How Bad Would Nuclear War Have Been in 1962?

I feel like it's worth pointing out there that if you take any of the depictions of crazed Air Force generals from circa that period seemingly pressing for nuclear war, while they've now gone down in popular history as warmongering nuts, the reason they were doing it at the time was because they were looking at exactly the kind of numbers the more conservative people in this thread are proposing in terms of strikes on the U.S.

They're looking at those and figuring that in 5 or 10 years, when the Soviets have their act together, they're going to be capable of pummeling America as bad as America can already pummel the Soviets. So if there's going to be a war, better get it over with now while most of the U.S. will survive it.
 
I feel like it's worth pointing out there that if you take any of the depictions of crazed Air Force generals from circa that period seemingly pressing for nuclear war, while they've now gone down in popular history as warmongering nuts, the reason they were doing it at the time was because they were looking at exactly the kind of numbers the more conservative people in this thread are proposing in terms of strikes on the U.S.

They're looking at those and figuring that in 5 or 10 years, when the Soviets have their act together, they're going to be capable of pummeling America as bad as America can already pummel the Soviets. So if there's going to be a war, better get it over with now while most of the U.S. will survive it.

It's a madman's kind of calculus.
 
the reason they were doing it at the time was because they
That and deterring the Soviets requires them to think you are going to use the bombs as they would probably lose conventionally v the Red army. US generals had read all the books on game theory and where just playing/leaking the part required knowing that the US civilians in charge would call them back?
 
That and deterring the Soviets requires them to think you are going to use the bombs as they would probably lose conventionally v the Red army. US generals had read all the books on game theory and where just playing/leaking the part required knowing that the US civilians in charge would call them back?
Well sure there is an element of that, too, but that was the guidance they were offering Kennedy behind the scenes too, not just playing it in public.

Look at it from Curtis Lemay's perspective, to take the guy most derided. He would be old enough to remember World War I happening when he was in middle school. He had watched the events of the 1930s and was a World War II vet. Appeasement doesn't work. If you're on the military side, at least, you probably have a pretty skeptical view of diplomacy in general out of that debacle. Now you have the Soviets, another brutal revisionist power. Appeasement won't work this time either. And now there's the nasty addition of nuclear weapons to the picture.

Odds are, peace won't hold forever. Two powers the size of the U.S. and the USSR are almost certainly going to clash eventually.

The only choice in your power to make is whether to have that fight now when the odds are still in your favour, or later when the odds are more even.

Please note I'm not recommending this worldview. Events proved them wrong. That was Japan's mentality in 1941, too, and we know how well worked it out for them (i.e. it destroyed them). But at least you can understand where they were coming from.
 
Well sure there is an element of that, too, but that was the guidance they were offering Kennedy behind the scenes too, not just playing it in public.

Look at it from Curtis Lemay's perspective, to take the guy most derided. He would be old enough to remember World War I happening when he was in middle school. He had watched the events of the 1930s and was a World War II vet. Appeasement doesn't work. If you're on the military side, at least, you probably have a pretty skeptical view of diplomacy in general out of that debacle. Now you have the Soviets, another brutal revisionist power. Appeasement won't work this time either. And now there's the nasty addition of nuclear weapons to the picture.

Odds are, peace won't hold forever. Two powers the size of the U.S. and the USSR are almost certainly going to clash eventually.

The only choice in your power to make is whether to have that fight now when the odds are still in your favour, or later when the odds are more even.

Please note I'm not recommending this worldview. Events proved them wrong. That was Japan's mentality in 1941, too, and we know how well worked it out for them (i.e. it destroyed them). But at least you can understand where they were coming from.

Japan was acting though from a position of weakness and knew it. They were objectively weaker than America and knew that if they didn't win quickly they could never win. In the Cold War the generals couldn't know that the Soviets would eventually collapse internally. You should never bet on your enemies screwing up to win. So they looked to strike when they had the advantage and in the early Cold War America had the advantage in nuclear weapons deliverable to the enemy. So they made plans to use them.
 

Marc

Donor
All assumptions are being based that Nuclear Winter is a false thesis.
And that there isn't use of biological and chemical weaponry in the holocaust scenario by the Soviets.
Oh, and regardless of who "wins", culturally, it's the end of Western Civilization.


