The American bomb in Britain: US Air Forces' strategic presence, 1946–64 9781526100658

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The American bomb in Britain

The American bomb in Britain US Air Forces’ strategic presence, 1946–64

Ken Young

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Ken Young 2016 The right of Ken Young to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN  978 0 7190 8675 5  hardback First published 2016 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Servis Filmsetting, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

List of illustrations page vi Preface vii List of abbreviations ix Introduction 1   1 Searching for bases

10

  2 Deploying to England

34

  3 Here to stay?

58

  4 Rehearsing for war

78

  5 Difficult relations

106

  6 A vulnerable island

130

  7 Defending the strategic force

151

 8 Towards atomic partnership

179

  9 Borrowing the bomb

200

10 Consenting to nuclear war

222

11 Strike hard, strike sure … and strike together?

247

12 The asymmetrical alliance

275

Bibliography 287 Index 299

Illustrations

1.1 B-29 radii of action from bases in East Anglia (drawn by Lester Jones). Source: Staff studies of certain military operations deriving from ‘Concept of Operations for “PINCHER”’, 10 June 1946, Appendix A, paras. 8, 9, NARA, RG 218, Geographic File, 1946–47. page 17 1.2 Four East Anglian airfields assigned as forward bases for US strategic forces (drawn by Lester Jones) 20 1.3 The ‘atomic handshake’: Chief of the Air Staff Lord Tedder greets General Carl A. Spaatz on arrival at Northolt in June 1946 (Getty Images) 22 3.1 Major-General Leon W. Johnson introduces Prime Minister Clement Attlee to the crew of a SAC B-50 aircraft during his visit to 3rd Air Force at Marham in September 1949 (Getty Images) 66 4.1 SAC B-47s on alert (US Air Force photo) 85 4.2 A USAF Globemaster delivers the first Thor missile to RAF Lakenheath in 1960 (RAF Museum © Crown copyright 1960) 100

Preface

That this book has come to be written is a surprise, even to me. Having spent decades as a writer on urban affairs, a period of research leave from Queen Mary, University of London, some thirteen years ago gave me the space to explore a longstanding interest in air power in the Cold War years. By the time I joined King’s College, London in 2005 I was already deeply immersed in archival research, re-acquainting myself with those figures whose names – Vandenberg, Norstad, LeMay, Boyle – were so familiar from my boyhood. It is well-understood that through this familiarity, the contemporary historian is exposed to a particular risk, that of over-identification with his or her subjects. I hope the reader will not be misled in this regard by the familiarity with which I introduce the men who appear here – Van Vandenberg, Archie Old, Bim Wilson, Augie Kissner, Jack Slessor, Bill Dickson – and so on. I met none of these figures. My connections were at one remove. I was once introduced to a nuclear-ready B-47 at Greenham Common; then, while writing this book, I discovered that the 1946 meetings to plan the nuclear installations at Sculthorpe and Lakenheath took place in an Air Ministry office, just feet from my own in Aldwych’s Bush House complex. I chose to write about the connections between these officers in the terms, and with the nicknames, they used themselves, in order to capture something of the tone and texture of their relations in that fraught and uniquely dangerous age, the early Cold War. This book had a long gestation period, but I think it is the better for it. However extensive the research on which it is based, there is always more to be said and as this book goes to press my further research on the politics of atomic air power gets under way. Meanwhile, it has been a long wait, and I must acknowledge the patience of my publisher, Manchester University Press, a patience that has been stretched at times. My other, more specific debts are numerous. First, and formally, I thank the following for permission to draw upon three of my previously published papers: ‘Special weapon, special relationship: the atomic bomb

viiiPreface

comes to Britain’, published in the Journal of Military History (77), April 2013 (the Virginia Military Institute); ‘A most special relationship: the origins of Anglo-American nuclear strike planning’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 9 (2), Spring, 2007, © 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Sage Publications for ‘US “atomic capability” and the British forward bases in the early cold war’, Journal of Contemporary History, 42 (1), January 2007. Next, of the many professional staff whose diligence brought vital documents into the light of day I thank those of the Eisenhower Library; of the Truman Library (especially Dennis Bilger and Randy Sowell); and of the Hoover Library (especially Spencer Howard). I also thank staff of the UK National Archives at Kew, the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, the Library of Congress, the United States Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB (especially the ever-patient Tammy Horton); the United States Air Force History Research Office at Bolling AFB; the RAF Museum Library; and the Harvard Law Library. Some help has been more personal and I gratefully acknowledge the kindness of Mrs Marcie Parkes for sharing the harrowing details of her husband’s narrow escape from death when his RB-36 crashed into the Atlantic en route to Britain; Dick Campbell for briefing me on the ‘Silverplate’ programme; Sean C. Kelly for entertaining me on the memoirs of personnel deployed to Britain; Professor Gerry Rubin for sharing his knowledge of the UK Courts martial system; and Bill Burr at the National Security Archive for regular advice over the years. The late Tom Hagler provided a vital detail while Phil Barnes first alerted me to his work on the atomic strike installations at Sculthorpe and Lakenheath, which we followed up in extensive correspondence and a memorable visit to his home in Flagstaff. Two historians, good friends, are thanked for alerting me to documents and for their unfailing attempts to broaden my understanding: Dr Robin Woolven, and Tom Culbert, whose help in the US archives is deeply appreciated. No author can scrutinise their own writing with the rigour it requires, and for that scrutiny, and for the many textual improvements to the manuscript which resulted, I give well-earned thanks to Susan Womersley. Finally, I have to thank my wife, Ioanna, for sustaining me, body and soul, through the long haul to completion and our daughter, Maria Olivia, for the delight of her continual distractions from it. Ken Young Petroupoli August 2015

Abbreviations

AA anti-aircraft AC&W Aircraft Control and Warning ACM Air Chief Marshal AEC (US) Atomic Energy Commission AFB Air Force Base AFHRA (US) Air Force Historical Research Agency AFSWP Armed Forces Special Weapons Project AM Air Marshal AMSO Air Member for Supply and Organisation AOC-in-C Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief AVM Air Vice-Marshal BJSM British Joint Services Mission, Washington DC CAS Chief of the Air Staff CIGS Chief of the Imperial General Staff CINCEUR Commander in Chief, Europe CINCSAC Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command CNS Chief of the Naval Staff CoS (UK) Chiefs of Staff CPC Combined Policy Committee DCAS Deputy Chief of the Air Staff DEFCON Defense Readiness Condition DGO Director-General of Organisation DoD Department of Defense ETO European Theatre of Operations EWO Emergency War Operations, Emergency War Order EWP Emergency War Plan ICBM Inter-continental Ballistic Missile IRBM Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile JCAE Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy JCS (US) Joint Chiefs of Staff JIC Joint Intelligence Committee

x

JPS MDAP MoD MRBM NARA NIE NM RAF SAC SACEUR SHAPE UKNA USAAF USAF USAFE VCAS VHB VLR

List of abbreviations

Joint Planning Staff Mutual Defence Assistance Programme Ministry of Defence Medium Range Ballistic Missile (US) National Archives and Records Administration National Intelligence Estimate nautical miles Royal Air Force Strategic Air Command Supreme Allied Commander Europe Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe UK National Archives United States Army Air Forces United States Air Force United States Air Forces Europe Vice Chief of the Air Staff Very Heavy Bomber Very Long Range

Introduction

[E]ager to get out of Cambridge for a few hours, I bought a Triumph motorcycle and began to ride into the flat countryside to the north of the city, a realm of fens and watercourses that vaguely resembled the landscape around Shangai. Behind the hedges lay forgotten wartime airfields, from which the bombing offensive against Germany had been launched, but there were new and larger bases where nuclear bombers were parked in their fortified dispersal bays. American military vehicles patrolled the runways, and the stars and stripes flew from the flagstaffs by the gates. Chryslers and Oldsmobiles cruised the country lanes, sudden dreams of chromium, driven by large pensive men and their well-dressed wives, who gazed at the surrounding fields with the confident eyes of an occupying power. From their closely-guarded bases they were preparing England, still trapped by its memories of the Second World War, for the third war yet to come. Then the atomic flash that I had seen over Nagasaki would usher these drab fields and the crumbling gothic of the university into the empire of light.

The words are those of J.G. Ballard,1 damaged seer of the new atomic age. As ever with Ballard’s semi-autobiographical writing, recollection cannot be taken at face value, but his dystopian vision brings into focus much of what this book is concerned with. The bleak East Anglian airfields to which the American strategic forces were deployed. The sleek aluminium bombers parked across the concrete aprons (fortified revetments derived from his fertile imagination, coming many years later to the initially ill-protected bases). The American airmen, so often bemused by the detached, bucolic England in which they found themselves. The lurking fear of apocalyptic nuclear assault. How did these things come about? Of the many aspects, sentimental and material, of the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’, the least well-known is that which began with an agreement, in the summer of 1946, to enable the United States Army Air Forces (from 1947 the United States Air Force – USAF) to launch an atomic strike on the Soviet Union from airfields in England. That agreement reflected the a­ ssumption that

2

The American bomb in Britain

conflict between the United States and an expansionist Soviet Union could occur in the years immediately following the Second World War. Given the Soviet preponderance of conventional forces on the continent of Europe, if such a conflict occurred it would be prosecuted by the use of the atomic bomb against the Russian heartland. Agreed informally, seemingly casually, and under conditions of the utmost secrecy that summer, within a few years the decision to permit the deployment of the atomic bomb to Britain locked in British military planners as ambivalent and poorly informed supporters of the United States’ plans. Britain had become, and remained, an important location for the forward deployment of the medium bomber forces of Strategic Air Command (SAC) and, from 1960, the Thor Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile With the introduction of the long-range B-52 and the intercontinental ballistic missile Strategic Air Command was able to strike targets in the Soviet Union from the United States – the Zone of the Interior (ZI) as it was mysteriously known. At that point, the value of Britain as a strategic, as distinct from a tactical, base by the USAF diminished and came to a close in the mid-1960s. This book provides an outline history of that American presence. It deals exclusively with the USAF strategic forces, and not with the tactical elements placed in Britain for a theatre conflict. The distinction between strategic and tactical is blurred at the edges, although Jimmy Doolittle’s succinct adage that that tactical bombing is ‘about breaking the milk bottles’ and strategic bombing about ‘killing the cow’ goes to the heart of the matter. In practice, the distinction was embodied in the types of aircraft available and the tasking of the units to which they were assigned. We are dealing, then, with the presence in Britain of the large, medium bomber aircraft of Strategic Air Command – the B-29 and B-50 Superfortresses, the B-47 Stratojet – and, peripherally, the Thor missile. The work covers the arrangements made for the placement of these forces and the relationships that developed with the British hosts. It is a political, as much as an operational, history. The book has both a method and a thesis. Being the kind of historian that I am, the method came first, and the thesis emerged from it as a result of more than a decade’s collection of and reflection upon a mass of archival material. The particular claim I would make for the method is that it enabled me to bring together two types of source – American and British – that are rarely brought into juxtaposition. There is of course a vast amount of truly excellent published historical research on the United States national security policies, on America’s rise to preponderance as the foremost nuclear power and on the expression of that power through the creation of Strategic Air Command. Equally, British

Introduction

3

researchers have created a field of scholarship in the nuclear history of the UK that is of the highest standard. Yet few have examined the relationship, the interactions and interconnections of these two nuclear histories. I tread in the footsteps of those few. To do so required an open-minded exploration of the archives on both sides of the Atlantic. For the United States, the resources of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at College Park, Maryland and in the Presidential libraries; the Library of Congress; the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama and the Air Force History Research Office at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, DC; the incomparable National Security Archive at George Washington University. In the UK, the National Archives at Kew and the RAF Museum library at Hendon were of obvious importance. Interesting discoveries at any one of these sites led me to pursue its correlative on the other side of the Atlantic, sometimes discovering useful confirmation, sometimes discovering papers that threw a different light upon the same episode, sometimes – more often perhaps – discovering nothing. It would, of course, be a mistake to treat any of these sources as incontestable. The written record is subject to a range of omissions and distortions. Equally, the archived interviews with retired senior officers, used extensively in this book, raise the familiar problems of oral histories. In common with the rest of us, public officials have a propensity to reinterpret their past through the convenient lens of the present. Old Men Forget was the teasing title British statesman and writer Duff Cooper chose for his autobiography. Forgetfulness, though, is less of a problem than the fact that old men remember: they remember partially, both in the sense of incompletely, and in the sense of often glossing their recollections in ways that emphasise their own significance in the events of their time. Bearing these caveats in mind, my inescapable conclusion from the research was that this aspect of the ‘special relationship’ looked dramatically different when viewed through the American and the British lenses. That conclusion, as it emerged from the files, came gradually to shape the thesis that emerged from the research. While it would be a travesty to present this as a story of dominance and submission, it becomes clear that at every stage the initiative lay with the United States, simply because Americans had the clear and unambiguous understanding of their national security interests that the British lacked. The British – ambivalent and equivocal – simply responded to American overtures, sometimes eagerly, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes in apparent absence of mind.

