>> NARRATOR: U.S. bombers and missiles. America's Cold War nuclear arsenal, the most powerful military force ever created. Now, "The Strategic Air Command" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> For over 45 years during the Cold War, an all-encompassing military machine controlled America's nuclear weapons. Some quarter of a million people strong, the Strategic Air Command was known by its acronym, SAC. The men and women of the command did not make foreign policy, but trained to be its ultimate enforcer. They did not build the weapons but masterminded how they were deployed and where they would strike. They did not defend the country, but by their sheer strength deterred the enemy from attack. >> GENERAL RUSSELL DOUGHERTY: It was a proud command, but it was a disciplined command with a heavy boot. And discipline was the name of the game. And I'm glad, because it needed to be disciplined. It was dealing with things that were so important and so critical, you couldn't make a mistake. >> NARRATOR: The heart of the United States' nuclear forces was a triad of military might. SAC bombers and refueling aircraft made up the first prong of the attack. SAC intercontinental ballistic missiles, located throughout the U.S., were another system ready at a moment's notice to decimate enemy targets, while the Navy's nuclear-missile-bearing submarines were the third and final sea-based arm of the U.S. offensive. Reconnaissance air and spacecraft, as well as mobile command centers, rounded out SAC's capability. At its height, the Strategic Air Command controlled over 3,000 aircraft, thousands of missiles and tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. The command's emblem was a raised armored fist holding both olive branch and lightning bolts. SAC's message was clear-- peace through absolute strength. During the Cold War, that strength hinged on the military men and women of the command rationally facing the unthinkable. >> SCOTT HAZELRIGG: I can't imagine any more challenging career than preparing, training, working as hard as you could to do a job that you that hoped you never ever had the opportunity to do. Uh, how do you wake up in the morning and bounce your three- year-old daughter on your knee, uh, kiss her good-bye, go to work and realize that, uh, if you do what you're trained for, uh, she may not be there when you get home? >> NARRATOR: With the ironic motto, "Peace is our profession," the United States Strategic Air command was a military giant. >> BRENT SCOWCROFT: It's probably as an effective a military enterprise, if you will, that the world has ever known. It operated, uh, automatically, meticulously. Nothing's ever error-free in the military, but it really was, uh, an awesome force. >> NARRATOR: So horrible were the consequences of using these weapons that military leaders and politicians alike focused on their ability to stop a war before it started. >> WILLIAM C. MARTEL: Deterrence in its simplest form means that I have a certain set of capabilities that will be so devastating to you that you won't take actions that force me to use it. You won't attack me, for example. You won't attack my allies. Uh, you won't attack my homeland, you won't attack my vital interests. >> NARRATOR: But a century ago, deterrence backed by such speed and certainty not only did not exist, it hadn't even been thought of. The creation of fixed wing aircraft at the beginning of the 20th century changed warfare forever. Before airplanes, destroying an enemy's strategic targets, such as weapons makers and food supplies, required first defeating its army on the battlefield. With airplanes, forces were able to fly over enemy lines and strike at the heart of their opponent's war machine. >> ALWYN T. LLOYD: First of all, you have to go back to World War I and the United States, uh, really didn't have any airplanes. They had to beg, borrow and steal French and British airplanes to fly. And the concept of strategic bombardment was developed by the Germans, the French, the Russians, the Italians, the British, and the U.S. really didn't get into it until much later. >> NARRATOR: Air power visionaries, such as Brigadier General William "Billy" Mitchell, saw in the airplane a brave new strategic force. But inaccurate targeting with the early weapons caused most in the military to view the technology with skepticism. >> DOUGHERTY: Strategic bombardment, starting back in, uh, in the early days, they were not wrong, they were just about 50 years or 75 years ahead of their time. >> NARRATOR: After the first world war, the science of finding a target, and striking it with a bomb, improved. For early bombardiers, weapons that were aerodynamically shaped, and the addition of better bomb sites in the aircraft, were great improvements. American pilots were getting better at their destructive craft. During the early 1920s, the fledgling Army Air Corps attempted to prove aerial bombardment's effectiveness against a captured and gutted German battleship called the<i> Ostfriesland.