 
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How badly the USA gets hurt depends on how things start and if any missiles/aircraft in Cuba are nuke armed and ready, which adds to the odds of things getting hit. The USA could get off with just a few cities getting hit or perhaps as many as a dozen or more. The Soviet missiles, while carrying large warheads, had some pretty impressive CEPs and it cannot be emphasized too strongly that CEP means HALF of the weapons fall in that circle and the other half anywhere form a cm outside the circle to who knows where. There will be damage if the weapon aimed at Boston with the aiming point the Naval Yard (a two-fer shot counterforce/countervalue) actually hits about 2 miles east over the water. However any fallout blows out to sea under usual wind conditions, and even a 4-5MT blast will only have the max pressure (~10psi) 2-3 miles away if the burst height is optimized. The point being that even for a weapon that lands within the CEP and a large warhead, the amount of death and destruction depends on the luck of where the ground zero is. For a miss outside the CEP, this could be really bad news for some suburban town or farmer, but be no direct damage for the city/installation. Throw in missile/warhead failures, missiles not launched before their launch site hit etc, and the "hair won't be mussed" is not that far off.

For the NATO countries, there is more the Russians can throw at them and given the density of cities and populations in Europe, even a clear "miss" could be pretty nasty, although many of the same factors apply. While the USA will hit transport nodes etc in WP countries with nukes, either cruise missile or aircraft, I'm not sure how many cities in WP countries would be hit as countervalue. Inside the USSR, for sure. Perhaps hitting the WP capitals for political disruption, and places with transport/military industry etc, but that's really more counterforce targeting than countervalue. As far as China goes I expect Beijing and some cities take a hit, perhaps major military complexes and any known nuclear sites.
 
The Soviet missiles, while carrying large warheads, had some pretty impressive CEPs and it cannot be emphasized too strongly that CEP means HALF of the weapons fall in that circle and the other half anywhere form a cm outside the circle to who knows where

The first generation Soviet RVs were copies of the earliest US prototypes. Blunt body. While that is great for returning spacecraft, it's not so good for a nuclear warhead.

Problem was it shed speed, fast- enough to drop from hypersonic down to low Mach range, into the envelope where they could be intercepted by the Nike-Hercules SAM batteries surrounding most large US metro areas at this tiem.
With the nuclear warhead, that SAM had limited ABM captability.

Next gen Soviet RV that used biconic shapes wasn't for a few years yet, that kept high speeds
 
and now many of those would it there target (are even get near there target).

CEP was about 3-kilometers, which with a 3-5 megaton warhead is enough for counter-value work, although obviously hopeless for most counter-force work. The Soviets kept around half of their missiles ready during the crisis on a rotating basis (and all of the 26 missiles they had in silos could be made launch ready within a maximum of 15 minutes), so that's a minimum of approximately 25 launches. Failure rates were on the order of 30%, so that's about 17-18 3 megaton warheads. The Soviets also have about 155 intercontinental bombers, but interception rates among them to American air defenses would probably exceed 75%. Finally, there are about 52 submarine Soviet subs with around 161 nuclear-tipped SLBMs or SLCMs (2-3 SLBMs for the ballistic missile boats and 3-6 SLCMs for the cruise missile boats), but these are all mid-range weapons that would have to run a gantlet of American ASW and then remain surfaced relatively close to their target for 15-20 minutes before firing, all of which again translates to excessive intercept rates and some would probably be sent against targets in East Asia or Europe. Then there's the weapons on Cuba, of which 6-8 were theater weapons ready to be launched. And a number of the "tactical" nuclear weapons could be lobbed over to Florida, although whether they would be is a different question.

The exact number of nuclear warheads that would make it through to American targets, fundamentally, remains uncertain and depends on the details, but a dozen is probably the lowest it can possibly be. The idea of the US avoiding taking nukes entirely, especially by this point, is more delusion born of wishful thinking then honest analysis. The US won't be destroyed, like the Soviet Union would be, but it would be hurt. That was more then enough of a catastrophe to make most of the level-headed policymakers cautious enough about starting a war.
 
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Jack Brisco

Banned
The first generation Soviet RVs were copies of the earliest US prototypes. Blunt body. While that is great for returning spacecraft, it's not so good for a nuclear warhead.

Problem was it shed speed, fast- enough to drop from hypersonic down to low Mach range, into the envelope where they could be intercepted by the Nike-Hercules SAM batteries surrounding most large US metro areas at this tiem.
With the nuclear warhead, that SAM had limited ABM captability.

Next gen Soviet RV that used biconic shapes wasn't for a few years yet, that kept high speeds

Yeah, remember seeing a Nike-Hercules battery in a nearby state park when I was a kid. It was there as part of St. Louis area's point defense.
 