4

The American bomb in Britain

Here, then, is the story that unfolds in the chapters that follow. The book opens with ‘Searching for bases’, and that chapter deals with the initial decision to create an American atomic capability on British soil. The establishment of a US atomic strike capability in England arose from early war planning, and was sought as a vital strategic priority. Success in this endeavour flowed from the informal agreement between the two air force chiefs, Carl A. Spaatz and Sir Arthur (later Lord) Tedder. And the nature of that personal relationship, based on the trust and respect fostered when they worked together during Operation Overlord just two years earlier, was of major consequence. It enabled atomic base rights in England to be gained through an entirely informal arrangement, in striking contrast to those that the United States made elsewhere in the world. Once the deal had been struck between these two former comrades, construction work commenced without delay, and secret nuclear installations were fully operational within two years. Chapter 2, ‘Deploying to England’, explains how, with the infrastructure for an atomic strike in place, a series of visits and deployments by American aircraft followed to build up an accepted presence and rehearse operational procedures. These visits predated the Berlin crisis of 1948, when the much publicised arrival of three groups of B-29s on the East Anglian bases was taken as a token of American determination to defend Europe. Seen as nuclear sabre-rattling, the Berlin deployment was nuclear bluff. That infrastructure was, however, put to use in the next major crisis in the summer of 1950, and enabled the deployment of atomic-capable aircraft, along with 30 Nagasaki-type ‘Fat Man’ bombs, lacking only their fissionable cores, to English bases soon after the outbreak of the Korean conflict. If the order to attack had been given, those last vital components would have been released for immediate transport to Britain. Chapter 3, ‘Here to stay?’, recounts the tangle of logistical, financial and political considerations that materialised as the USAF began to bed down in England. The nature of that presence was shrouded in ambiguity. Was it to be indefinite, or even permanent, as senior American officers envisaged? Or was it just a short-term expedient, as British ministers and officials seemed to hope? In its forceful push to develop new bases for a continuously expanding presence, the United States seemed to provide the answer to that question. From the outset, the East Anglian airfields, close to the North Sea and lying outside the coverage of Britain’s south-east oriented air defence screen, were judged vulnerable to pre-emptive strikes by the Soviet Air Force. Additional locations were required, and through the early 1950s the US developed and further improved a number of centrally located air bases primarily in

Introduction

5

the south Midlands, bringing them up to modern heavy bomber standards, with secure storage for nuclear weapons. In so doing, the financial arrangements for these developments tilted away from equal partnership towards American funding as the UK struggled to pay its way in the world and chose to rely on American largesse. In order to achieve the formidable atomic ‘force-in-being’ that Strategic Air Command became, aircrews and ground crews alike were pushed to the limit. Chapter 4, ‘Rehearsing for war’, shows how combat training and rehearsals, already intense in the period of the initial deployments, became progressively more so as one generation of bomber aircraft gave way to the next. Such was the rapid pace of technical change in the machinery of warfare that SAC’s B-29s, under-­ powered and far from reliable, were soon supplemented, and then largely replaced, by the B-50, a much improved variant of the earlier aircraft. A qualitative leap was made in 1953 with the deployment of SAC’s new swept-wing ­high-speed B-47s, the last medium bomber to be regularly rotated through the English air bases. Deployed in large numbers, and with an increasing proportion poised in alert posture – ‘cocked’ in SAC’s unequivocal terminology – the B-47 represented the fullest expression of the American strategic presence in Britain. It was complemented by the decision in 1956 to deploy Thor missiles across the eastern counties of England. While the original deployments of the big, slow, propellerdriven bombers had not excited much alarm amongst the British public, the public tolerance of the USAF presence now began to fray. The expansion of that presence across yet more airfields in middle England, the arrival in large numbers of the B-47s and the supposition that they would be carrying the new thermonuclear weapons fuelled the fear of a nuclear accident, resurgent anti-Americanism and the emergence, at the margins of public opinion, of a movement of nuclear resistance. Public attitudes apart, Chapter 5, ‘Difficult relations’, deals with the relationships between American and British officers and officials through this period. For some on both sides, the strain of managing the relationship was at times all too apparent. At no point were British concerns about American intentions entirely assuaged. At no point were American concerns about British reliability and commitment entirely absent. The resident command in England was the 3rd Air Division (later reconstituted as the 3rd Air Force), an offshoot of US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE). As the local command, the 3rd Air Division, and its European-based parent, placed a premium on diplomacy and good relations with the hosts. Back in Omaha, SAC commanders saw the relationship with the British as too cosy, insufficiently ‘aggressive’ and as a continuous impediment to maximising the effectiveness of their

6

The American bomb in Britain

strike force. When the 7th Air Division was created within SAC as its British-based operational arm, two major USAF divisions entered a period of what might be kindly described as creative tension. And at 7th Air Division and SAC headquarters alike, impatience with the 3rd Air Force’s carefully nuanced diplomacy spilled over into irritation with the British hosts themselves. The issue of survivability loomed large in the minds of both British and American officials and officers. Chapter 6, ‘A vulnerable island’, recounts the losing struggle to frame plans and deploy forces in a way that would enable the British Isles to be sustained as a forward base in time of war. The Soviet acquisition of an atomic capability, coupled with the rapid growth of the Soviet Air Force’s medium and long-range bomber regiments put a premium on securing USAF bases from attack. Had an attack come, it would have been catastrophic. Highly secret assessments, made both before and subsequent to the development of thermonuclear weapons, established that few would survive and Britain would become, in the antiseptic language of war planning, ‘untenable’ as a base. Unsurprisingly, doubts emerged as to whether the UK would be prepared to accept the risk of annihilation, or instead renege on the alliance. Even before that point, there was little indication that the British government was prepared to commit its own resources to effective defence against such a threat. Chapter 7, ‘Defending the strategic force’, shows that while such a commitment to shared defence was implicit in the acceptance of the US nuclear presence, what Britain was prepared to provide fell well short of the need. The thinly stretched and obsolete RAF air defences required increasing supplementation by American fighter aircraft. British inability to meet the costs of defence ensured that outdated and fragmented radar cover could not be improved. And, the possible vulnerability of SAC bases to sabotage tended to be discounted by British officials. So sanguine was the 1945–50 Labour government about the Soviet threat that it chose to grant export licences for what were then state-of-the-art jet engines to the Soviet Union. Insouciant in the face of American protests, Britain provided the means to power the MIG-15 fighter and the fast IL-28 light bomber, soon to be the principal threat to the UK air bases. USAF officers saw building up the Soviet Air Force while depriving RAF Fighter Command of the best equipment as worse than an abdication of responsibility. Yet British governments, unlike their RAF commanders, continued to rest easy about the air defence of the UK. When the severity of the threat came eventually to be fully grasped in Whitehall, the response was to accept that the British Isles were essentially undefendable, that fighter

Introduction

7

defences squandered scarce resources, and that reliance could be put only on nuclear deterrence. British political perceptions of the importance of the American strategic presence were entangled with the UK’s own nuclear aspirations, as explained in Chapter 8, ‘Towards atomic partnership’. Once the UK began to emerge as a nuclear power in its own right, what had begun as an informal basing arrangement eventually matured into a wider, if still unequal, partnership between SAC and RAF Bomber Command. Successive British governments pushed ahead in pursuit of atomic independence through their own programmes for civil energy and atomic weapons. Their determination to establish nuclear independence was pursued doggedly in the teeth of American resistance to what was seen as a dangerous – because strategically vulnerable – proliferation. American policy was to try to dissuade the British from this development while offering incentives to deeper cooperation through at first tentative, and then increasingly firm, offers to supply American atomic weapons to the RAF. The culmination of this twin-track bargaining was something of a British triumph, with the success of the domestic atomic bomb, and the later thermonuclear programme, prompting the resumption of Anglo-American cooperation. As Chapter 9, ‘Borrowing the bomb’, shows, providing American weapons to the RAF bridged the gap between Britain’s nuclear aspirations and achievement of full operational status as a nuclear power. The weapon supply programme, though, had a long gestation period, bedevilled as it was by implementation problems and coloured by elements of injured pride. For, however deeply valued, there was a sting in the tail of this arrangement. While it was a key element in what British ministers described proudly, if ambiguously, as inter-dependence, making American nuclear weapons available to the British was not unconditional. The USAF and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP) retained control of the hardware and set their own security conditions. British aircraft carrying American weapons were assigned to NATO, and fell under the control not of British ministers, but of SACEUR, the Supreme Allied Commander. The frustration of being kept in the dark about US war plans had tantalised British officials and the Air Staff throughout the early Cold War years. They had foregone the opportunity to forge an agreement about the use of the air bases at the time of the Spaatz–Tedder agreement. Chapter 10, ‘Consenting to nuclear war’, documents the long struggle to rectify the situation and regain influence over an American decision to launch a nuclear strike upon the Soviet Union from British soil. Agreement to share the decision to put such a plan into operation

8

The American bomb in Britain

and so commit the UK to war was not easily secured. While British governments insisted that they should consent to the use of the bases before US forces went nuclear, this aspiration to consent had to be reduced, in the face of American stonewalling, to mere consultation, perhaps to no more than a right to be informed. It took more than a decade of diplomacy before a concordat was reached and the British could claim to be accepted partners in deterrence – doomed, of course, should deterrence fail and war come. There was really only one way of squaring this fatal circle, and that was through full partnership in any such action. Chapter 11, ‘Strike hard, strike sure … and strike together?’, narrates the emergence of joint operations between the two strategic forces, SAC and RAF Bomber Command. That partnership, once established, provided a degree of shared knowledge and interdependence. While rift and reconciliation had coloured the political relations of the two powers during and after Suez, fraternal relations at the military level continued uninterrupted through that period as the two air forces moved progressively towards operational integration. It found most dramatic expression in the joint USAF/RAF control of the Thor missiles placed in the UK in 1960, but by that time collaboration between the two air forces extended to joint strike planning and shared targeting, a closeness that required acceptance of RAF operational integration into the US war plans. Collaboration came close to being tested during that apogee of Soviet nuclear brinkmanship, the Cuban missile crisis. While the decision to launch their nuclear forces would have rested separately with the two governments, there can be no doubt that their two air forces, with their targets pre-allocated and their routeing pre-agreed, would have struck together, realising at last the earliest aspirations of Anglo-American partnership in the atomic age. Such is the sketch of the events covered in the chapters which follow. I am under no illusion that they will be viewed very differently by different readers. Those who harbour prejudices about American global strategy will think them confirmed by that country’s urgent and purposive approach to the exploitation of Europe’s ‘offshore aircraft carrier’. For their part, American readers might be surprised by the confusions and contradictions of British decision-makers in the early Cold War years, by their unreadiness to engage with the facts of their own geo-political location. Consider the contrast: in their preparedness to contain Soviet expansionism through encirclement with strategic bases, the United States demonstrated unambiguous resolve and clear values. While accepting a part in this global role, the British response was nonetheless characterised by equivocation in its expression, by ambiguity of purpose

Introduction

9

and by ambivalent impulses towards both ally and adversary. In that respect, the ‘special relationship’ was profoundly asymmetrical.

Note 1 J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women, London, HarperCollins, 1991, p. 71.

1 Searching for bases

Highest priority should be given to moving the 58th Wing to England … Construction should be initiated without delay to provide bases in the UK for receiving the first five VHB groups. At least two bases should be prepared for handling the atomic bomb. Major-General Frank F. Everest to General Carl A. Spaatz, June 1946

The cataclysm of the Second World War overwhelmed America’s earlier isolationist sentiments and redefined the United States’ defensive boundaries on a global scale. While initial wartime planning for the postwar world envisaged that American air power would be committed to enforce the will of the future international community, even in the closing months of the war US strategic thinking had identified the Soviet Union as a potential adversary. Army Air Force plans envisaged that air power would be needed to contain its expansionist adventures.1 A challenge emerged in the very first year of peace, a year when ‘the contradictions of the Grand Alliance ripened into discord and suspicions congealed into fears’.2 An initial threat to Iran dissolved unexpectedly easily, but was followed by threats to Greece and a far more sinister Soviet posture towards Turkey where Soviet diplomatic demands came close to being imposed by military force.3 Both were vulnerable to Soviet pressure, and Britain, resources exhausted, announced its intention to cease aiding Greece after 31 March 1948. President Harry S. Truman committed aid to Greece and Turkey, insisting that ‘it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures’.4 Stalin backed down in the face of this declared American resolve to put Soviet determination to the test, even to the point of going to war. Thus was born the Truman Doctrine.5 To mount a comprehensive challenge to Soviet expansionism required America to develop and maintain, in the words of Army Air Force chief ‘Hap’ Arnold, ‘those weapons, forces and techniques required to pose a

Searching for bases

11

warning to aggressors in order to deter them from launching a modern devastating war’.6 What he meant by this was clear. As early as May 1945 strategic bombing was envisaged as the principal means of waging war against the Soviet Union should such a catastrophe arise, and its instrument the B-29 Superfortress aircraft which had undertaken the attacks on Japan.7 Decisive in Japan, that aircraft was of limited range in the context of global war. Its effectiveness would depend on just where it was deployed. And that meant finding and developing suitable forward bases. A plan for a world-wide 90-base network was prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) after Potsdam, but severely trimmed back by civilian officials on grounds of its excessive ambition.8 Secretary of War Robert Patterson thought the plan to be beyond the capability of US forces to support them.9 In any event, Army Air Force planning was separately conceived and sometimes at odds with the Joint Chiefs of Staff processes. A more limited Periphery Base Plan, originated by Army Air Force Commanding General Carl A. Spaatz in late 1944, was intended not so much as a means of achieving strategic capability as to simply to encircle Germany and Austria. It would enable the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) to enforce the terms of surrender by supplementing tactical air power resources within the occupied territories with strategic forces outside, at the same time protecting land and sea supply routes and securing over flight rights. Realising these rather curious aims in the unstable military and political environment required the dispersal of strategic forces – at that time, the well-worn B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator heavy bombers – to peripheral locations beyond the occupied areas. Noting the absence of an obvious strategic purpose in this plan, the US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) headquarters commented dryly that ‘the maintenance of strategic air power in Europe was dictated by some national policy unknown to us’.10 Despite these doubts, the plan was finalised in March 1945 and approved by June that year. By that time, however, a number of new factors had emerged not least the difficulty of achieving diplomatic agreement on the acquisition of base rights in France and Italy.