</i> With Navy officials watching, U.S. bombers repeatedly struck and, eventually, sank the ship. Still, U.S. military leaders decided to ignore the tests and stick with what they knew best-- armies and ships. That decision would eventually haunt the U.S. On December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, 363 Japanese warplanes flew in undetected over the island of Oahu. When the attack was over, five American battleships were destroyed and the base lay in ruin. All questions regarding aerial bombardment's effectiveness were answered by the sunken ships. For the next five years, Japan and America were at war. In that time, the U.S. Army's Air Force dropped nearly 153,000 tons of bombs on its enemy. Three-and-a-half years into the war in the Pacific, the man who would become SAC's most influential commander, General Curtis Emerson LeMay, took command of the 20th Air Force Pacific Bomber Fleet. Gruff, hardworking and controversial, LeMay was rewriting the book on strategic bombardment. >> SHERMAN WILKINS: He did things like lowering our fuel reserves, taking the armor plate out of the B-29s, so we could carry more bombs. It scared some of the-the crews, the air crews. If we didn't have the armor plate, and we didn't have as much fuel reserve, and we didn't have as many rounds of ammunition in our machine guns, we just thought it would be the end. But as we did these things, we found out we were carrying more bombs, we were putting them on the target more accurately. >> NARRATOR: But in the mountains of New Mexico, American scientists were developing a weapon that depended less on accuracy than brute force. On July 16, 1945, physicists working on the top secret Manhattan Project succeeded in creating a catastrophic nuclear blast. >> LLOYD: The Manhattan Project developed atomic weapons, and we had two of them go to Japan-- the Little Boy and the Fat Man. And they dropped the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima and literally brought the war to the end because it broke the will of the enemy to continue. >> NARRATOR: The war that had begun with hundreds of bombs at Pearl Harbor, ended with two detonating over Japan. The United States, and the world, had entered the nuclear age. >> MARTEL: I'd be uncomfortable stating from the beginning that we viewed it as just any other weapon. But on the other hand, it took us probably by the '50s to really internalize the nature of a revolutionary weapon. Most understood that they constitute a revolutionary new development in military technology. And by that definition, it takes time for societies, for military organizations, for national leaders in many countries to really internalize what those weapons mean, both to policy, to capabilities, to peace and to security. >> NARRATOR: While politicians grappled with the policies surrounding nuclear weapons, the military began discussing just how they fit in the future U.S. arsenal, a debate that intensified as a new threat loomed. In August of 1945, America was tired of war. Having spent the previous five years leading the Allied victory over both Germany and Japan, the United States was happy to begin dismantling its forces. But the stewardship of devastating nuclear weapons was a problematic responsibility. The U.S. military began focusing on a strategic wing that would oversee the new bombs and provide the means by which they were delivered. >> DOUGHERTY: It was the end of World War II, nobody thought it was gonna be needed. But SAC was formed because we had a lot of big airplanes, and we had a capability to go longer distances. They felt they ought to put it together in a ball of wax and let it run around and practice going long distances, and delivering weapons just in case it's needed. >> NARRATOR: From such inauspicious beginnings the Strategic Air Command was created on March 21, 1946. Carl "Tooey" Spaatz, Commanding General of the Army's air forces, defined SAC's purpose-- "to conduct long range offensive operations, maximum range reconnaissance and provide combat units able to employ the latest, most advanced weapons." Training personnel to maintain the force was also part of the job. Within six months, SAC was under control of the newly created U.S. Air Force, but not before General Spaatz chose the Strategic Air Command's first leader. >> LLOYD: General George C. Kenney became the first commander of Strategic Air Command. He spent a lot of his time on the, uh, political circuit trying to drive for a separate air force, and SAC really didn't perform very well during that, that period. >> NARRATOR: An additional hindrance, SAC had been chosen to wield America's nuclear weapons, but it wasn't allowed to have any. By 1948 all 50 nuclear bombs in the U.S. arsenal remained under the control the of their builders, the Atomic Energy Commission. SAC would have to wait until the early '50s before having the weapons at its immediate disposal. But increasing world tensions were about to give SAC a new importance. By the late 1940s, the political climate between the U.S., England and France, and their onetime ally the Soviet Union, was cooling. The first point of contention was the division of Berlin. In June of 1948, Soviet leaders, enraged by what they saw as an unfair division of the German capitol, cut access to the western portion of the city. They were attempting to starve the west into submission. For the next year, U.S. and European air crews flew over a quarter million flights to the city, delivering nearly two and a half million