The Berlin Blockade leads to World War III. Who wins?

@ObssesedNuker

Well you are also forgetting this would be 3 years after the end of wwII Eastern Europe is being subjugated, the soviet "liberator" routine is being proven to be false by this time. The East Germans are not going to be the happiest of people to be going into a war, neither will the Poles or the Hungarians or Czechs. Yes the soviets have more ground forces stated in eastern Europe, much of it in an occupation format. it takes time to start pointing the army in a coherent manner west and have them start marching. that magically also doesn't happen over night. and do you think that would go unnoticed?

I concede that the initial onslaught will favor the soviets. But the Western Powers are not going to just sue for peace and say .. hey its all yours. especially if the soviets are now acting like the Nazis. This will become WW III.. so the Soviets start marching towards france, they will bog down. France does have a military, there are lots of surplus and military presence in western Europe.

THis will buy time. time to move the supply lines into full effect and reopen the staging areas yet again. and yes start ramping up bomb production and start using them. oh the war might stalemate into a phony war for a bit as the line stabilizes. Unthinkable was a two way street, the west didn't want to invade and the soviets didn't either. both sides loose in this and it sets back Europe for another 10-20 years. the soviets lost 1-5 people during the second war, they can ill afford to loose another 5-10 million
 
@ObssesedNuker

Well you are also forgetting this would be 3 years after the end of wwII Eastern Europe is being subjugated, the soviet "liberator" routine is being proven to be false by this time. The East Germans are not going to be the happiest of people to be going into a war, neither will the Poles or the Hungarians or Czechs. Yes the soviets have more ground forces stated in eastern Europe, much of it in an occupation format. it takes time to start pointing the army in a coherent manner west and have them start marching. that magically also doesn't happen over night. and do you think that would go unnoticed?

In reality, the Soviet army was doing very little in the way of occupation. That task mostly fell to the military arm of the NKVD (well, MGB by now). The Red Army was focused on maintaining it's forces in a high-state of readiness and exercising to keep it's skills sharp. The divisions in deployed in Eastern Europe are all category A formations, which can be ready to go by the end of day 1. Category B divisions from the USSR would reach full readiness at 10 days and Category C divisions would reach full readiness at 20 days. Compare that to the half-year+ months it would take for the US to ship over any ground reinforcements.

I concede that the initial onslaught will favor the soviets. But the Western Powers are not going to just sue for peace and say .. hey its all yours. especially if the soviets are now acting like the Nazis. This will become WW III.. so the Soviets start marching towards france, they will bog down. France does have a military, there are lots of surplus and military presence in western Europe.

Again, this tells me you clearly didn't read the rest of the thread. Otherwise you would know that I never claimed that the Western Powers are going to sue for peace, at least not in a situation where the Soviets shoot first as proposed by the OP, and the French themselves admitted they didn't have an army that could hold off the Soviets.

Well. This thread got intense.

I am reminded of that old joke about two Soviet generals meeting up for lunch in Paris, when one asks, "By the way, who won the air war?"

But even with Soviet tanks plunging into the Loire and Po, I also can't see the Americans and the Commonwealth suing for peace. What you'd get instead would be a long and ugly (and highly destructive) war. The one sure set of losers would be continental Europeans, only barely starting to recover from the horrors of the previous world war, now plunged into yet another, thanks to conquest (temporary or not) by yet another genocidal totalitarian dictatorship.

Pretty much. I've consistently said that the Western Powers will win in the end, it just will not be a quick or easy victory like a lot of people were wishfully postulating and their going to lose continental Europe for a time.
 
In reality, the Soviet army was doing very little in the way of occupation. That task mostly fell to the military arm of the NKVD (well, MGB by now). The Red Army was focused on maintaining it's forces in a high-state of readiness and exercising to keep it's skills sharp. The divisions in deployed in Eastern Europe are all category A formations, which can be ready to go by the end of day 1. Category B divisions from the USSR would reach full readiness at 10 days and Category C divisions would reach full readiness at 20 days. Compare that to the half-year+ months it would take for the US to ship over any ground reinforcements.



Again, this tells me you clearly didn't read the rest of the thread. Otherwise you would know that I never claimed that the Western Powers are going to sue for peace, at least not in a situation where the Soviets shoot first as proposed by the OP, and the French themselves admitted they didn't have an army that could hold off the Soviets.



Pretty much. I've consistently said that the Western Powers will win in the end, it just will not be a quick or easy victory like a lot of people were wishfully postulating and their going to lose continental Europe for a time.
I did.. how long do you think it takes to start flying bombs and dropping them?

lets say America has 12 A bombs .. they start flying them over to England .. unload .. load.. fly and drop .. even 1 or 2 a day maybe even three ..
Vladivostok is going to go poof, Leningrad will have a very bad day, Gdansk, warsaw, faluda gap and other places. that's 5 places.. lets take on Moskva, minsk, Kyiv any place that serves as a forward depot. Krakow, lviv, Smolensk , vilno.. these will also see bombing raids with various devices be it atomic or conventional.

and lets just play nice for a second. if france is threatened again.. the west will unleash anything it has to stop the soviets. gas, nerve, biologic.. no matter how primitive in 1948. IN 1950 the usa had around 300 bombs. so lets pair that back .. say in 1948 they have around 150.. think they are not going to use them?

lets continue this logic short bus train, the soviets can not touch the united states. the usa can touch the soviet union. European Russia is still in ruins as is much of eastern Europe.

combine that with british and American airpower, maybe you are not reading the responses. I agree, this is going to be ugly and the soviets have an advantage at the start, but the soviets then become the clear aggressors who pulled the trigger to start this. The west is going to fight tooth and nail.
  • It still takes time to get your divisions from places in eastern Europe who are doing "sight seeing " tours ..
  • You are still going to have to convince those eastern European nations to join in and pray they don't back stab and or you are going to have to retain enough forces locally to keep the locals under lock and key
  • 50 + bombs plus a new ramped up urgency for them is going to put a small damper on soviet enthusiasm as cities start to vanish 1 by 4
  • The USA is going to make this a two front war on the Soviets
  • Its a game they are not going to win and everyone is going to loose
Honestly anyone could win or loose. but a quick 3 week war and the west drops to its knees and says okay its all yours.. eh.. no.. the red army is not some hording mass of indestructible power and neither is the west.

So if you want to write a tory where the soviets win.. go for it.. would like to read it..
 
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I did.. how long do you think it takes to start flying bombs and dropping them?