Bases for an atomic strike The end of the war in the Pacific brought about a major change in the periphery base requirements, as the B-29 aircraft – categorised as Very Heavy Bombers (VHB) – became available for deployment to Europe.11 The periphery bases plan was now merged with an upgrade plan

12

The American bomb in Britain

whereby the obsolete aircraft stationed in Europe would be replaced by five groups of this latest type. In October 1945 the War Department sent out an urgent request for information on those bases where B-29s could be placed immediately. The sole criterion was physical suitability – there was no indication of the likely mission of such forces, their best strategic location, or the political implications that might arise. As it was, the French remained hostile to hosting US bases, while those in Italy were considered vulnerable to air attack from Soviet forces in Yugoslavia – the first indications of the politico-military considerations that would soon come to dominate the basing issue. So while the establishment of the original peripheral bases plan might have been achievable in mid-1945, within six months the strategic situation had become more complex and challenging. Stationing VHB units in Europe would do little to encourage Soviet forces to withdraw from those territories they had over-run in the war or moved to occupy thereafter. Rather, they might be encouraged to consolidate their forces there. At this point the countries bordering the Baltic ‘shied violently from such a plan for fear the Russians would not draw back or would ask for similar rights’ while ‘countries which might have favourably considered the basing of [Heavy Bombers] within their boundaries would probably feel entirely different toward the VHB program’.12 By early 1946, then, it had become apparent that much of the original justification of peripheral basing had dissolved: the replacement of the B-17s by B-29s had no relevance to the policing of post-war Germany. Instead, their deployment would introduce a qualitatively different dimension. Their greater range enabled them to strike at targets in Russia, but the threat posed by their unique atomic capability made any potential host country reluctant to place itself in a new front line. By mid-1946, United States military planning had settled on the presumption that conflict with the Soviet Union was possible, and that the huge land army superiority of the Soviets could be held back only by air power. Displaying pessimism of the intellect and an optimism of the spirit, the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that while war with the Soviet Union was unlikely, they could not deem it impossible. They had, then, ‘to be ready to meet contingencies however remote, and as AmericanSoviet relations continued to worsen, planners … began to draw up operational concepts for a war against Russia in case the unlikely came to pass’.13 A Joint War Plans Committee report in January 1946 proposed attacks against 17 Soviet cities, making optimistic assumptions about the availability of atomic weapons and their deliverability.14 The USAAF was far from ready, following the rapid demobilisation – especially of the most skilled men – and the laying-up of thousands

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of aircraft. Indeed, Air Force plans ran far ahead of the capabilities. In February that year an instruction was issued to the USAFE that the strategic concept underpinning the maintenance of US air power depended on VHB units assigned to the occupation forces in Europe, for which a ring of bases was to be sought.15 However, the strains of defending Europe with a substantial USAAF presence and maintaining occupation forces in the conquered territories were showing. Five VHB groups were allocated to the European Theatre of Operations (ETO), but their arrival was not expected before mid-1946 at the earliest. The unstable political situation dictated that forces on this scale should be maintained, but complying with War Department regulations on overseas service meant that in practice the deployment of the bomb groups in particular would be constrained by the shortage of trained ground crews.16 These manpower problems compounded the difficulties of finding suitable bases in Europe, where those under consideration were judged unsatisfactory – not spacious enough, or the runways not strong enough – to serve even as interim bases. Where potential sites could be identified in Italy and Germany, substantial construction would be needed to make them operational for the large and heavy B-29 aircraft. The result of these several factors acting in combination was that American air forces in Europe were by 1946 at ‘an extremely low level of effectiveness’.17 Arguably, the deployment of B-29s to mainland Europe could put the United States in a position that was politically, and perhaps strategically, vulnerable: ‘there is a possibility that the Russians may be waiting for us to stick our neck out in order to chop off our head. It may be difficult to justify the placing of B-29 units in Europe.’18 So the UK, which had hosted a large number of USAAF units between 1942 and 1945, came back into focus. The defensive English Channel, the abundance of recently abandoned bomber airfields and the popular acceptance of American military forces were major factors in turning planners’ attention once again to England. Of greatest importance was strategic location, for this offshore island provided the optimum combination of strategic reach and defensibility. A June 1946 planning document listed 30 Soviet urban-industrial complexes within range of B-29s flying from English bases.19 Important under any circumstances, these locational factors were lent over-riding importance by the presence of the atomic bomb in the United States’ armoury. The atomic-capable B-29 differed in important respects from the other aircraft in the USAAF inventory. In early 1946 there were just 27 B-29 aircraft modified to carry the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb. They were equipped with the latest fuel injection engines, reversible propellers,

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and (rather unreliable) radar bombing equipment and had extensive strengthening and other modifications.20 Converting the aircraft had entailed extensive structural and electrical modification, including the installation of pneumatically operated bomb doors, all amounting to more than 6,000 man-hours work per aircraft.21 A sufficiency of these aircraft, initially coded ‘Silverplate’, could not be conjured into existence at short notice. Nevertheless, within months of the Japanese surrender, moves were afoot to develop an atomic strike force of four bomb groups, to incorporate the original, the 509th Composite Group, which had been formed specifically to carry out the atomic attacks on Japan. Deputy AAF Commander Lieutenant-General Ira C. Eaker considered it an error to designate any wing as an atomic striking force: ‘would it not be better’, he asked, ‘to have all our long range bomber units employed for this purpose?’ His reasoning, at a time of fierce dispute over Air Force expansion, was presentational and political, as ‘we are very likely to find the attitude of the War Department and of the Congress to be that the atomic bombing force is the only Strategic Air Force we require. If one wing will do the job, then one wing will be the size of the strategic force.’22 For this reason, when the initial shape of the strike force was decided in January 1946, it was agreed that ‘the designation special and/or composite was deleted from all reference to the groups which will be handling the atomic bomb’, and ‘no official publication will reflect the peculiar status of these squadrons’.23 In June 1946 the 58th Bombardment Wing was established as the initial element of the USAAF atomic strike force. Major-General Curtis E. LeMay, Deputy Chief of the Air Staff for Research and Development, defined the mission of the 58th Wing ‘and other Wings to follow is … to be capable of immediate and sustained VLR [Very Long Range] offensive operations in any part of the world, either independently or in cooperation with land and naval forces, utilizing the latest and most advanced weapons’.24 In line with standard USAAF organisation at that time, a wing was a larger entity than a group, although this hierarchy was abandoned in part from 1947.25 At this point a wing would comprise three groups of four squadrons each. The aim was to establish the 58th Bombardment Wing ‘in a constant state of war readiness’.26 Permanent bases at Forth Worth, Texas, Roswell, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona were assigned.27 The 509th Bombardment Group, formerly the top secret 509th Composite Group, became the nucleus of this atomic strike force on its return from the Pacific theatre. In the event of war, attacks could be mounted in a number of ways, with atomic bomb carriers flying as part of a conventionally armed VHB task force in daylight conditions, as individual aircraft operating at

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night or in poor weather, or in massed night attacks. The larger context for these operations was the war planning process PINCHER, which at that time – June 1946 – was predicated upon strikes made against the Russian centres of population and industry. A plan for the 58th Bombardment Wing’s world-wide deployment was drawn up: When an emergency arises which requires the deployment of the atomic elements, any one or all of the four groups would be immediately moved to suitable operating bases where they would normally become part of a standard VHB wing or task force. These organisations could and should be completely airborne, provided the essential base functions such as maintenance, housing, messing and general supply are already established … The supply of atomic bombs may not move at this time but will remain in the United States until such time as they are to be actually used against the enemy. A transport squadron assigned to and operated by the wing headquarters will be charged with the transportation of the atomic bombs when required and with the movement of other scientific and highly trained technical personnel and equipment as required.28

A plan is but a plan. The realities of delivering on this plan were very different. A massive attack on the Russian industrial heartland, using long-range aircraft to deliver 196 Nagasaki-type ‘Fat Man’ atomic bombs accurately on target lay beyond the reach of the USAAF at this stage. It was 1947 before these far from realistic assumptions, set down by planners ‘sitting around highly polished tables and talking of dreams’, were formalised into an ‘overall strategic concept’ to which the immediate use of atomic assault was central.29 The concept was then embodied in a series of Emergency War Plans (EWP), the first of which, BROILER, spelled out its dependence on forward bases for such a campaign, with England offering the best prospect for launching the required massive air offensive.30 Carl Spaatz was later to admit that when the initial programmes for the size of organisation of the post-war Air Force were drawn up, the significance of nuclear weapons had not been fully appreciated by the planners.31 Kenneth Nichols, then deputy to General Groves at the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP), confirmed in early 1948 that the atomic aspects of BROILER could not be implemented as they assumed the use of weapons and personnel units ‘not presently in existence’. A more realistic plan – or rather enhanced capabilities – were needed.32 Inescapably, the newly formed United States Air Force came under stringent criticism for its inadequate preparation for atomic warfare. Originally, the Army Corps of Engineers at Sandia provided the

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e­ngineering support for Los Alamos, with ordnance work undertaken at nearby Kirtland Field at Albuquerque, New Mexico. With the incorporation of the AFSWP at Sandia in March 1947, a major training programme in weapon preparation, assembly and testing was developed by Sandia’s Z Division. Re-designated as Kirtland Air Force Base (AFB), adjacent to the Sandia base to which the weaponeers were relocated from Los Alamos, Kirtland was being expanded as the facility for developing and proving air-dropped atomic weapons and converting the aircraft that would use them. A good deal of development work would be required. The Inspectorate-General of the USAF launched inspections of Kirtland AFB in order to evaluate the readiness of the Air Force with respect to these weapons. The operation, as Nichols had indicated, was in some disarray, and inspectorate reports were coruscating. Summarising their findings Major-General Hugh J. Knerr, a much respected and technically aware veteran officer, now in his final post as Inspector-General, warned Chief of Staff Vandenberg that ‘the Air Force is not competent at the present time to perform its function as the primary agent for the delivery of the atom bomb’. This was largely due to ‘an incredible lack of initiative’ in USAF headquarters towards ‘establishing and maintaining our position as the chosen instrument for the waging of atomic warfare’. Kirtland, intended as ‘the epicentre of contact between the Air Force and the AEC’, was instead ‘a sorry spectacle of neglect in both materiel and personnel’. The lack of Air Force input into the development of the atomic bomb had resulted in a bomb with unsound ballistics, unstable non-nuclear mechanisms, unrealistic storage plans and logistic arrangements that were vulnerable to sabotage. Moreover, ‘the capabilities of air force atom bomb aircraft do not meet the maximums claimed for them in recent public discussion’.33 The problem was not just one of the high-level input on the part of Air Force personnel; technicians had yet to be trained, as the Air Force had none trained and capable in the required highly intricate engineering. The first weaponeers, recollected one of them, were Army engineers.34 These technical, training and manpower difficulties took time to resolve. At the same time, the nascent atomic strike force faced great uncertainties as to their access to, and prior preparation of, bases that might be used for this purpose.35 A safe location for the atomic force was crucial. In mid-1946 US forces in Europe seemed especially vulnerable: Since the Russian ground forces are capable of overrunning almost immediately, the US occupied zone. Such action by Russia would leave us the alternative of extricating or losing our occupational forces. This presents a difficult problem with regard to basing the VHB groups.36

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1.1  B-29 radii of action from bases in East Anglia (drawn by Lester Jones).

This vulnerability was offset only by possession of the atomic bomb. A 1946 ‘concept of operations’ study by the joint war planners presented England as ‘the keystone of at least the initial air efforts against the USSR and her conquered territories of western Europe’ and urged that ‘as soon as it is diplomatically possible an air mission should be sent to England for the primary purpose of making the necessary arrangements’ for construction and commissioning of facilities. An accompanying map (Figure 1.1) showed the radius of operations for B-29s flying from what appeared to be East Anglian locations.37 General Carl A. Spaatz, to whom fell the task of securing the necessary bases and arranging their preparation, was briefed by Major-General Frank F. Everest, air member of the Joint Chiefs planning staff, on the

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necessity of ‘build[ing] up the VHB strength in the UK for prosecution of strategic air warfare’: Highest priority should be given to moving the 58th Wing to England … Construction should be initiated without delay to provide bases in the UK for receiving the first five VHB groups. At least two bases should be prepared for handling the atomic bomb. In addition, bases for the three additional groups which can be deployed by D+1 should be sufficiently prepared beforehand to permit completion between D-Day and D+1 of minimum construction required for VHB group operation.38

Putting this wish-list to the British authorities was a daunting prospect, given the State Department’s earlier unwillingness to sanction a worldwide base network. That ‘spineless’ attitude and the State Department’s apparent reluctance to remind the British authorities about ‘our great contributions to them’ for which ‘we expect their cooperation’ were the subject of bad-tempered complaint.39 Hence the greater confidence placed in military-to-military relationships, at this crucial juncture and for many years after, as the more dependable route to securing the infrastructure for strategic operations.

