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STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND HISTORY The story of the Strategic Air command starts with the Cold War in 1946, and when it finished with the total collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, The Strategic Air Command stood down.This is the story of the Command in maintaining peace and leading the peoples of the world to victory. The story behind the SAC Insigna : It is said that Generals LeMay, and Power, selected the design submitted by Staff Sargent R. T. Barnes of the 92nd Bomb Wing at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington in 1951. The Insigna depects an armored arm on a blue field clutching both lightening flashes, symbols of the art and science of projecting air power in time of war, and an olive branch, symbol of peace. 1943 - 1945 Our story starts in the spring of 1943, The U.S. Army Air Force had assembelled enough forces on English Air Fields to begin large scale attacks against Germany. With the P-51 Mustang in 1943 we had excellent protection for our Bombers and German losses soared. In January, 1944, The U.S. Strategic Air Forces, Europe was established. It directed 8th and 15th Air Forces Bomber Wings from England and Italy. The germans suffered great losses in the high altitude daylight, and low level nighttime bombing missions and giving support to our Allied Troops. By the time Germany surrendered, and with the destruction of refineries and manufacturing, all oil production and transport of goods was halted.
The North American B-25 "Billy Mitchell Bomber" The Billy Mitchell Bomber was perhaps the best medium/light bomber to serve in the war. It was made famous by General Doolittle in his April 1942 Raid on Tokyo and other cities as our first strike force to bomb the Japanese mainland after taking off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. It was also used to deliver bombs with pinpoint accuracy in Northern Italy and routing German Panzers in occupied France.
The Confederate Air Force's restored B-29 "FIFI" By 1945, The United States had captured Japanese held islands and made it possible to bomb Japan with our B-29's of the 21st Bomber Command under Major General Curtis LeMay. The B-29's were long range bombers with large bom-bays electrically controlled with Norden Precision bomb sites capable of dropping bombs from 30,000 ft with accuracy. Due to jet stream winds aloft, even with the Bomb Sites, drops were very inaccurate. General LeMay was transferred from the India to the Marianas to deal with this problem and came up with the idea to use incendary bombs at low level. These raids were led by General Thomas Power who later would become the second commander of SAC. The U.S. Army Air Corp wanted to end the war as early as they could to save American and Allied lives from a land invasion of Japan, and this was accomplished by dropping Atomic bombs by B-29's. After the war, to prove the long range of the B-29's, LeMay took off with a stripped down 29 with extra fuel tanks and flew from Tokyo to Washington, a distance of 7,000 miles. This was hardly a true test of its long range performance, because loaded with bombs its effective range was only 1,500 miles which showed a need either for intermediate air fields, inflight refueling or longer range bombers for intercontinental distances. In an address to his alma mater, Ohio State, He charged his audience to not let what happened to Germany and Japan happen to the United States. He also said that in the next war, distances would not be and insulating factor. There must not be any ceiling, no boundries, no limitation to our air power. No air attack, if once it has started could be completly stopped. We must have an existing air force that could attack instantly if attacked and have a force more overwhelming that would dissuade a enemy from attacking in the first place. At the close of the war, the world became a cold war battleground between Russia and the U.S. The U.S. generally proposed the Marshal Plan in 1946 and Stalin's actions concluded to the U.S. that he was embarking on a plan to destabilize and take over Western Europe and with England exhausted it was up to the U.S. to see that did not happen. The creation of NATO followed and the Soviets countered with the Warsaw Pact, two separate Europes, one slave one free. The cold war was on.On 21 March 1946, The United States Air Force was born which included combat branches called Tactical Air Command, Air Defense Command and Strategic Air Command with headquarters at Bolling Field Washington D.C. with General George C. Kenney as first Commander of SAC. SAC received a permanent mission on 10 October, 1946, to attain a state of immediate combat readiness and to stand by for immediate operations. After being moved from Bolling Field, and possibly to Colorado Springs, they settled on Andrews AFB. General Kenney was also serving in other duties that took him away from SAC. Equipment and personal were also hard to come by. Adequate basing was also a problem. 1946 - 1948 In June, 1946, SAC sent the 46th/72nd Reconnaissance B-29 Squadron to Ladd Field, Alaska (Project Nanook) to secretly assess the Soviet military activities, conduct mapping activities, and navigational techniques to 1948. At one time, a B-29 found itself flying over a Russian Base and they found another B-29 flying with them. The second B-29 was a Russian Tu-4 Soviet Bomber copied after 3 - 29's who crashed during the war. Apparently, the Russian Bomber thought they was one of theirs and they let them continue. To gain further experience, the 28th Bomb Group deployed to Elmendorf Field in October 1946 for 6 month TDY. LeMay also visited Ladd Field to determine if it was feasable to create a new long-range, high altitude plane, for Reconnaissance purposes to fly non-stop from Alaska to Western Europe. This plane later would become known as U-2. In Dec. 1947, General Kenney promoted Major General Clements McMullen as Deputy Commander, and General McMullen most sweeping changes was to implement a system in SAC called cross training. Its intent was to produce well rounded crew members by training the pilot of the skills of navagator, bombardier, and radar operator plus keeping up with his own skills. This system practically wrecked SAC by slowing down everyones progress and causing delays. This was also SAC's first period of growth, expanding from 279 Aircraft to more than 700 including 11 groups of B-29's, three groups with P-51's and two with F-80 Shooting Stars, two Reconniassance groups flying B-17's & one group flying F-13's and support groups flying C-54's, with a raise of personal of 12,500.