According to American plans of the time, 45 days. Even those assumed a stronger and more capable strategic air command then existed at the time, as well as facilities in England for the storage and assembly of atomic bombs which did not actually exist yet.

lets say America has 12 A bombs .. they start flying them over to England .. unload .. load.. fly and drop .. even 1 or 2 a day maybe even three ..
Vladivostok is going to go poof, Leningrad will have a very bad day, Gdansk, warsaw, faluda gap and other places. that's 5 places.. lets take on Moskva, minsk, Kyiv any place that serves as a forward depot. Krakow, lviv, Smolensk , vilno.. these will also see bombing raids with various devices be it atomic or conventional.

Given the actual capabilities of SAC and American bomb assembly teams in 1948, they'd struggle to assemble even three bombs and the bombers would either get lost or be intercepted and shot down en-route.

and lets just play nice for a second. if france is threatened again.. the west will unleash anything it has to stop the soviets. gas, nerve, biologic.. no matter how primitive in 1948. IN 1950 the usa had around 300 bombs. so lets pair that back .. say in 1948 they have around 150.. think they are not going to use them?

The nice thing about already having discussed this in the thread is that I can just quote myself on the subject instead of having to retype my debunking of your inane arguments:

Prior to 1949, the US had 0 assembled bombs. They had the components for approximately 50 bombs as of the end of the fiscal year (June 30, 1948 in those days), but lacked the assembly teams to put more then a handful of them together. They faced further bottlenecks in aircraft, crews, logistical support, and basing which further would degrade their ability to deliver any weapons successfully to a target.

Bigger Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow by John M. Curatola goes into exquisite detail, without sacrificing readibility, on just how ineffective the US strategic air arm in general and nuclear arsenal in particular was in the 1946-50 period. Curatola also goes into some detail about Soviet air defense forces, although he doesn't spend as much time on them as his focus is mainly on SAC. Here's a choice quote of particular relevance to the discussion:

"The issues regarding the small pool of skilled weapons assembly teams and atomic competence were highlighted during the SANDSTONE atomic test held in April and May 1 948 as the Berlin Blockade crisis emerged. At the end of March, in a meeting at Forrestal’s office with the service chiefs, Secretaries Royall and Symington, and retired General Dwight Eisenhower, the issue of atomic capability came to the fore. Eisenhower inquired about American atomic capability given the growing tensions around the German capital. The response to Eisenhower’s question was an alarming one. Nichols answered that the United States could not prepare or assemble any bombs for delivery at the time because all the qualified personnel were at Eniwetok preparing for the SANDSTONE tests. In subsequent meetings the issue was raised of returning some of the assembly personnel back to Sandia in case the atomic bomb was required during the early part of the crisis, but the idea of returning the teams was eventually nixed by the AEC." - Pg 47

“We were plain bluffing. We couldn't have put the bomb together and used it.”-Colonel Gilbert M. Dorland, Commander of the US Sandia Atomic Stockpile

And in another thread, although this is technically for a war in '47 rather then '48 but the differences are minor enough:

As for strategic air power, I highly recommend John M. Curatola's “Bigger Bombs for a Better Tomorrow”, which goes into exquisite detail, without sacrificing readibility, on just how ineffective the US strategic air arm in general and nuclear arsenal in particular was in the 1946-50 period. All the information I'm posting here is pulled from there. His assessments tended to be echoed by books like Steven Ross's "American War Plans, 1945-1950" or Raymond Ojserkis's "Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race", although the latter does not directly focus very much on the state of the nuclear arsenal.

So, first: the arsenal. The earliest tentative USAAC/USAAF estimates drafted in 1945 said that to inflict a crippling blow on the Soviet Union they would need a minimum stockpile of 123 weapons and a ideal one of 466, a figure that would only grow with time. By the end of 1947, total US stockpile of bomb components (not full-on bombs, more on this in a moment) was 13, and further production was being bottlenecked by technical issues with the reactors needed to produce plutonium. The first generation of nuclear bombs, and their associated aircraft, were crude and unwieldy devices that took considerable time and preparation before usage. Yet the problem of assembling these early bombs took a host of specially trained teams that after the war the US had a critical shortage of. And even the bomb teams they did have were found to be woefully inadequate at assembling their weapons. The issue was so bad that the Atomic Energy Commission privately admitted that they were unable to assemble any of the bombs under wartime conditions. Just assembling bombs for the testing programs of Crossroads and Sandstone maxed out their capabilities. What's worse, the bombs were not under military control: they were under control of the civilian Atomic Energy Commission and were only to be released to military control after the bombs had been transported to the airbases and assembled by the aforementioned AEC teams. But the AEC was not on talking grounds with the military: the head of the AEC, David Lilienthal, was deeply suspicious of military personnel and vigorously opposed military influence in atomic decision-making. As a result coordination and communication between the AEC and the military was practically nonexistent. So not enough weapons which the people in charge of assembling the weapons, who aren't coordinating with the people in charge of delivering the weapons, can't be relied upon to put together. We're off to a great start!

So that's the bomb situation, how about aircraft? The number of atomic-capable aircraft available to the air force in 1947 was... 18 and these were all described as "well worn and beginning to show their age". But that's the total number. When one takes into account that 56 percent of US aircraft were out of commission at any given time by 1950 and this was a radical improvement over the earlier years as a result of a overhaul in maintenance practices in 1949, you're probably looking at somewhere below 1/3rd that number actually being available to fly. Never mind those which would be lost attempting to bomb their targets with their inadequately trained crews.

Speaking of which, there was a even grosser shortage of aircrews: during this time, the US only had 12 crews fully certified to fly nuclear strike missions. Yet even the certified crews training left something to be desired: they did not train for navigation over the East European and Russian landmass, they were trained in daylight when they were expected to deliver the weapons at night so as to minimize detection, and their practice with RADAR bombsights was basically as handheld as it get with the practice targets being outfitted with reflectors and the like. When Curtis LeMay took over SAC in late-1948, he proceeded to ask his crews them to perform a practice run in early-1949 against Dayton Ohio under realistic conditions. The results were a total fiasco: not one of the bombers achieved accuracy close enough to the target to even damage it, much less destroy it, with atomic bombs. A number had to abort or never even found the city at all! No wonder LeMay subsequently remarked that not one of his air crews were capable of doing a professional job. What's worse, they'd basically be flying blind: intelligence on what to target was execrable, relying on spotty interviews with German returnees and maps that were outdated when the Tsar was around. About 20% of the planned targets were simply out of range. And then there was the infrastructure problem. Most of the British and all of the Middle Eastern bases that the bombers were supposed to base out of had runways that were too short to support a B-29/50 carrying an atomic bomb, no facilities for the storage and assembly of atomic munition, the aforementioned paltry air defenses which made them vulnerable targets for Soviet counter-air strikes, and so-on. What's more, there was uncertainty whether the Middle Eastern bases could even be held against the expected Soviet ground assault into the Middle East.

