Commissar
Banned
all of what you say is true... except... 80,000 US troops works out to 1 division (1st Armored) plus attachments, corps support, a lot of military government types and the Air Force. This is a 1945 organization US Armored Division with only 9 task forces (built around the battalions). That isn't a lot of tanks or frontage. It was the only full strength US Division in 1950.
Which was a match for two Soviet Divisions which were just as depleted from the heavy losses from WW2 and are spread out keeping Eastern Europe down.
They also have nearby France to call in for help. Worse comes to worse, they fall back to the Maginot Line which was still mostly operational and hold out there for UK and French forces to build up and CONUS to send the reserves.
There isn't nearly enough equipment on hand to mobilize the US Army to wartime strength in 1950. Incidently, only around 7.6 million of those veterans were from the Army or Marines, most of the rest were Navy or Air Force. There are the National Guard Divisions, a few reserve divisions, and the 5 divisions on hand in the US (4 in Korea, 1 in Germany). One of those is the 82nd which is close to full strength and has specific duties as the strategic reserve and will not be committed (one of its jobs was to help SAC secure its overseas bases). It will takes months to recall, organize, retrain, and establish base facilities for those recalled reservists, especially as most of the bases used in World War II were deactivated and a lot are not even available anymore because they were absorbed into the civilian economy. A lot will be, but their facilities have not been used in years and are in poor or nonexistent repair.
And the Soviets will have it even worse. When it comes down to it, the U.S. can mobilize faster than the USSR can and won't have to work with its transport system wrecked.
Dropshot planners were not nearly as optimistic as you are about their ability to shut down Stalins railroads. A similar sized operation in World War II occurred prior to the invasion of Normandy and required thousands of tactical and medium bombers which are no longer around in 1950-51.
"Snickers" They were using iron bombs with the odd TV guided glide bombs here and there.
Nuclear bombs, especially the Mk. 4 (31 kilotons), of that era are completely different can of fish. Moscow has twelve rail terminals. B-50s or B-36s dropping twelve Mk. 4s on Moscow's rail terminals would have, so long as they were dropped within 200 feet in a ground burst, scoured off the tracks. Even an Airburst would wreck the rail terminals, destroying cars, locomotives and whatever is within its radius of destruction. If properly coordinated, the airbursts would also cause a firestorm in Moscow, wrecking much of it.
SAC also had the Soviet Oil Industry targeted.
Seriously are you that dense?
B29s did not during the Korean War have a good track record in dropping bridges. Lemay was right to insist on keeping SAC available for its main mission and Truman was right to agree. Truman also ordered a massive buildup after the War started, but to a level consistent with deterrence, not immediate war fighting. The 1950s economic boom is the result of that.
Actually they dropped four bridges across the Yalu using VB-13s, achieving a 36% hit rate.
A nuclear bomb as long as it got within 400 feet would have annihilated the bridges.
Also nearly every bridge across the Yalu was destroyed except one by conventional bombing.
The Soviets have at least 50 divisions available for immediate deployment to the primary front, and could raise 200 more fairly quickly (and have their wartime stocks on hand). The main problem the Soviets have is supplying that force, not raising it. The NATO nations do not have the West German Army, the French Army has significant (and its best troops too) forces in Indochina and elsewhere in their Empire, while the British are in bad shape economically and the BAOR is only a couple of divisions (with maybe 10 or so it can get to Germany relatively quickly). The Dutch and Belgians have forces in name only at this point. So what is to stop those Soviet divisions on the ground?
The fact that the Soviets immediate frontline troops are garrison forces holding down Eastern Europe and SAC would have wrecked the Soviet Transport system preventing the reserves from even coming.
The French can immediately recall it Divisions in Algeria to assist and rapidly mobilize its significant force of reservists rather quickly. The Magniot Line was still operational and the Soviets lacked the equipment to make a frontal assault on it, so the French can narrow the front significantly.
Only nuclear weapons, and the US can wreck the Soviet Union, but only at great cost, and even then possibly not soon enough to stop the Soviets from overrunning the continent. The big issue was that Stalin wasn't willing historically at the time to accept the certain level of damage to the Soviet Union that would result. But he was pretty crazy toward the end in the last 2 years before he died, and it is not impossible that he might decide that the Revolution was worth the cost if he can strip France and the rest of Europe of its industrial plant to make up what he loses to American atomic bombs.
The Soviets till 1951 had massive holes in its RADAR coverage, lacked night fighters, and had nothing that could stop the B-36 till the MiG-19 came along.
That and Stalin will be dead when SAC is done.
Cause after the SAC's primary targets are taken out, B-50s and B-36s with full bomb loads will mop up the USSR via conventional firebombing until the rubble is rubble and the Soviets will have little real defense.
Considering B-29s only lost 16 of their number to Soviet piloted MiG-15s who in turn lost 16 of their number to B-29 gunners. In total 34 B-29s would be lost to all causes in the Korean Conflict while they shot down 33 planes in return, had 17 probables, and damaged 11 more MiG-15s. The USSR would have been hard pressed to hold back B-29s.
The B-50 flies higher and faster than the B-29 and the B-36 even higher and faster...
So where the hell do you get the notion that SAC would suffer heavy causalities when it is clear Dropshot was a worse case scenario cooked up to secure funding for various weapons projects and Soviet defenses were not up to snuff.
And Stalin knew this. It was why he used proxies till his death. He knew to take on the U.S. directly before he had consolidated Eastern Europe and rebuilt his manpower base which had been depleted greatly by over 27 million, he would lose everything, so did those around him who were busy trying to find an opportunity to kill him.