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Strategic Air Command: The passing of an era
By Stanley Brogden
There have been three famous air force organisations — RAF's
Fighter and Bomber Commands and the USAF's Strategic Air
Command. Two of them arguably changed world history: One was the
SAC but it is being scrapped. STANLEY BROGDEN reports.
There would have been no Strategic Air Command if the United States Air Force had
not been founded as a separate and independent service after WW2. The battle for
independence from the Army had been fought from the days when Brigadier-General
Billy Mitchell returned from WW1 after seeing the Royal Air Force's Independent
Bombing Force at work in the last month of that war. WW2 forced the issue of air
force independence largely because of the experience gained in the massive
bombing of Germany, the first time the US flying generals had the chance to prove
the theory that air power could win wars. The Army had military aviation bottled up in
what was called the United States Army Air Corps until June 20, 1941, more than
five months before Pearl Harbor. The US Army Air Forces (USAAF) took over the Air
Force Combat Command and the Office of the Chief of Air Corps. The USAAF was
allowed considerable leeway, more or less on an old boy basis which depended on
the man who was Chief of Army Air Forces, the tough H H (Hap) Arnold. He had to
fight for recognition as a de facto, if not de jure, chief of service like the chiefs of staff
of the Army and Navy. When WW2 ended, the USAAF had 2.2 million people in
uniform, with 64,000 aircraft. Within two years it had shrunk to 1940-strength and
aircraft availability was down to one aircraft in five.
Meanwhile, Arnold had met the great German rocket man, Dr Theodore von Karman
and was sold on the notion of a largely unmanned air force. He also found the
Germans had surpassed the Allies in aircraft design, like sweepback. Arnold decided
on an air force combining jet aircraft and rockets.
Meanwhile, the Army and the US Navy (USN) were fighting in Washington DC; The
Army wanted an independent air force because the USN hoped the country would
back a largely naval strategic air concept because of its wartime miracles with
carriers. The Army knew it could not retain its hold on the USAAF in this light.
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The clincher came at the end of 1945 when the Army backed the politicians' desire
for a Department of Defence, while the Navy rejected it. Truman made his decision a
few days before Christmas 1945. The congressional battle went into 1947, when the
Department of Defence was founded, with three military departments, Army, Navy
and Air Force, as of July 26.
When the USAF came into being on September 18, a curious situation arose. The
USAF was not at first under complete congressional control and surveillance as the
older services were. It had a free hand in organising itself. The organising genius
was General Carl (Tooey) Spaatz, a tough character who had been the commanding
genius of the US strategic bombing of Germany. Spaatz took over from Arnold in
February 1946, and there was no doubt what he wanted and got: Three functional
combat commands — Strategic Air, Tactical Air, Air Defence. Date: March 21, 1946.
(Air Defence Command became Tactical Air Command in 1979, the first variation to
Spaatz's set-up in 33 years.)
Theatre commands, like the Far East Air Forces and USAF in Europe, were also
created. They were entirely operational, getting aircraft for specific purposes from
combat commands at home. All this organisation stemmed from the Truman
Doctrine and the Marshal Plan, which created in two strokes the US responsibility for
world freedom — protection from dictatorships like the Soviet. Truman accepted the
principle that the nation's new task could be performed only by combining air power
and the atom bomb. That combination achieved during the Cold War what warships
of the Royal Navy did in 1815-1914 — no major war.
The USAAF had a magnificent strategic bomber for the Japanese campaign in
WW2, the Boeing, B29 Superfortress, which was not employed against German
targets. It was used in conjunction with the USN's war-winning strategy of
island-taking, which allowed the full scale bombing of Japan.
An advanced version, the B32, was well under way when WW2 ended. In 1940, the
generals, fearing it might take too long to capture the islands, considered a concept
for a very long range bomber to fly non-stop from US bases to bomb Germany.
A few weeks after Pearl Harbor, two prototypes were contracted with Consolidated
Vutlee (Convair) but the project was held up while other aircraft were produced; later
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it was obvious islands would be taken. The idea firmed in 1944 with orders for 100
B36s, with first flight in August 1946.
The Convair B36 was the first backbone of SAC. It had six Pratt & Whitney piston
R-4360-25 3000 hp engines, grossed about 125,420 kg, cruised at 173 kt (top speed
277 kt at 35,000 ft), covering almost 8684 nm with five tonnes of bombs, or 3343 nm
with 35,282 kg of bombs. Had WW2 continued, the B32 version of the B29 would
have been manufactured instead of this giant, so SAC was lucky.
It is difficult now to grasp just what a tonic effect the B36 had on the whole USAAF
and SAC in particular. Great publicity was given to the fact that crew did not walk
through its fuselage — they used a small carriage to drive through a tunnel between
compartments. There were four beds and 16 crew for doubling-up on missions
lasting 34 hr.
