Atomic Bomb Inventory

Atomic Bomb InventoryPlot is cumulative, the number along the left hand edge is the worldwide total.The blue area is the US stockpile, the red area is the Russian stockpile.The thick line along the top is everyone else.

I'm slowly making my way through Command and Control by Eric Schlosser. Back in the 1950's the US Military was actually afraid Russia / Stalin might start another war. Since we didn't want to support an army big enough to counter an attack by a Russian army (on account of big armies are expensive), we opted to build up our stockpile of atom bombs so we could have a big stick to threaten them with, i.e. if you attack Europe we will obliterate your country. And since Russia had developed their own atom bomb, they weren't going to the let the US have a bigger stick, so they built up their arsenal and that's how we ended up with a zillion atom bombs.

Airplane of the Day - Northrop F-89 Scorpion

Northrop F-89D-45-NO Scorpion interceptors, Goose Bay AB, Labrador (Canada), in the 1950s

I'm reading Command and Control by Eric Schlosser and on page 151 he mentions the F-89 Scorpion. I don't recall ever hearing of the Scorpion. I'm familiar with the F-86 that we used in Korea and the F-100 Super Sabre (it was really cool), but the F-89? Nada. But then I pull up a picture on the net and boom! It hit me, I remember that airplane. I think I may even have had a toy model of it when I was a kid.

An F-89 Scorpion sits on the tarmac at Indian Springs AFB as an AIR-2 Genie nuclear missile detonates in the distance during the Plumbbob John 2kt nuclear test in 1957

It wasn't supersonic, not with those straight wings, but it packed a serious punch. Six machine guns in the nose, rocket pods or bombs under the wings, and for a topper it could also carry an air-to-air missile armed with nuclear warhead for destroying Soviet bombers that were coming to destroy America with their H-bombs. Boy oh boy, Stalin versus Curtis LeMay.

AIR-2 Genie | air-to-air Nuclear missile
The Atomic Cafe

The 50's were a very strange time. If atomic weapons flying through air wasn't enough, we also had UFO's. The US Air Force in northern Michigan sent a Scorpion to investigate a UFO that had appeared on their radar. They were able to track the target and the interceptor until they met and then the Scorpion disappeared. No trace of it was ever found and the target continued on its merry way apparently unaffected. I'm not saying it was aliens, but you know what? It was aliens.

Curtis LeMay

General Curtis LeMay - A. Y. Owen

I'm reading Command and Control by Eric Schlosser. Around page 90 he starts talking about Curtis LeMay. Here's a couple of quotes:

• "I'll tell you what war is about. You've got to kill people and when you kill enough of them, they stop fighting."
• "We scorched and boiled and baked more people in Tokyo than went up in vapor in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined."

I knew the our firebombing raid on Tokyo near the end of WW2 killed a large number of people, but I had not heard it compared to the death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

LeMay organized the attack on Tokyo, ran the Berlin airlift and became the head of the Strategic Air Command. My mother called him 'Bomber LeMay'. I don't think she liked him. He probably took the nickname as a complement. 

LeMay suffered from Bell's palsy, "a condition that causes a temporary weakness or paralysis of the muscles in the face. It can occur when the nerve that controls your facial muscles becomes inflamed, swollen, or compressed. The condition causes one side of your face to droop or become stiff."

Bomber Lemay has appeared here before.

Airplane of the Day - Boeing E-6B Mercury

US Navy E-6B Mercury leaving Des Moines International

The Boeing E-6 Mercury is an airborne command post and communications relay based on the Boeing 707. The E-6B provides command and control of U.S. nuclear forces should ground-based control become inoperable. - paraphrased from Wikipedia

Based on a 707? This thing must be ancient.

Land based nuclear weapons systems can be contacted by radio, but contacting submarines can be problematic. The way it is normally done is through a specialized VLF transmitters. There is one in Australia and one in my backyard.

But how is the E-6B going to contact the boomers? Hoo boy, are you ready for this? They go to an altitude of 20,000 feet, unreel a five mile long antennae out of the rear of the airplane, and then fly in tight circles at the slowest speed they can manage. For hours on end. The antennae works best when it is near vertical. Flying in tight circles allows the antennae to droop until it is pretty much vertical.

This History Channel video has a simplistic animation of this operation at the three minute mark.

TACAMO History Channel
MapleValleyMoM

TACAMO is an acronym for Take Charge And Move Out which makes no sense to me, but then this is the military. They can call it whatever they want.

The Drive has a story about this aircraft and its insanely long antennae.

This business with the antennae reminds me of a movie I saw a while back about some missionaries trying to make contact with some natives living in the Amazon rain forest. They would fly over the jungle at a low altitude and when they spot a village they would take a plastic bucket, load it with goodies, and then lower it on a rope. The pilot would fly the airplane in a circle and it worked out that the bucket would hang in one spot in the air and the natives could come and take whatever they wanted out of the bucket and put things into it, if they felt so inclined. I don't know how long the rope was but I imagine it must have been several hundred feet long at least. I mean, how tight a circle can a Piper Cub turn?

Update 2 weeks later. TACAMO shows up in Command and Control on page 273.