Douglas DC-4 or Air Force C-54 or Navy R5D Skymaster In June 1948, the Allies knew the need to replace the old german currency with the Deutsche Mark to speed germany's rebuilding. The Soviet's said they were not consulted, and to retailate, stopped all transportation into Berlin and hopped that we would leave Berlin. The Allies responded with a giant airlift. General LeMay was put in charge. C-54's were rushed to Berlin to help airlift 4,500 Tons of material to feed app. 2,000,000 people. Operation "Vittles" but unofficially called " LeMay's Coal and Feed Company", was kept up for one year. As a show of force, two squadrons of the 301st joined one squadron of the 301st in Germany, and SAC placed the 307th Bomb Group on a three hour alert and the 28th Bomb Group on a 24 hour on a deployment to England.At that time sixteen F-80 Shooting Stars left Selfridge AFB Michigan for Scotland and after that the North Atlantic Route became routine. The Berlin Crisis spured the USAF to take a closer look at our preparedness and Air Force Chief of Staff, Hoyt Brandenburg asked Charles Lindbergh for his opinion. After review, Lindbergh reported that he found them poorly trained, inexperienced and overworked. Vandenburg considered who he wanted leading SAC if war started the next day. To him it was obvious. 1948 - 1950 On 19 October 1948, Leutenant General Curtis LeMay transfered from U.S.Air Forces in Europe to replace General Kenney as SAC Commander. LaMay roared into Andrews and asked for a War Plan. No plan. He asked," how's your bombing"? "Oh, good, real good". He found out that not a realistic mission was flown. LeMay called his staff together and kept the best and replaced the other with officers he had worked with. Replacing General Mullen as Deputy Commander was Brigidier General Thomas Power. After assuming command, his first project was moving SAC from Andrews to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. There wasn't much to Offutt, a run down WWII base, with a large bomber plant, and a runway ending in a steep bank. Once installed in Offutt, LaMay give his crews a mission. That mission was to bomb Wright Field at Dayton, Ohio, at 30,000 ft. with pinpoint accuracy. Only one plane came close to the field, none hit the target and some planes turned back because of faulty oxygen and pressurization problems. LeMay transformed one group at a time into a combat ready unit starting with the 509th who dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. He classified the group as non operational. First, they cleaned out and restocked the warehouses, fully equipped the planes, and replaced people that should not be there with ones who did. Then they went on to the next group. Only top quality personal were accepted for these units. LeMay attacked the problem of attrition by improving the mess. There was no place to live. Nothing came easy, battle for money to improve barracks, battle for equipment, battle for new planes, Battle for tankers. He wanted to give this impression to his men that they were to consider themselves at war. The crews practiced as if they were bombing certain cities and practiced over and over until they could do it in their sleep. LeMay and his crews strived for perfection. SAC gained a reputation for highly skilled and trained personal. He worked to cut accidents by discipline usually caused by people that thought they were above such things. In 1948, two B-50's were delivered. It was lighter, faster, had more payload, but it was to be used as an interim machine until the B-36 was operational. It had many design design flaws to be worked out. The second new bomber to join SAC was the B-36. It was a huge aircraft powered by six pusher type turboprop engines, designed to deliver atomic bombs, had unrefueling range of 10,000 miles, but was slow, with weak landing gear. The later B-36's would correct some of these problems. It came to be known as a good intercontinental bomber. At the begining of 1949, SAC had 90 special crews, and 124 aircraft capable of delivering atomic bombs that included B-50's, B-36's, and B-29's. plus 2 fighter wings, two reconnaissance squadrons, and two support groups and 56 Mark III bombs. LeMay said we are capable of committing this operational force today. At the end of 49, the command consisted of 3 heavy bomb groups, 11 medium bomb groups, two groups of fighters, 3 recon groups and 2 support groups along with 6 refueling squadrons. Three aircraft were newcomers to SAC, F-86 Sabrejets, YC-97's, C-82's. LeMay paid much attention to his people by having creature comforts on the base. People had to go on duty at many different hours as missions were flown 24 hrs per day. General LeMay made it clear that no discrimination would be permitted at SAC. He established a Lead School at McDill AFB, for training superior crews. As a result, bomb scores improved. (To be continued).
