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Fail-Safe Type B-52 Alerts "Operation Headstart" 1959 US Air Force Strategic Air Command 14min
Fail-Safe Type B-52 Alerts: "Operation Headstart" 1959 US Air Force Strategic Air Command.
The plan[]
America and Canada wanted a way of limitedly retaliation against the USSR if an attack feat was detected coming over the North Pole on the DEW Line or when the bombs began falling in Florida, Germany and Africa
Plans were soon thought up by people like General Thomas S. Power in which which B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber aircraft armed with thermonuclear weapons remained on continuous airborne alert, flying routes to points on the Soviet Union's border. The would loiter near strategic points outside the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia to provide rapid first strike or retaliation capability in case of a nuclear war.
The operation[]
Strategic Air Command-0
Strategic Air Command (SAC) was both a Department of Defence Specified Command and a United States Air Force (USAF) Major Command (MAJCOM) responsible for Cold War command and control of two of the three components of the U.S. military's strategic nuclear strike forces, the so-called "Nuclear Triad," with SAC having control of land-based strategic bomber aircraft and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). SAC also operated all USAF jet aerial refueling, strategic reconnaissance, and airborne command post aircraft. SAC primarily consisted of the Second Air Force (2AF), Eighth Air Force (8AF) and the Fifteenth Air Force (15AF), while SAC headquarters (HQ SAC) included Directorates for Operations & Plans, Intelligence, Command & Control, Maintenance, Training, Communications, and Personnel. At a lower echelon, headquarters divisions included Aircraft Engineering, Missile Concept, and Strategic Communications. In 1992, as part of an overall post-Cold War reorganization of the U.S. Air Force, SAC was disestablished as both a Specified Command and as a MAJCOM, and its personnel and equipment redistributed among the Air Combat Command (ACC), Air Mobility Command (AMC), Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), and Air Education and Training Command (AETC), while SAC's central headquarters complex at Offutt AFB, Nebraska was concurrently transferred to the newly created United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), which was established as a joint Unified Combatant Command.
It started as the in 1958 Head Start Program, the full-scale Airborne Alert Indoctrination program known as Operation Chrome Dome which ran from from 1960 to 1968. Other related programs were called Hard Head Round Robin and Operation Giant Lance.
The United States Air Force had several which B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers armed with nuclear weapons on continuous airborne alert, flew on routes from North America to bordering points on the Soviet Union border, at least 2 flights crossing Greenland a day with nuclear weapons for almost a decade. All the route covered or all of the borders of Greenland, the USA and Canada.
A related offshoot saw similar fights go from the USA to Spain, Portugal, Malta and Italy in the mid to late 1960's.
Accidents[]
- 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash
- 1961 Yuba City B-52 crash
- 1964 Savage Mountain B-52 crash
- 1966 Palomares B-52 crash
- 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash
- NATO command structures and HQs