And of course, they’ll face resistance. The USSR had established all-weather, 24-hour local air defense of all critical installations and facilities following the wars end and by 1947 the air defense system had grown to a national scale, a point emphasized just a year later when it was removed from the Soviet Artillery Directorate and made a independent branch of the armed forces. US ELINT was badly done (something which even the US itself recognized) and as a result underestimated Soviet radar capabilities in this period in both size and quality, a problem compounded by the fact that shortages of jammers, chaff, chaff dispensers, and electronic maintenance personnel rendered SAC's ECM capabilities only 35-percent effective from requirements. Conversely, the Soviets demonstrated the capability in jamming American navigation aids during the Berlin airlift, which would greatly compound navigation and accuracy issues for American crews already badly trained in such matters. Soviet radar operators were capable of vectoring Soviet fighters so as to achieve intercept at a distance of 70 miles from any given air defense station. Estimates on expected losses to enemy resistance at the time run gamut from 15 to 50%, even the lower ones would be crippling given the limited numbers of aircraft, bombs, and aircrews available. And given the poor training and support outlined above as well as the strength of Soviet air defense forces, it’s liable to be on the higher end as the lower-estimates tended to assume adequately-trained crews operating in sufficient numbers with sufficient support... all of which, as I've established, did not exist. This is without taking into account aircraft which go down or have to abort due to equipment failures: numbers forthere usually hover in the 20-25% range.

Given these deficiencies in the US's nuclear arsenal (not enough bombs, lack of crews for all tasks, lack of aircraft, inadequately trained crews, inadequate intelligence, unprepared forward bases), it's no wonder in that Curatola delivers the following judgement in his book: "In all, the ways in which the United States sought to defeat the Soviets by an atomic aerial offensive were poorly funded, ill-conceived, speciously planned, badly organized, and yet relentlessely optimistic." -Pg 134.

The US would be better off refraining from conducting any immediate atomic offensive and instead spend several years building up, retraining, re-equipping, and expanding the nuclear delivery force so as to overwhelm Soviet defenses. If it did attempt an immediate atomic offensive, which unfortunately is what the war plans of the era called for, the US nuclear delivery force's tiny size means even the most optimistic loss estimates would see it functionally destroyed and the US would have to rebuild it from scratch, an even longer process even with American economic power.

Here's a video lecture for those interested in learning more but not willing to shell out for the book:

and lets just play nice for a second. if france is threatened again.. the west will unleash anything it has to stop the soviets. gas, nerve, biologic.. no matter how primitive in 1948.

Western planning of this time makes no mention of the use of any of these to defend France. Instead, the fall of Continental Europe is accepted as inevitable and most attention is devoted to securing Britain as a staging position for future operations for it's liberation. Fundamentally, the WAllies do not have the assets in place to effectively use such weapons nor the conventional forces to back them up. A gassed region absent any conventional forces to defend it is an obstacle that can be surmounted by simply putting on a gas mask and driving really fast through it.

Remember that in 1947 jet fighters were still in their infancy and short ranged. Soviet fighter aircraft during WW2 never had faced high flying bomber formations and the few experiments into high flying interceptors were never put into production.

The Soviets by 1948 have established a capable air defense system. with early-warning nets covering Eastern Europe, and have around 1,000 early jet fighters (mostly MiG-9s and YaK-15s) for high-altitude interception, as well as another 5,000 piston-engined fighters, some of which are capable of high-altitude interception as well. This represents more fighters alone then the Western Allies have total aircraft worldwide.

Honestly anyone could win or loose. but a quick 3 week war and the west drops to its knees and says okay its all yours.. eh.. no.. the red army is not some hording mass of indestructible power and neither is the west.

And if I had claimed as such, you'd have a point. Unfortunately this is a total strawman so you don't...

So if you want to write a tory where the soviets win.. go for it.. would like to read it..

I actually do have the beginnings of a TL where the Soviets win... not a war, per-say, but rather a more violent 1948 Berlin Crisis. The optics of the matter are very different from what the OP posits (as they'd have to be to give the Soviets the chance to win), the Americans are the ones who initiate the use of force in it for example, but I'm uncertain about the butterflies.
 
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the French themselves admitted they didn't have an army that could hold off the Soviets.

I haven't read every single post in the thread, but the role of France in this war is an interesting question to me.

There's no question that France in 1948 was poorly situated to fight a full scale war in Europe. The cream of the army (close on 200,000 troops) was off in Indochina, making them extremely unavailable for combat in the Rhine Valley; the only force of note they had in their Occupation Zone was, if I am not mistaken, the Fifth Armored Division. I make no doubt they'd fight like hell, but they'd only be a speed bump for a Soviet shock army.

The more interesting question, though, lies in French politics, which were ugly. The PCF had been a radicalized force after the '47 Exclusion Crisis, even indulging in sabotage actions; and you had disorders like the '48 Coal Strike. Being conformed to the Cominform line, it is hard to see how they wouldn't transform into a full scale fifth column force as Soviet forces pushed deep into Germany and over the Rhine. The result would be something close to a civil war in France (until the Soviets took control), you'd have to think?

Since - and I agree with Nuker here - the French Army in 1948 would not be able to hold off the Soviets, Schuman's government would surely do the De Gaulle thing and relocate to London or Algiers, and Stalin would, presumably, set up a new client government under the PCF. But it would only get uglier from there. What does Schuman's government, first in Paris and then eventually in exile, do with its forces in Indochina? It can't get them to Europe in time to make a difference, but they also aren't doing it much good in Vietnam, either: it will want them on hand for whatever Anglo-American re-entry onto the Continent, whenever it happens. And what would be the role of De Gaulle in all this?
 
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According to American plans of the time, 45 days. Even those assumed a stronger and more capable strategic air command then existed at the time, as well as facilities in England for the storage and assembly of atomic bombs which did not actually exist yet.

Yeah, SAC didn't even qualify as a trainwreck in 1948. Lemay took charge in October, and he was the first to admit that the U.S. was in no position to fight an atomic war. SAC had something like 60 nuclear capable bombers (mostly Silverplate B-29's, with the first set of B-36's just starting to reach the 7th Bombardment Wing that summer), many of which were in maintenance hell; no bombs were assembled and the AEC had control of the cores anyway.

If the war happened five - hell, three! - years later, the Soviets would be in a world of hurt, and fast. But in 1948, the USAF would need months, frankly, to assemble any worthwhile nuclear strike force, and that's assuming that Truman turns over control of the warheads to Lemay, something that did not happen in OTL until 1951.

Lemay could assemble something worth talking about on a crash basis over several months, and it could play an important role in Allied operations in 1949-50, but in the opening weeks of the war, they'd be helpless.
 