The base requirements Two key requirements shaped the search for suitable bases in England. The first was the availability of sufficient runway length and strength, together with suitable taxiways and lines of approach. The B-29 was a large, heavy and initially underpowered aircraft. Loaded with the fiveton Fat Man bomb in the forward bomb bay, its operation presented a challenge. An initial requirement of 150-foot-wide, 7,000-foot-long runway with 1,000 feet clearance at each end and the ability to bear the weight of a 120,000 lb aircraft – that meant at least 15 inches of concrete slab – was a bare minimum. Even the later, far more powerful B-50 version of the aircraft, deployed with atomic weapons during the 1950 Korean emergency, struggled to get airborne in operational conditions. A USAF weaponeer recalls: The B-50 was designed to take off at a maximum weight of 175,000 pounds; the first B-50 that loaded out for deployment from Kirtland exceeded that weight by 17,000 pounds … The B-50 could take off at Mildenhall [Suffolk] with a Mk. IV weapon on board, provided there was a tanker waiting to refuel immediately after take-off, the runway was too short for a B-50 to take off with even a half load of fuel. Lakenheath Air Base was adequate, Schulthorpe [sic] Air Base was adequate.40

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The second requirement was the presence of the special atomic bomb infrastructure, something that would need to be developed from scratch in a new location, using the system developed at Wendover AFB, Utah, and installed in the Marianas for the attacks on Japan. Suitable bases, then, were not easily found. St Mawgan in Cornwall was initially listed as the only airfield capable of supporting operations by B-29s although its location in the far west of England would scarcely have made it a feasible base. Location in East Anglia was preferred. Other sites mentioned purely on grounds of their runway length – Heathrow was one, Bovingdon another – were unsuitable on other grounds, including their proximity to the capital. In practical terms, deployment to England could be to the only bases in eastern England – Sculthorpe, Marham and Lakenheath – that already had the 8,000-footlong, 200-foot-wide runways required by a laden B-29, having been extended and strengthened after D-Day, when it was anticipated that B-29s would be flown against Germany.41 Mildenhall and Waddington were included later, but only those three were deemed suitable for war operations by a joint USAF–RAF working group in July 1948. The sites were not visited, and the study group were seemingly unaware that Sculthorpe and Lakenheath had already been identified and actually developed as locations for the bomb preparation and loading facilities required for the launch of an atomic air campaign.42 A second joint study followed to determine the construction requirements at Marham, Lakenheath and Sculthorpe and to survey other potential B-29 bases as well as determine locations for five fighter stations. The group considered 105 airfields and concluded that 23 were suitable for extension for B-29 use. The criteria were exacting. A B-29 group when deployed would involve 4,000 men supporting 30 aircraft with combat loads for an indefinite period. Runways, night lighting, dispersal areas, maintenance areas, fuel storage and distribution, ammunition storage, crash-fire facilities and equipment, housing, electric power, mess facilities and hospital facilities were all included in the review.43 The physical capacity of runways and these other infrastructure facilities were just starting points for developing a base for atomic operations. Handling the atomic bomb required not just specialised storage but also specialised assembly workshops. The procedure at that time was to assemble the bomb from crated components that would be flown to England by cargo aircraft. Early atomic bombs required the nuclear component (the plutonium capsule) to be kept separately from the non-nuclear component and mated before use. The deployment of the B-29s to overseas bases required the largest element of the bomb, the non-nuclear component, to be immediately available on site to facilitate

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1.2  Four East Anglian airfields assigned as forward bases for US strategic forces (drawn by Lester Jones).

assembly at short notice. By 1950 a new and simplified assembly process had been developed, which proved more effective than shipping crates of bomb components to England for testing and assembly there. Instead, components would be tested and bombs assembled in the United States and flown to England, complete but for their fissionable capsule, in the bomb bays of B-29s. The next stage in the procedure would be for a US Army Forward Assembly Team (FAT) deployed from the AFSWP at Sandia base to unload and check each bomb, before handing it back to the USAF ground crew to be loaded on to a B-29.44 These improvements lay in the future. The method of operation in 1946 required extensive facilities and complex test equipment at the

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assembly area. Preparation required assembly to exacting standards and the testing, by high speed camera, of the simultaneous firing of the 32 detonators that would set off the high explosive that surrounded the plutonium capsule, so achieving critical mass by compression. This assembly and testing was to be done in a specially built, air-conditioned workshop building. As the officer who played the key role in finalising the workshop preparations explained to the author: My memory says that some of the Forward Assembly Team equipment, if not all electrical items, operated on [30 volts] DC. It was necessary for the Flight Test Box to operate on the B-29 electrical system during flight. The [box] was also used as part of the testing system during assembly. The battery charging equipment required that input. To obtain that, I went to Burtonwood to find the variable transformers needed to obtain a full 30 volts in the newly installed DC system.45

Once assembled and tested, loading an atomic bomb on to a B-29 remained a highly complex and unwieldy process. The aircraft, very large by the standards of that time, employed a tricycle undercarriage, and accordingly sat low on the ground, with insufficient clearance to install the 5 foot diameter bomb. The solution was to excavate a pit 8 feet deep, line it with concrete and install a hydraulic ramp, similar to that used in garages for servicing motor vehicles. Mounted on a specially designed trolley, the bomb would be wheeled into position on to the ramp, detached from the trailer and lowered into the pit. The aircraft was then rolled into position over the pit and the bomb lifted into the bomb bay by means of the hydraulic ramp.46 The machinery was developed by the Joyce-Cridland Company of Dayton, Ohio, and the complete kit comprised a number of separate parts that had to be installed within the pit. Power for the lifting operation was provided by a separate compressor building erected close to the pit, but with sufficient distance to allow the aircraft’s wing to clear it when manoeuvring.47 A variant of the loading technique involved the use of a turntable to assist the aircraft to rotate into its exact position over the pit, ensuring greater accuracy and considerable time-saving.48 Turntables were not installed in England. Apart from the pits, hoists and other equipment, a compressor building, assembly workshops and specialised storage were required. Adaptation for atomic operations in England therefore required a considerable amount of construction work, which would have to be accomplished under conditions of the strictest secrecy.

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1.3  The ‘atomic handshake’: Chief of the Air Staff Lord Tedder greets General Carl A. Spaatz on arrival at Northolt in June 1946.

The ‘atomic handshake’ Arthur Tedder and Carl Spaatz were wartime colleagues from Operation Overlord days and had continued their warm regard and mutual trust as they each assumed command of their countries’ air forces.49 Tedder, who continued to press the case for Anglo-American cooperation while hoping to avoid ‘complete subservience’ to American interests, hosted a tour of RAF stations for his former comrade. Spaatz had been charged with finding the atomic base facilities in England. His route to achieving this was through informal meetings with his old colleague.50 The stress on informality, person-to-person diplomacy and wartime comradeship

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through which this vital aim was achieved is captured in the Reuters photograph of Tedder greeting Spaatz on his arrival at RAF Northolt to discuss the American base requirements – the ‘atomic handshake’, as it were (Figure 1.3). It is clear from the war plans and basing plans that the acquisition of atomic strike facilities on at least two British airfields was a matter of high policy for the Americans from early 1946. Whatever Tedder’s brief – if indeed he had one – Spaatz was charged with acquiring immediate base facilities, and in a form that would permit the use of atomic air power in time of war. Their close personal relations enabled confidential negotiations to be quickly concluded, but they did not originate in that friendship. The first meeting between Spaatz and Tedder took place over the period 25–28 June 1946, with just Major-General Clayton Bissell, US Air Attaché in London, present. The two principals discussed a study which had been undertaken of bases required for long-range bombers and Tedder arranged for Spaatz to receive it through Colonel Don Z. Zimmerman, the US assistant air attaché.51 Tedder also offered to make available one of the RAF’s most senior officers, Air Marshal Sir Leslie Hollinghurst, the Air Council Member for Supply and Organisation (AMSO), to confer with an American specialist who would be detailed to visit London ‘regarding RAF landing fields in England required for execution of U.S. emergency plans’.52 Spaatz returned to meet Tedder again on 4–6 July, when the latter agreed to provide ‘certain physical facilities on two air fields adequate for the handling of some very special purpose VLR aircraft’, a clear reference to the facilities required for preparing and loading the atomic bomb. For his part, Spaatz agreed to have an officer familiar with the required special equipment come to England and report to Bissell. The matter was to be handled as routine so as not to attract any undue attention, although the use of the term ‘special’ was so commonplace a euphemism for ‘atomic’ that these arrangements would have been transparent to anyone who knew of them.53 On his return to Washington, Spaatz briefed the Air Staff, reporting that two airfields would be ‘ready soon’ for the B-29s, with five more to follow.54 He also reported on his return to President Truman. It was the only time they met together alone in Spaatz’s career, and no record was made of what they discussed.55 Later that month the Military Attaché’s office reported that Tedder himself was urging that US technical staff be sent over as soon as possible, and suggesting dates.56 Shortly afterwards, in mid-August, Colonel Elmer E. Kirkpatrick, Jr, the officer who had supervised the digging of the A-bomb loading pits on Tinian in the Second World War, arrived in England to discuss similar construction on these bases.57

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The instigation of atomic bomb preparation and loading facilities at Sculthorpe and Lakenheath was the most dramatic development, but of equal importance in preparations for deployment at short notice was the coordination of radio navigation facilities to enable American aircraft to use rapid reinforcement routes without first deploying ground staff. The response to the American needs was prompt, with Tedder demanding a detailed brief on the obstacles to rapid deployment. Within a year the Americans were able to derive the probable flow rates of aircraft along these routes from the then current US war plan.58 The feasibility of deploying to England was tested in June 1947, when nine B-29s of the 340th Bomb Squadron, 97th Bombardment Group, landed at Marham to be greeted on their arrival by Tedder and Bissell, the only other person present at the July 1946 Tedder–Spaatz talks. 59A delighted Tedder welcomed the visit and, shaking hands with the colonel commanding the flight, urged ‘we must keep this grip firm’.60 Presented as a goodwill visit, this deployment was of nine regular B-29s and three specially modified aircraft, designed to carry very heavy bombs, the object being in fact to test out the suitability for American use of the British ‘Tallboy’ bomb. This was a Barnes Wallis design, a 12,000 lb ground-penetrating bomb carried by special Lancasters and used against submarine pens and other highly fortified targets in the latter stages of the war. It was subsequently adopted as the M-121 and carried by these few special B-29s. These visits and tests, and those which followed, were explicitly designed to strengthen the partnership between the two air forces. Recollecting the earlier conversations, Bissell recalled that the two commanders had agreed that the combined air force effectiveness of the two nations in the last war had been reduced initially and for a very considerable period because of differences that were not really fundamental between the two air forces in almost every field of air force activity – organization, training, procedure, operation, technique, equipment, orders, briefing, reports, communications, aids to navigation, landing facilities, and that in many respects the two air forces did not speak the same language.61

This was what they had set out to rectify. Urgent staff work on rapid deployment was immediately set in hand, but the British and American officers involved ran into difficulties with the potentially broad scope of their remit, being ‘anxious to avoid for political reasons the appearance of being implicated seriously in joint war-planning’.62 Deniability would be crucial. Just weeks after the Spaatz–Tedder agreement, US Secretary of State James Byrnes tenta-

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tively raised with British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin the possibility of reciprocal air base and port rights for British and American forces, implying that they too were unaware of what had transpired between the two air force commanders.63 Dennis Allen, counsellor in Washington, learned of the informal agreements on the use of British airfields by the USAF only in May 1948, when exchanges between the British Joint Sservices Mission, Washington, DC (BJSM) and General Vandenberg confirmed that aircraft movements could be arranged directly between the two air forces.64 Deniability – or rather denial – was maintained long after the events. Nearly twenty years later, as the era of US strategic air power in Britain drew to a close and the 7th Air Division was inactivated, that command’s official historian, William R. Karsteter, set out to discover just what ‘precautionary steps’ were taken by Spaatz and Tedder acting together. Karsteter’s starting point was that the deployment of SAC bombers to Britain was ‘one of the crucial actions of the post-war period’ and marked ‘the beginning of the effective use of atomic power’. Paying elaborate tribute to the ‘foresight and courage’ the two had displayed, he sought to ‘complete the record’.65 Spaatz, it seems, was not tempted and did not respond. Tedder did so with a curt rebuff, declaring that ‘even after this passage of time reticence is still advisable’.66 Reticence at the time about the arrangements to establish the base network left the Department of State out of the loop. Military men had scant regard for Foggy Bottom, and the culture of secrecy that surrounded nuclear matters since the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 provided cover for their own inter-service negotiations. When, in September 1948, the Berlin situation appeared to be deteriorating to the point where war might become a possibility, Secretary of State Marshall asked about the possibility of installing ‘certain assembly equipment’ in air bases in the United Kingdom to provide the B-29s there with an atomic capability. He was unaware of the arrangements that had already been made and the work that had been largely completed, and only at that point did AFSWP head Brigadier-General Kenneth Nichols brief the State Department, advising that ‘the arrangement for storing assembly equipment there’ (surely an understatement) would remain, but on an ‘informal’ basis.67 Nor was the leadership at the Pentagon completely in the picture. Lieutenant-General Lauris Norstad, USAF Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, was dispatched to London to ‘sound out the British on using bases there for construction of nuclear support facilities’.68 These of course had already been constructed, and had only to be commissioned. Two weeks later the Joint Chiefs told Secretary of Defense

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James Forrestal that an AFSWP team was being sent to England to make these preparations.69 All these discussions took place more than two years after the event, a fact about which the highest ranking officials (though not, of course, Nichols) were seemingly oblivious. Subsequently Marshall, in his first weeks as Secretary of Defense, authorised the substantial expenditure required to construct air-conditioned ‘igloo’ storage for nuclear weapons in England and at Guam and Goose Bay that had been urged earlier that month by the Joint Chiefs, but he was completely in the dark while at the State Department.70

