WI/PC: Skybolt ALBM Not Cancelled

The proposed NATO Multilateral Nuclear Force was actually designed around the basing of Polaris on surface ships, not submarines.

I remember seeing reports at the time.....vessels of approx 5,000 tonnes from memory.

We had a thread on this a while back. Both options were considered; the Europeans wanted subs for survivability, but the US wanted surface ships because we wanted to reserve our submarine construction capability for our own uses.

SAC's response time was to get the alert force off in three minutes from the horn sounding. The reason's pretty simple: a number of SAC bases (Castle, Fairchild, Mather, Pease, Plattsburgh, Griffiss, Loring, among others) were under the gun from SLBMs off the coast-six minutes' flight time from launch until impact. Bases in the middle of the country had ICBM flight times to worry about, and they certainly would be able to get their alert force not only off, but well away, before the first ICBMs arrived.

Do you have a citation for that? I'm looking for something to read on the subject that's more reliable and less pop-nonfic than Fifteen friggin' Minutes. (In case you can't tell, I am absolutely unsurprised he got that wrong.)
 

CalBear

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SAC's response time was to get the alert force off in three minutes from the horn sounding. The reason's pretty simple: a number of SAC bases (Castle, Fairchild, Mather, Pease, Plattsburgh, Griffiss, Loring, among others) were under the gun from SLBMs off the coast-six minutes' flight time from launch until impact. Bases in the middle of the country had ICBM flight times to worry about, and they certainly would be able to get their alert force not only off, but well away, before the first ICBMs arrived.


This was just for the Hot Pad alert aircraft. It is impossible to keep all the aircraft on Hot Pad status. The goal to get the entire wing up was 15 minutes, which is still fairly remarkable.

The likelyhood that a good percentage of the bombers would never get into the air was the reason for the entire Chrome Dome operation in the 1960s. Even then it was only 12 bombers, but SAC would at least have had some capacity in case of "bolt out of the blue".
 
There's a book called The Day After World War III, which was published in paperback sometime in the mid '80s. Mine's packed away with a lot of other paperbacks, so I can't get to it, but I do remember this being mentioned. Not to mention that MITO (Minimium Interval Takeoff) was designed with this in mind-getting the alert force off and away in three minutes. Especially with coastal bases under the SLBM threat.

The alert force at each base was six bombers and four tankers, IIRC, except for FB-111 bases (Pease and Plattsburgh), which had eight Varks and five tankers on alert. And SAC in a crisis always had reinstating airborne alert as an option, along with dispersing the force to other bases and to civilian airports (which they did do in October, 1962).
 
There's a book called The Day After World War III, which was published in paperback sometime in the mid '80s. Mine's packed away with a lot of other paperbacks, so I can't get to it, but I do remember this being mentioned. Not to mention that MITO (Minimium Interval Takeoff) was designed with this in mind-getting the alert force off and away in three minutes. Especially with coastal bases under the SLBM threat.

Thanks, I'll check that out.
 
Chrome Dome lasted eleven years, from 1957-68. It was ended due to two major accidents: a B-52/KC-135 midair off of Palomares, Spain, in 1966, which spilled four B-28 gravity bombs and wound up contaminating some Spanish farmland when some of the material spilled from two bombs. The second one was in '68, when a Buff with four B-28s crashed after an inflight fire near Thule AB in Greenland. There was some spillage and contamination, and SECDEF Clark Clifford ordered the airborne alerts halted.

Even under an airborne alert situation, the Ground Alert Force would've been able to get their aircraft up and away. Bases in the Atlantic Coast were under the SLBM threat from 1969, when Yankee-class SSBNs began patrolling off the Eastern Seaboard. Pacific Coast bases were under the gun from 1971, when Yankee patrols began off the West Coast.

That book has a lot of info, from SAC, to continuity of government, protection of art, company records, civil defense, etc.
 
Yes, bombers wear out...

...I'd be content with VC10 or Nimrod Skybolt carriers rather than the glorious Vulcan. In a war crisis, Vulcans were planned to disperse to almost every UK long runway - and a bomber based on an airliner would fit in with the handling requirements. OTOH, the Vulcan's structure was good for slicing through turbulence at low level, whilst a VC10 is designed for an airliner flight profile at altitude, and does a VC10 have the thrust for a rapid 2-minute deployment? Or should the TSR2 have been dusted off again?

One story I love is the eyepatch system to guard against nuke flash blindness - every pilot and co-pilot a Capitalist pirate, tovarisch!:D

ALCM deployment from disguised bombers painted up as airliners is a ploy used in at least one terrorist scenario a novel was written around. I think they used a 747 in that one.
 
The standard expected of the V Bombers on Quick Reaction Alert was for them to be airbourn in 2 minutes from the scramble order. Most people expected no more than 4 minutes warning of an inbound missile attack.

Given where most of the bombers were based, it could be less than 3 minutes and there was no Fylingdales at the time.....

Interestingly, when the vulnerability of Blue Streak silos was being highlighted, the possibility of the Soviets putting warheads down in the flight path of scrambling bombers and at an angle each side to catch ones who veared off quickly was ignored even though the figures suggested that less warheads would be needed that to guarantee knocking out all Blue Streak silos in a first strike.
 
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