The US could deliver at least 12 warheads in 1948 with a 100% loss of mission rate (B-29s going one way from current forces.). Russian air defense was (and is) a complete joke, but one still has mechanicals, pilot error and statistical chance to contend with. Probably 6-8 bombers reach their targets and destroy the objective. Was it enough to make the Russians pause? IT WAS. The Russians did not risk it. Not even Stalin dared. THAT is RTL history and as much as ON wants to argue about it, one has to deal with the RTL results and not fantasies; even in ATL scenarios.

McP.
 
While I do not believe there would be mass uprisings against the Soviets in Poland/Baltics/Ukraine/Czechoslovakia/Hungary, none of these countries were in any way "reliable" in 1948 and the idea of the Russians in 1948 trusting any East German formations to have serious weapons and be reliable in this offensive is ludicrous. While the partisans in some of these places are weak and being hunted, they are still active. The Poles know all about the stab in the back (literally), Katyn, and the Red Army deliberately sitting outside Warsaw and doing nothing to assist the rising and preventing the Allies from dropping supplies (no, you can't land and refuel behind our lines). In 1956 the Hungarian Army was unreliable in putting down the uprising, Soviet forces were needed, so how much use will that same army be to the Soviets eight years earlier with less indoctrination. I don't care what color rank tabs the Soviet forces have, but manpower is manpower, jeeps for patrolling are jeeps, and fuel expended is fuel.

During the preparation phase, assuming this is a planned Soviet attack, or during the reaction phase when the Soviets move things rapidly to escalate, you probably won't see a lot of "local" sabotage/resistance. As time goes by, there will be more both spontaneous and with western assistance/planning. The Soviet response will be predictably brutal, which will rapidly ensure they are as well liked as the Nazis.

The west is no more stupid than the Soviets. They will recall that the successes in WWII came with wrecking transportation and attacking the petroleum infrastructure - the most profitable bombing targets (and in the Pacific naval targets). Sure specific industries are good targets, but these two represent the highest return. The Soviets have long, creaky, and vulnerable logistic links which are more problematic the minute they go west, and their main petroleum resources are within heavy bomber range.

Unless the west surrenders promptly when the Russians reach the Channel (by no means a given), the Russians are screwed. They will be out produced, and when atomic bombs start dropping in Russia (first on the periphery and then closer to the center) they have no counter. The USA owns the Pacific right up to the beaches of the Soviet Pacific coast. The Soviet naval (submarine) threat to the Atlantic is minimal at best, so all Allied issues can be directed to Europe. The USA can outproduce the USSR several times over, and the UK and Commonwealth/Empire add a lot to that. The USSR in 1948 cannot win a war with the west of any duration, which Stalin knew and why he did not start one.

If you have a Berlin crisis that spirals out of control, rather than one manufactured by Stalin to initiate an attack on the west, then Soviet forces are NOT primed to attack instantly, supplies and troops have to be shifted etc and some of this will be noticed by the west which will respond. Yes, the USSR is in better shape even under those circumstances to launch an attack and a quick march to wash their feet in the channel in a "spirals out of control" scenario nope.
 
The US could deliver at least 12 warheads in 1948 with a 100% loss of mission rate (B-29s going one way from current forces.). Russian air defense was (and is) a complete joke, but one still has mechanicals, pilot error and statistical chance to contend with. Probably 6-8 bombers reach their targets and destroy the objective.

Lots of assertions, zero supporting evidence, plenty of evidence already provided contradicting them. On Soviet Air Defense:

As for strategic air power, I highly recommend John M. Curatola's “Bigger Bombs for a Better Tomorrow”, which goes into exquisite detail, without sacrificing readibility, on just how ineffective the US strategic air arm in general and nuclear arsenal in particular was in the 1946-50 period.
...
And of course, they’ll face resistance. The USSR had established all-weather, 24-hour local air defense of all critical installations and facilities following the wars end and by 1947 the air defense system had grown to a national scale, a point emphasized just a year later when it was removed from the Soviet Artillery Directorate and made a independent branch of the armed forces. US ELINT was badly done (something which even the US itself recognized) and as a result underestimated Soviet radar capabilities in this period in both size and quality, a problem compounded by the fact that shortages of jammers, chaff, chaff dispensers, and electronic maintenance personnel rendered SAC's ECM capabilities only 35-percent effective from requirements. Conversely, the Soviets demonstrated the capability in jamming American navigation aids during the Berlin airlift, which would greatly compound navigation and accuracy issues for American crews already badly trained in such matters. Soviet radar operators were capable of vectoring Soviet fighters so as to achieve intercept at a distance of 70 miles from any given air defense station. Estimates on expected losses to enemy resistance at the time run gamut from 15 to 50%, even the lower ones would be crippling given the limited numbers of aircraft, bombs, and aircrews available. And given the poor training and support outlined above as well as the strength of Soviet air defense forces, it’s liable to be on the higher end as the lower-estimates tended to assume adequately-trained crews operating in sufficient numbers with sufficient support... all of which, as I've established, did not exist. This is without taking into account aircraft which go down or have to abort due to equipment failures: numbers forthere usually hover in the 20-25% range.

Also worth noting that David Holloway states that by 1948 Soviet early-warning nets covered the approaches from the west, with them expanding to cover the southern and eastern approaches during the course of 1948-1949:

"In July 1948 the National Air Defense Forces were converted into a separate service, on an equal footing with the Air Forces, the ground forces, and the Navy. The country was divided for the purposes of air defense into a frontier zone and a zone of the interior. Responsibility for air defense in the frontier zone was given to the commanders of the military districts and to the Navy. Defense of the interior was the responsibility of the National Air Defense Forces. Early warning radars were first deployed to cover the approaches from the Baltic and Eastern Europe; by 1950 the radar net had been extended to the Pacific Ocean, and to the Caspian and Black Seas." David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, Pg 236

The claim that 6-8 bombers would be able to deliver it's bombs is similarly contradicted by a wartime exercise in early-1949, where not a single plane managed to successfully complete the mission:

Was it enough to make the Russians pause? IT WAS. The Russians did not risk it. Not even Stalin dared.