tons of food, coal and other necessities. In charge of the U.S. portion of the mission, former wartime Pacific bomber fleet commander, General Curtis LeMay. >> HAZELRIGG: Curtis LeMay, whether you love him or hate him, uh, no one would say that he wasn't probably the true definition of a leader, and that at any time you make tough decisions that will impact the lives, um, of individuals but also of nations, um, there are going to be people who agree with how you do it and people who disagree with how you do it. >> NARRATOR: The man who had helped write the book on strategic bombing and supervised the Berlin airlift, seemed a perfect match for SAC. On October 15, 1948, the Air Force put General LeMay in charge of the lackluster Strategic Air Command. With Berlin still fresh in his memory, LeMay considered the Soviets a major threat to the U.S. and believed his new command would be instrumental in keeping them at bay. His hopes met reality upon his first inspection of SAC forces. He claimed disgustedly, "I found a soldier guarding a hangar with a ham sandwich." Of even more concern, SAC had no plan of attack in the event of war, no routes plotted nor cities targeted. LeMay vowed to remake SAC anyway he could. One of his solutions was to make sure his best people moved up quickly. >> LLOYD: He wanted to motivate his people and his air crews and he developed what was known as a spot promotion program. The ones that won the bombing competitions, around-the-world flights, something of great import, the whole crew was elevated one grade. All you had to do was have one guy screw up on that crew and the whole crew was busted back. He, he was a stickler. >> NARRATOR: Of more importance, LeMay defined SAC's strategic nuclear war plan. It called for attacks on 70 Soviet cities with 133 atomic bombs over the course of 30 days. In later years, some in the popular press pegged LeMay as a warmonger. Phrases such as "bomb them back to the stone age" were attributed to him. Still, he oversaw SAC's change from a second-rate outpost to one of the most respected commands in the U.S. military-- a transformation which faced some unlikely resistance. An almost irrational fear of Communism left Congress willing to spend billions on the military. But the money wasn't limitless. The biggest opponents to the Strategic Air Command spending were often other military branches. In the late '40s, LeMay testified before Congress on the need to build a fleet of new long-range bombers. The Navy had been seeking to procure the same funds for a super carrier. A bitter fight ensued with the Navy claiming fraud and referring to the new bomber as "the billion-dollar blunder." Still, Congress sided with the Air Force and SAC received its B-36 bomber. With a wingspan of 230 feet the enormous B-36, was the largest American bomber ever built. With its 72,000 pound payload it could carry both conventional and nuclear weapons. >> HAZELRIGG: The development of the B-36 and the, the capability for us to, um, to send a bomber from, uh, South Dakota or from Nebraska, uh, all the way around the world to the Soviet Union, drop a payload and return without refueling, was an incredible feat. >> NARRATOR: But LeMay's victory was bittersweet, the Navy had been right. The mammoth B-36 was grossly inefficient. Propeller driven, it was slow and most of the space on the plane was reserved for fuel not bombs. It had been built on the premise that a bomber can't pull over and stop for gas. But that's exactly what SAC needed-- aerial gas stations. One of many war technology advancements was in-flight refueling. The KC-97 tanker would cater to a developing breed of new jet bombers which could refuel en route to their target. SAC would soon boast an efficient and sustainable global reach without the ponderous B-36s. Meanwhile, the new enemy became stronger. On August 29th, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb. Three years later, on October 31, 1952, America upped the stakes by detonating the first hydrogen bomb. >> SCOWCROFT: In around 1950 or so, there was even a notion of a preventive war, uh, mostly in Air Force circles, that, uh, we had this fundamental confrontation with the Soviet Union. We were going to have to fight a war with them and we ought to do it while we're ahead. >> NARRATOR: But the Soviets were catching up fast. In August of 1953, by exploding their own hydrogen bomb, Russia dampened American thoughts of a preventive war. But America's darkest Cold War days were still to come. On the 15th of May, 1957, the Soviets started tests on what would become the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. Unlike bombers the device had the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead in minutes as opposed to hours. >> LLOYD: The visionaries saw that by putting SAC in the middle of the country you made it a more difficult target for the enemy. >> NARRATOR: The Air Force moved the command's headquarters from Washington, D.C., to the dead center of America. Its new headquarters on Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska was built as an underground bunker fortification. Dug from the fertile Nebraska plains, 25 feet below this yellow brick military building sits another three- story structure with nearly 130,000 