Putting the infrastructure in place The work to put the infrastructure for atomic operations in place had been undertaken with a wartime sense of urgency, and overseen with the direct involvement of the most senior RAF officers and civil servants. An initial meeting was held at the Air Ministry on 26 August 1946 to consider those requirements at Lakenheath and Sculthorpe that Kirkpatrick had identified, and to authorise the work to proceed. Chaired by Air Vice Marshal F. Whitworth-Jones, the Director-General of Organisation (DGO), it was attended by Sir Ernest Holloway, the Air Ministry’s Director-General of Works (DGW). Holloway’s presence was crucial as, beyond his current responsibilities, he had taken overall charge of the construction of airfields in the UK for the USAAF during the period 1942–45. Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Lex’ Stevens of the AFSWP and two other US colonels attended for the United States.71 This first meeting agreed that pits would be constructed on the hardstandings of both airfields, that a number of existing buildings would be reserved and adapted for what was described as ‘Air Ministry use’ and a number of additional small buildings erected. What was referred to as ‘a special design of roadway and special building’ was also to be constructed at the loading points. The cost of the work in each case was estimated at £12,550 and as DGW, Holloway agreed that the construction would go ahead on his personal authority. Top priority was to be given to the work required at hardstandings and the special buildings and roadways.72 The list of requirements included hoists and other equipment as well as storage facilities, and it was thought vital that the necessary construction should be handled as an apparently routine matter so as not to attract undue attention.73 Three weeks later a direction went out to RAF Bomber Command that certain of the existing buildings at these two airfields – which had yet to be re-commissioned – would have to be relinquished to the Air Ministry for a ‘special purpose’.74

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This construction of the pits and some at least of the associated buildings was completed as early as September 1946 when two sets of hydraulic lift equipment for Fat Man loading pits were flown to England from Kirtland AFB. The late Colonel Tom Hagler recollected to the author having charge of loading the hydraulic lift and other equipment onto a C-54 bound for England that autumn.75 In confirmation, AFSWP records list a Capt. Hagler as assigned to the Command Group in September 1946, and responsible for shipping out ‘two sets of pit and loading equipment’ to an undisclosed destination.76 The installations at the British airfields were overseen by ‘Lex’ Stevens who, operating in civilian clothing, supervised the construction of the bomb assembly buildings and directed installation of the hydraulic lifts that would be used to load completed bombs on to the B-29s. A follow-up meeting took place at the Air Ministry on 18 December with Bissell himself and the DGO, Whitworth-Jones, in attendance. On this occasion the chair was taken by Air Marshal Sir Leslie Hollinghurst, the AMSO. The meeting noted that the construction work at both Sculthorpe and Lakenheath was complete, with 90 per cent of the associated mechanical work complete at Sculthorpe and 50 per cent at Lakenheath. No further work could be undertaken until the remaining pieces of equipment had been received from the United States. This was not expected to be the case until February 1947 but it was anticipated that both installations would be completed and operational within ten days of their arrival. Security was naturally among the foremost concerns but elaborate and intrusive security measures for equipment being brought in from the United States was avoided on the ground that they would attract undue attention. Provision was therefore minimal, and backed up by a great deal of hopeful expectation. The covers on the pits at Sculthorpe and Lakenheath were to be secured and padlocked to add security and the bomb loading trailers stored in double-locked magazines. ‘High tension’ warning signs would be put on the assembly workshop buildings as a deterrent to intruders and while obscured windows would have aided security, Bissell proposed that ‘the matter could be achieved by assisting the natural accumulation of dirt on the windows’. As both airfields had yet to be re-commissioned they were at that point entirely unmanned, without care and maintenance staff or police guards, and there was concern that ‘both are wide open for easy access by the public’ and, obviously, at risk of sabotage. Care and maintenance parties were to be established forthwith at both airfields but no special security instructions would be given with respect to the recently completed buildings and installations, so as to keep a low profile.77 With

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the work largely completed, the installations were secured and stood down. It was only in August 1948, with the Berlin crisis well under way, that other AFSWP officers arrived to discuss completing the installations and bringing them up to operational status. Secrecy was tight and all three visitors were instructed to wear civilian clothing. The junior officer, Captain Joseph (Phil) Barnes, who was the expert member of the team, made a second trip in October 1948, accompanied this time by an NCO specialist on the hydraulic bomb lift. For the next two months Barnes supervised the equipping of the buildings erected two years earlier to accommodate the bomb assembly process while the Master Sergeant checked over the hydraulic lifts.78 Barnes recalled: In 1946 two assembly facilities were built to what I estimated was 80 percent completion, missing mostly required electrical sources. Could they have been used by an assembly team in that condition? In 1948 I concluded that they were not useable without adding the direct current, 30 volt distribution system.

Barnes set out to collect together the equipment needed to complete the assembly and test facilities. But there was no particular sense of urgency. The Berlin crisis did not impinge on the task: ‘No one was pressing me in 1948 to expedite completion of assembly facilities. We worked with only the regular station work force, at the leisurely pace of British labor. No overtime, no weekend work. Do not draw public interest to what we were doing.’79 At the end of the year, Phil Barnes returned to New Mexico, his task complete yet, ironically, already overtaken by changing technology.

Notes  1 P. McCoy Smith, The Air Force plans for peace, 1943–1945, Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970, pp. 39–53; M.S. Sherry, Preparing for the next war: American plans for postwar defense, 1941–1945, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1977, especially pp. 139–190 and 213–219.  2 E. Mark, ‘The war scare of 1946 and its consequences’, Diplomatic History, 21 (3), summer 1997, p. 384.  3 D. Merrill, ‘The Truman doctrine: containing Communism and modernity’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 36 (1), March 2006, pp. 27–37. Revisionists dismiss the Turkish ‘crisis’: see M.P. Leffler, ‘The emergence of an American grand strategy, 1945–1952’, in M.P. Leffler and O.A. Westad (eds.), The Cambridge history of the cold war. Volume 1: Origins, Cambridge, Cambridge

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University Press, 2010, pp. 67–88; and O. Stone and P. Kuznick, The untold history of the United States, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2012, p. 207.  4 Address of the President of the United States delivered before a Joint Session of the Senate and the House of Representatives, recommending assistance to Greece and Turkey, 12 March 1947.  5 Mark, ‘The war scare of 1946’, pp. 383–415.  6 Gen. H.H. Arnold to Gen. George C. Marshall, 28 May 1945, quoted in J.T. Greenwood, ‘The emergence of the post-war strategic air force, 1945–1953’, in Air power and warfare: the proceedings of the 8th military symposium, United States Air Force Academy, 18–20 October 1978, Washington DC, Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF, 1979, p. 219.  7 S.L. Rearden, ‘US strategic bombardment doctrine since 1945’, in R. Cargill Hall (ed.), Case studies in strategic bombardment, Washington, DC, Office of Air Force History, 1998, p. 388.  8 Memorandum for the Chief of Staff, 30 January 1946, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park MD (hereafter NARA) RG 165, file 686, Box 326.  9 Smith, Air Force plans for peace, 75ff. In JCS 570/83 a reduced network of 53 primary, subsidiary and transit base and base areas was proposed. The most detailed account of the basing issue is E.V. Converse III, Circling the earth: United States plans for a postwar overseas military base system, 1942–1948, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, 2005. Detailed discussion of the politics of planning is in Sherry, Preparing for the next war, pp. 35–57. 10 USAFE Study on Location of VHB units in ETO, HQ US Air Forces in Europe, 31 May 1946, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter LoC), Papers of General Carl A. Spaatz, Briefing Materials for European Trip, Box 265. 11 With the introduction of the massive B-36 into service some years later, the B-29s, together with the more powerful derivative, the B-50, were re-designated Medium Bombers (MB). 12 USAFE Study on Location of VHB units in ETO, HQ US Air Forces in Europe, 31 May 1946, LoC, Spaatz papers, Briefing Materials for European Trip, Box 265. 13 S.T. Ross, American war plans, 1945–1950, London, Frank Cass, 1996, p. 20. 14 Ross, American war plans, pp. 14–17. 15 S. Duke, United States military forces and installations in Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 293. 16 Training of combat crew personnel for VIII bomber command, 29 December 1945, 17 January 1946; Interim deployment of Army Air Force Units to Europe, 16 January 1946, NARA, RG 18, Operations and Tactical Units, Box 605. 17 Maj.-Gen. Everest to Gen. Spaatz, VHB Airbase Construction in the United Kingdom, n.d. (June 1946), LoC, Spaatz papers, Briefing Materials for European Trip, Box 265. 18 Memorandum, Gen. J.E. Hull, 2 May 1946, NARA, RG 29, Box 137, Army Staff P and O Division, decimal file 1946–1948.

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19 Staff studies of certain military operations deriving from ‘Concept of Operations for “Pincher”’, 10 June 1946, Appendix A, paras. 8, 9, NARA, RG 218, Geographic File, 1946–47. The PINCHER studies are dealt with at length in Ross, American war plans, pp. 25–52. 20 D.A. Rosenberg, ‘US nuclear stockpile, 1945 to 1950’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 38, May 1982, p. 28; N. Polmar, The Enola Gay: the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution, 2004, p. 30. Sherry, Preparing for the next war, at p. 190, erroneously refers to the two original weapon types as ‘Fat Boy’ and Thin Man’. 21 R.H. Campbell, The silverplate bombers: a history and registry of the Enola Gay and other B-29s configured to carry atomic bombs, Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Co., 2005. 22 Atomic Bomb Striking Force, 3 December 1945, NARA, RG 18, Box 635, 370.22, Campaigns and Expeditions. . 23 Atomic Bomb Striking Force, 4 January 1946, NARA, RG 18, Box 635, 370.22, Campaigns and Expeditions. 24 Organization and Deployment of the 58th wing, 13 June 1946, NARA, RG 18, Box 605, 370.22, Deployment, etc., Misc. 25 The terms ‘group’ and wing’ in early USAF usage are particularly confusing in comparison with the clear hierarchy used by the RAF. Within SAC, ‘wing’ became synonymous with ‘group’ after 1947, so that by early 1951 SAC wings had abandoned group headquarters functions, with the 509th and 43rd bomb groups becoming the 509th and 43rd bomb wings. For example, the 509th was re-designated the 509th Bombardment Wing and absorbed into the 509th Bomb Wing in 1952. G.M. Watson Jnr., The office of Secretary of the Air Force, 1947–1965, Washington DC, Center for Air Force History, 1993, 104. 26 The Establishment of an Atomic Bomb Striking Force, 5 December 1945, NARA, RG 18, Box 635, 370.22, Campaigns and Expeditions. 27 Organization and Deployment of the 58th wing, 13 June 1946, NARA, RG 18, Box 605, 370.22, Deployment, etc, Misc., 28 The Establishment of an Atomic Bomb Striking Force, 5 December 1945, NARA, RG 18, Box 635, 370.22, Campaigns and Expeditions. 29 R.H. Ferrell, ‘The formation of the alliance, 1948–1949’, in L.S. Kaplan (ed.), American historians and the Atlantic alliance, Kent, OH, Kent State University Press, 1991, pp. 14, 27. 30 Ross, American war plans, pp. 53–79. 31 D.R. Mets, Master of airpower: General Carl A. Spaatz, Novato, CA, Presidio Press, 1997, p. 313. 32 Nichols to General Wedemeyer, 2 April 1948, NARA, RG 319, Box 105. 33 Special Weapons Organisation, Memorandum for the Chief of Staff, USAF and attached reports, 8 September 1949. 34 Col. Gilbert M. Dorland, ‘Engineer Memoirs’, unpublished memoir, 1987, in private hands. 35 The Establishment of an Atomic Bomb Striking Force, 5 December 1945, NARA, RG 18, Box 635, 370.22, Campaigns and Expeditions.

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36 USAFE Study on Location of VHB units in ETO, HQ US Air Forces in Europe, 31 May 1946, LoC, Spaatz papers, Briefing Materials for European Trip, Box 265. 37 Staff Studies of Certain Military Operations Deriving from ‘Concept of Operations for “Pincher”’, Appendix A, paras. 8, 9, NARA, RG 218, Geographic file, 1946–47. The map is at Appendix B, Annex B. A smaller scale version is in Ross, American war plans, p. 25. 38 Maj.-Gen. Everest to Gen. Spaatz, VHB Airbase Construction in the United Kingdom, n.d. (June 1946), LoC, Spaatz papers, Briefing Materials for European Trip, Box 265 (author’s emphasis). 39 Gen. Lincoln memorandum to Lt.-Gen. John E. Hull, 31 January 1946, NARA, RG 319, Records of the Army Staff, quoted in Converse, Circling the earth, p. 151. 40 Maj. Curtis L. Mirgon, unpublished memoir, in private hands, p. 17. The Mark 4 atomic bomb was an improved version of the ‘Mark 3–0’ (‘Fat Man’) current in 1946–48. Introduced in 1949, it was of similar dimensions and weight but simpler in assembly and with improved ballistic characteristics. C. Hansen, US nuclear weapons: the secret history, New York, Orion Books, 1988, pp. 125–128. 41 Availability of the VLR [very long-range] Airfields in the UK, 23 January 1945, NARA, RG 18, Box 25. 42 Report on the physical facilities and services available on certain RAF air bases which may be suitable for the operation of B-29 aircraft, July 1948, NARA, RG 341, Box 748. 43 USAF-RAF joint survey of selected airfields, United Kingdom, 15 August – 15 September 1948, NARA, RG 341, Box 749. 44 J.L. Abrahamson and P.H.Carew, Vanguard of American atomic deterrence: the Sandia Pioneers, 1946–1949, Westport, CT, Praeger, 2002, p. 117. R.G. Hewlett and F. Duncan, Atomic shield: a history of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Volume II, 1947–1952, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1990, pp. 48–61, 134–135. 45 Col. (retd.) Joseph P. Barnes to the author, 2 April 2008. 46 The most complete, authoritative and best illustrated account of this process is given by Campbell, Silverplate bombers, pp. 34–38. 47 A copy of the loading pit construction manual, dated 13 May 1947, with copious illustration, was obtained from the Federation of American Scientists’ website on 31 July 2006: www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00424697. pdf. It appears to be no longer accessible. Although a full series of photographs exists at Sandia, showing each stage of the operation, these were reproduced as line drawings in the construction manual, and in both the photographs and the corresponding drawings the faces of the loading crew were whited out for security reasons. 48 Archive film of this technique, showing the starboard mainwheel being guided on to the turntable and chocked, at which point the aircraft powers round in a 180 degree turn to bring the bomb bay over the pit, can be seen in Peter Kuran’s 1999 film Trinity and beyond, Visual Concept Entertainment.