What made the Soviets pause wasn't the atom bomb. Both Soviet political and military leaders repeatedly dismissed the atomic bomb at this point as a important factor in a war, a analysis largely shared by their American counterparts:

"Stalin did not abandon these principles after the war. He told Alexander Werth in September 1946 that atomic bombs "cannot decide the outcome of a war, since atomic bombs are quite insufficient for that." 7 Since Stalin wished to minimize the significance of the bomb, this statement cannot be taken as proof of his real views. But he had received several reports in 1945 and 1946 about the effects of atomic explosions, and although these drew attention to the destructive effects of the atomic bomb none of them portrayed it as a decisive weapon." Stalin and the Bomb, Pg 225-226

Military commentators played down the significance of the atomic bomb. In June 1949, for example, a Colonel M. Tolchenov argued that the atomic bomb was not as effective as some of its "apologists" claimed, and quoted an American admiral who was critical of the American reliance on air power. To be effective against the multimillion army of a powerful state, wrote Tolchenov, the enemy would need far more atomic bombs than any capitalist state could build. In October 1951 a Colonel P. Fedorov argued, on the basis of data published in the American press, that the number of bombs dropped on Germany during the war was equal in effectiveness to about 330 atomic bombs, and that those bombs had not destroyed Germany's economic potential. Consequently, he implied, the atomic bomb would not give the United States a decisive advantage over the Soviet Union.

In June 1950 Major General of Tank Forces V. Khlopov argued, in a survey of American military doctrine, that in a war the United States would attack the most important Soviet military economic and administrative political centers in order to demoralize the population and the Army, and break their will to resist. 105 The United States would carry out these strategic air strikes in the first phase of the war, while mounting a blockade of the Soviet Union and its allies. The allies of the United States would try to wear down the forces of the Soviet Union and its allies, disorganize their rear, and shatter their morale. In the second phase of the war the United States would deploy its forces to defeat the enemy.

This strategy would be ineffective, Khlopov argued. Strategic bombing had not been all that successful during the war, and Soviet air defenses would be much more effective than Germany's had been. Besides, the ballyhoo about the atomic bomb was meant to frighten and blackmail people who had weak nerves. "There is not the slightest doubt," wrote Khlopov, "that the effect of using the atomic bomb against forces and equipment deployed and camouflaged over large areas at the front and in the rear will be far from that which was caused in the bombing of the Japanese cities with their dense population and their flimsy city buildings." Furthermore, the American image of a future war was not realistic because the Soviet Union would carry out powerful air strikes with the "most modern" weapons to frustrate the movement and concentration of NATO forces. Soviet ground forces would be able to mount powerful large scale, rapid offensive operations to deny the United States the spring board on which it hoped to concentrate its forces for the ground battles; and they would be able to do this before American reinforcements were transported across the Atlantic. "The war," wrote Khlopov, ''will acquire in this case a completely different character from that which the representatives of military political circles in the USA plan for it."

Khlopov's article provides the clearest available Soviet discussion of the character of a future world war in the late Stalin years. The United States would launch an atomic air offensive, and this would be countered by Soviet air defenses and by strikes against United States air bases. Soviet ground forces would launch a counteroffensive in Europe, and perhaps also in the Middle East, to prevent the United States from using those regions as a springboard for attacking the Soviet Union. This image of a future war matches postwar military policy. The atomic bomb was seen as a strategic weapon which the United States would employ against targets in the rear, and not against forces in the field, where it would be relatively ineffective. The correct response to the atomic bomb therefore was air defense, coupled with strikes against United States air bases. The ground forces had to be ready for counteroffensives to prevent the United States from landing forces on the continent. If the United States were driven from the continent, it would find it much more difficult to mount a successful strategic bombing campaign.
-Holloway, 238

As Holloway ultimately concludes: "Soviet and American military planners agreed in 1949–51 that the atomic air offensive would not win the war." (Pg 240) and the bomb brought about "no radical shift in the Soviet conception of war." (Pg 250)

What deterred Stalin was not the atomic bomb, or at least not the atom bomb specifically, but rather concern about American economic strength in a long war. In conclusion...

THAT is RTL history and as much as ON wants to argue about it, one has to deal with the RTL results and not fantasies; even in ATL scenarios.

You'll likely want to take your own advice.

While I do not believe there would be mass uprisings against the Soviets in Poland/Baltics/Ukraine/Czechoslovakia/Hungary, none of these countries were in any way "reliable" in 1948 and the idea of the Russians in 1948 trusting any East German formations to have serious weapons and be reliable in this offensive is ludicrous.

I've already cited scholarly sources which state otherwise. Until you provide something of similar quality, your just blowing smoke.

The west is no more stupid than the Soviets. They will recall that the successes in WWII came with wrecking transportation and attacking the petroleum infrastructure - the most profitable bombing targets (and in the Pacific naval targets). Sure specific industries are good targets, but these two represent the highest return. The Soviets have long, creaky, and vulnerable logistic links which are more problematic the minute they go west, and their main petroleum resources are within heavy bomber range.

Sure. They can recall it. The problem is that they don't have the means to execute it for the first year or two. I've already discussed extensively at the West's state of their strategic air forces and their failure to wreck the communists supply lines in Korea despite facing a weaker opponent and more favorable air conditions. The claim that the Soviet logistic links are creaky and vulnerable have not been substantiated in any manner and certainly they are much more robust then the North Koreans and Chinese, not to mention better protected. Now over the long term, the West will rebuild their strategic air forces to their wartime strength and then their conventional and atomic attacks will wreak absolute havoc on the USSR but in 1948, there's little they can achieve.

Unless the west surrenders promptly when the Russians reach the Channel (by no means a given), the Russians are screwed. They will be out produced, and when atomic bombs start dropping in Russia (first on the periphery and then closer to the center) they have no counter. The USA owns the Pacific right up to the beaches of the Soviet Pacific coast. The Soviet naval (submarine) threat to the Atlantic is minimal at best, so all Allied issues can be directed to Europe. The USA can outproduce the USSR several times over, and the UK and Commonwealth/Empire add a lot to that. The USSR in 1948 cannot win a war with the west of any duration, which Stalin knew and why he did not start one.

Neat way to contradict yourself there. As you yourself obliquely ascknowledge, if the WAllies call it quits when the Russians hit the channel then they have "won a war of some duration", just not one of long duration. You are correct that the US would ultimately outproduce the USSR once it gears up and over the subsequent years, the US would rebuild it's forces and eventually grind down the Soviets and this was sufficient to deter Stalin. It's not strictly true that all attention can be diverted to Europe: the Middle East and East/Southeast Asia might become theaters depending on how the Arab States and China swing, but it's true enough since American efforts in these theaters would be secondary and largely defensive.

If you have a Berlin crisis that spirals out of control, rather than one manufactured by Stalin to initiate an attack on the west, then Soviet forces are NOT primed to attack instantly, supplies and troops have to be shifted etc and some of this will be noticed by the west which will respond. Yes, the USSR is in better shape even under those circumstances to launch an attack and a quick march to wash their feet in the channel in a "spirals out of control" scenario nope.