square feet of sheltered floor space. For the rest of the Cold War the command post housed top secret map rooms and communication equipment. Here, commanders tracked forces and performed administrative duties for SAC bases around the world. With walls nearly three feet thick, blast doors and its own artesian well, the facility was designed to survive a near hit by a nuclear weapon. But even more important, it was built with the idea that it was expendable. SAC's best defense was the fact that its forces and command structure were being dispersed throughout the U.S. and Europe. >> DOUGHERTY: Our command was structured so it could take damage and still operate. We had several locations that had all the capabilities of the headquarters. >> NARRATOR: Multiple bases insured that pieces could be lost to a Russian nuclear strike and SAC would still carry out its mission. The strategy proved necessary as the Soviet Union continued to fly farther and higher. On October 4th, 1957, six months after the Soviets began testing their ICBMs, Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched. America was now behind in a race in which winning or losing could mean the end of the world. The U.S. Strategic Air Command was charged with playing catch- up, a task that would turn the command into the largest and most dangerous fighting force the world had ever seen. Next (<i> siren blaring</i> ) By 1957, SAC commanders were in charge of an operation over 220,000 people strong. That same year, Curtis LeMay left the Strategic Air Command after nearly nine years when he was promoted to Air Force Vice- Chief of Staff. No other commander would spend as much time in charge, nor have as profound an impact on SAC. Under the shadow of the ever- growing Soviet threat, Congress raced to greatly increase military spending. The money started rolling in for the Air Force, and for the Strategic Air Command. By the late '50s, SAC boasted 2,711 aircraft, 200 of which were a new breed of bomber developed by Boeing, the B-52. >> HAZELRIGG: The B-52, the development of that aircraft, really has revolutionized our nation's military, and certainly revolutionized strategic bombing. And you look at an aircraft that essentially is the same. The instrumentation has changed, the people have changed, but the physical aircraft itself is the same today as it was when it first came off the assembly line. >> NARRATOR: Between 1955 and 1963, 744 of the eight-engine monsters were created at Boeing's Wichita and Seattle plants. Each aircraft was able to carry 70,000 pounds of weapons. >> WILLIAM F. MOSES, JR.: The plane behind me is a B-52, which was the staple bomber of the Strategic Air Command. This is the bomb bay of the B- 52, and as you can see, it's quite cavernous. We could carry in the conventional mode up to 108 bombs, and in the nuclear mode, we could carry four nuclear weapons in here. >> NARRATOR: By the late 1950s, these planes as well as other jet bombers were flying regular training missions from SAC bases in Newfoundland, Labrador, Greenland, North Africa, England, Spain, and Guam. The crews' flight paths encircled Soviet airspace. The new bases had been built to get SAC forces closer to the enemy. Defining their potential targets became a priority for SAC. The late '50s saw the development of a new Strategic Air Command mission. U.S. military and political leaders, caught off guard by Sputnik, decided intelligence gathering was as important as nuclear weapons and bombers. The U-2 spy planes, and later, the SR-71 Blackbird, were housed at Beale Air Force Base just north of San Francisco, California. A cooperative venture between SAC and the CIA, the highly secretive planes flew reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union. From an altitude of 80,000 feet, and reaching speeds of over mach three-- about 2,100 miles per hour-- the SR-71 was all but untouchable. But the U.S. had been developing the ability to fly higher and faster than even the SR-71. During the late '50s, SAC began testing its own intercontinental ballistic missiles. >> MARTEL: Remember, it takes bombers hours and hours and hours to go from the United States to the Soviet Union, or from the Soviet Union to the United States. We slowly begin the shift over toward land-based missiles. The reason was twofold. One is by putting on missiles, we shorten that reaction time from hours to minutes. The second is that once we started moving in this direction, it began to push the technology to make nuclear weapons smaller and much more accurate. >> NARRATOR: On September 9, 1959, SAC launched its first true ICBM-- the Atlas missile. The 85-foot-tall, three-engine, liquid-fueled rocket was able to reach an altitude of 900 miles before dropping back to Earth with its payload. >> JOHN DOLLARD: When they started up the Atlas program, we were all in the 320th Bomb Wing, and they deactivated the 320th Bomb Wing, and they took all the pilots and sent them to Atlas. We used to say, "Out of the sky and into a hole in the ground." But we knew that SAC needed it. The Russians were already putting things in the ground, and we needed something to counterbalance that, and it was important, so we did it, and we did it very well. >> NARRATOR: But the Atlas system had a fatal flaw. The