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49 V. Orange, Tedder: quietly in command, London, Frank Cass, 2004, pp. 303–316, 317–330. The second of these two chapters is significantly entitled ‘Avoiding complete subservience to our essential ally in countering the risk of atomic war’. 50 S.R. Williamson and S. Rearden, Origins of US nuclear strategy, 1945–53, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1993, p. 43. R. Jackson, United States Air Force in Britain: its aircraft, bases and strategy since 1948, Shrewsbury, Airlife Publishing, 2000, p. 11. Short History and Chronology of the USAF in the United Kingdom, Historical Division, Office of Information, Third Air Force, May 1967. The only published account in full of the Spaatz–Tedder agreement, drawn from the US archives, is given in S. Duke, US defence bases in the United Kingdom: a matter for joint decision? Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1987, Appendix 1, pp. 195–196, although the Spaatz papers have since been differently catalogued. 51 Memorandum for General Spaatz, Reminder on decisions taken during London visit, 25 to 28 June, 28 June 1946, LoC, Spaatz papers, Box 1-27. It is unclear what this study was, but the reference to USAF Col. Zimmerman suggests this was something that might have been originated on the British side and shared with the Air Attaché. 52 Memorandum for General Spaatz, Reminder on decisions taken during London visit, 25 to 28 June, 28 June 1946, LoC, Spaatz papers, Box 1-27. The note misleadingly refers to ‘Hollingshead’ as the UK contact, probably a reference to A.M. Hollinghurst, but possibly also to the Director-General of Works, Sir Ernest Holloway, whose staff would handle the necessary construction. 53 Memorandum for General Spaatz, Reminder on decisions taken during London visit 4 to 6 July 1946, 6 July 1946, LoC, Spaatz papers, Box 1-27. 54 Note of a meeting of the Air Staff, 10 July 1946, LoC, Spaatz papers, Box 1-27. 55 Truman Presidential Library, Independence, MO, Presidential Papers, appointments file. 56 Memorandum for General Spaatz, Message from Military Attaché, London, England, 25 July 1946, LoC, Spaatz papers, Box 1–27. 57 Duke, US defence bases in the United Kingdom, p. 21; Abrahamson and Carew, Vanguard of American atomic deterrence, p. 116. 58 Telegram, Goddard (Washington) to Air Ministry, 9 October 1947, UK National Archives, Kew (hereafter UKNA), AIR 20/7073. 59 Maj.-Gen. Schlatter to Spaatz, 26 June 1947, LoC, Spaatz papers, Box 1-251. 60 Orange, Tedder, p. 323. 61 Bissell to Goddard, 19 December 1947, LoC, Spaatz papers, Box 1-257. 62 Gp. Capt. F.F. Rainsford, cover note for Report on Anglo-American Conference on Reinforcement Routes, 29 January 1948, UKNA, AIR 20/7073. 63 Bevin to Attlee, 23 August 1946, UKNA, PREM 8/411. 64 M.F. Hopkins, Oliver Franks and the Truman administration: Anglo-American relations 1948–1952, London, Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 41–42. 65 Karsteter to Tedder, 2 April, 22 April 1965; Karsteter to Spaatz, 22 April 1965, Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, AL (hereafter AFHRA) K416.03–168.

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66 Tedder to Karsteter, 8 April 1965, AFHRA, K416.03–168. 67 K. D. Nichols, The road to Trinity, New York, William Morrow, 1967, pp. 266–67. 68 S.L. Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense: the formative years, 1947–1950, Washington, DC, Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1984, pp. 296–297. 69 Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, p. 297. 70 Robert LeBaron (chairman of the AEC’s Military Advisory Committee) to Marshall, 16 November 1950; Marshall to Gordon Dean (AEC chairman), 22 November 1950, NARA, RG 330, OSD Central File, Classified 1950, CD 400.112. Six million dollars had already been authorised for construction at the English bases. 71 Recalled in Flight, 17 March 1947, p. 227. 72 Minutes of a meeting in room 408, SE Wing, Bush House with the representatives of the United States Air Force, 26 August 1946, UKNA, AIR 20/952. 73 Williamson and Rearden, Origin of US nuclear strategy, p. 43. The only evidence in the United States of the Spaatz–Tedder agreement is in the memorandum, Maj.-Gen. Clayton Bissell to Spaatz, 6 July 1946, Reminder on decisions taken during London visit, 4 to 6 July, LoC, Spaatz papers, Box 1-27. 74 Lakenheath and Sculthorpe Airfields, Air Ministry Requirements, 12 September 1946, UKNA, AIR 20/952. 75 Col. (retd.)Tom Hagler to the author, 26 June 2006. 76 Early History of the Special Weapons Organisation, Headquarters 8460th Special Weapons Group, September 1949, p. 8 (document obtained from the US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA). 77 Minutes of a meeting in AMSO’s room, at 10:30 hours on 18 December 1946, UKNA, AIR 20/952. 78 Col. (retd.) Joseph P. Barnes to the author, 13 April 2006; Abrahamson and Carew, Vanguard of American atomic deterrence, p. 116. 79 Barnes to the author, 2 April 2008.

2 Deploying to England

Prime minister asked if there would be ‘A’ bombs and ambassador said there would probably be bombs, but without the nuclear component. Prime minister insisted that this whole move be treated as a normal rotation, said his impression was that our people wanted to use this as a show of strength but he didn’t believe it correct to do so. Major-General Leon W. Johnson, July 1950

The establishment of a USAF presence on English soil would, in time, raise questions about Britain’s role in the enactment of American war plans – a matter about which British leaders, military and civilian, were kept in the dark. Resentful of the secrecy, the Chiefs of Staff complained that Britain was regarded by Americans as ‘an aircraft carrier conveniently anchored off the coast of Europe’.1 Variously attributed to Mussolini and to Churchill, this striking image came naturally to be employed in Soviet propaganda.2 Later, it would be adopted by antinuclear activists.3 US planners had no illusions about the strategic need. W. Barton Leach, Harvard Law professor and trusted confidante of successive Air Force Secretaries, summarised the challenges in his characteristically succinct manner: We can build and maintain, for decades if necessary, an atomic air offensive as a deterrent to the USSR. It must be kept at combat readiness with increasingly effective aircraft types. It must grow in size and effectiveness, for a static SAC will be constantly diminished in effectiveness through air defense measures which the USSR is capable of taking … It must have world-wide deployment and its bases, particularly those in the UK which are most vulnerable and most effective for both political and military reasons, must have the fullest possible protection without stint of expense.4

With the imbalance of forces in Europe, any conflict would initially go badly for the West, with Britain taking the brunt of heavy Soviet air attacks. It was not expected to survive for long as a base following the outbreak of conflict. For the American planners, the priorities were to

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protect the United States, its territories, and its base in the British Isles.5 These concerns were expressed in a series of Emergency War Plans (EWP), whose successive changes of name signified improved targeting information and updated appraisals of the force developments on both sides.6 OFFTACKLE, which dealt with the initial stages of a war, declared that the UK would have to be held as a staging and operational base from which to retard a Soviet advance in Western Europe, with five medium bomber (B-29) groups deployed for that purpose.7 Ominously, a theme in later discussions of the EWP was that Britain was expendable and might have to be abandoned following the expected initial, mutually punishing, exchanges with the Soviet Union, possibly becoming ‘untenable’ after the launch of the initial strike.8 None of this was obvious to London; the little that was known about the US war plan was mere inference from discussions of the ‘strategic concept’. British and Canadian officials had taken part in discussions on OFFTACKLE, and were expected to take from those discussions a concept of operations to shape their own national plans.9 For American policy-makers, the war plans necessitated bases in the British Isles and, following the Spaatz–Tedder agreement, these had been secured and provided for. Some incident would still be necessary to trigger an actual deployment, following which longer-term arrangements could be negotiated. When expectations of the Soviet Union’s conduct darkened with the Czech coup in February 1948, American and British planners began to work on the assumption of a possible Soviet attack coming through Germany. The response was to be an atomic strike launched initially from the East Anglian airfields, by B-29 medium bombers and, later, by the improved version, the B-50. The massive, 400,000 lb, ten-engined B-36 was soon in service, but while this troubled aircraft would have the range to reach targets in Russia from the continental United States, the first strikes would have been made by the UK-based medium bomber force. B-36s, however, would have recovered to England following their long-range missions, notably to the vast airfield at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire. Familiarisation exercises brought them, and the reconnaissance version, the RB-36, on visits to the English air bases.

Berlin and after The international crisis precipitated by the Berlin blockade of June 1948 was to prove the turning point in the Anglo-American alliance. Fears of war abounded, and while few thought it imminent, the darkest

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suspicions of the Soviet Union’s continued military strength were harboured.10 Western policy makers were reconciled to an expansionist Soviet Union acquiring the atomic bomb before long, although that event was closer than they expected, and arrived the following year. Soviet forces had a matchless superiority in the European theatre and, despite a tone of caution in the US intelligence reports, Soviet capabilities were presented as implying an aggressive intent.11 So, in response to the worsening situation in Berlin, President Truman agreed not just to a massive airlift operation to supply the city, but also to deploy three medium bomb groups of B-29s as a political gesture and as a token of United States interest in the defence of Europe. It was a signal of American resolve to stand fast. Two groups, each of 30 aircraft, arrived in England in July 1948; a third group sent to Germany was later transferred to the UK to ease the burden on the German airfields and to reduce their exposure to possible attack. Welcomed by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin for the British government, he reserved its position on administrative and financial implications. In August 1948 provisional financial agreement was reached for the ‘period of the present emergency’, but no forward-looking agreement on finance or on the employment of this force was made. Domestically, there was a presentational problem to be overcome. Briefing the cabinet, Bevin referred to an earlier Parliamentary answer about flying training and reciprocal visits, but anticipated further questions when Parliament met: I feel that at present it would be best to give only a interim reply [to the Commons] … if a question is asked specifically about the third group we might say that the heavy pressure on the United States airfields in Germany caused by the necessity of maintaining the air lift to Berlin has interrupted normal training facilities and we have, therefore, as a friendly gesture, provided bases and training facilities here for United States aircraft from Germany.12

Presentation was deliberately low-key. Had this been the first deployment of nuclear forces overseas, elaborate arrangements would have been made to conceal that fact from all but the highest level of Britain’s military authorities. Specifically, USAF headquarters instructed that, were atomic weapons to be taken to the UK, all planning, guarding, servicing, operating or securing should be accomplished by trusted United States personnel … No British, either military or civilian, should be allowed on the flying fields and their included installations nor in any area adjacent thereto where these sensitive areas can be

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observed. This undoubtedly would mean evacuation of British or other native personnel from these critical areas. Complete airtight perimeter guarding would be necessary by US Military Police or other US units.