At most, it will take the USSR a few days to shift it's forces into a offensive posture and launch their to-the-channel offensive. History shows that it will take the west many months to dispatch reinforcements of any substance. The massive difference lends itself to the conclusion that the West simply cannot reinforce fast enough. So yes, a quick march to wash their feet in the channel is still very much a realistic outcome even in a "spirals out of control" scenario.
 
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Yeah, SAC didn't even qualify as a trainwreck in 1948. Lemay took charge in October, and he was the first to admit that the U.S. was in no position to fight an atomic war. SAC had something like 60 nuclear capable bombers (mostly Silverplate B-29's, with the first set of B-36's just starting to reach the 7th Bombardment Wing that summer), many of which were in maintenance hell; no bombs were assembled and the AEC had control of the cores anyway.

If the war happened five - hell, three! - years later, the Soviets would be in a world of hurt, and fast. But in 1948, the USAF would need months, frankly, to assemble any worthwhile nuclear strike force, and that's assuming that Truman turns over control of the warheads to Lemay, something that did not happen in OTL until 1951.

.

As soon as there is a real shooting war, expect the AEC to be put under DoD control, in not totally under the USAF for the duration.

Bombs were not assembled due to the extremely short life of the polonium initiators. This became less an issue with the Mk 4 capsule that was tested at Eniwetok early in 1948 and getting service deliveries in March, 1949
 
As soon as there is a real shooting war, expect the AEC to be put under DoD control, in not totally under the USAF for the duration.

The AEC is liable to mount a political battle, although it'll likely fail, and even after that there's still the fact that training sufficiently skilled teams in large enough numbers will take time.

Bombs were not assembled due to the extremely short life of the polonium initiators. This became less an issue with the Mk 4 capsule that was tested at Eniwetok early in 1948 and getting service deliveries in March, 1949

*cough cough*

Bigger Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow by John M. Curatola goes into exquisite detail, without sacrificing readibility, on just how ineffective the US strategic air arm in general and nuclear arsenal in particular was in the 1946-50 period. Curatola also goes into some detail about Soviet air defense forces, although he doesn't spend as much time on them as his focus is mainly on SAC. Here's a choice quote of particular relevance to the discussion:

"The issues regarding the small pool of skilled weapons assembly teams and atomic competence were highlighted during the SANDSTONE atomic test held in April and May 1 948 as the Berlin Blockade crisis emerged. At the end of March, in a meeting at Forrestal’s office with the service chiefs, Secretaries Royall and Symington, and retired General Dwight Eisenhower, the issue of atomic capability came to the fore. Eisenhower inquired about American atomic capability given the growing tensions around the German capital. The response to Eisenhower’s question was an alarming one. Nichols answered that the United States could not prepare or assemble any bombs for delivery at the time because all the qualified personnel were at Eniwetok preparing for the SANDSTONE tests. In subsequent meetings the issue was raised of returning some of the assembly personnel back to Sandia in case the atomic bomb was required during the early part of the crisis, but the idea of returning the teams was eventually nixed by the AEC." - Pg 47

The problem is that the Sandstone test pushed American bomb assembly teams to the limit and left nothing available for assembling bombs for wartime. The problem is that cancelling Sandstone leaves the Mk-IV as an unproven concept and it can’t enter operational service in ‘49. The US in 1948 can either assemble bombs for wartime or conduct the Sandstone Test. It cannot do both at the same time.
 
And again, you keep ignoring that the initial Soviet Radar for early warning(P-3, Nato 'Dumbo') were no better than Chain Home, still using A Scope displays, and the sets that were built could not cover all the ingress routes SAC, such as it was, could take in 1948.

The later Knife Rest(1949) and Bar Lock(1949) was what finally gave the USSR near complete coverage, but not till 1955 qere enough emplacements built
 
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And again, you keep ignoring that the initial Soviet Radar for early warning(P-3, Nato 'Dumbo') were no better than Chain Home, still using A Scope displays,

So what? Chain Home was inferior to a lot of it's German counterparts at the time, yet the British still mounted a more effective air defense intercept better then the Germans would a year later. What mattered is how the British used it, integrating it into a national air defense system. Given the poor state of SAC ECM as late as 1950, that would be more then enough.

and the sets that were built could not cover all the ingress routes SAC, such as it was, could take in 1948

David Holloway disagrees and unlike you, his assertion has a citation from the Soviets (Col. N. Iakimanskii and Maj. V. Gorbunov, "Nekotorye voprosy razvitiia teorii operativnogo iskusstva i taktiki Voisk PVO strany v poslevoennyi period," Voenno istoricheskii zhurnal , 1973, no. 3, p. 39.) which clearly shows the European ingress routes are covered.

Last Sandstone test , Shot Zebra, May 14, 1948

Berlin Crisis, June 24, 1948, the date for WWIII, yes?

The test crews had to stay out there to gather and interpret the data for some months more, ya know.

Also, use the edit button if you want to add some additional stuff yet nobody else has made another post. Double-posting is obnoxious.
 
So what? Chain Home was inferior to a lot of it's German counterparts at the time, yet the British still mounted a more effective air defense intercept better then the Germans would a year later. What mattered is how the British used it, integrating it into a national air defense system. Given the poor state of SAC ECM as late as 1950, that would be more then enough.



David Holloway disagrees and unlike you, his assertion has a citation from the Soviets (Col. N. Iakimanskii and Maj. V. Gorbunov, "Nekotorye voprosy razvitiia teorii operativnogo iskusstva i taktiki Voisk PVO strany v poslevoennyi period," Voenno istoricheskii zhurnal , 1973, no. 3, p. 39.).



The test crews had to stay out there to gather and interpret the data for some months more, ya know.

Also, use the edit button if you want to add some additional stuff. Double-posting is obnoxious.
On Mobile, so too bad.

Personnel have access by aircraft if a war is on to get where is needed, like for an actual shooting war. The assembly techs won't be around after the last shot is completed. Results will be gone over in CONUS, not the island.

Chain Home was ridiculously easy to jam, and all it takes is window, don't even need active jammers.
 
When the USSR occupied the countries of Eastern Europe, they either had no military or what they had had been used against the USSR (Hungary, Romania). Most of the military officers in these countries were either in POW camps (East Germany, Hungary), or dead (combat losses, Katyn). Essentially any officer, including those that had served in the "free" Polish units under Soviet control, was considered politically suspect if not politically unreliable with very few exceptions. Three years later (1948) to expect any of these units to be "reliable" and effective unless embedded in a Soviet units with guns to their heads is simply not reasonable. The populations of these countries were not "thrilled" to be under Soviet control, they were "cowed". Of course there were dedicated communists in these countries, but the locals were small in number, and in fact were often marginalized (or worse) by the Russians in favor of those of that ethnicity who had been in exile in Russia and thoroughly vetted.

