How Bad Would Nuclear War Have Been in 1962?

Yes it does, your just leaving it out. Here is the full paragraph, with emphasis added:
Hmm. Somehow I did miss that.

When you have more than 10 interceptors(many with nuclear AAMs) for every incoming bomber, the few leakers would then have 132 Nike batteries to get past, and wherever else the Army had set up mobile Hawk batteries.
 
When you have more than 10 interceptors(many with nuclear AAMs) for every incoming bomber, the few leakers would then have 132 Nike batteries to get past, and wherever else the Army had set up mobile Hawk batteries.

Okay, and? Again, why do you think I said the Soviets would be taking loss rates unseen even in early-SAC estimates?

Interestingly, the Soviets may have been better off earlier on in this regard. Their intelligence managed to snag American IFF codes around 1955, so they could have theoretically posed as American bombers returning from running low on fuel or what-have-you as far as the radar scope is concerned. Of course, they only had around a third the number of intercontinental bombers in the mid/late-50s. Whether the IFF codes were still good by the early-60s is, of course, extremely doubtful.

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

EDIT: Just saw this and it's factually incorrect. Soviet RV design was indigenous, in no way copied from the US, and from the start was biconic and not blunt-body. Even a glance at the R-16s or R-7s RV in comparison to the Atlas's would tell you this. US SAMs intercepting Soviet RV's is in the realm of fantasy.
 
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EDIT: Just saw this and it's factually incorrect. Soviet RV design was indigenous, in no way copied from the US, and from the start was biconic and not blunt-body. Even a glance at the R-16s or R-7s RV in comparison to the Atlas's would tell you this. US SAMs intercepting Soviet RV's is in the realm of fantasy.
a quick lookup
from http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/WW3_Documents/DARPA/DARPA_II_PENAIDS.htm
Due to their large warheads, the Soviets had less need for accuracy and used blunt-nosed RVs for some time. Cf.. ABRES 1962-ASMS 1984, TRW, Inc., 1985. p. 15 and p. 2.
 
a quick lookup
from http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/WW3_Documents/DARPA/DARPA_II_PENAIDS.htm
Due to their large warheads, the Soviets had less need for accuracy and used blunt-nosed RVs for some time. Cf.. ABRES 1962-ASMS 1984, TRW, Inc., 1985. p. 15 and p. 2.

How about we actually look at the RVs to see how this claim checks out? Here's the warhead for the Atlas-D, the archetypical blunt nose RV.

eqrGbLZ.jpg


Since the early single warhead missiles didn't need aerodynamic nosecones for multiple RVs like the later MIRVed missiles did, their RVs tended to be pretty obviously mounted. You can pretty clearly pick out the RV on the nose of this Atlas.

E6d5WjB.jpg


This is good, as I can't really find any pictures of these early Soviet RV's without the rest of their missile. Now here's the silo-version of the R-16 (SS-7 Mod 2 in the NATO designation, R-16U in Soviet), with most of the stages cutaway to focus on the RV. Tell me: are you seriously claiming that is the same shape as the Atlas up there? Because to me, it looks pretty clearly like a bicone with a frustrum that is pretty much the standard on ICBM RV's these days.

NM4onjT.png


By comparison, here is the RV for the W76 which is up on modern US Minutemen-III. As can be figured out at a glance, it's basically identical in shape to the R-16's RV and radically different from that of the Atlas's. The only real difference is size (the W76 is about 2/3rds the height of a human being while the R-16s RV is around twice the height).

IlCU0R5.jpg


Now with the SS-6/R-7... well, things get odd there. The R-7's RV as tested in 1957-58 is on the right there and it's pretty obviously a bicone-with-frustrum design. The R-7 as deployed (which the Soviets designated as the R-7A, while NATO doesn't appear to have made any distinction between the two) however is on the left and it actually looks like something of a halfway cross between the R-16s bicone and the Atlas's blunt nose. Not entirely sure why that happened, but apparently it increased the payload while saving weight?

39JpAQh.png
 
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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.

That would also explain the Soviets' obsession with "peace". While I was quick to dismiss it as mere propaganda when I read it in history books, it really kind of make sense for the 40s, 50s and 60s. The USSR was not interested in a real, both conventional and nuclear, war between them and the US, because they knew they would lose it.
 
So basically, for the US it's bad but survivable. For the rest of us it's the mother of all holocausts.

Pretty much, Europe's basically gone, as are several cities in the US (up to say about half a dozen to a dozen max), but the USSR and Warsaw Pact simply cease to exist as functioning entities beyond small villages that SAC does not drop sunshine on. Not sure about Africa/Middle East China/Japan etc. South America and Australia/New Zealand would probably be okay.
 
