“War is hell, Mr. Thornhill, even when it’s a cold one.” A CIA agent spoke these words in the 1959 Cold War spy thriller, “North by Northwest.” The Cold War played out between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1991. All during that time, the United States had a constant fear that the Soviet Union would start an unprovoked nuclear war.
In preparation for a surprise attack, Thomas S. Power, a general in the Air Force and commander of Strategic Air Command (SAC), initiated a program whereby the United States had aircraft equipped with thermonuclear bombs in the air 24/7, in order to provide rapid first-strike or retaliation capability against the Soviet Union. One such operation went by the code name, “Chrome Dome.”
Missions
Operation Chrome Dome began during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s waning days in office, in 1960. By 1964, a recurring mission had a B-52D heavy bomber leaving the Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas, flying northeasterly to New England, and then heading out to the Atlantic Ocean, where it refueled while in flight.It went north to and around Newfoundland, then changed course and flew northwesterly over Baffin Bay (part of the Arctic Ocean) towards Thule Air Base, Greenland. It then flew west across the Queen Elizabeth Islands of Canada. Continuing to Alaska, it refueled again over the Pacific Ocean, headed southeast, and returned to Texas. By 1966, three separate missions were flown: one east over the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, another north to Baffin Bay, and a third over Alaska. Eventually, there were a total of six.
Bombers weren’t the only means of defense against the Soviet Union. In tandem with them, the United States had submarines equipped with nuclear weapons as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Together, these were known as the “nuclear triad.”
A Pilot Remembers
In 1958, at 17 years-old, Bob Connolly received an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy. He received his bachelor’s degree in June 1962, went on to pilot training school near Lubbock, Texas, and graduated in September 1963. During Operation Chrome Dome, Mr. Connolly flew KC-135s, which were the aircraft used to refuel the bombers in mid-flight.The bombers usually had six crewmembers on board, including two pilots. On flights that lasted 24 hours, a third pilot joined the crew. Mr. Connolly volunteered for that position once. “I flew one of those Chrome Dome 24-hour missions and said never again,” he told American Essence. “Cramped quarters, dry air. Made me appreciate my KC-135. 'Tis better to give than to receive fuel.”
At any point during that flight, the crew could have gotten the command to strike a target, obliterating hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. But Mr. Connolly wasn’t thinking about that at the time. “We were more focused on the importance of the mission,” said the 81-year-old. “It’s just the business. We were professionals.”
What if they received an order to go bomb Moscow? What then? “We’d go bomb Moscow,” he said. He feels that the bombers were an integral part of the nuclear triad to ensure the safety of the country. “The idea was to have ′mutually-assured destruction,′” Mr. Connolly said. “By having the potential to do this, the idea was that the other guy would not try to threaten.”
Public Domain
A Navigator Remembers
Ron Poole was in the Air Force Academy’s class of 1962 and then attended navigator training school, graduating fifth in his class. He spent 14 years in Strategic Air Command (SAC). “That was the cream-of-the-crop,” the 85-year-old told American Essence.Mr. Poole flew his first Operation Chrome Dome mission in 1961 as one of the aircraft’s two navigators. “I flew 136 Chrome Domes,” he said. “We were flying 15 percent of the total B-52 force, 24 hours a day.”
The United States had a radar strategically positioned at Thule Air Base in Greenland. Its primary task was to detect incoming ICBMs fired from the Soviet Union over the North Pole. One of the routes for Operation Chrome Dome was to have a bomber above the radar in case communication from it stopped. That way, the military would know if it were under attack or just malfunctioning.
“If we flew the Thule monitor [route], it generally ran about 29 to 30 hours,” Mr. Poole said. “And we would have anywhere from four to six target packages.” An “internal target package” was essentially a one-megaton bomb. An “external target package” was something such as a Hound Dog missile on the wing. “The long-range targets would be very deep into the USSR and then the shorter-range ones were like in some of the satellite countries,” Mr. Poole said.
