Posted on 12/25/2015 1:30:51 AM PST by WhiskeyX
Newly declassified documents reveal the extent of Americaâs nuclear target list during the Cold War, showing the U.S. military was prepared to hit thousands of sites in the communist world stretching from Beijing to Moscow to East Berlin.
The 800 pages of documents from a 1956 plan known as the âAtomic Weapons Requirements Studyâ were released by the National Archives and published this week for the first time by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
âAs far as can be told, no comparable document has ever been declassified for any period of Cold War history,â the organization said, while calling the Strategic Air Command study a âchillingâ document depicting plans to attack population centers filled with civilians.
The study includes thousands of targets or âdesignated ground zerosâ -- spanning 1,200 cities.
According to the study, the goal was to undermine if not destroy Soviet air power and that mission was âparamount to all other considerations.â While most targets focused on military, industrial and agricultural centers, they also included populations in Moscow, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), East Berlin, Warsaw and Beijing, among other cities.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Nothing new here....the Soviets had their list of sites in West Germany.
My Dad’s target was Vladivostok. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dad was in VMA-214 in Hawaii. They were going to strap a nuclear warhead on his A-4, then he was going to drop it on Vladivostok.
Was VMA-214 off a carrier?
The nuclear war scared everyone so much that war never happened.
VMA-214 was the old Black Sheep squadron. It was 20 years later, and none of the original Black Sheep were in it. They were stationed at Kanehoe Bay. He may have been placed on a carrier for this, I don’t know.
Thanks....just curious. The other option was air/air refueling. I’ve also read that versions of the A4 were capable of “buddy refueling” so range could be extended that way using one or more buddy-tankers.
True but why is the Obamabastard releasing this now?
Most of this has been known for decades...
Thank God we're still here. It's a game no one would have won.
Does anyone REALLY need to know these things? Certainly our enemies already have such a list and very likely a good deal more. Perhaps the media wants to assist those who would do us harm by suggesting some targets, albeit it is “old” information.
Well, duh.
Nuclear war would have been (would be) Hell. Thankfully, it has not happened yet and hopefully it never will.
It is history. Some people think it is important to document.
It’s not just history, but already well known history. There was another thread on these “revelations” here a couple day ago. Counter-value vs Counter-force targeting being in the public domain dates back to the 1950s; one reason for that is the Government wanted and even put that information in the public domain because signalling how we were going to fight acted as a deterrent.
Was a little surprised that East Berlin was in the list since the US Army maintained a reinforced Brigade in West Berlin, along with about 2000 USAF personnel plus families.
I remember the Weapons’ in West Germany. e had some good times with them. Always in the chem gear when we did our drills with the Nukes! If you ain’t AMMO you ain’t SHIT!!!!!
He wants us to know how evil that was, and that he has corrected it.
All nukes are now aimed at red states........and the Bible Belt........
Would have been hell for the Soviets and Europe but just really bad for the US. Everything I’ve read about a war in the 50’s postulated that maybe a dozen nukes would have hit America. The soviet ICBM force was small until the late 60’s, that’s why Cuba was so important to them. Their bombers would have been the real issue and getting through Canada would have been very hard for them.
A dozen would have been bad enough. Luckily, Communism fell without a major war being waged. While Russia is resurgent, at least they are not Communist. One could almost argue that we are becoming more Communist (Socialist) than they are.
Of course, these days, the Muzzies seem like a bigger threat.
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