off the ground and make it to within the US/Canadian ADIZ face interlocking radars, lots of fighters, and closer to targets NIKE missiles - some of the fighters and missiles have nuclear warheads. The bombers are big, slow, and easy to kill.

IMHO the USA would come off relatively lightly, as far as Europe goes their major threat is from IRBMs and medium bombers like the IL-28. Sepending on when the Soviets launch against Europe it could get ugly - a lot depends on timing and how well European air defense works against bombers.
 
The soviets could kill 40 American cities if the USN failed horribly you could easily kill 40 cities in NA but many of them would be Canadian not American
 
The soviets could kill 40 American cities if the USN failed horribly you could easily kill 40 cities in NA but many of them would be Canadian not American
Why would the Soviets nuke Canadian cities and not American ones?????
 
Why would the Soviets nuke Canadian cities and not American ones?????
Canadian cities are in range of regional missiles in Northern Russia while you may need ICBM (of which there was 36) to hit American ones. I assume that there are similar constrains for other portions of the nuclear triangle.
 
Would Britain have used any of its nukes?

Yes.

All V Force crews were recalled, leave cancelled & aircraft 'bombed up'. On at least one occasion, Vulcans and Victors (although not dispersed - the thought being that this would be seen as additional provocation) were held, engines running, for twenty minutes either on the 'Q' pans or on the piano keys of the active. As one crew member remarked in a documentary some forty five years later, 'I WAS worried then...'

The dual - key Thors were also fuelled & raised, and the Valiants (armed with US B28 gravity bombs) were already under direct SACEUR control.
 
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well that is if the out of a soviet force of 150 bombers in 1962 some 50 or so making through the DEW and
Why would the Soviets nuke Canadian cities and not American ones?????
another 16 or so making through to drop the bombs on various cities. most of them will be Canadian due to the fact that the were closer to the border. The others will go down to Soviet ICBMs and the handful of successful sub attacks
 
Many years ago (I was 13 at the time of the Cuban missile crisis) I had seen a map of the potential targets from Cuba. Many targets within theoretical range could not be hit because of trajectory and curvature from launch to the target remember not much in flight guidance at the time.
 
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