DEFCON 2
The United States Armed Forces measures its states of alert using a scale called “Defense Readiness Condition” or “DEFCON.” It’s rated one through five, with five being normal readiness for war and one being nuclear war is imminent or has already begun. In October 1962, the Soviet Union stockpiled missiles in Cuba, which President John F. Kennedy found far too close for comfort. For several days, he and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, were at a stalemate.During this period, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, SAC went to DEFCON 2. Mr. Poole and his crew were given a “red-dot message”: the order to bomb a target. This was the only time that he received a red-dot message. Just like Mr. Connolly, Mr. Poole knew that he had a job to do. “You don’t have time to think about what’s going to happen to you because you’re so busy trying to get your job done,” the retired major said. “We were committed, and we knew that if they were committed and we were committed, there wasn’t going to be any place for us to come home to,” he added.
Each target had a “positive control turnaround point,” which was the location nearest a target that offered the last opportunity for a “stop order” to be issued for them to turn around. If they passed that point, the target would be bombed. “We got within 30 minutes of our positive control turnaround point and then we got a stop order,” Mr. Poole said. The experience was harrowing. “You get back home from something like that and then you land and all of a sudden your legs start shaking. You kind of go into a shock mode and you can’t get up out of the seat. You got to wait a few minutes and settle down, get your nerves calmed down before you get out of the airplane.”
Pilots-in-training and identical twins Lew and Len Svitenko (center and far right) at Reese Air Force Base, near Lubbock, Texas, circa 1963. Courtesy of Bob Connolly
Accidents
Throughout its implementation, the Chrome Dome operation was besieged with accidents. In 1961, two B-52s crashed. In 1964 and 1966, there was a crash. In every case, the aircraft had nuclear bombs that needed to be retrieved. But it was the 1968 crash that factored into ending the operation.Len Svitenko was the co-pilot on January 21, 1968. Another crewmember brought onboard some extra seat cushions. A heater malfunction ignited them, filling the cabin with smoke and prompting the crew to eject into the tundra of Greenland. “The six guys in the ejection seats punched out and their chutes opened,” said Mr. Connolly. He believes that Mr. Svitenko was most likely in the lower compartment with the navigators. “He probably tried to dive through the hatch and hit his head,” he said. “Whether that killed him, or he never got to open his chute and the impact with the earth killed him—I don’t know which.”
Mr. Svitenko was 28 years old when he died. He and his identical twin brother, Lew Svitenko, were in Mr. Connolly’s graduating class from the academy. “We could never tell them apart,” he said. Mr. Poole knew the twins as well. “I flew the mission the day before he flew the mission,” he recalled.
In addition to the poor safety record, there were two other factors that brought an end to the operation in 1968. “U.S. early warning systems had improved, significantly reducing the likelihood that the Soviets could land an undetected first strike,” Dave Stewart, a history professor at Hillsdale College in Michigan, told American Essence. “And long-range nuclear missiles had improved, making them the primary mechanism by which we intended to retaliate against any nuclear strikes,” he added.
Pop Culture
There are two classic feature films from 1964 about bombers with thermonuclear weapons.In the drama “Failsafe,” which is based on the novel by the same name, a pilot receives an erroneous command to drop a bomb on Moscow. Rescinding the order proves to be impossible and the president has an unsolvable problem.
In the dark comedy “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” a pilot actually rides the bomb he dropped, waving his cowboy hat and hollering as if he were on a bronco at a rodeo, as it falls to its target.
“I wasn’t gonna do that,” Mr. Poole joked.
Mr. Connolly feels that he and his brothers-in-arms hold a place in Cold War history. “The Strategic Air Command’s mission was, ′Peace is Our Profession.′ And that’s what we felt,” he said. “The mission that we were doing ensured that there would be peace.”
“We never had a war with the Soviets. We never had a nuclear war.”
