Viewed in a vacuum, the March 12, 1959, USAF nuclear strikes against the three suspected air bases that launched the Krasnoyarsk Raid is often seen as a rather severe case of over-bombing or of using a sledgehammer to kill a single ant. There would be a great deal of truth to this viewpoint if the reason for the strike was simply to eliminate a dozen Ju-688 bombers; in actuality the destruction of the bombers was simply a bonus (Although one of the Krasnoyarsk aircraft actually survived the war intact, having been on a recon mission at the time of the strikes, the Ju-688 force was eliminated by the strikes. Interested readers can now actually see this aircraft, tail number #8765692, in fully restored form, at the USAF Museum located at Wright Patterson AFB Ohio.).
The real reason for the strikes was well worth the expenditure of six 1.2 megaton bombs, even though this reason has only become clear in the last decade or so. While the USAF attack has long been seen as an Allied effort to show Russia that it was not forgotten this has now been clearly shown to not be the basis for the attack.