The Air Defense of the Continental US in the first years of the Cold War

Review

Share |

When World War II ended in September 1945, the United States of America was the most powerful economic and military country in the world. As the sole possessor of the mighty atom bomb, in possession of the most advance conventional weapon systems in the world and the world power that was the least affected by the destruction of four dramatic years of fighting, the US, confident that peace would reign in the world for at least a decade, started demobilized its massive armed force apparatus and curtails the development of new weapon systems. World events changed all this very quickly. The wartime military relationship that existed between America and the Soviet Union promptly soured. In the years that follow the end of the war, the Soviet regime moved to consolidate its hold on the countries of Eastern Europe. They did not stop there. The Soviets wanted to spread communism to all parts of the globe. After Eastern Europe, they planned to move towards Asia. In America, the US armed forces continued their downsizing in 1946 despite the increasing evidence that Red Russia were continuing to build their military forces. During the early years of World War II, the Soviet Union was forced to move most of its industrial base outside their capital, Moscow. As a result, by mid to late 1940s, they possessed a large, albeit crude, military complex. The Soviets started a crash curse to develop new weapon systems to increase their already massive land and air forces. Gathering information from espionage activities around the world, their own scientific research data and capture of German scientist, the Soviet Union was by mid 1946 in a full rearmament mode. In the meantime, their leaders were moving promptly in securing their country’s position as an equal to that of the United States. Political and military leaders in the West watched these disturbing developments within their former allied with uneasiness.

In March 1946 former wartime British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, gave a powerful and prophetic speech at Westminster Collage stating that: “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across Europe”. He was right of curse. Tension would increment when on October 23rd, 1947, American intelligence officials noted the existence of a high number of Soviet made Tu-4 “Bull” bombers. The Bull was a textbook case of reverse-engineering copy of the huge Boeing B-29 bomber. The Soviets got their hands over a few example of the B-29 when they crash landed on Soviet territory after sustaining damages during bombings runs over Japan late in the war. These bombers gave the Soviet Union for the first time the ability to hit targets in continental America. By the beginning of 1948, all but the essential communication links between the one-time allied had ceased. Then on the morning of April 1st, 1948, the Soviets closed all land access to the divided city of Berlin, deep behind the Soviet Occupation Zone. The land blockade lasted until September 30th, 1949; three days after President Harry Truman informed a stunning nation that the Russian had succeeded in exploding an atom bomb ending the short-lived United State monopoly on nuclear weapons. All these developments, occurring in such a short times span, prompted concern in the ability of the US armed forces to defense the homeland. Accordingly to the times, in 1947, the United States government proceeded to make one of the most overwhelming reorganization of its political and military structure. The War Department, stabled since the incorporation of the Colonies, was replaced with the new Department of Defense. The Army retained all of its ground forces, the Navy retained their assets, but the air arm of the Army became a separated service, the newly and independent military service was the US Air Force. As soon as the new Air Force enters service, it started to flex its political power. It was often at odds with the Army brass over the control of nuclear weapons systems as well as who should be in control of the country’s air defenses. As the 1940s passed and the 1950s began, US weapons development systems were in constant turmoil because of the inter service rivalry that was forming between the three services. Both the Army and the Air Force fought feverish for control over the development and deployment of a surface-to-air missile system, and the three services sought to develop independently long range ballistic missile programs.

The outbreak of hostilities in the Korean Peninsula in 1950 put all the squabbling to rest. The US Army de-activated most components of its artillery department and reorganized them in the newly created Army Anti-Aircraft Command (ARAACOM). The ARAACOM was assigned the task to deploy antiaircraft artillery on sixty six key locations inside the United States as a stopgap until a missile defense system were available. About the same time, the US Air Force was assigned control of America’s ballistic missile research and developing program. In the mid 1950s the Air Defense Command (ADC) became the main strategic command coordinating the defenses of continental United States. With this massive undertaking, the Air Force was awarded a bigger piece of the budgetary pie. Funds were now available for the development of new types of nuclear weapons, new long range heavy bombers and the big prize, the guided long range ballistic missile. The priority of funding went to the research and development of a strategic long range surface-to-surface missile, an offensive missile system. The leaders at the Pentagon envisioned an offensive missile system so powerful that it by itself deterred any possible preemptive nuclear attack by the Soviets. The deployment of these missiles clearly implies the ability of the US to achieve a massive retaliation capability upon the attacker. The role of these missiles and that of their ability to lunch a massive un-surviving counterattack would be discussed during most of the years of the Cold War.

