Where they were

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Volumn 55, Issue 6, 1999, Pages 26-35

  Norris, Robert S ^a   Arkin, William M ^c   Burr, William ^b  

^a NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL   (United States)

^b National Security Archive   (United States)

^c NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0038224234     PISSN: 00963402     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2968/055006011     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. The History was prepared by the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy) and is dated February 1978. One of the authors first requested it in 1985 and received a 182-page version, heavily redacted. In 1994 an appeal was submitted to the Pentagon for a more careful line by line, word by word, review. This lengthy process has resulted in the current 332-page version, 150 pages longer. In response to the first request the Pentagon chose not to supply a 36-page bibliography and nine appendices totaling 114 pages, an action clearly against the regulations of the FOIA. Portions of the document are on the National Security Archive Web site and the full document is available in the Office of the Secretary of Defense's FOIA Reading Room, Room 2C757, the Pentagon.
2. Doris M. Condit, The Test of War, 1950-1953, vol. II, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1988), pp. 463-467;
3. L. Wainstein et al., The Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control and Warning, 1945-1972 (Arlington, Va.: Institute for Defense Analysis, June 1975).
4. Wainstein et al., Evolution, p. 31.
5. The logic of declassifiers is sometimes a mystery. While the History deletes the fact about the Coral Sea, it was published in Wainstein et al., Evolution, p. 31;
6. and in Condit, The Test of War, p. 463.
7. Air Force Safety Agency, Accident Report, August 1950.
8. A diligent Canadian researcher got to the bottom of this story; John Clearwater, Canadian Nuclear Weapons, The Untold Story (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998).
9. The other two were Manzano Base at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico (Site Able), and Clarksville Base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky (Site Charlie).
10. We would like to thank Michael S. Binder for this information about the 43rd Bomb Wing.
11. Ed Offley, "The Day a Nuclear Bomb Fell on Canada," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 30, 1990.
12. Guam, a U.S. territory about three times the size of Washington, D.C., is located 3,700 miles west-southwest of Honolulu. From 1950 to the 1980s it had about 20 types of nuclear weapons. Andersen Air Force Base, located 13 miles northeast of Agana, was an important SAC base for almost 40 years. The 3rd Aviation Field Depot Squadron arrived at the end of May 1951 to assume responsibility for the bombs. Presumably the original deployment a year earlier was to include ten assemblies. After the crash on August 5, 1950, only nine were delivered. These capsules were possibly for the nine assemblies.
13. There were also British nuclear weapons deployed in Germany from the early 1970s until March 1998. Previously the Royal Air Force used U.S. weapons.
14. Roger Dingman, "Atomic Diplomacy During the Korean War," in Scan M. Lynn-Jones et al., Nuclear Diplomacy and Crisis Management (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 127, 139-40;
15. William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 67.
16. For SAC on Guam, see Peter Hayes et al., American Lake, Nuclear Peril in the Pacific (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 85.
17. For nuclear threats and planning during the first Taiwan threats crisis, see essays by Gordon Chang and H.W. Brands, in Lynn-Jones, Nuclear Diplomacy.
18. For Japan as a nuclear base, see Hayes et al., American Lake, p. 76. Hayes and his colleagues correctly inferred that components, not complete weapons, were stored in Japan.
19. The initial deployment was first declassified by the Defense Department in 1992. See Institute for Defense Analyses, The Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control and Warning, 1945-72, p. 3,
20. reproduced in William Burr, ed., U.S. Nuclear History: Nuclear Weapons and Politics, 1955-58, A National Security Archive Special Collection (Alexandria, Va.: National Security Archive/Chadwyck-Healey, 1998).
21. For details on the 1960 treaty, see Robert J. Watson, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, vol. IV, Into the Missile Age, 1956-60 (Washington, D.C., Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1997), pp. 637-638.
22. By researchers Hans Kristensen and Thorsten Olesen.
23. Greenland During the Cold War: Danish and American Security Policy, 1945-68 (Copenhagen: Danish Institute of International Affairs, 1997), p. 18.
24. Harry R. Fletcher, Air Force Bases, vol. II, Air Bases Outside the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: Center for Air Force History, 1993), p. 185.
25. Harry R. Fletcher, Air Force Bases, vol. II, Air Bases Outside the United States of America Ibid., p. 69.
26. Fighter-bombers went on "strip alert" in 1969 to protect U.S. reconnaissance aircraft operating in the South China area. See State Department cable 87660 to Embassy Taipei, May 29, 1969, Record Group 59, subject-numeric files, DEF 15 Chinat.
27. For the pledge, without any information on its timing, see Kissinger memorandum for the President, "Our Future Relationship with the People's Republic of China," n.d. [circa August-September 1974], National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Policy Planning Staff Director's Files, 1969-1977, box 381, President's China Trip.
28. General Haig to the President's Files, August 10, 1971, Nixon Presidential Materials, President's Office File, box 85, beginning August 8, 1971. According to Kissinger, Minuteman missiles were not useful against China because they would have to fly over Soviet territory.
29. Memorandum of conversation, "Call by Ambassador Unger," April 12, 1974, Record Group 84, Top Secret Foreign Service Post Files, Embassy-Taipei, 1959-1977, box 1, file DEF 15-9 Reductions-ROC-1974.
30. An additional reason may have to do with worries about Defense Department liability and lawsuits from foreign nationals claiming health problems from exposure to radiation or other matters.
31. Nuclear contingency plans no doubt still exist. They may include plans to disperse nuclear warheads to additional bases, to place warheads in countries which do not now host nuclear weapons, to fly in more planes, to "recover" strategic bombers and submarines in foreign locations during alerts and operations, to overfly foreign airspace with nuclear weapons, and even to put Tomahawk nuclear cruise missiles back on surface ships and submarines if circumstances warranted.