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Showing posts with label cold war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cold war. Show all posts
1948 ... B-45 "Tornado"
... the first US operational jet bomber, the "Tornado" gained importance as it assumed a tactical nuclear delivery assignment when atomic bombs became smaller and lighter.
... 36 hour war - catastrophe!
... my jaw dropped when I found this sensationalistic warning of a possible Atomic War in an issue of LIFE magazine - dated November 19, 1945! Just a few months after the World War II ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the head of the US Air forces, Gen. 'Hap' Arnold, lays out in remarkable accuracy the future dangers of a war fought with nuclear tipped ICBM's.
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... 36 hour war - tracking the attack!
... in 1945 RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging) was still pretty whiz bang, high tech stuff. Searching outer-space for incoming rockets was at least a decade away. This illustrations reminds me of scenes from the 'B' science fiction classic 'Fiend Without a Face' . The AV Kid has the whole movie here. In the movie the search for atomic powered Radar has the side-effect of producing invisible brain sucking monsters - of course!
Wonder if 'Hap' Arnold didn't want to tell us about that?
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... 36 hour war - paratroop invasion!
...LIFE magazine was never shy about including a buxom blond for reader appeal!
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1953 ... big-nose sub!
... USS Bonita of the 'Barracuda' Class.
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1986 ... multiple warhead strike!
... time exposure showing re-entry paths of 8 MIRV missile warheads from a single 'Peacekeeper' missile. MIRV stands for( Multiple Independent targetable Re-entry Vehicle).I don't know where they lost the 'T' in the acronym.
Each of these warheads could have the explosive force of up to 300 Kilotons- or 14 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Fortunately for the test they were dummies.
... holy crap is right. The effects of eight detonations are much higher than one big bomb of the equal megatonage.
Having multiple warheads gives defensive systems more threats to track and neutralize. Since each re-entry vehicle can follow a pre-programmed independent ballistic path- one missile can take out different targets. The current Minuteman III force has only 3 MIRVs per missile. Before taking their seperate firey re-entry paths they ride on a last rocket stage called the 'bus'. The Peacekeeper, which was never actually deployed, could have carried up to ten. There were rumors that the USSR had designs for a missle that could have carried 30 MIRVs!
This was all part of the chess game of targeting the other sides missile and silos. In theory a 'first strike' could wipe out the opponents missile force. Obviously both sides adopted a 'launch on warning' protocol. As soon as the early warning system of satellites and radar spotted the incoming missile barrage a massive retaliation would be launched. It was also known as the 'use them or lose them' strategy.
Both sides had (have) a 'Nuclear Triad' of silo based missiles, bombers and ballistic missile submarines. This ensures that enough of a superpower's nuclear forces will always survive to launch a devastating counterattack. This maintained the wobbly balance of Assured Mutual Destruction'. Each piece of technology being advanced and then counter-advanced across the chess board that was known as The Cold War.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRV
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacekeeper_missile
... oh boy, here's the AV Kid with an official Air Force film on the Peacekeeper missile. It was tested but never deployed.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPhjMHBBdbM
ABM site- Grand Forks- 1975
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ballistic_missileAnti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) systems have always been controversial. Expensive, prone to technical glitches. They seemed to motivate the opposing cold-war side to just build more missiles. Early systems relied on atomic warheads to zap the incoming missiles and only had to get close for a kill. Later and present day technology pushes for a 'hit and kill' non-nuclear defense. The defensive missile must hit or get very close to the incoming warhead.
1951 ...
Before the advent of Hydrogen Bombs made mere survival problematic, there was a lot of ballyhoo about the need for good citizens to crawl out of the rubble, dust themselves off and get to work on bringing the GNP back up.
...here's the AV Kid with "Our Cities Must Fight"
The Arctic was a pretty important place during the Cold War. It was from the North and over the Pole that the Russian bombers would come. It was the shortest and fastest route.... here's the AV Kid with a cool newsreel about the Distant Early Warning line (DEW)
http://www.archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.52896
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