Hi, I’m the History Guy. I
have a degree in history, and I love history. And if you love
history too, this is the channel for you. You might not think about November 9th, 1979 as
being one of the most important dates in history, and yet it honestly might have been. It
might have been one of the most important dates in world history. It might even have
been the end of history. And what happened, and what didn't happen, and the reason
you probably never heard about it all tell us something about the era. It is
history that deserves to be remembered. The idea that a nation can develop such a massive
military potential that it makes war unthinkable, the thing we today know is mutually assured
destruction, goes farther back than you might think. In fact, both Richard Gatling,
who in 1862 invented the Gatling gun, and Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite in 1867,
suggested that their weapons were so destructive that they might make war futile. The concept of
using a nuclear bomb to deter someone else's use of a nuclear bomb goes back to very earliest
development of such weapons. In March of 1942, scientists living in England, Otto Frisch
and Rudolf Peierls published an extraordinary memorandum that was the first technical exposition
of a practical nuclear weapon. In short, their analysis of the critical mass needed
to sustain a nuclear chain reaction was much smaller than had been previously theorized, small
enough to incorporate into a practical bomb. In addition to the scientific calculations,
Frisch and Peierls talked about such a bombs strategic potential. Arguing that,
“If Germany were to develop such a weapon, the most effective reply would be a counter
threat, with a similar bomb.” The Frisch Peierls memorandum was considered to be a prime
motivation behind the Manhattan Project, and both Frisch and Peierls would later be part
of the team that produced the first atomic bombs. After the Second World War, a new competition
between the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its satellites began.
The date of the official start of what came to be called the Cold War is often seen as March 12th,
1947. The date that US President Harry S Truman made a speech to the US Congress, enunciating the
Truman Doctrine, an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical
expansion, arguing that it was a threat to the national security of the United States. There
is no specific date assigned to represent the start of the nuclear arms race between the
United States, and the Soviet Union that was a centerpiece of the Cold War, although August 29th,
1949, the day of the Soviet Union first tested a nuclear bomb, might be as good a day as any.
The RDS-1, otherwise known as First Lightning, had a yield of 22 kilotons of TNT, and surprised
the West coming nearly four years earlier than the US had expected the Soviets would be able to
develop a nuclear bomb. By the mid-1950s, both countries had develop much larger thermonuclear
bombs, as well as heavy bombers such as the Convair B-36 and the Tupolev Tu-95, that were
capable of delivering these bombs well into each other's territory. During the 1960's, not only
did strategic bombers improve, but both the US and the Soviet Union developed submarine-launched
ballistic missiles, and intercontinental ballistic missiles, to deliver their ever more potent
nuclear weapons. These delivery systems, strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and
submarine-launched ballistic missiles became what was called the Nuclear Triad, and were part of
a philosophy of Assured Destruction, described by US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in
1967. In brief, McNamara argued that, “To deter nuclear war, a threat of assured destruction was
necessary.” “This required not only a nuclear capacity, but so much nuclear capacity that even
if an enemy were to use their nuclear weapons in a hypothetical first strike, the ability to
respond would remain. So that the destruction of that enemy would still be assured.” “The purpose
of having a three branch nuclear capability is to significantly reduce the possibility that an
enemy could destroy all of the nation's nuclear forces in a first-strike attack. This in turn,
ensures a credible threat of a second strike.” New technologies, and uncertainty over each
other's capabilities continue to drive the arms race, as leaders on both sides worried about
hypothetical missile gaps, or bomber gaps. It was the financial demands of the arms race, and
the concepts of massive retaliation, and assured destruction that led President Dwight Eisenhower,
in 1955, to change US military strategy, in what became known as, The New Look. A policy
which emphasized reliance on strategic nuclear weapons to deter potential threats, thus allowing
the nation to reduce the size of the conventional Army, and Navy. As part of The New Look, the
role of the United States Strategic Air Command, or SAC, tasked with the air defense of the
continental United States, was amended. Under The New Look, the major purpose of air defense
was not to shoot down enemy bombers, it was to allow SAC bombers to get into the air, and not
be destroyed on the ground, to allow for massive retaliation. But survivability required more than
planes and missiles. To truly allow survivability, you have to have sufficient warning that an attack
was coming. Thus, in 1957, the US and Canada formed a joint military group called the North
American Air Defense Command, or NORAD, whose primary purpose was to provide an early warning
and defense for SACs retaliatory forces. And NORAD needed a hardened facility designed to protect its
operations from Soviet attack. In May of 1961, the US started to excavate underneath a nine thousand
five hundred and seventy foot Colorado Mountain to create the facility known as the Cheyenne
Mountain complex. The complex became operational in 1967 for a total cost of one hundred forty
two point four million dollars, and monitored the airspace of Canada and the United States through
a worldwide early warning system for missiles, space systems, and foreign aircraft. The five acre
facility is built under 2,000 feet of granite, and houses fifteen three-story buildings hidden
behind 25 ton blast doors and mounted on giant springs to keep them from shifting in the
event of a nuclear blast. The bunker is built to deflect a 30 Megaton nuclear explosion
as close as two kilometers. At its height, the tunnels of the Cheyenne Mountain complex
hosted nearly 2,000 personnel. During the 1970s, NORAD's early warning systems at the Cheyenne
Mountain complex were not fully automated. In 1972 Cheyenne Mountain began to integrate
those systems with what was called the Cheyenne Mountain Complex Improvements Program
427-M, which became operational in 1979. 427-M was a consolidated program for command center,