Because the design and development of an operational guided long range ballistic missile system seems to many in Washington as a more technical plausible weapon platform than the development of a comprehensive strategic missile defense system. The decision was made to pursue the offensive ballistic missile system first. Working on the strategic defense system was put on the back burner. America’s strategic doctrine underwent numerous changes during the course of the Cold War. Then, during the 1950s, the Eisenhower Administration pursued a military doctrine that called for a scale back in conventional force military expending and increasing the nuclear strike force in order to make it clear to the Soviet Union that the United States had the weapons and the means to deliver a massive nuclear blow at the Soviet Union if they decided to lunch a first strike campaign. Critics of this new policy, known as New Look, pointed to the administration that there was no assurance that the US arsenal could survive a Soviet nuclear attack. When the new Kennedy Administration took office in 1961, they brought a fresh look at the world strategic situation. Flexible Response was born. This new military doctrine called for a mixture of conventional and nuclear forces, which could be tailor made to threats in a proportionate manner. The success of this new policy would be the backbone of United States Military posture during the next thirty five years.

As the tactical integration of the continental defenses of the United States in the later stages of World War II, the airplane emerged as the main offensive weapon platform. It had demonstrated that its strategic advantage was un-rival at the time. The airplane, specially the bomber, was capable of delivering a heavy bomb payload to far and away locations with devastating effects. This concept was proven over the skies of Spain during the country’s civil war and then over the first two years of the war. But the action that really made the bomber a weapon of fear was the indiscriminating bombing of Dresden, a major German city, in the latest stages of the war. The city’s destruction in just one day is widely recognized as the starting point for the development of the strategic annihilation of a city-wide target. As these developments were taking place overseas, the United States began to develop and deploy Interceptor Commands Units all around the costal areas as late of 1941.These units were a combination of two major assets that were to be re-arrange in order to provide a more reliable antiaircraft system. The first, were the attachment of units of Army Air Forces to Interceptor Command and their deployment near major costal cities in America. Also, on March 1942, the United States Army constituted the Army Antiaircraft Command (AA). The newly created command would have control over all Costal Artillery Anti aircraft Army Units as well as that of the Army’s Interceptor Commands. During the next months, the United States Army develops more advance antiaircraft weapon systems. At this time, rockets were staring to appear as accepted weapon systems. Radar, developed in the early stages of the war, was rapidly becoming a serious method of detecting and tracking incoming targets. When the war ended in Japan on August 1945, the United States had over 331 active AAs battalions world-wide, with around 246,000 troops at their disposal.

On June 1945, Bell Labs, acting on a request from the Army, commenced the development the first integrated defensive missile system. The Army’s first surface-to-air missile system program was based on an internal Army memo suggesting that the United States must not waste any more time in the development, and ultimately, deployment of an advanced radio-controlled antiaircraft rocket system that could protect major cities in America against bombing from the air. The new program was code named Project Nike, after the winged goddess in the Greek mythology. Three months later, with the surrender of Imperial Japan, the U.S. Army started its massive de-mobilization. Most of the active AA units in Europe and the Far East were de-activated and shipped home along with their equipment, the same holds true for the AA battalions in Continental America. The majority of them were de-activated within weeks after the armistice. But the situation would change dramatically in three years. By 1948, the Cold War was over Europe, countries on the east side of the Iron Curtain were engulfed by the Soviet Union, and a new age of terror had arrived. America began a prompt process of re-arming and re-organizing its costal defenses and the U.S. Army re-started its missile development programs that had been shutdown by them after the war ended. At the beginning its was anticipated by high ranking officials in the newly created United States Air Force, that high flying interceptor fighters would be the main layer of defense against massive Soviet bomber formations and first generation Inter Continental Ballistic Missile coming inbound from Soviet mainland bases. U.S. Air Force’s Strategic bombers as well as the Navy carrier base attack planes would also participate in the defense of the continent, but it was clear early on, that a new mechanism of dealing with the bomber and, more importantly, with the offensive ballistic missile; was needed. A missile defense system that could replace the outmoded conventional Anti-Aircraft-Artillery guns was imperative to the defense of America. The three services, Navy, Army and the Air Force, revamped their respected missile development programs with the idea of fielding a continent-wide defense missile platform as quickly as possible. In the end, the Navy dropped out of the running, but the Air Force and the Army would fight for the next two decades over control of the missile systems and its funding. A fight that would make a possible deployment of a workable defense missile system a long and tedious process. The main responsibility for the defense of the United States against bomber attacks was assumed by the Air Force in the early 1950s. The Air Force went on to develop the Defense in Depth Strategy that would form the backbone of the U.S. Cold War continental defenses. The new strategy called for the use of high-frequency early warning radar stations along with ready-for-takeoff interceptor fighters and long-range antiaircraft missiles positioned around the perimeter of the U.S. If these defense system was breached by a Soviet force, the U.S. Army would activated its own batteries of antiaircraft missile systems located around key U.S. industrial and military sites.