British counter intelligence organisation might be permitted to operate ‘adjacent to and around the areas under US jurisdiction, and not in them’. Even then, ‘there would be no need to inform the British counterintelligence agents or operators of the specific type of protection they were affording’.13 Observation by Soviet agents was to be confounded by the multiplication of dummy installations, the deployment of atomiccapable aircraft to them, and the establishment of a similar level of intense security so rendering the deception the more effective. Although the British military personnel – even local RAF commanders – were excluded from nuclear weapon sites when atomic weapons were later deployed to England, such ‘airtight’ security measures were a fantasy, and could not have avoided attracting the most intense curiosity. As it was, the press readily assumed that the B-29s deployed in the Berlin crisis were indeed nuclear armed. Commentators at the time readily fell into the trap of assuming that the act of deployment represented the rattling of a nuclear sabre (although of course nuclear bluff is itself an exercise of nuclear capability). As Avi Shlaim summarised this development: The dispatch of the two groups of B-29s to Britain in mid-July 1948 was regarded as such a momentous event in the history of the Cold War because it was generally assumed, by contemporary observers as well as later historians, that these were of the [atomic] modified type and hence constituted the forward movement of an American nuclear striking force.14

The idea that the Berlin crisis occasioned the first deployment of postwar nuclear forces persists. The inference drawn at the time was that they were atomic armed. Hoyt Vandenberg’s biographer quotes ‘two highly placed officials’ who asserted that atomic weapons were deployed to England during the crisis: ‘“We were not in a mind to bluff” recalled one.’15 This is certainly incorrect; bluff it was, an elaborate double bluff even, but in reality a hollow threat.16 Stalin and his advisers ‘presumably … realised this and could discount an atomic threat from the B-29s based in England’.17 In any event, there was no prospect of delivering the planned 196 atomic bombs in 1948, even if they existed – which they did not. Nor could a single one have been delivered by the British-based B-29s. The installations required to support an atomic air campaign were still incomplete, and remained so until close to the end of that year. The

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B-29s deployed to the UK were to be made combat ready, but they were not ‘atomic capable’ aircraft. Although the 509th Bombardment Group – at that time, with the 43rd, Strategic Air Command (SAC)’s18 only atomic-modified aircraft – was put on 24-hour alert, it remained in the United States and the first two waves of aircraft that touched down in England were from the 28th and 307th bombardment groups, which did not have the ‘Silverplate’ aircraft.19 Nor did the third group redeployed from Germany a few days later. Nevertheless, the implication at the time was that ‘atomic capable’ aircraft had been deployed and they were so described in the press.20 The USAF lacked the capability to deliver an atomic attack on the Soviet Union from English bases in 1948, but the Berlin deployment provides the first instance of diplomacy playing the nuclear card, prefiguring the sequence of episodes that followed in the course of the Cold War, through Cuba and beyond. Of greater significance was that the Berlin episode enabled the United States to exploit its close political relations with the UK to establish the bases required by US war plans on a ‘taken for granted’ basis, and so enable the subsequent longer term projection of American strategic air power. While the B-29s deployed to the UK were not ‘atomic capable’, they were to be made combat ready. Unconverted aircraft, conventionally equipped, they were to be armed almost entirely through the purchase of ordnance from their British hosts.21 An initial order was placed, through the British Joint Services Mission, Washington, some two weeks before the B-29s arrived, for 1,000 tons of high explosive bombs, split 50/50 between 1,000 lb and 500 lb bombs, with nose and tail fuses to suit, and more than two million rounds of .50 calibre machine gun ammunition, both armour-piercing and incendiary. It was enough for a 30-day campaign for which it is clear from station operation record books they trained relentlessly, with trial loadings of 500 lb bombs, constant flying practice, training in the acquisition of targets by radar and the dropping of vast numbers of practice bombs. Huge quantities of machine gun rounds were expended in practice firing; one B-29 shot itself down in so doing.22 Returning to Europe, the Americans were clearly prepared to fight, and the deployment was planned to have two phases, the first a ferry operation, the second the implementation of the emergency war plan.23 LeMay proposed a provocation in which his B-29s would be in the air, with fighter escorts, and heading for the Soviet air force fields while American troops attempted to force their way into Berlin.24 In the event of more than token resistance,

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I had the Air Force in position, including the B-29s, in the air and we planned to enfilade their radar positions so that we could hit the aerodromes in Germany where all the Russians were lined up wingtip to wingtip. We probably could have done a good job of cleaning out their air force with one blow with what we had using the B-29s as well as the fighters.25

Indeed, the B-29 deployment appears to have been LeMay’s brainchild back in the spring of 1948, before the blockade was imposed.26 But far from atomic attack, his plans were reminiscent of his attacks on Tokyo – B-29s, carrying minimum fuel, fully laden with high explosive, flying low against their targets. Other generals thought it a suicide mission, General Lucius D. Clay, the military governor of Allied occupied Germany, vetoing the idea.27 In future, SAC would expect to have a substantial stockpile of armament ready to hand in England but for this emergency deployment they had to depend on RAF matériel. Although American stock was preferred, using British bombs presented no great difficulty, as the shackle fittings – screw-in eyebolts with which the high explosive bombs were suspended within the aircraft – were interchangeable, and the B-29s would be bringing their own supply of these fittings. Fuel supplies were a problem, but Shell-Mex granted the USAF access to more than a quarter million barrels of aviation spirit to be made immediately available and replaced in six weeks.28 This freed the tankers already at sea to divert to Bremen and supply the airlift mounted to relieve Berlin. Ground equipment, supplies and spare parts were shipped to Liverpool to sustain the bombers over a longer period. Meanwhile, the USAF extended its shopping list to 52,000 tons of high explosives and pyrotechnics to be sourced in the UK, with a mass of other ordnance, and close to seven million rounds of ammunition. Additional bomb parts, fuses, rockets for ground attack by escort fighters, and another four million rounds would be brought over from the US or moved from Germany.29 Throughout and following the Berlin crisis, the USAF presence on the English bases built up steadily. Sculthorpe, its atomic bomb facilities now complete and operational, reopened in December 1948 to support a USAF heavy bomb group. An advance party arrived from America in January 1949, and despite preparations to accommodate the personnel having not been completed, there was no postponement of the planned deployment and the first B-29s, of the 92nd Bombardment Group, flew in on 7 February. On completion of their 90-day rotation, the 92nd were followed by the 98th, and, in August, by one squadron of nuclear-­capable B-50s of the 43rd. Thereafter, the numbers grew.

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In May 1950 the RAF station commander reported ‘a great number of transient aircraft. Including C-97s, C-47s and civilian operated DC-4s’ as the deployment rapidly built up.30 At Lakenheath, 24 B-29s arrived in August 1948 and in June 1949 the atomic-capable 509th Bombardment Group was installed there, to be followed by the similarly capable 43rd dividing its rotation with Sculthorpe.31 Having achieved a foothold, LeMay’s SAC continued to build its presence. Its scale, though, raised questions about how comfortable the British government would feel about it. In May 1950, at a meeting of the Cabinet Defence Committee, a minister asked CAS Sir John Slessor whether he thought the USAF presence ‘rather dangerous … weren’t they encouraging aggressive action by the Russians?’ The fear, it seemed, was that SAC would make a limited strike and then pull out, leaving Britain to face retribution. Slessor found little difficulty in reassuring the doubters, pointing to the sheer scale of the plans for emergency deployment.32 A month later, his prediction was put to the test.

The Korean deployment On 25 June 1950 the Korean conflict erupted with North Korea’s invasion of the south, Seoul falling to North Korean forces three days later. Strategic Air Command was seen as the United States’ best chance of preventing the conflict from spreading to a general war, and if the deterrent signals were ignored and Soviet forces intervened directly in Korea or moved against Western Europe, the EWP would have been triggered. President Truman, at his Blair House emergency meeting on the evening of the invasion, had pondered the possibility of using the atomic bomb against Soviet bases near Korea. At his cabinet meeting on 7 July the preferred option was to reinforce American strength in Europe by signalling resolve to contain the Soviet Union by use of the atomic bomb. Deployment to the UK would have the diplomatic advantage of binding Britain, seen as a shaky ally in the crisis, to US policy.33 The Joint Chiefs of Staff, anticipating a worsening crisis, recommended the deployment of fighter and bomber units to the UK. Two more atomic-capable medium bomber groups, the 93rd and 97th, were readied to join the 301st already at Lakenheath.34 SAC bomb wings were visitors, but the ongoing USAF presence was the 3rd Air Division, commanded by Major-General Leon W. Johnson and reporting to the Commanding General, USAF Europe. On 8 July Johnson discussed the deployment plan with the RAF’s Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Operations), and the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff.

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He then approached Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor, who had succeeded Tedder as Chief of the Air Staff. Slessor refused to endorse the move on his own authority and asked for a formal request from the US Joint Chiefs to the British Chiefs of Staff. This was made later that day by USAF Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg. Moving a fighter group and increasing the number of bombardment groups, he advised, ‘will improve considerably the military position of the United States and its allies’. In particular, having three bombardment groups in position ‘could be expected to reduce by approximately one-half the time required to carry out their initial strategic air offensive missions under that required if starting from continental United States’. There were ‘political considerations’, of course, and ‘If it is determined to be politically infeasible, the movement, of course, will not be made.’35 With the Joint Chiefs’ endorsement of the deployment, SAC commanding general LeMay demanded that ‘hardware’ – the non-nuclear components of SAC’s atomic bomb armoury – be airlifted to Britain to accompany the bombers. Despite the extreme sensitivity of the issue, the decision to do so posed few difficulties. Lieutenant-General Lauris Norstad, Vice-Chief of Staff for the Air Force, assured him: The Chief of Staff and the Air Staff appreciate the importance of the hardware matter which was the subject of your redline last night. As you know, we desired to raise the question at a time and under circumstances which would be most favourable for full consideration by proper authority. For your personal information only. Such an opportunity presented itself this morning and I made the recommendation to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After some discussion, the reaction of the Chiefs was one of favourable understanding. It was agreed that this matter would be considered formally at tomorrow morning’s meeting. Decision on this matter must be made by higher authority, but, in my judgment, it is at least probable that the Joint Chiefs of Staff will recommend at their meeting tomorrow that the hardware be taken by the two groups. This information is for obvious reasons for your own personal knowledge only. We will keep you advised on developments on both of these subjects.36

Later he signalled: The question of hardware was considered by [the Atomic Energy Commission] this afternoon and I understand as of this time that the matter will be presented jointly by Defense and AEC to the top man tomorrow. Our best experts here expect favorable decision but nothing is certain until final approval. We will hold the movement of the groups until the hardware question is settled.37

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That same day the US Ambassador in London was briefed by Leon Johnson and told ‘we would desire to bring in the Atom Bombs, less nuclear components’. The government of the UK, as the host nation, had to give prior approval to this epoch-making development. Johnson’s diary pinpointed the crucial decision to accept the deployment of the bomb: Ambassador met with prime minister this morning. Prime minister was in cabinet meeting but came out to see ambassador. He appeared to approve project but said he must discuss with his colleagues before final approval. Prime minister asked if there would be ‘A’ bombs and ambassador said there would probably be bombs, but without the nuclear component. Prime minister insisted that this whole move be treated as a normal rotation, said his impression was that our people wanted to use this as a show of strength but he didn’t believe it correct to do so. Ambassador telephoned foreign office again in my presence but when I left ambassador at one p.m. local time cabinet still in session.38

Johnson’s is a colourful recollection, but if Attlee did leave the cabinet meeting to give his permission to deploy, this is apparent neither from the formal cabinet minutes, nor from the cabinet secretary Sir Norman Brook’s handwritten notes, which minutely record comings and goings. The cabinet was instead joined for a low-key briefing on the deployment of the additional bomb groups by Kenneth Younger, Foreign Office Minister of State, who made no mention of the atomic factor.39 Later that afternoon the cabinet approved the receipt of the bomb groups in ignorance of their atomic cargo. Foreign Secretary Bevin ‘in particular wished us to stress the point that this was in no way connected with the Korean situation, but was merely a routine training manoeuvre which had been going on for some two years’ – that is, since the original Berlin crisis deployment.40 Julius Holmes, the US Ambassador-atLarge, then confirmed to Washington that ‘no further action’ would be required to implement the deployment.41 On 11 July, President Truman authorised the deployment of SAC’s nuclear capable B-29s and B-50s to England, together with their inert weapons. The B-50s left Kirtland Field, New Mexico and Castle AFB, California to stage through Goose Bay, Labrador, where the following month a number of bombs, minus their nuclear components, would be stockpiled until November.42 Leaving ‘the Goose’ for England, each B-50 carried a Mark 4 atomic bomb, the developed version of the Fat Man bomb, again without the nuclear component.43 Others staged through Iceland. LeMay had ordered that officers and men be equipped with side-arms prior to departure. ‘Take all security measures … at

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Keflavík’, he warned, ‘against sabotage and armed intervention by local communists.’ 44 Secrecy was tight, but propaganda broadcasts indicated that the details of the units deployed were well known to the Soviets.45 The atomic factor was far too sensitive to be shared with the British public, and the Labour government would have found its own Parliamentary supporters hard to control had the news leaked. The supply convoys needed to bring in oil and station kits were dispatched to Sculthorpe, Mildenhall and Lakenheath as discreetly as possible, and Norstad instructed Johnson: If inquiries are made you should neither affirm nor deny the availability of special weapons in the U.K. Personnel of SAC groups will be especially briefed before departure on security matters and the serious consequences of speculation or loose talk regarding weapons or possible employment. You appreciate that this movement is to be treated as a normal rotation of units.46

Lacking their plutonium spheres, and so incomplete ‘bombs’ in the crucial operational sense, from a political and diplomatic perspective the precedent had been set of an atomic weapon presence in Britain. The hurried deployment in response to the Korea crisis found the English bases ill-prepared to go operational. The pit and elevator systems at Lakenheath and Sculthorpe were now redundant, as better means had been found of loading the weapons, but the other bases lacked the workshops that had been created at those two sites for the preparation and elaborate testing of the bomb’s 32-detonator system. SAC, however, had developed an air transportable building known as a ‘Palmer house’ that could be flown in and quickly erected to create a clean air-conditioned environment for bomb preparation.47 Curtis L. Mirgon, then a Warrant Officer technician, recollected how that process worked on arrival at Mildenhall in July 1950: A site was selected on the off, or far side, of the air base away from all other activities. The roadway selected had been macadam between two hedgerows with a marked crown in the roadway and 3 to 4 degree incline. These factors only made erecting the building more difficult. We were self-sufficient, our own generator air conditioning … The day our building arrived by truck, the work really began. The generator, the air conditioner were positioned – the secret of erecting one of these buildings was absolutely level floor, foundation, then everything else more or less fell into place. Suffice to say, 19 hours after arrival of the building, we were declared complete and ready to start processing weapons.