rocket was designed to be stored empty, which meant in the event of an attack, ground crews would spend precious time fueling the rocket. While other missiles would join the SAC inventory, it was the Minuteman missile that represented a huge leap forward in military technology. Always fueled and stored in underground hardened silos with retractable doors, it could be launched at a moment's notice. The Minuteman also held up to three warheads, meaning that each missile was a multiple threat. Keeping them safe from attack was a top priority. Air Force planners built the silos and control centers far enough apart so they couldn't be destroyed by a single nuclear blast. In some cases, the control centers were at such a great distance that crews traveled hours to get to their posts. Security personnel checked each crew that entered the site. >> Yes, sir, can I have your trip number, number additional personnel, and has your vehicle been searched? >> Trip 16, Captain Martin, plus one, vehicle has been searched. >> JAMES M. McCOY: The bomber crews and tanker crews had a little bit more freedom that they could move around on the base in alert vehicles, and so forth, but your missile crew members were on alert in a missile silo in a launch control facility, and locked down in the capsule. >> NARRATOR: Strict procedures and missile silo design features were implemented to insure against an accidental launch. Two missile launch officers needed to simultaneously operate controls at separate consoles to launch an ICBM. From their seats within the control center, the two missileers waited to receive encoded launch orders. If the code arrived, it was cross-checked with launch codes in the control center. >> Alpha, zero, tango... >> NARRATOR: If the message was correct, the two missileers simultaneously turned keys on their console, which activated the silo door and launched the missile. But the Air Force, which was in charge of SAC, wasn't the only U.S. military branch working with nuclear missiles. In the late '50s, the U.S. Navy, thanks to smaller nuclear warheads and solid fuel technology, began deploying submarine-launched Polaris missiles. But the new weapons had their share of problems. >> MARTEL: When you fire a ballistic missile out of a submarine, you do damage to the launch tubes. You're firing a rocket motor within a very small space. We eventually figured out that the smarter way to do this is what is called the "cold launch," where you use compressed gas to basically blast the missile out of the tube, or the silo, if you will, in the submarine, and once it pops to the surface, then its rocket motor ignites, and it takes off. >> NARRATOR: Now that the Navy had nuclear missiles on submarines, policy makers realized the Air Force and Navy had to work together on strategic nuclear planning. >> MARTEL: What we establish in SAC is an organization called the JSTPS, which stands for "Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff," designed to coordinate in a very detailed sense how one would use, in this case, Air Force nuclear weapons and Naval nuclear weapons. >> NARRATOR: Just as SAC improved the planning and strategy of using nuclear weapons, so was it improving its physical ability to deliver them. The "ready pad" was the offensive center of the SAC bomber base. It was designed to get bombers off the ground faster than ever before. Also known as the "alert pad," it was separate from the rest of the base on a raised, double- fenced, restricted area. On the pad, planes fully fueled and loaded with weapons were ready to fly at a moment's notice. By 1960, one-third of SAC's bombers could be launched within 15 minutes. Security around the alert pad was some of the tightest in the military. Security police kept a watchful eye over all personnel who entered. Technicians arrived in pairs, and were not allowed out of each other's sight. >> STEVE PRALL: If they lost track of each other, uh, usually security police that witnessed it would call alert to that, and the technicians would be forced to the ground and searched. >> NARRATOR: With such high stakes, SAC leadership always had to remain in control of their commands, even under a full-scale nuclear attack. With that in mind, on February 3, 1961, SAC initiated Project Looking Glass. EC-135 aircraft-- similar to 707 jet liners-- were outfitted with identical command capabilities as SAC headquarters. >> HAZELRIGG: The concept that at any time, if Offutt Air Force Base was destroyed, you had an EC-135 with a staff that could command and identify what needed to happen and make decisions at any time of day or night really was something that had never happened in any military organization prior to that time. >> NARRATOR: The term "looking glass" came from the aircraft's ability to mirror exactly headquarters command. 