Interesting...

...Some good stuff on warhead numbers and re-entry shapes.

However, I may be the only former Emergency Planning Officer in AH, and we had to plan for conventional, chemical and nuclear attacks. Agreed, we expected attacks on counterforce and logistic targets, major industrial sites and C3I locations, but targeting population centres was a collateral damage problem, not a direct target choice. As for Carl Sagan and his misleading support for 'Nuclear Winter'... ! Flash starts fires, blast extinguishes them, smoke does not enter the Stratosphere but can rise to the Tropopause. In essence, the 'mushroom' cap can enter the Stratosphere, but the smoke cannot. The smoke would be 'rained out' as it provides perfect nuclei for raindrops.

Nuclear Winter is therefore no go. Fallout is restricted to groundburst and shallow seaburst nuclear detonations. Airbursts cause a lot of blast damage but very little fallout. That should be remembered in every nuclear war scenario or the result is flawed.

I hope this information helps.
 

Mr. House

Banned
Interesting...

...Some good stuff on warhead numbers and re-entry shapes.

However, I may be the only former Emergency Planning Officer in AH, and we had to plan for conventional, chemical and nuclear attacks. Agreed, we expected attacks on counterforce and logistic targets, major industrial sites and C3I locations, but targeting population centres was a collateral damage problem, not a direct target choice. As for Carl Sagan and his misleading support for 'Nuclear Winter'... ! Flash starts fires, blast extinguishes them, smoke does not enter the Stratosphere but can rise to the Tropopause. In essence, the 'mushroom' cap can enter the Stratosphere, but the smoke cannot. The smoke would be 'rained out' as it provides perfect nuclei for raindrops.

Nuclear Winter is therefore no go. Fallout is restricted to groundburst and shallow seaburst nuclear detonations. Airbursts cause a lot of blast damage but very little fallout. That should be remembered in every nuclear war scenario or the result is flawed.

I hope this information helps.
Quick question for you and thank you for your contribution to the thread. In your opinion how resilient is a nation like the United States to a nuclear attack? In these discussions I always find the line between say the continuation of the U.S.S.R. or U.S. post attack to be blurry.

Basically I'm asking what is the threshold at which you think a nation state like the U.S. would cease to exist from a nuclear attack?
 
The USA is pretty resilient due to size, a very decentralized governmental system, and a well developed road net and (in the early 60s) an extensive rail net that may be partially mothballed but not yet torn up. In the 1960s Soviet roads are better than they were in WWII but pretty poor. In terms of government every small town has a local town council that manages issues like police, fire, water & sewage, etc. Obviously the degree to which this is done locally and the resources varies, but this is in contrast to the USSR where everything is very top down meaning cut the links and the locals have to work to begin to get organized (yes an inexact model but basically correct). Because of the US economic system, you have more dispersed manufacturing, as opposed the the Soviet system of "one big factory" or at least a few big factories. IMHO this and other factors makes the USA more resilient - in a 1962 war, the USA should survive as a unified entity, how much trouble there is depends upon how many hits at which cities take hits, and how many hits are ground bursts producing a bunch of fallout and how many are air bursts.
 
In your opinion how resilient is a nation like the United States to a nuclear attack?
In the early '60s lip service was being paid to Civil Defense. By '67 or so, that pretty much was forgotten about.

In that earlier time, AT&T communication centers and 'Project Offices' were hardened against nuclear attack
 
In a nutshell...

...The USA is very hard to knock out as its decision-making (civil and military) is designed for multiple redundancy. If Russia or China could simultaneously annihilate every federal and state capital and military base, destroy every successor to the President and the Command Team, they might just manage to paralyze the USA. However, every military unit (not just the US Marine Corps) has the ability to operate autonomously, even if it has less information than it desires.

It is my considered opinion that only a prolonged military occupation can defeat a democracy; autocracies of all kinds are far more vulnerable to military attacks, although covert action against national will to fight may be more successful.
 
a quick lookup
from http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/WW3_Documents/DARPA/DARPA_II_PENAIDS.htm
Due to their large warheads, the Soviets had less need for accuracy and used blunt-nosed RVs for some time. Cf.. ABRES 1962-ASMS 1984, TRW, Inc., 1985. p. 15 and p. 2.
Yep...

I recall reading similar comments in the late 1980's and early 1990's in retrospective reviews of US ABM efforts. I seem to recall the general tone was that the U.S. could have had a reasonably functional ABM system without a huge effort vis a vis the early Soviet ICBM's.
 
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