In the mid 1960s, the United Stated Air Force was ready to deploy its first advance surface-to-air missile defense system, the BOMBARC. The BOMBARC was to have a 440 mile range of operation but constant problems with their guided system limited the deployment of the system from nation-wide, integrated system to a more regional. On the other hand, the U.S. Army had fielded its own missile defense system since 1953, the NIKE. The initial deployed surface-to-air NIKE system used the Nike-Ajax liquid fueled missile with an operational range of thirty miles as its main interceptor asset. By the late 1958, there were over two hundred NIKE missile batteries in the U.S., primarily defending nuclear research facilities and depots. On December of 1958, the Army began the process of supplanting its Nike-Ajax missile with the more advance Nike-Hercules. The Hercules was a leap forward in the development of a surface-to-air missile. It was propelled by solid-fuel which gave the missile an operational range in excess of seventy five miles. The Hercules was also the first interceptor missile with a nuclear warhead capability. About one hundred NIKE sites were upgraded with the Hercules. Of these facilities, around fifty were redeployed to defend the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command bomber bases. The Air Command was the United States primary source for massive nuclear retaliation after a Soviet attack. The key component of the NIKE system was the advance, early-warning radar. The U.S. Defense Department was committed from the beginning to build a series of interlocking radar stations that would allow the Army to monitor the perimeter and selecting interior parts of the North American continent. The goal of the system was to provide the Air Force and Army with up-to five hours of warning to response in case of a Soviet bomber attack. The U.S. Air Force took the lead in the design, development and deployment of radar systems. The first significant antiaircraft radar platform was the LASH-Up system. It was designed by the Air Force to cover America’s costal centers and major nuclear production facilities. In 1949, LASH-Up radar stations numbered just seven, but by the end of 1951, the system grew to fifty stations. The LASH-Up system was eventually replaced by the PERMAMNENT system, which was to number seventy-four radar locations by mid 1952. The U.S. early warning radar system was supplemented by the thirty four stations of the PINETREE LINE system located across the vast Canadian territory, which in theory could provide the Air Force with two additional hours of warning in a case of a surprise attack.

In the summer of 1957, the U.S. Department of Defense approved the production of its more ambitious early detection radar system, the Distant Early Warning radar line and the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense control system. The DEW consisted of a series of radar stations fifty miles part, stretching along the northern boundary of the North American continent, several miles north of the Artic Circle. In 1962, the system was upgraded to include an imaginary line from Midway Island to Scotland. The DEW radar line was the outmost line of early warning and it was assisted by the MID-Canadian Line, the PINETREE Line, the PERMANENT radar system and the Gap Filler Radar System. By the mid 1960s, the U.S. Navy had joined the club with its ship and air-borne radar picket units. With all of these layers of protection, America was still susceptible to one weapon platform, the intercontinental ballistic missile. The SAGE system incorporated the latest in computer technology to support the estimated fifty Air Force Combat Direction Centers it was schedule to defend. The Combat Direction Center was the predecessor of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD. Its main function was to coordinate all aspects, radar, sensors, the interceptor aircraft squadrons and the antiaircraft missile batteries, of the continental air defense system. SAGE became partial operational in 1958 and was fully deployable in early 1961. Each of the massive 275 ton SAGE tracking and targeting computers were housed on four-story windowless buildings. Because of their immense size and the fact that they needed to be located above ground, they were extremely vulnerable to any air attack. Still, SAGE was the first truly integrated tactical command system in the United States. It linked the Air Force’s Air Defense, Tactical Air and Strategic Command with the Army Air Defense Command and ARADCOM’s NIKE missile system. This capability gave NORAD the necessary resources to detect and track and inbound aircraft coming to the North American continent.

Story By: Raul Colon e-mail:rcolonfrias@yahoo.com