ballistic missile, and space functions. Developed using new software technology, and designed for
computers with large processing capacity it was intended to give greater reliability
and quicker early warning capability. And it was there in the early morning of November
9th 1979, in the world's most advanced bunker, using the brand-new and robust early warning
system, that the unthinkable happened. Decades of strategy around massive retaliation
and mutual assured destruction collapsed, as the screens at the NORAD command center showed
indisputably that America's worst nightmare had occurred. The Soviet Union had launched an
all-out nuclear attack on the United States, designed to destroy our command
functions, and our nuclear weapons. This was no drill. The Pentagon's National
Military Command Center, and the alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie,
Maryland, all showed the same thing. The Soviets had launched more than 200 submarine-launched
ballistic missiles. Following standard procedures, the launch control centers for America's 550
Minutemen 3, and 450 Minutemen 2 missiles, missiles whose combined warheads represented
approximately 55,000 times the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, were
given a preliminary warning to prepare for a counter-attack. The crews of the SAC ready
alert bombers, and tankers were moved to their aircraft. Emerging from the readiness
crew buildings, commonly called Mole Holes, to man their B-52 bombers, each armed with up
to 20 nuclear tipped AGM 69 short-range attack missiles, and start their engines. The entire
continental air defense interceptor force, fighter aircraft tasked to defend the United
States, was put on alert. And at least 10 F-106 Delta Dart fighter interceptors were
launched to protect US airspace. Finally, the president's Doomsday Plane, the national
emergency airborne command post was launched, although without the President or Secretary of
Defense on board. US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski later recalled the event.
He was awakened at 3:00 a.m. by a call from his military assistant, Major General William Odom who
informed him that 250 Soviet ballistic missiles were headed to the United States. Brzezinski
knew that the president's decision time to order retaliation was just three to seven minutes.
They were still waiting for satellite confirmation of the launch, and Brzezinski did not want to
call the President until that confirmation, but asked to confirm that SAC was launching its
planes! A moment later, Odom called back to inform him that the command center was reporting that
the Soviets had now launched over 2,200 missiles, an all-out nuclear attack! As Brzezinski prepared
to call the president he made a silent decision of his own, he chose not to wake his wife. If
the world was going to end in half an hour, he would let her go quietly in her sleep. Moments
before he picked up the phone to call President Jimmy Carter, and recommend massive retaliation,
Odom called a third time. Raw data from the early warning satellites and ground-based radar were
seeing nothing. It was, apparently, a false alarm. Later it was determined that software simulating
a Soviet nuclear attack intended to test the new 427-M system had inexplicably been transferred
into the regular warning display. As all command centers were linked, they all showed the same
thing. The air force insisted that there was never any real risk, and that all the actions
taken were, “Merely precautionary.” Secretary of Defense Harold Brown cited, “The human element is
preventing the risk of any irretrievable actions.” Brown also said that, “We must be prepared for the
possibility that another, unrelated malfunction, may someday generate another false alert.”
A note that proved true, as there were three more false alerts in 1980, all attributed to a
flaw in a 46 cent computer chip. A senior State Department official at the time warned Secretary
of State Cyrus Vance “That false reports of this kind are not a rare occurrence.” We may have
been lucky in the timing and that US-Soviet relations were relatively calm in 1979, a year
which saw the signing of the second of the US Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties, giving
more reason to question the validity of the alert. But they deteriorated quickly, partly because
of a diplomatic exchange based on the reports in the 1979 alert, and even more so as the Soviet
Union invaded Afghanistan in 1980. As relations deteriorated, the risk of miscalculation
due to false alarms became even more real. While flaws were recognized in the 427-M system
from the start, it took nearly a decade to replace the system. And much has happened in the
time since, the Soviet Union is gone, as is the Strategic Air Command which was reorganized out
of existence. And Cheyenne Mountain complex is no longer the headquarters for NORAD, the complex
today hosts about 1/10 as many employees as it did in its height in 1979. The risk today of a
nuclear war starting because of a false alarm is uncertain, but still real. In the end, decades
of false alarms in both the United States and the Soviet Union have never resulted in what Harold
Brown called, “Irretrievable actions.” The event in 1979 was little and inaccurately reported at
the time, and the vast majority of the world's billions of people slept through the night not
knowing that anything extraordinary at all had happened in the early morning of November 9th.
Whether this is just a memory of the tensions of the past, or a warning of the risks of the future,
it is history that deserves to be remembered. I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this
edition of my series, five minutes of history, short snippets of forgotten history five to ten
minutes long. And if you did enjoy it, please go ahead and click that thumbs up button which is
there on your left. If you have any questions, or comments, feel free to write those in the
comments section, I'll be happy to respond. And if you'd like five minutes more forgotten
history, all you need to do is subscribe.
I'm guessing a Univac system of some flavor.
A SAGE terminal?
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/151980-inside-ibms-67-billion-sage-the-largest-computer-ever-built
I don't recognize it, but in general it might be a vector/graphical terminal from someone like Tektronix or Hewlett-Packard
Nice try Skynet! We’re not telling you sh*t!
I feel like one of the cool things about old computers like this today is that it wouldn't surprise me if NORAD's system has only been updated a handful of times since this video. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
To be clear, the unit I'm asking about is not the one in the thumbnail, but the one with a schematic displayed at 6:01 in the video. Thanks!