60 years ago these days the retreat from Chosin and the subsequent evacuations.
I’m trying to figure out what the U.S. could really have delivered, would MacArthur’s idea/plan/desire for a nuclear attack against NKorea and/or China in December 1950 actually have been accepted.
Again I’m fascinated how sketchy the documentation of the early years of the nuclear armament are! So here is what I collected so far:
WARHEADS:
Mk.4 — As the most available, the most operational, and thus the most probable type. Weakish tactical for today’s understanding. This type was in serial production from early 1949 on, with a mathematic average of 22 over the 26 month production run. Thus it can be assumed that around 350 of them were available in late 1950.
Mk.1 — Officially retired Nov1950. 5 to 9 assemblies built, 1 used (Hiroshima). Basically a prototype, never really operational after the first use. Weak tactical for today’s understanding. But still interesting because of – see below.
Mk.3B — 120 built, various yields, all weak tactical for today’s understanding. There were a couple of additional built, 1 used on Nagasaki, 5 more assemblies used during the early tests. Retired in “late” 1950 (I am not able to fix a date to “late”). It is said to have been a cumbersumb system and there were never enough trained assembly teams available for the type; and I think only the 509th BW at Walker AFB had them. In addition the radar fuze might have been compromised by Soviet intelligence. When it was retired enough Mk.4 were already available.
BOMB ASSEMBLY TEAMS:
3 Navy — These were probably Mk.1 specialists. 3 teams because 3 Midway class carriers?
4 Army — The Army didn’t have a nuclear capability at that point, but since it was a joint affair …
15 Air Force — The prime deliverers of the goods. The Mk.3B type took ages (half a week) to assemble and load, the Mk.4 was much faster. LeMay’s plans started to work during summer 1950 and huge progress was made. Still, at that point in late 1950 the SAC’s reach was weak. To make up for the lack of range of the aircraft 10 of the 15 teams were forward based (French North Africa, England, Japan, &c).
For an attack on China I assume no more than 3 teams would have been available, since at that point the Soviet-Chinese pact was still alive and a Soviet attack on Western Europe in response to the bombing of China was possible.
DELIVERY VEHICLES & BASES:
This list here is actually not complete. Any additional info welcome!
# B-29A
Bases: 9th BW, Fairfield-Suisun AFB, CA
There should have been around 30 “Silverplate” B-29A available. The B-29 was clearly on the way out at that point. Still, I read that 10 of them were sent to Guam in August 1950, with bombs aboard. (That’s when Gen Travis crashed, and Fairfield-Suisun was then renamed Travis AFB in 1951). The 9th was actually more tasked with strategic reconnaisance. If after the August trip this unit would have been the prime candidate for a hot mission against China I don’t know. But I assume that the B-50 and certainly the B-36 were reserved for the Soviet Union.
# B-50A
Bases: 43rd BW, Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ; 2nd BW, Hunter AFB, GE
Nothing to say here, the 2nd had just relocated from Chatham AFB a few weeks earlier. These U.S. bases would not have been the actual jump-off points against the USSR, rather these units would have been fwd based in French North Africa.
# B-50D
Bases: 93rd BW, Castle AFB, CA; 509th BW, Walker AFB, NM
Also nothing to say here, the D model was capable of AAR, the tanker would have been KB-29. Probably also fwd based in North Africa in a war against the USSR.
# B-36B/D
Base: 7th BW, Carswell AFB, TX
There was a reason these monsters were based right at the factory. But the sound!!! Even on youtube! And in that SAC movie with James Stewart!
Would certainly not have gone to China.
In early 1951 the 11th BW was split off the 7th, but in Dec1950 the 7th was still the only unit flying B-36. During this time the B-36 was in constant upgrades, so the 7th flew a mix of original As for training, original Bs, Bs that had been upgraded to Ds, and also original Ds. Complicated.
# And the Navy:
The brings me back to the remark about the Mk.1. The Navy, to stay relevant (do we know the song?) also wanted the bomb. So they did that JATO stunt thing with the Neptune. But the P2V-3C could only take off from the Midways, and carry only the Mk.1 bomb (Mk.3 and 4 were too fat). VC-5 was the test/eval/training unit, but was probably ready to fly a hot mission if need be. It’s not totally impossible that the Navy would have been included in any “let’s nuke the gooks” action. A Midway with 2 or 3 P2V-3C and the rest of the Mk.1 bombs would have been an option.
VC-6 was just about to be stood up, and they operated a mix of P2V-3C and AJ-1s. The Savage was designed around the Mk.3/4, but had rather severe problems and was not really operational until a year later.
The interesting point of course is that the Mk.1 was officially retired in Nov1950, while VC-5 and their Nepuntes were not officially mission ready yet. Puts a twist on the story of the first Navy nuclear bomber …
TARGETING:
Hard to say. Probably military targets, assembly and logistics areas, major railyards, harbors. But maybe also certain cities – just to make a point. But I didn’t really look into that question, and there might be some literature.