19 crew members led by a general officer, and including flight crew, communications experts, tacticians, maintenance, and air traffic control people, took to the air for eight hours at a time. The system offered redundancy of command, a type of insurance policy against failure. Project Looking Glass exemplified a term often associated with SAC-- "fail- safe." The SAC command system was spread out, in the case of an EC-135, potentially anywhere above the United States, and yet so intertwined that if a portion was destroyed, the system was safe from failure. For the Russians, Project Looking Glass created another target to worry about-- a target that had the ability to broadcast launch codes to all SAC bases, aircraft, and missile silos. >> HAZELRIGG: The EC-135-- there was one of those flying at all times. Before one would land, another one would take off, and they would make sure everything was in order and in place in case of that worst-case scenario. >> NARRATOR: And that worst-case scenario was never closer than on October 22, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Joint Chiefs of Staff placed the Strategic Air Command at DEFCON 2, the highest defense condition ever reached. The lowest DEFCON, DEFCON 5, denotes normal peacetime operations, while the highest, DEFCON 1, places military forces at maximum readiness. At DEFCON 2, SAC had 76 B-52s on 24-hour flights fully armed, orbiting within striking distance of their Russian targets. >> MOSES: During the Cuban Missile Crisis, we had B-52s fully loaded with nukes on two routes-- one that went up over the poles, and one I flew on, we coasted out from North Carolina, flew over Spain and refueled, went around the Mediterranean, and refueled over Spain again. At any point in time, we could have pulled out of our route and gone straight to our targets in the Soviet Union. >> NARRATOR: Thankfully, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended peacefully, and helped change the way both sides looked at their nuclear arsenals. It was a wake-up call to the chilling reality that nuclear weapons could end the world. From that point on, the nuclear arsenals were viewed as deterrents, as both sides subscribed to the unwritten pact of "mutually assured destruction," or MAD. Through SAC's entire history there were no accidental missile launches or nuclear weapons detonations. Still, there were mishaps. On January 17, 1966, a B-52 loaded with four nuclear weapons collided with a KC-135 tanker while refueling over Spain. Seven men aboard the two aircraft perished as the planes crashed near the city of Palomares. Three of the weapons were destroyed without detonating on impact. One splashed down five miles out in the ocean and was the object of a nearly three-month search before being found by a Navy submersible. Two years after the incident over Spain, an Air Force bomber crashed at Thule Air Force Base in Greenland, again carrying four nuclear weapons, all of which were destroyed in the crash. >> STEVE PRALL: In the early '60s, SAC implemented an airborne alert program, basically meaning that there were bombers and tankers that were always in the air fully loaded and ready to go. Between accidents and budget cuts, uh, the program was just too costly, and the program was scrapped. >> NARRATOR: The day after the Thule crash, the Pentagon ordered SAC to cease all training flights with nuclear weapons. Though one-third of SAC's bombers were still loaded with weapons and ready to fly at a moment's notice, the rest of the force left their nuclear weapons on the bases. For SAC, a new era had begun. Unfortunately, it was not an era of peace. Linebacker II was a mission that combined Air Force, Marine and Navy aircraft over Vietnam. SAC's contribution: for 11 days in the winter of 1972, its B-52s rained conventional bombs down on Hanoi and Haiphong. Many believe SAC's action brought the North Vietnamese back to peace negotiations with the U.S. in Paris. But it also showed the Air Force that the concept of strategic bombing worked much better than the reality. 15 SAC B-52s, nearly half the bombers lost in the Vietnam war, were downed during the Linebacker mission. >> DOUGHERTY: We took losses in Linebacker that we'd never experienced before. I've been through this, uh, with all the people that were involved, and, uh, I think that I speak the truth when I say it was a very sobering learning process. >> NARRATOR: While SAC bombers flew difficult missions over Vietnam, U.S. missileers began working with the most advanced weapon ever placed in a silo. In the early '70s the government started work on the MX missile program. The 71-foot-long, four-stage rocket carried ten 350-kiloton MIRV, or Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle warheads. Now a single ICBM could strike ten enemy targets with precision. >> MARTEL: We now have the ability to launch nuclear weapons in a very short time, and most importantly, to threaten many more targets, uh, than we could in the past which changed this nuclear balance in a radical way. >> DOUGHERTY: A lot of people think we had overkill. Overkill has to be put into a rational framework. Remember, I've got to be able to suffer a major attack and then respond effectively. >> NARRATOR: The need to respond effectively pushed every facet of the Strategic Air Command. The B-52s were constantly upgraded. By the mid '80s, the interior electronics included low light cameras and FLIR, Forward Looking Infrared sensors, that allowed the pilots to fly through fog and dead of night by watching two television monitors in the cockpit. The Strategic Air Command was rushing forward on all fronts and heading straight into the digital age. By the late '70s the Strategic Air