The mere size of the MGB assets in these countries, as well as the local secret police forces testifies to the fact that the bulk of the populations would have been more than happy to see the Soviets go away. A vision of happy Eastern Europeans marching off arm in arm with their Soviet brothers to defeat the capitalists, well you probably live somewhere where marijuana is legal for recreational use. Sullen acceptance is the best the Soviets could expect and that limited. The longer the war goes on, and I mean months not years for things to begin to happen, the more the Soviets are going to have a rear area problem.
 
On Mobile, so too bad.

Yes, so? I can find the edit button on a mobile. I would also question how you managed to edit post 232...

Chain Home was ridiculously easy to jam, and all it takes is window, don't even need active jammers.

So unfortunate that SAC in 1948 had a crippling shortage of chaff, as you'd know if you bothered to read my link...

When the USSR occupied the countries of Eastern Europe, they either had no military or what they had had been used against the USSR (Hungary, Romania). Most of the military officers in these countries were either in POW camps (East Germany, Hungary), or dead (combat losses, Katyn). Essentially any officer, including those that had served in the "free" Polish units under Soviet control, was considered politically suspect if not politically unreliable with very few exceptions. Three years later (1948) to expect any of these units to be "reliable" and effective unless embedded in a Soviet units with guns to their heads is simply not reasonable.

All I'm seeing are claims which contradict already provided scholarly sources and yet have no supporting sources of it's own...

A vision of happy Eastern Europeans marching off arm in arm with their Soviet brothers to defeat the capitalists, well you probably live somewhere where marijuana is legal for recreational use.

That's a cute strawman you've built there. Make sure nobody sets fire too it...
 
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The more I think about it, I wonder if a Berlin Blockade War isn't just a more robust (and destructive) strategic version of the Pacific War: An expansionist dictatorship which ignites a war in which it quickly overruns all Allied assets in theater, but in the process has taken on a maritime coalition with much more war-making potential (albeit one which requires years to fully actualize that potential into combat assets), left to hope that the coalition decides the sacrifice in blood and treasure simply is not worth it and decides to cut a deal.

The analogy limps at certain points, to be sure. We can think of a number of qualifications. But in broad strokes, I feel confident that the comparison occurred to Stalin, which is why he never pushed the Berlin Crisis into something hotter, despite his considerable strategic advantages in theater.

Which is why I agree with others here that a Berlin Blockade War is much more plausible as an "accidental" war: a local incident rapidly escalates before Stalin can rein it in, and finds himself compelled to commit because the loss of face would be too great.
 
The more I think about it, I wonder if a Berlin Blockade War isn't just a more robust (and destructive) strategic version of the Pacific War: An expansionist dictatorship which ignites a war in which it quickly overruns all Allied assets in theater, but in the process has taken on a maritime coalition with much more war-making potential (albeit one which requires years to fully actualize that potential into combat assets), left to hope that the coalition decides the sacrifice in blood and treasure simply is not worth it and decides to cut a deal.

The analogy limps at certain points, to be sure. We can think of a number of qualifications. But in broad strokes, I feel confident that the comparison occurred to Stalin, which is why he never pushed the Berlin Crisis into something hotter, despite his considerable strategic advantages in theater.

Which is why I agree with others here that a Berlin Blockade War is much more plausible as an "accidental" war: a local incident rapidly escalates before Stalin can rein it in, and finds himself compelled to commit because the loss of face would be too great.

In terms of the political situation, I agree the analogy mostly fits. The only difference I see is that there might be room for the USSR to get a favorable political settlement then there was for Japan, although this is heavily dependent on how the war starts. In particular, who resorts to violent force first will greatly shape subsequent public perception of the war and hence the willingness for the public to subsequently deal. The OPs scenario has the Soviet Union resort to violent force first, so that's why I do not believe it is likely the American public will force a deal. The economic-military situation strikes me as more comparable to that of a Germany vs the Anglo-Americans if the Nazis hadn't attacked the USSR after the Fall of France, given that in that realm either contest would fundamentally a contest between a vast continental land power and a pair of maritime powers. Although the Soviets geographical position does leave them better positioned to launch an attack to seize the Middle Eastern oil fields, and maybe Southeast Asia depending on how events in China shape up, then the Germans ever were. These would be the qualifications you mentioned of course.
 
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Here.

The perfect example of its organizational dysfunction was obvious in the Strategic Air Command’s plan of operation. In the event of a war with the Soviets, all of SAC’s B-29s would first fly from their various bases to Ft. Hood, Texas, where the nation’s nuclear weapons were stored under the command of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Once there, pilots would fill out the necessary paperwork, and the bombs would be brought out of their deep lockers and loaded on to the planes. From Texas, they would fly to England or Newfoundland where they would refuel. Only then would they fly off to their targets. The potential for problems was truly nightmarish if a crisis were to strike. It was obvious to LeMay, who believed in Murphy’s law, that no one had thought things through.

There was a flying club atmosphere in SAC, similar to the one LeMay encountered in the 1930s Army Air Corps. In an odd calculation, pilots were encouraged to take an aircraft for any cross-country weekend jaunt—to visit a girlfriend or relative—for the sole purpose of burning up gas. In the military’s accounting system, all future allotments of fuel were based on what was used in the previous year. This made for some happy pilots, but hardly instilled the correct sense of mission.

The Strategic Air Command was basically the same Twentieth Air Force from Guam that LeMay had commanded during the war. It was a natural transition, since it was the only military organization on earth with previous nuclear experience, having dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. SAC’s bomber was still the B-29, but it did not have the capability of flying to the Soviet Union and back. If the country had been attacked and the planes were directed to drop bombs in Russia, the crews would be flying one-way missions. In case of war, Walter Boyne, a SAC colonel and later Air Force historian, was to fly to his target, the Soviet city of Tula, near Moscow. “Then [we were to] turn southwest in the hope that a successful bailout could be made somewhere in the Ukraine where, we were told, we might encounter ‘friendly natives.’ We were not optimistic about the outcome.”

When LeMay took over SAC, he assessed the readiness of the Air Force and was blunt in his appraisal. “I should go on record and say this flatly: we didn’t have one crew, not one crew in the entire command who could do a professional job.” SAC itself was as bad as anything he had yet encountered in his career.

LeMay realized at the very start that it was no use to remodel what he had inherited. It was completely broken. He had to tear it down to its foundation and completely rebuild it. So he started the process with a vivid demonstration to show everyone just how bad things were. It would become known as the Dayton Exercise, and to this day, even though many of the people involved in it have long since died, it is still a legend within SAC. For obvious reasons, the public did not learn about it at the time. Even as late as 1964, when LeMay requested the official records of the Dayton Exercise while writing his memoirs, they were still classified.

