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AF controllers bailed Reagan out more than you can admit to yourself.

"I can GUARANTEE you that NO AF controllers worked any traffic positions at any ARTCC in the country during the strike period"

You're so wrong that it isn't even funny.
At Seymour Johnson AFB, when the planes showed up to take our controllers, our manning before the strike was about 105 counting management.
Of the roughly 80 people assigned to the Rapcon, we lost 35 that day,
and we had 10 more that left within the next two weeks from the Rapcon.
In addition to that, center delegated to the Rapcon more airspace and a corridor to Dare County Range, as well as Dare County Range.
The ceiling went from 12,000 feet to 18,000 feet, and the borders expanded another 50 miles to the north, east, and south. Then the corridor from Seymour's airspace at 15,000 to 18,000 was a 15 mile wide route to Dare County Range.
All of this on half the controller force, the Rapcon previously had.

Tower manning was 25 people, counting the office staff.
We lost 11 controllers, not trainees, mind you, but fully rated controllers.

Part of these controllers went to ZMA and some went to ZFW.
Some went to SDF. Some went to TLH.
And they didn't return for more than 6 months, and that was only to visit their wives and children,
and some relocated them to their FAA station, after their two day visit home.
Most were stationed at FAA locations that more than doubled their housing cost, and the reimbursement money was very slow from the finance office.

There were many other locations that our controllers were disbursed to, but I can't remember them, now.

After a year and three-quarters, we only got two of the controllers back, and one of those two caught an assignment to a remote overseas location (he had just reenlisted a week before the strike).

As our disbursed controllers ended their contract with the AF, we were tasked to send replacement controllers to those sites, even after our controller that timed out of the AF stayed at that FAA location, and didn't miss a day of work.
The controller just tripled his salary with the FAA pay.

Yes, the USAF rescued Ronald Reagan by keeping the airways safe and expeditious, when the FAA Union turned it's back on the United States.

Again, NOBODY bailed Reagan out. He took his decision knowing there were two possible outcomes, both of which he was comfortable with.

One, the system would perform well enough not to hurt the economy, or

Two, if needed, he was prepared to Federalize ATC. No fuss, no muss.

The facilities you mention were not a big worry for the FAA...it was Chicago, PATCO knew it, and exerted immense pressure on their members to go out and stay out, and they did a damned good job of that. Out of 479 members at ZAU, only 14 did not walk out, or made it back before the deadline. I was one of 8 non-members, naturally we all stayed.

The architect of FAA contingency plans was Bob Thorne - he and Helms spent a LOT of time at the center, briefing us and asking what we needed. We learned a LOT of stuff that was never given to the press, including the Federalizing option.

Many of the approach controls we worked with expanded greatly to take some pressure off us. This included altitude expansion, as well as lateral so as to butt up with other approaches, allowing what was called 'tower enroute', where aircraft could fly fairly long distances without needing to contact the center. This was all done to allow the center to concentrate more on the higher traffic, which is where the most commercial traffic was.

On Monday, we ran 3,000, Tuesday 3,300, Wednesday 3,600 (normal avg was about 7,000), and management would not let us go any higher, as they were concerned about us burning out over time - probably a good call, but it pissed us off.

Helms and Thorne made it very clear to us that due to that extremely high percentage we lost that we were THE facility that MUST hold up. They said that due to the recession and much lower percentages of strikers elsewhere that other facilities were not of concern as to keeping the system running.

We got TDY controllers from JAX, FTW, MEM, STL, MIA and ABQ centers. Boston and NY got a few, but nowhere what we did.

Again, NO AF at Chicago...it was tough enough training experienced enroute controllers from other facilities to get them checked out on two or three positions to make them usefull, ain't no way we could take the time to train a tower type from the ground up.

In conclusion....bailed out Reagan???...my ass.