B-52 flying in formation with B-47 Reference: Strategic Air Command (Turner) & SAC: A Primer of Modern Strategic Airpower (Yenne) & SAC, The Strategic Air Command, (Hubler) Researched and Edited by Roger W. Miner
U.S. Strategic Command Command CenterIn 1955 Leo A. Daly designed two buildings for SAC at SAC headquarters, Offutt Air Force Base: the headquarters command post, with above and below ground components, and, the chapel. Both structures were more than functional, and both offered a portrait of the Cold War easily enhanced through imagination. Leo A. Daly designed the SAC command post at Offutt at the outset of February 1955. The post replaced the simple three-story office building, the A Building, that SAC had adapted from the Martin Bomber Plant. The new command post featured a four-story, reinforced concrete and masonry office building aboveground, more than 16 times larger than the modest administrative A Building. Sometimes called the Western Pentagon, the aboveground SAC headquarters building was of classic 1950s office design. Although the administrative structure had a basement, it was a segregated, adjacent three-story structure below ground that served SAC as its command post throughout most of the Cold War period. Of hardened reinforced concrete, the below ground command post was itself more than five times the size of the original A Building. The underground command post had 24-inch thick walls and base floor, with 10-inch thick intermediate floors, and 24-to-42-inch thick roof; blast- and gas-proof doors; and, ramped tunnels with non-skid surfacing and decontamination areas connecting to an extended tunnel leading up to the aboveground office building. The final ramped tunnel was eight-foot in diameter, with two-foot thick reinforced concrete walls. Historically, and today, the below ground command post is known at Offutt as the “molehole” due to its ramped tunnels and self-contained condition. The SAC headquarters underground command post was in construction during 1955-1957—simultaneous in its later stages with planning for the SAC bomber and tanker alert aprons and semi-subterranean crew quarters, the latter also known as moleholes. The structure also featured lavish and modern connections to the world outside. Its “big board,” a series of maps and postings showing military conditions worldwide, ran along the 264-foot side of the post. In the beginning, SAC updated the board manually, using personnel in cherry-pickers, and making the setting more theatrical through its frontal suspended lighting and drawn curtain. Key military personnel looked down on the big board from glassed-in offices. Communications links were state-of-the-art, with the first SAC command post computer the IBM 704, installed in 1957. The IBM 704 was the more popular name for the AN/FSQ-7, the mainframe computer developed for ADC’s SAGE early warning program. The IBM 704 was one of the earliest production computers to incorporate random access memory (RAM). It also incorporated a dual arithmetic element that processed the X and Y positions of data simultaneously, allowing greatly enhanced speed. The IBM 704, available in 1954-1955, was primarily used in the military and in scientific laboratories, as late as 1959. Six 16-foot data display screens updated SAC personnel in the war room. A “red phone” system, with dedicated connections to 200 operating locations internationally, further supported communications in the SAC underground command post.
