Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be human beings if ya didn’t have some pretty strong feelings about nuclear combat. But I want ya to remember one thing, tha folks back home is a countin’ on ya, and by golly

Third Draft 91,530 words

April 3, 2001 422,401 characters (without spaces)
Filename: SAC305.doc 520,237 characters (with spaces)
Introduction
World War II left in its wake a conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union that quickly escalated into what became known as the “Cold War.” Toward deterring aggression, the United States built a vast nuclear arsenal, most of it under the control of the Strategic Air Command. The Soviet premier banged his shoe on the United Nation’s podium and screamed wildly at the American ambassador, “We will bury you.” SAC had over a thousand jet bombers that dared them to try. Tensions peaked in October, 1963 when the Soviets placed nuclear tipped missiles in Cuba and aimed them at the U.S. Leaders of the two nations pushed “brinkmanship” to the limit and brought the world perilously close to nuclear holocaust.

Years later, scientists prophesied that a greenhouse effect would have resulted from such a confrontation. A carpet of ash and debris would have orbited the globe and blocked out sunlight. All plants would have died and this cataclysmic disruption of the food chain would have eventually destroyed all life on earth.

I served in SAC’s 380^th Bombardment Wing from September, 1961 to January, 1964. It was a traumatic time. The Cuban Crises – that infamous week of constant terror - was but one incident in the overall experience. Long-established social traditions were being torn apart by the Civil Rights Movement. The birth control pill had unleashed a sexual revolution that challenged, nay attacked, traditional moral and religious values. America’s youth were dropping out of schools and “tripping out” on illegal drugs. The nation was becoming increasingly entrenched in the quagmire of Vietnamese jungles. Our President was murdered! It was as if our world was not only being turned upside down, but was being shaken like a cheap cocktail in a sleazy bar.

Throughout this chaos, America’s nuclear armada was on a hair trigger. SAC represented that it’s complex command and control systems precluded the possibility of an accidental nuclear war. SAC said it was “Fail Safe,” but that just wasn’t true. There was always the threat of an electronic or mechanical malfunction and the ever-present risk that the unrelenting pressure would cause someone to panic and “push the button.” In 1965, a few months after his retirement, our former wing weapons officer, Col. Bill O’Reagan, prophesized that an accidental nuclear war was inevitable. The movie Doctor Strangelove depicted the beginning of such a war. It’s writer and director, Stanley Kubrick, said, “I suspect that few planets survive their nuclear age.”

During the 1970’s, tensions eased and both sides began a process of gradual disarmament. The next decade saw the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. SAC dismantled many of it’s missiles. Almost all of it’s bombers were placed in storage or scrapped for their metal. One-by-one, it’s bases were closed. In 1992, the Strategic Air Command was officially disbanded. It was the end of an era.

The Strategic Air Command is now history and there have been a rash of books about its aircraft, its weapons and it’s role in world events. This is fitting and proper, as these things need to be recorded for posterity. Surprisingly these books avoid the subjects of nuclear weapons and nuclear combat, which is what SAC was all about. It was like writing about great chefs without ever discussing food. The authors bragged about the technological achievements - the airplanes, missiles and control systems, but failed to acknowledge that they were nothing more than the means to an end - the destruction of an enemy. It was to be achieved by the wholesale annihilation of cities and military targets, which would have resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of innocent people. At most, these books contain a few isolated references to weapons, but generally in the context of an aircraft’s payload.

This was an enormous omission. The real story of the Strategic Air Command is the interplay of it’s men and their machines, played against a background of political and cultural upheaval under the foreboding clouds of nuclear holocaust. They had to reconcile an inherent revulsion to becoming mass-murderers with their duty to protect family, friends, and the American way of life. They were able to do that because the primary mission of the Strategic Air Command was not to fight a war, but rather it was to deter one.

Today the SAC museum maintains, “The Cold War didn’t just end … it was won.” For many years SAC’s motto proclaimed, “Peace is Our Profession.” It’s mission had been fulfilled. Our planet survived the most trying moments of it’s nuclear age and without question it was the single greatest threat that mankind has ever experienced. The men of SAC had to endure the day-to-day experience of actually fighting the Cold War, the only war ever won without a shot being fired, but one that changed the world.

If there is a place where such men are immortalized, then SAC’s airmen will join the Americans who defended our beliefs and our way of life on the rolling hills at Lexington-Concord, the thickly forested wilderness near Fredericksburg, the muddy trenches of Verdun, the expansive waters of the Coral Sea, the blood-drenched beaches at Normandy, the flax-filled skies above Germany and countless other places where their presence made a difference. Such men helped create the world that we enjoy today. Everyone who served in the Strategic Air Command has his own stories to tell. These are mine.
* * *
As a life-long genealogist and historian, I’ve often wished that I could know more about my ancestors. Public records reveal little more than basic facts. My ancestor James Broyhill fought Indians in Kentucky and later served with the Virginia Militia at the Battles of Camden and Yorktown. I know the dates and major events, but nothing of the details. What was it like traipsing through the vast, unexplored Kentucky wilderness? James watched General Cornwallis surrender his army, ending the American Revolutionary War. Did his small role in launching our nation fill him pride, or was he just thankful to have survived the war? My maternal great-grandfather, George Washington Hubband, was one of Pickett’s men, who made the infamous charge at Gettysburg. How did he and his comrades feel during that long slow march across the field toward the gaping mouths of waiting Union cannon? My grandfather, whose name I bear, strung the first telegraph lines across Alaska while still in his teens. In his later years, he used to tell stories of mushing his dog team down the frozen Yukon River, but I never heard any of them. I have often wished that the details of these events and many more had been preserved.

Some day my sons and their descendants may want to know to know such things about me, so I decided to provide them with a brief account of my life. My experiences in the Strategic Air Command had a tremendous impact on everything that followed, so I began by simply relating a few anecdotes. One memory led to another and the story began expanding. I was very surprised that the memories of events that happened so long ago were so vivid, but soon realized that it was the result of the events being so intense. You don’t forget them.

When I was about seventeen, I vowed that when I became old and decrepit, rocking back and forth on the veranda, I was not going to look back on my life and say “I wish that I had done this.” or “I wish that I had done that.” I wanted to live life to the fullest and I have always strived to do just that. While in SAC, I enjoyed the benefit an incredible broad range of experiences, ones rarely, if every, experienced by my contemporaries. They provided me with many different perspectives. It’s been over three and half decades since I departed the Strategic Air Command. The intervening years have increased my knowledge, broadened my perspectives and led to more objective understandings. The process of researching and writing this work inevitability led to questioning the wisdom of our nation’s cold war posture. Was it really necessary for us to build a force that could have destroyed the world? Or was it insanity? Were the men of SAC filling a very real need or were we the victims of propaganda?

The primary purpose of this work was and is to share my experiences with my sons and their descendants. Several friends proofread it and urged me to publish it, maintaining it’s a valuable historic account of the Cold War, as I knew it. I might follow their advice. But regardless of who my eventual readers are, I hope they benefit from the effort.

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