The B36 had problems; a later version had four J47-GE turbojets and a gross weight
of 148,780 kg. It could drop a pair of 19,051 kg bombs after flying 2518 nm, or a
five-tonner at 3474 nm. SAC therefore had a true intercontinental bomber with
all-weather, atomic bombing capability in 1949, when the world suddenly looked a
very dangerous place. That was the year the Soviets showed off the MiG15 at their
May Day military show.
The B36 was retired from 1958 but was credited by most US commentators as
having kept the peace in the 1950s, the worst years of Cold War. The B36 was not
used in Korea, where there was no strategic target in the real sense; the B29 could
do what was needed in heavy bombing. It made little difference to the stalemate.
The USAAF ordered its first jet bomber on March 31, 1944 — the Douglas B43 —
with pusher engines, three crew, high-wing, 3629 kg of bombs and a range of 955
nm. It first flew in May 1946.
The first true SAC jet bomber was the Boeing B47 Stratojet, first proposed as Model
482 with a straight wing but quickly changed to sweepback almost a year later in
September 1945. Four GEJ47s producing 5200 lb thrust each, gave it a range of
2605 nm with 4536 kg of bombs. It grossed at 73,71 kg and first flew on December
17, 1947. The B47 didn't make the Korean War either, as production was delayed.
Everyone knew it was SAC's tactical bomber and too costly for a war like that.
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But it did set the pattern for the great SAC strategic bomber which has gone on,
through the Vietnam conflict and the more recent Gulf War, and on — the B52. The
B52 and SAC are inseparable in most people's minds.
The B47 was designed with the German research on sweepback applied for the first
time in the US, only to be denigrated by the RAF and the British generally as only a
second to their lovely Canberra. Frankly, both were workhorses.
The B52 Superfortress was designed from the start to announce to the world (mostly
Moscow) that the world's biggest and most fearsome air weapon was at hand. It was
the foremost expression of sheer air power for many years. Even the original XB52
weighed in at 176,904 kg maximum; the real job was at once past the 181,440 kg
mark. First flown in April 1952, the B52 entered service in June 1955 to create a different atmosphere in SAC. The crews regarded it as a miracle aircraft, what with all
the counter-measure equipment. It suffered none of the bad-mouthing aimed at the
B47 which had problems arising from the fact that it was the first USAF bomber with
sweepback wings. The SAC not only had the B52 but the most heroic US Cold War
personality, General Curtis E LeMay, the cigar-smoking icon of strategic bombing.
He led the B29 bombing of Japan.
LeMay was chunky, strident, deceptively intelligent and able to strut sitting down. He
and Spaatz learned in WW2 that a bomber force must have fighters and reconnaissance aircraft. This resulted in the SAC being a complete air force. LeMay,
the only top commander in history to use the atom bomb in combat, considered it the
ultimate weapon. His strategy forced the Soviets to invest such huge sums in
response that SAC was arguably a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet
economy in the 1980s and hence a prime force in the dismantling of the Soviet
Union. LeMay was the archetype Cold War warrior of the 1950s and 1960s. Largely
forgotten, he must be recalled by historians and given his just due. He was the man
who evolved SAC strategy and tactics.
Of course, times change. In the Vietnam War, SAC was used as a strike force —
B52s were employed against targets which LeMay and his staff would have considered below their dignity. Many people were surprised when the first B52 strikes were
made in Vietnam late in 1965, thinking it was a waste of such a big aircraft. The
theory was to drench the enemy with explosives.
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SAC had come full circle since the days in 1959 when the first official launchings of
SAC Atlas D missiles were made by the 576th Strategic Missile Squadron. It has
been the biggest intercontinental ballistic missile force ever since, another overlooked aspect. Ironically, the passing of SAC comes just as it was time to upgrade to
another potentially great aircraft, the Northrop B2 stealth bomber. Now, even the
ultra-modern bomber is a victim of glasnost, with production cut to a mere 20, which
barely serves to keep the type in being.
SAC has been broken up over past weeks, its combat aircraft going to the new
Combat Air Command via Tactical Air Command. The tankers will be part of Air
Mobility Command, which has taken over Military Airlift Command.
Penetration capability will be provided by CAC wings equipped with Rockwell B1s,
which will give way in part to the small number of B2s later this decade. But the
whole principle of a force armed with heavy bombers carrying nuclear missiles and
containing a vast ICBM component is now an historical fact only.
But what will really replace SAC?
Not even the best minds in the Pentagon know what the world's armed situation will
be even next year. Will the new Russia be a threat under revived hardliners? Will
China in the long-term replace the Soviet Union as a real world power, rejecting the
notion of a world which contains, as it does today, only one superpower?
More difficult to assess is the rise of Moslem power, a new factor in world history
now the former Soviet Moslem nations have been freed and are already discussing
their future with Iran.
Like it or not, Spaatz's concept and LeMay's construction of the US Strategic Air
Force kept us from a WW3 — perhaps the most important single historical fact of the
second half of the 20th century.