Approximately 1000 people worked underground at the height of the command post’s use, with the capacity to sustain up to 800 people underground for two weeks. Leo A. Daly handled the new headquarters underground command post assignment, between 1986 and 1989, as it had the first below ground command post in 1955-1957. The SAC command post of the late Cold War was a 16,000 square-foot, two-story reinforced concrete structure, joined to the earlier command center. In addition to reasonable hardening, the new underground command post included protection against electromagnetic pulse. As had been the case in the middle 1950s, the post featured state-of-the-art communications links and information displays. Imagery for SAC was still paramount, with that for this particular
subterranean command post even commented upon by the popular author of late Cold War
thrillers, Tom Clancy. He wrote in The Sum of All Fears in 1991 that local rumor at Offutt
had it that the second generation command post “had been built because
Hollywood’s rendition of such rooms was better than the one SAC had originally built
for itself, and the Air Force had decided to alter its reality to fit a fictional
image.” Fiction or fact, the Clancy observation was not far from true in its
understanding of just how much Hollywood film had nurtured the popular understanding of
SAC and the Cold War. By 1961, even engineers were using the term “Hollywood
hard” in distinguishing between truly hardened infrastructure and visually
“hard” infrastructure—the latter always fortress-like for the public, but
often vulnerable. As early as 1954, the Air Force Installations Board commented:
“Beyond 1960, the increase in weapons yield will be such that…above-ground
hardening will not be economically or operationally feasible.”
As the nerve center of the United States Strategic Command, the USSTRATCOM Command Center is prepared to transmit National Command Authority directives to strategic aircraft, submarines and missile forces. The USSTRATCOM Command Center is located in the Underground Command Complex. Also located within this complex are the Intelligence Operations Center, Weather Support Center, Force Status Readiness Center, the Alternate Processing and Correlation Center [APCC]and other support offices. The Alternate Processing and Correlation Center [APCC] provides an alternate missile warning correlation center to Cheyenne Mountain Air Station (CMAS) for USSPACECOM, and is the prime source of missile warning data for USSTRATCOM for force survival and force management. It is comprised of the integration of the SCIS, CSSR, and CCPDS-R systems as well as numerous non-Cheyenne Mountain upgrade equipment and communications links into a two story, underground, high altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) protected facility at Offutt AFB, NE.
When the Command Center is self-contained, CINCSTRAT and members of the senior staff would work in the lower level senior battle staff area, while support staff members would take designated positions in the support battle staff area on the second floor. Workstation consoles provide CINCSTRAT and senior and support battle staff members state-of-the-art integrated secure/nonsecure voice communications and data management systems. Individual video monitors at each console position provide an advanced capability to display information essential to decision making and to manage the command's aircraft and missile forces. Support battle staff members have individual computer terminals which access an advanced automatic data processing system that provides word processing, spreadsheets, computational aids, graphic/tabular decision making information and automated briefing preparation and presentation.
The Command Center's group display and briefing support system provides the capability to display full motion video and still frame imagery on eight large wall screens and individual video monitors. It also allows video communications between the Command Center and weather and force status readiness centers; the capability to convert hard copy, 35 mm slides, or overhead transparencies into video; and rapid access to worldwide maps. Within seconds, vital operational data can be displayed on the large wall display screens or individual computer monitors. The primary system for storing and supplying this data is the USSTRATCOM Automated Command Control System. Information about weather, force movements, aircraft and missiles is stored in computers, ready for immediate access. Field units continually update the data. In time of war, the computers would record strike force progress, serving as an invaluable aid to CINCSTRAT in making command and operations decisions. Because the information would be processed automatically, the battle staff would have immediate and continuous updates on its strike force. The Primary Alerting System, using dedicated telephone circuits, enables USSTRATCOM controllers to speak directly to approximately 200 operating locations throughout the world, including missile launch control centers. Through this "Red Phone" system, each unit receives coded messages giving notice of an actual or practice alert. The Senior Controller also has a direct line to the National Military Command Center in Washington, DC, and to the other major command headquarters. This system, called the Joint Chiefs of Staff Alerting Network, allows CINCSTRAT prompt contact with the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other unified commanders. Through satellites and radio networks (VLF, LF, UHF and HF), the Command Center can communicate with aircraft in flight over any part of the world. A principal purpose of these networks is to pass National Command Authority orders to the alert forces. Several detection systems provide the USSTRATCOM Command Center with Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) and Sea-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) attack warnings. This information is processed through high-speed computers for display on the Command Center's large screens, the CINCSTRAT's video monitors, and the Warning System Controller's video monitors. Information shown on these screens would instantly alert the Senior Controller of an ICBM or SLBM attack against the North American continent or our allies. These systems, along with summary information and attack assessment from other military commands, permit CINCSTRAT to protect his force pending the presidential decision. Although CINCSTRAT can launch aircraft for survival, only the President can order nuclear strikes. In the event the USSTRATCOM Command Center becomes inoperable, control of strategic forces would be passed to the USSTRATCOM Airborne Command Post, which is ready to become airborne 24 hours a day.
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Last modified : January 1st, 2007
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