Fact check: Would JFK Airport have been a first-strike target in a nuclear war?

Would JFK Airport have been a first-strike target in a nuclear war?

  • Yes

  • No


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If it’s 1972, there will be a couple of Nike-Hercules sites in operation in the NYC area. They’ll be long gone when the bombers come, but they were there.
 
OP said 73. that's a different story
Aware, but I was responding to the gentleman earlier who was talking about in today's terms, I just quoted the message in brevity. I should have left the rest for context.

Still, even in the 70s both were not the juggernauts they were. Hell, Penn was put underground the decade before.
 
JFK Airport would have been part of a first strike (if there are a few nukes heading to NYC). most likely it would have by one of them (and not by its own designated nuke)
 
Aware, but I was responding to the gentleman earlier who was talking about in today's terms, I just quoted the message in brevity. I should have left the rest for context.

Still, even in the 70s both were not the juggernauts they were. Hell, Penn was put underground the decade before.
True but 7th and 35th and 72nd both would be spots to get nukes or really close.
 
I'm working on a thread that involves this set in 1973. JFK Airport is New York City's biggest, located in the borough of Queens, almost at the Nassau County line. It had at the time one runway big enough to land/take off a B-52, with the possibility of doing so on a second.

Would this have made it a first-strike target on its own, independent of a Soviet strike on Manhattan, which certainly was a priority first-strike target?
I doubt it would have been targeted in the first salvo, but at some point I expect it would have been.
 
I doubt it would have been targeted in the first salvo, but at some point I expect it would have been.

I tend to agree, there are plenty of airfields that are far more threatening than JFK; every USAF airfield and USN/MC NAS for starters. There must be dozens of those, each of which would need its own ICBM/SLBM or 2 for redundancy.
 
On reflection, given that this is 1973 not 1983, I'm calling a hard no!

My reasoning is that in 1973 only the first generation MRV ICBMs were in Soviet service, and these had generally 3 warheads rather than the 6-10 of the generation introduced in the mid 70s. Thus to hit a USAF ICBM squadron of 10 silos with 2 warheads each (to allow for misses and failures) would require some 7 MRV ICBMs, and the USAF has some 100 Minuteman squadrons so the USSR needs to allocate 700 MRV ICBMs to the Minuteman force alone which is virtually every MRV missile they have in 1973. Of the ~800 they have left there is a list a mile long of nuclear related targets including SLBM and bomber bases, warning radars, C3 infrastructure and then there are important non-nuclear military targets and each would require 2 single-warhead ICBMs (to allow for misses and failures). When you start adding it up like this in 1973 the USSR ICBM force had more targets than it could service with its arsenal.
 
Thus to hit a USAF ICBM squadron of 10 silos with 2 warheads each (to allow for misses and failures) would require some 7 MRV ICBMs, and the USAF has some 100 Minuteman squadrons so the USSR needs to allocate 700 MRV ICBMs to the Minuteman force alone which is virtually every MRV missile they have in 1973.
Was always a question on what percentage the USSR had for Counterforce vs Countervalue Targeting.
 
On reflection, given that this is 1973 not 1983, I'm calling a hard no!

My reasoning is that in 1973 only the first generation MRV ICBMs were in Soviet service, and these had generally 3 warheads rather than the 6-10 of the generation introduced in the mid 70s. Thus to hit a USAF ICBM squadron of 10 silos with 2 warheads each (to allow for misses and failures) would require some 7 MRV ICBMs, and the USAF has some 100 Minuteman squadrons so the USSR needs to allocate 700 MRV ICBMs to the Minuteman force alone which is virtually every MRV missile they have in 1973. Of the ~800 they have left there is a list a mile long of nuclear related targets including SLBM and bomber bases, warning radars, C3 infrastructure and then there are important non-nuclear military targets and each would require 2 single-warhead ICBMs (to allow for misses and failures). When you start adding it up like this in 1973 the USSR ICBM force had more targets than it could service with its arsenal.
I seem to recall there was some speculation that the Soviets might have focused on the under ground launch control centers for the minuteman force vs the missile silos, prior to the massive build up of the Soviet MIRV ICBM force. I realize the US had the ability to launch minuetman missiles directly from their silos via certain airborne launch control centers but as you point out attacking each silo would have taken a lot of warheads.

If the U.S. fires some or all of the missiles on warning then the warheads aimed at the silos are largely wasted.

One can speculate endlessly about the various trade offs, but in my view it may not be a forgone conclusion that the Soviets would have fired the bulk of their ICBM force at missile silos in 1973.

It is also not clear to me if the MRV ICBM warheads (vs the later MIRV warheads) could even effectively engage targets such as missile silos, whereas the high yield single war head ICBM's could perhaps have been targeted against a smaller number of under ground launch control centers.
 
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Was always a question on what percentage the USSR had for Counterforce vs Countervalue Targeting.
And command and control, air defence targets, possible bases for returning bombers etc, vs targets such as ICBM silos that might be empty by the time the Soviet ICBM delivered warheads arrived. IMHO this was part of the reason for the massive build up of the Soviet MIRVed ICBM force, along with longer ranged SLBM's that were less vulnerable to NATO ASW.
 
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