Btw, no Soviet nuclear capability at that point.
By: alertken - 9th December 2010 at 10:51
During the Berlin Airlift SecDef was briefed on the aftermath: expunging 70 Sov. sites with 1949’s planned stock of 133 Bombs (would reduce USSR’s ) “industrial capacity by 30-40% (not) bring about capitulation,or destroy the roots of Communism (but) increase the will of the people to fight (,open) the field (to) any weapon of mass destruction (and) maximum retaliatory measures with (CBW” hurting NATO more than dispersed USSR) J.L.Gaddis,We Now Know, Cl’don, 98, P112. US/CAS resisted A-raiding China mid-51 as he had a “shoestring” (447 Bombs!) to deter USSR P262, R.F.Futtrell in H.R.Borowski, Military Planning in 20thC,USAF,86. (I have, but have lost the source) US stockpiles as:1951(?FY) 438/1952 841.
MacArthur was notoriously dismissive both of the Intel business and of the sagacity of Asians. No Counter-Value target was within B-29 range in S.China; he had no means of finding any formed-mass jump-off point, Counter-Force. His notion might have been shock and awe – to make one very big bang somewhere above the Yalu, to send the pyjama brigade scurrying back to their hovels.
By: Distiller - 9th December 2010 at 07:43
It wasn’t said that the U.S. would attack the USSR first. The concern was that Stalin goes into Western Europe once things heat up with China. As I said they still had that “Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance” in place in 1950.
As far as I’m aware (lots of rumors out there, little hard facts) MacArthur’s idea was using the bombs to cut off Manchuria, and then push into China to finish off the Chinese North-Eastern field armies in Manchuria. That would of course have caused alarm at the Kremlin cause it threatened the Russian Far East. And also MacArthur wanted to use Chiang Kai-shek for mischief in the South. Mao didn’t have terribly many troops available then, and no way to quickly shift them around. So I bet he would have gone a looong way to convince Stalin to take some pressure off China – in Europe (active communist movements and also guerilla fighting all over Western Europe, Italy, the Balkans, the Berlin blockade over just a few month – the stage was set!) and probably Persia (Stalin wanted to expand the southern reaches of the USSR already during the war, see British-Russian invasion of Persia and the establishment of SSRs in that region). The only thing that kept Stalin from expand the Soviet empire during the Truman years was the atom bomb.
Lots of factors here. China was still in ruins, the Kuomintang had lost their last stronghold on the mainland only a few month earlier, Europe was in ruins, as was still large parts of the western USSR. U.S. troop levels in Western Europe were at an all time low. A Soviet push into Western Europe could only have been answered by SAC, and it was in summer 1950 that LeMay had something like a first target list for the USSR drawn up. Certainly the U.S. would not start a war with the Soviets, but they would answer nuclear. I have no doubt about that; and that’s why I think it’s realistic to say that the only available SAC units for MacArthur’s idea was the 9th. The North Koreans were pretty much reduced to irregulars and partisans at this point, so nuclear attacks within Korea would have had little effect.
Of course we all know that politically this didn’t go through and that Truman relieved MacArthur of his command. Still, trying to redraw the military’s thoughts is kinda interesting.
Regarding the warhead numbers: The last official statement on the stockpile is from summer 1948. Back then it was really, really low. There were only a handful of bomb assembly teams in the U.S., and only 12 fully qualified crews in the 509th at Walker (Roswell). Those B-29A couldn’t even reach anything meaningful in Russia, and it would have taken at least a week to move them into attack positions and load the bombs (took like three days for the whole squadron). No hard stockpile numbers after 1948, but there was a SAC plan to have 400 warhead assemblies (assemblies – not necessarily also cores) by 1951. Mk.4 production started in March 1948 with an average of a little over 20 per month. Of course there is a certain production ramp-up factor, and production doesn’t mean operational availability (though they were fast in that back then) – in any case I feel confident with 350 Mk.4 available. The complicated and not overly reliant Mk.3B was out (probably since LeMay felt that the radar fuze might have been compromised by the Soviet spy ring in Sandia/Los Alamos), with the cores probably re-used, so it’s really down to the Mk.4s.
By: J Boyle - 8th December 2010 at 21:10
Any guesses or theories about a USSR attack are moot.
No way Truman would have attacked the USSR.
At most…an that would have been long shot, they would have been against N. Korea only.
Remember, he later fired MacArthur, and from what I can tell, never did trust him….so he wouldn’t have listed to him about this serious of an option.
But your aircraft list is interesting, and your comment about lack of historical records on the early days of Nuke basing concurs with what I’ve found.
By: Levsha - 8th December 2010 at 20:39
I recall reading book a long time which stated that the total number of nuclear warheads in the US’s arsenal was around 250 or so – but I can barely remember.
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December 8, 2010 at 12:17 pm