... this is a great documentary! All of the PBS 'American Experience' programs are excellent! It is an accurate and well crafted look which brings history alive and is a revealing snapshot of life in America during the late 1950's. Nikita Khrushchev visits the United States in 1959! He kisses babies, lectures and threatens and wants to, but can't, go to Disneyland!
I cruise the Internet a lot looking for, amongst other things, Cold War material to put on this Blog. Here is a series of photos from a interesting site I stumbled upon By Simon Raffeiner 'One Man - One Map' .
This is a 'Spare Long-Range Command Bunker of the Soviet Air Forces from 1951 to 1995'
It is located beneath the streets of Moscow. It was sold in auction to a private company that now operates it as a museum. I urge you to go to the site LINK to read complete descriptions of these wonderful photos.
Gotta love that carpet! Visible are lots and lots of plate and screw shaft pinions used to secure reinforced panels to underground rock. I am thinking of the renovations done to NORAD headquarters inside of Cheyenne Mountain.
Be sure to stop by the mannequin to have your papers checked Comrade! He looks like he was recruited from an upscale Woolworth's. Unlike many the disheveled dummies I have seen at other museums.
I certainly hope the electrician who produced this work of art was praised. Not sent to Siberia for wasting precious building materials!
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... no background on this. But let us imagine it was produced at the Sheboygan, Wisconsin Rotary Club as a public service and aired before sign-off by the local TV station. The group were, of course, the Trinity Test Trio!
A British 'V-Bomber', a Handley Page 'Victor', is scrambled. Notice the all white 'anti-flash' livery. This was protection against the heat transmitted by the flash of nuclear detonation.
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From 1948 to 1955 the Convair B-36 'Peacemaker' was the only aircraft capable of making a round trip from the United States to the Soviet Union and then back again. That's on one load of fuel! In fact the B-36 was not even capable of air to air refueling; having been developed in an era when that technique had not been sufficiently developed. The USAF's Strategic Air Command had 'smaller' bombers at forward stations in allied Nato countries closer to Russia. But those planes could not carry the new, very large, Hydrogen Bombs and their bases were much more vulnerable than SAC's runways in the geographic center of of America.
... notice there is no mention of Polaris Ballistic Missile Submarines? They won't come on duty till next year (1961). Instead of a 'mix' it will be the 'Triad'.
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At first, in the early sixties, the range of the SLBM's (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles) was only about 1,200 miles. US subs had to lurk in waters close to the USSR as shown by the map above. The accuracy of the subs solid fuel 'Polaris' missiles was not good enough for hitting precise military targets. Instead the 1 megaton warhead was targeted at large population centers. A 'Polaris' Submarine carried sixteen missiles. The Soviet Union test launched their first SLBM about 2 months after the USA. The 'Triad' of air, land and sea atomic annihilation was in place. 'Assurance' was complete.
* Pentagon planners would rather we use the word 'deterrence'
Note: the USSR began operating their missile carrying nuclear subs two months after the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/41_for_Freedom
List of USN 'Polaris' submarines
... painted by master illustrator Keith Ferris and brought to us by the wonderfully cranky host of 'Up-ship'
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The Soviet Union was always a scary place. Lot's of violence and blood. Lot's of murder in the name of utopia. But the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin was it's darkest chapter. Stalin's paranoia and absolute control fashioned an adversary of dark and unknowable threat. When the Soviets got 'the Bomb' in1949 the world was in a nightmare it could not wake up from!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
Look at modern mythology and the blending of myth and fact. The specter of nuclear war has to be the most dark, and ominous theme. Before 1945 the office of the President of the United States was one of great power and influence but not of God-like reach. After the weaponization of the fundamental force of the Universe, the atom, it's control and use becomes Biblical in scope! Unleashing this power is unimaginable. That is; beyond the ability of any person to fully comprehend and understand. And yet, the largest engine of this hellfire is under the command of one person, one human being among all the billions. The President.
This drama, this mythology has one hero, one central character into whose hands is thrust the fate of the world. Since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, a preview which mercifully ended before the final curtain, this role has been magnified into a well worn and well known collective nightmare. Filled with magical devices, secret incantations and numberless servants of the great destruction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Vulcan
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-history-of-the-avro-vulcan-bomber
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LINKS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Air-Raid_Siren
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/08/the-chrysler-air-raid-siren-was-so.html
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