The exercise sounded fairly simple in its concept. LeMay walked into his office early one morning and issued the following order to his operations chief: “Have ’em attack Wright. The whole damn command. By radar.” That was all he said.

In translation, LeMay wanted the entire fleet of Strategic Air Command planes to stage a practice bombing exercise on Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. They would fly directly from every SAC base across the country, converge over Wright Field and electronically “bomb” it. The radar controller at Wright would be able to track the descent of every “bomb” to determine the accuracy of each crew. And because, as LeMay put it, “nobody seemed to know what life was like upstairs,” he wanted all the planes to go in at a high altitude, where they would have to wear oxygen masks. Up until then, SAC pilots flew at low levels because they found the masks uncomfortable.

This challenge would be much easier than the real thing. SAC pilots would not have to fly into the Soviet Union, or even overseas. They were all familiar with Wright Field, but familiarity, short range, and peaceful conditions did not seem to help at all.

Because of mechanical failures, many of the planes never got off the ground. Still more had to turn back to their bases before they got anywhere near Dayton. Of the planes that actually made it all the way to Ohio, not one bomber was able to hit the target. Not one.

Now everyone at Strategic Air Command and the Air Force could no longer avoid the truth. LeMay responded in his typical form. Instead of yelling or pitching a fit, he led. “I’ve been telling you [that] you were in bad shape. We are in bad shape. Now let’s get busy and get this fixed.” That was all he had to say, and as he had in the past, he included himself in the process.

Once again LeMay broke down the problem into its parts. First, he began cleaning house, and sent out a call for the best people he had worked with in the past. LeMay was cold-blooded in the way he went about his work. A lot of people were fired in that opening phase. “We don’t have time to distinguish between the unfortunate and the incompetent,” LeMay explained with his stinging bluntness.

LeMay was one of the few Americans who understood how the nature of war had changed in just two years. He also understood that World War II could no longer serve as the model for any future conflicts—especially in regard to the Air Force. Nuclear weapons, along with jet planes and rockets, had changed the paradigm. The old world, in which the United States was protected by its two great oceans, was over. Unlike some, LeMay did not lament this. He always viewed technology as an ally that could advance his goals. But what made him immeasurably more effective was this ability to inject his past experience—when relevant—into this new realm.

LeMay’s most crucial observation was that SAC’s first mission could very well be its last. This new form of warfare would allow for no second chances. So LeMay had to create the state of readiness that was necessary to capitalize on that first and only chance to strike, should it ever be needed. To do it, he had to change the way people in SAC thought. “My determination was to put everyone in SAC in this frame of mind: we are at war now. . . . So that if actually we did go to war the very next morning or even that night, we would stumble through no period in which preliminary motions would be wasted. We had to be ready to go then.” If it came to a nuclear exchange, LeMay knew there would not be the luxury of a period of adjustment as there had been in England or the Marianas.

LeMay completely redefined SAC along with its mission. “No other U.S. military force commander so imprinted his personality and ideals upon his organization as did LeMay,” says Walter Boyne, who served under LeMay in the 1950s. “SAC became LeMay personified—but only after tremendous effort on his part.” Years after he left Omaha, people would comment on seeing and feeling the “LeMay aura” when they visited SAC’s headquarters, which was eventually named after him.

LeMay did not accomplish this for himself or because he wanted to coax the Soviet Union into an all-out war as some have suggested. LeMay had a rock solid belief in the Constitution of the United States, which placed the military under civilian control. In spite of what his detractors said and wrote, the Strategic Air Command was under the absolute and complete control of the commander in chief of the military, not SAC. LeMay never questioned this. He performed well so the president could deal with adversaries from a position of power, which was, LeMay believed, the only way of dealing with adversaries.

As it had been in World War II, one of LeMay’s primary concerns was looking out for the men and women under his command. From 1948 to his last day at SAC in 1957, LeMay managed to stop the hemorrhage of men and equipment that he inherited at the start. In 1948 there were 51,965 people at SAC—5,562 officers, 40,038 airmen, and 6,365 civilians. Morale was low and living conditions were appalling.

When LeMay took over Strategic Air Command in 1948, the accident rate was sixty-five major accidents per 100,000 hours—a dismal record. By 1956, LeMay’s last full year at SAC, the accident rate fell to nine per 100,000 hours—an 85 percent drop. “Every time a commander suffered a major accident in his wing,” LeMay recounted, “he came to see me about it. We went into the matter from every angle. They did not like the idea of coming up there and standing on the unpleasant piece of carpet, but that’s what I made them do. We were going to find out how the accident happened and why.”

General Jacob Smart, LeMay’s aide in the 1950s, reiterated LeMay’s firm belief in Murphy’s law. Because of this, “he drove himself and others to prevent error or accident by Strategic Air Command personnel.” To illustrate the point, Smart says, “LeMay required all air crew members to make a detailed preflight inspection of a SAC bomber in accord with a prescribed check list. Nobody was beyond doing this. He never put himself above the rules and followed the same procedure whenever he flew a SAC bomber.”

Just as he disliked losing men during war, he was equally angry losing them to accidents. The worst thing a wing commander could say to LeMay was: “I don’t understand it, he was a great pilot.” It seemed every commander started his explanation that way. “They were never stupid pilots or bad pilots, they were always great pilots,” LeMay observed. For that reason, he made the SAC safety checklist much more detailed—to make sure every pilot, especially the hotshots, followed the rules.

Better food, improved living conditions, and happier flight crews helped, but what ultimately turned SAC around was hard work, continuous innovation, and Curtis LeMay’s demand for perfection.

By 1953, the Strategic Air Command under Curtis LeMay had achieved a massive retaliatory strength. There were seventeen nuclear-armed wings, which translated to 329 B-47s, 185 B-36s, 500 tankers, and 200 fighters, as well as the old standby, the B-29, which flew until the early 1960s. A global network of bases, some even built in isolated and barren locations like Greenland and North Africa, had been assembled, all within striking distance of the Soviet Union. In all, there were twenty-nine bases in the States and ten overseas. Airmen would take their turns in “ready-rooms” where they would be on alert for twenty-four hours. The planes, just outside the door, were “hot,” meaning they were maintained, fueled, and fully loaded with nuclear arms. The bases were secure—LeMay ended careers if he witnessed any breach in that security. Within just a few years of taking over, Strategic Air Command was a well oiled and deadly machine, coiled back and ready to spring at any time of day or night.

Note the description of the mission profile presumed in 1948? One way suicide mission is the only way to interpret it with the equipment, forward bases and personnel and munitions we had available and which I have previously documented for you. These are not assertions but RTL facts. Loss rates are predictable based on RTL statistics and what was known about Russian incompetent IADS at the time.
 
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