Command had become a fine- tuned machine. The commanders worked diligently to keep their personnel ready to go to war with the most destructive weapons known to man. This Air Force film shows a training exercise as SAC commanders at headquarters on Offutt Air Force Base respond to a simulated Russian attack. (<i> beeping</i> ) This scenario begins as would a real battle situation. The Joint Chiefs of Staff send a coded message through the National Command Center in Washington, D.C., letting SAC know of an increased military alert. >> Sir, we have an emergency action message. >> Go ahead and process it. >> NARRATOR: The Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command, or CINCSAC, takes his place overlooking the command center. As Washington informs the commander of increasing tensions he ratchets up his command's response. >> Sir, based on the current situation, I recommend that we disperse forces to ready standby and civilian bases. Do you concur? >> Recommendation approved. >> Thank you, sir. >> NARRATOR: He first sends bombers and refueling planes from their assigned bases to other military and civilian airports. Spread out, the airplanes won't be as easy to target if the Soviets should strike. Teams of mechanics, communications and security personnel are also dispersed to look after the aircraft at their new bases of operation. Additional personnel are scrambled to alternate missile command centers. Now multiple teams of missileers have the ability to launch the weapons in the event a Soviet first strike takes out the primary launch center. (<i> beeping</i> ) As tensions increase, the Joint Chiefs of Staff order an airborne alert as a show of force. To comply, the CINCSAC scrambles a portion of his bombers to their forward attack positions. Over the next few hours, the remaining bomber crews are briefed and missile commands are placed on heightened alert. Both aerial and ground mobile command personnel are activated. The additional command units will be used to carry out retaliatory strikes if SAC headquarters is destroyed. Then, the unthinkable. >> General Ellis, we have indications of multiple ICBM launches threatening North America. This activity is now displayed on the balcony monitors behind you. >> Sir, your decision time is shown here. >> Launch the force under positive control. I'm going airborne. >> Yes, sir. (<i> klaxon blaring</i> ) (<i> air raid sirens sound</i> ) >> NARRATOR: For safety, the CINCSAC takes off in a command aircraft. In the final steps of the exercise, the Russian launch is confirmed. The President orders a mass retaliation of American nuclear forces and the Strategic Air Command is given the go code. >> Message follows-- tango, six, three, delta, yankee, tango, six, one, seven... >> NARRATOR: If this scenario, which was enacted so calmly, had ever played out in real life, the world as we know it probably would have ended. But at SAC's technological peak, politics, not warfare, caused its demise. In the late '80s Mikhail Gorbachev's<i> perestroika</i> led to revolutionary changes in the Soviet Union. SAC's strength was reduced with the wavering Soviet threat. >> SCOWCROFT: Well, I think, it happened gradually. Through most of the Cold War, we actually had aircraft in the air all the time. That's very expensive. So, the first thing was to take them off airborne alert. And then there was the command and control aircraft which was in the air 24 hours a day. Uh, do you have to have that up all the time? And so, it, it happened gradually. >> NARRATOR: The Berlin Wall had fallen and countless other Soviet satellites were breaking away. The Cold War had been won. On June 1, 1992, SAC was disbanded. >> HAZELRIGG: I think the end of the Command meant different things to different people. But for those folks who were so invested in that lifestyle, in that devotion to purpose, in that commitment to excellence, in that understanding and appreciation that what the Command stood for was peace and that what they had to do was to preserve that peace through training and through honor and through constantly asking the question, "How can we do this better?" When that all of a sudden was gone, I think there are a lot of SAC veterans who would tell you that they lost something. >> DOUGHERTY: Others can claim fame but the Cold War commander's responsibility was to make sure that there was, there was no war and no sacrifice. We didn't walk the cat back and we didn't get him into a fight. >> NARRATOR: Today, bilateral disarmament continues to shrink the size of the United States' nuclear arsenal. U.S. forces, reduced by over 50%, still hold a tremendous advantage over the crumbling military of the former Soviet Union. Today's American nuclear forces are overseen by multiple commands within different military branches. While the targeting and planning of the weapons falls to a relatively small military entity created in 1992, simply called Strategic Command. But the blueprint from which all the commands work was once the sole domain of the most powerful, ominous and focused military structure ever created, the United States' Strategic Air Command. <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> Captioned by <font color="#00FFFF"> Media Access Group at WGBH</font> access.wgbh.org