The Soviets kept around half of their missiles ready during the crisis on a rotating basis (and all of the 26 missiles they had in silos could be made launch ready within a maximum of 15 minutes), so that's a minimum of approximately 25 launches.
I have this
The most authoritative figures on ICBM availability come from Strategic Rocket Forces historian Lt. Col. Sergei Karlov. He concluded that there were 42 ICBMs deployed during the crisis.75 These included six SS-6s (R-7) and 36 SS-7 (R-16). Four of the SS-6s were on open launch pads at Plesetsk and two were reserve missiles at Baikonur that were not on permanent duty as they were intended for space exploration. During the crisis the two Baikonur SS-6s were made ready by being fueled and attaching a warhead.76
...
In mid-1962 according to NIE 11-8-62 (July 6, 1962) there were 161 nuclear missiles on 52 submarines. These included ten Hotel (three ballistic missiles each), four Echo (six cruise missiles each), seven Zulu (two ballistic missiles each), 25 Golf (three ballistic missiles each) and six converted Whiskey (three cruise missiles each). With SS-N-3 cruise missiles and SS-N-4 ballistic missiles the Soviet diesel and nuclear submarines would have to within 150-350 nautical miles to reach their targets and avoid U.S. Navy ASW forces.82 The cruise missile submarines probably had an anti-carrier mission rather than a land-attack mission and after 1962 were dropped from U.S. intelligence estimates.
...

  • Forty-eight R-12 SS-4 “Sandal” MRBM missiles with twenty-four MRBM launchers, maximum range 1,300 miles. Only 36 missiles and 24 launchers arrived, as a ship carrying some went back or they were never shipped. Thirty-six one megaton nuclear warheads arrived.

  • Thirty-two R-14 SS-5 “Skean” missiles with 16 launchers, maximum range 2,800 miles. Neither the missiles nor the launchers arrived as their ships turned back, but their nuclear warheads did arrive.
...
By October 25 there were over 1000 air defense aircraft on alert; 598 on five to fifteen minute ground alert, and 446 on one to three -hour alert.132 Florida CONAD forces of 154 aircraft were broken down as follows:
26 on 5 minute alert
35 on 15 minute alert
55 on 1-3 hour alert
4 to 11 aircraft were continuously airborne around the Florida Peninsula.

On October 31 the JCS approved a reduction of CONAD’s dispersed air defence force from 173 to 143. On November 18 CONAD returned its dispersed aircraft to their home bases and re-established the normal one-third alert.

During the period October 22 to November 26, ADC flew a total of 13,047 sorties, 2,800 of them from Florida bases.133 The planes were F-102A Delta Daggers armed with the nuclear AIM-26A Falcon air-to-air missile and F-106A/B Delta Darts armed with one nuclear AIR-2A Genie air-to-air missile. In 1962 there were 42 U.S. Interceptor squadrons. In terms of number of planes the Air Force accepted 889 F-102As and some 340 F-106s (275 F-106 As and 63 F-106Bs).

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the above doesn't all of ADC and ANG aircraft. 150 odd bombers getting thru vs that many fighters.....
 
I have this

*snip*

Yes, I've seen that. It's where the 26 missiles-in-silos with a launch time of 5-15 minutes comes from (although I notice you left that bit of out). Nothing in there that really contradicts me.

the above doesn't all of ADC and ANG aircraft. 150 odd bombers getting thru vs that many fighters.....

That's why I posited a 75+% interception rates, which is extremely high. I mean, a loss rate of 10+% is generally regarded as crippling and SAC in it's early years expected loss rates as high as 50% or higher. So 75% or higher is a positively catastrophic loss rate. Still, it's inevitable that there'll be at least a few leakers.
 
Yes, I've seen that. It's where the 26 missiles-in-silos with a launch time of 5-15 minutes comes from (although I notice you left that bit of out).

Document didn't mention the lift time, just
The majority of the Soviet ICBM force during the crisis was the 36 SS-7s (R-16), 26 in silos and 10 on open launch pads

That's why I posited a 75+% interception rates, which is extremely high. Still, it's inevitable that there'll be at least a few leakers.

besides what ADC and ANG (and our Canadian friends of the RCAF) would do, you still had the BOMARC and Nike batteries. Soviet bombers were on a Deathride, jumping into a woodshipper
 
Document didn't mention the lift time, just
The majority of the Soviet ICBM force during the crisis was the 36 SS-7s (R-16), 26 in silos and 10 on open launch pads

Yes it does, your just leaving it out. Here is the full paragraph, with emphasis added:

The majority of the Soviet ICBM force during the crisis was the 36 SS-7s (R16), 26 in silos and 10 on open launch pads. The SS-7 Saddler was a two-stage storable, liquid-propellant ICBM capable of delivering 3500 lb reentry vehicle to a range of 12,000 kilometers with a CEP of 1.0-1.25 nm. It was deployed in soft and hard sites. Reaction time under normal conditions was three hours for soft sites and five to fifteen minutes for hard sites.

besides what ADC and ANG (and our Canadian friends of the RCAF) would do, you still had the BOMARC and Nike batteries. Soviet bombers were on a Deathride, jumping into a woodshipper

Yes, I know. That's basically what I said. I expect even those bombers which make it far enough to deliver their payload to not make it home, partly because there would be no home to return to. And?
 
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