Several matters, recalled Mirgon, were of pressing importance, beginning with ‘the inspection of the weapons for damage during transport

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and storage in uncontrolled atmospheric conditions, [and] return weapons to hermetically sealed condition for storage’. The damp East Anglian climate presented an unexpected obstacle. Whereas the weapons collected from Sandia had been stored in an air-conditioned vault in the mountainside, here they had been downloaded and stored in the open air, on their trailers, under canvas covers. This created problems when the technical work began. Initially this amounted to no more than verifying the serial numbers of the detonators, removing batteries and providing for freshly charged batteries if needed. Processing the bombs themselves proved more difficult: Some of the weapons had been out of storage for 20 or more days, no nuclear components were in the United Kingdom, metal mandrel been fabricated for use in checking the acceptability of nuclear component into the pit. On the first trial of this procedure … the weapon had been in ambient temperature of 50s, relative humidity of 99.9% and possibly a shower or two. When it came time to insert the mandrel all work came to a stop. It didn’t fit, it was too big … I had a sergeant take mandrel outside and place it in a box on the macadam roadway. The long and short of it was the weapon warmed up, the mandrel cooled down, shrunk, and fit exactly as designed … The procedure soon evolved of bringing a weapon into the mechanical bay at the close of a workday to allow it to warm up, dry out and be ready to be worked on the following day. We soon had a rate of one weapon a day inspected and returned to storage configuration.48

Unlike Berlin, Korea was no short-term crisis. The significance of the July 1950 deployment was that it marked the beginning of the largescale ongoing USAF presence on the British bases, and highlighted a wide range of deficiencies from the accommodation of the men to the secure storage of the weapons. These and other considerations had now to be urgently addressed.

The threat of sabotage Security of the deployed forces had been a concern from the moment tension rose on the Korean peninsula, and the 3rd Air Division’s Leon Johnson had been reluctant to accept the B-29s and B-50s rushed to England until he had a greater capability to protect them.49 While the British did not share the American view on the likelihood of a surprise air attack by Soviet forces, American and British officers agreed that the deployed aircraft and their equipment might still be vulnerable to sabo-

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tage. The risks of deploying the latest SAC aircraft to Britain in these circumstances greatly exercised Johnson. The ‘Silverplate’ B-29s were being replaced by the latest B-50s, and with around half of the USAF’s total atomic strike force en route to England he signalled his alarm. A degree of protection from air attack could be accomplished by dispersing the forces to satellite airfields, but he was not prepared to do this without first obtaining additional bases, personnel and security support from the British, for dispersal would necessarily carry with it a greater exposure to sabotage. LeMay concurred up to a point, recognising the ‘obvious serious risks’ in sending additional B-50 groups to the UK and advising Air Force Secretary Finletter that Johnson was ‘well justified in his expression of reluctance to receive these groups until there was greater capability of protecting them’.50 Yet LeMay was sure this could be resolved by toplevel pressure on the British government to stress the ‘importance and urgency of providing bases, base complement personnel, and security troops to support the dispersion of our forces’ and ‘insure the security of our bases from sabotage’. He told Johnson: I am concerned that defensive preparations in the UK appear to be oriented primarily against sabotage. While I fully recognise the risk you run from sabotage I feel we must make every effort to improve our chances of surviving a surprise air attack and consider it essential that bomb wings be further dispersed to the extent that no more than 15 bomber aircraft are concentrated in one place. Dispersal bases need not be satisfactory for launching combat operations. We recognise the disadvantages of this dispersal in terms of operations, supply and ground security, but we believe this is the best protective measure we can take.51

LeMay went so far as to ask that Johnson be directed to disperse the SAC units.52 But the latter protested strongly, warning that falling back to dispersal bases would over-extend the existing guarding arrangements – dogs, RAF Regiment personnel and paratroopers. Staying on Sculthorpe, Mildenhall and Lakenheath ‘is safer under present circumstances … as I’m sure real threat from sabotage exists’. He would be prepared to go to squadron dispersal only when arrangements for reasonable base security could be made.53 In the event, USAF HQ backed Johnson against the SAC commanding general, directing that the aircraft should remain at the three bases unless and until adequate alternative arrangements could be made.54 With dispersal ruled out, and worried that the guard cover was thinly stretched, Chief of the Air Staff Jack Slessor asked for troops to be brought from America to guard the stations and the aircraft, but Air Marshal Sir Hugh Saunders, the RAF

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Inspector-General, countered by offering British troops ‘to guard [US] aircraft against sabotage’.55 The British cabinet, concerned about the risk of Communist subversion, took the threat of sabotage very seriously. When on 14 July, ammunition barges were destroyed by a large explosion at Portsmouth, a nervous government immediately concluded (‘no room for doubt about it’ announced Viscount Hall, First Lord of the Admiralty) that this act was perpetrated by Communists, aimed at destroying an ammunition shipment bound for Korea.56 Ten days later, the Prime Minister and First Lord made statements in both Houses, announcing that an interim report on the incident had come to a ‘definite conclusion’ as to the cause: ‘an act of sabotage’ by a person or persons by means ‘based on considerable scientific knowledge and … carefully calculated for their effect’.57 This did not stand up to further investigation, and a Board of Inquiry had by September reached no firm conclusions on whether sabotage had occurred. Nevertheless, mindful of the potential embarrassment, the Attorney General advised that ‘it would be unwise to modify the public statements already made’.58 While a subsequent detailed report by the Armament Research Establishment, Woolwich, was unable to make any finding as to the cause of the explosion, sabotage was considered unlikely.59 Although there had been some preliminary study of the need for improved security against Communist sabotage at the airfields, the Portsmouth incident increased the sense of urgency. 60 The potential threat to the East Anglian airfields was obvious. Johnson had reported in early June that while his emergency plans for the bases were ready, security will not be up to desired standard due to shortage of air police in place. We are led to believe the British Counter Intelligence is aware of possible saboteurs and that action can be initiated by that agency to counter their effectiveness immediately.

Meanwhile, ‘background investigations are [a] continuing process to eliminate possible saboteurs’.61 Air Chief Marshal Sir Ralph Cochrane, Vice-Chief of the Air Staff, subsequently asked MI5 to make a complete assessment of ‘sabotage capabilities in the East Anglia area’.62 The subsequent annual report of the RAF Provost Marshal recorded that steps had been taken to monitor potentially subversive activity in East Anglia by the RAF Police, the USAF Air Police and the (USAF) Office of Special Investigations (OSI) acting together.63 A full review of the means of guarding key points in time of war, including the bases occupied by the USAF, was also set in motion, and included MI5’s full assessment of the sabotage threat posed by subversives.64

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The attack on SAC aircraft In these circumstances, it was all the more startling that the sole attack upon the B-29s, at Lakenheath, was made by their British guards. In July 1950 the USAF deployment there consisted of the 301st Bombardment Group, comprising the 32nd, 352nd and 353rd bomb squadrons and the 301st Refuelling Squadron.65 Nearly four hundred USAF officers and 1,319 enlisted men joined the RAF station complement of 28 officers and 762 other ranks. An RAF Regiment squadron was in place to secure the airfield, alongside air defence troops with light anti-aircraft weapons and a detachment of the Royal Ulster Rifles. Later in the month the RAF Regiment units returned to Upavon, the majority of the airmen drafted in for guard duties returned to their units, and the responsibility for guarding the USAF aircraft passed to the Army detachment. On the night of 23 July, four aircraft of the 301st were put out of action by their British guards. As Johnson recorded it: Early in the morning I received word that seven nose-wheel tires and two main structure tires of our aircraft had been punctured by a bayonet with as many as 25 holes per tire. I informed C-in-C Bomber Command and the Air Ministry. Later in the day Mr Newling, of the Minister of Defense’s office, called my Deputy Chief of Staff and stated that this matter would have to be dealt with between the British Foreign Office and the American Embassy. I called Mr Michael Carey, Secretary to the Secretary of State for Air, suggesting that we keep this matter in Service channels and not take it up with the Ambassador. He called me back and said that the Minister of Defense had already gone to a Cabinet meeting and it was too late to keep it in service channels, inasmuch as they considered it a rather serious offense.66

The desire to cloak the incident in secrecy was accepted at the highest levels. Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary Sir William Strang received the US Ambassador, who was accompanied by Ambassador-atLarge Julius Holmes, a figure who had been closely involved in dealing with the USAF deployment to England. Strang – who mentioned that batteries as well as tyres were damaged – advised that the British ‘were making enquiries into these incidents and would keep him informed. Meanwhile, we thought this information should be kept secret and not allowed to leak to the press, and we hoped that he would take all necessary steps, on his side, to that end.’ The Ambassador had not heard of the incident, but when briefed agreed that it should be kept quiet. ‘When I met the Ambassador’, wrote Johnson, ‘he informed me that the British considered this a very serious matter and were going into it thoroughly.

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They asked that we release no publicity on the incident and I told the Ambassador we were making no releases.’67 The immediate reaction had been to take the British troops off aircraft guard duties, replacing them with US airmen and combat crews, with British paratroops deployed for area guard while a Board of Inquiry was set up. The following day Johnson noted in his diary This morning the Wing Commanders were informed of the desire of the British to keep down publicity on the matter of the incident at Lakenheath. Discussed the situation with Air Marshal [Sir Hugh] Lloyd, who informed me that he does not have confidence in the type of soldiers in the Army and he wished we could have kept the RAF Regiment and not put soldiers on the base.68

Colonel Thomas W. Steed, commanding the 301st Bombardment Group, complained that using his aircrew for guard purposes would weaken training efforts and the effectiveness of the SAC forces: We are supplementing our guard with assistance from the several hundred British here for that purpose. In addition, I am keeping on duty one officer over each four airplanes in addition to the guard for the aircraft … I might add, the necessity of guarding all the A-Bomb sites – which we must do – is a heavy drain.69

Major-General ‘Hamp’ Atkinson used the harassed Steed’s warning to submit his own worries about security against sabotage. By this time Steed himself was out of action, having suffered serious and ultimately disabling head injuries in an attack by one of his own crew members in the course of an RB-29 training flight. Despite the apparent sabotage at Lakenheath, security at the several air bases did not immediately improve. Colonel Robert H. Terrill, the commanding officer of the 93rd Bombardment Wing, carried out his own security checks and found he could reach the Lakenheath aircraft at 1.00 a.m. without challenge, although this was not the case at Marham. The underlying problem, it seemed, was that the men assigned to protecting the aircraft ‘are not trained in guard duty’.70 Some reinforcement was provided, the RAF Police strength being increased by the attachment of a Police Flight, commanded by a Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal, who issued perimeter passes to those who needed to be on the airfield at night. The Army units continued to be responsible for the guarding of USAF aircraft, and on the night of 2/3 August, an exercise was held to test the efficiency of the measures adopted by the Army. But Lakenheath was an un-fenced airfield, and further embarrassment followed on 13 September when a journalist, himself a Royal Auxiliary Air

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Force officer, drove into Lakenheath and casually inspected the flight line without challenge, being detained temporarily by US officers only on attempting to leave the site. Paul Richey’s Daily Express revelations – ‘I claim it’s too easy to get near our atom-bombers’ – prompted a further RAF Board of Inquiry.71 Meanwhile, the soldiers involved in the Lakenheath incident were arraigned before secret courts martial. Following a joint investigation by the RAF and the Army’s Special Investigation Branch, three soldiers faced charges. The sergeant in charge of the guard, Arthur Elliott of the Somerset Light Infantry, attached to the 1st Essex regiment, faced charges under S.41 of the Army Act, a section which enables a court martial to hear charges brought under the civil code. The court martial was convened in Colchester on 17 August; Charles Caulfield prosecuted for the Directorate of Army Legal Services, Judge Advocate Featherstone presided and a local solicitor, Mr Sutton, defended. The presiding judge initially refused the application to hold the hearing in camera, causing consternation among the American and British officers dealing with the case. Dick Halse, a senior military lawyer, recalls: Caulfield contacted me and I spent a hectic afternoon chasing around the main building trying to find a senior officer who would give the necessary evidence. The Intelligence Branch said it was nothing to do with them so I saw a BGS [Brigadier] in Ops. He eventually agreed and I arranged for him to come with me to Colchester the following day. When we got to the court we found it was swarming with press men but eventually we got in without any photos being taken. I made the application in closed court and the court then agreed that the whole of the trial including the reading of the charges should be held in closed court.72

Sergeant Elliott was acquitted, but the Riflemen, charged under Sections 41 (James Connolly) and the more serious 41 (3) (Eric Smith) which specifically referred to imprisonment on conviction of treason-felony, were both found guilty of malicious damage the following day and were sentenced respectively to nine months’ detention and three years’ imprisonment and discharge with ignominy.73 Two important issues arose from the conduct of the trials: the suspicion of political pressure upon the court and divisions over the security arguments. Brigadier H.S. Shapcott, the Director of Army Legal Services, objected to remarks made by Featherstone, which appear to have given the impression that he was in effect acting under orders in relation to national security. He was vigorously defended by his senior colleague, C.L. Stirling, Deputy Judge Advocate General (JAG), to whom it fell to confirm the sentences. Stirling nevertheless deprecated

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the way the hearing in open court of the application for the trials to be held in camera was handled : It was for [Featherstone] to explain to the Court the principles of law they should have in mind when considering this application on its merits and for them to decide whether in their opinion it was right and proper in the light of those principles and the information placed before them to hold the trial and exclude the public. In deciding a point of this kind I do not think that the Court required assistance from the Judge Advocate and I have come to the conclusion that it would have been more in keeping with the functions of the Judge Advocate if Featherstone had refrained from making [his] observations.74

Underlying these remarks was a gulf between the JAG’s office and the prosecuting authorities, who had chosen to bring minor criminal charges rather than treat the matter as one of sabotage or subversion, so raising the question why the charges should be heard in secret. Stirling confessed he had great difficulty in appreciating what there was in the charges as framed to require them to be kept secret. In themselves they appear to me to be entirely innocuous and as you surely must have realised the consequences is a series of protests from the Press. Personally I feel so far as the charges were concerned that these protests were entirely justified.

Stirling reiterated the JAG office’s doubts when he responded to the General Officer Commanding Eastern Command, on whose watch the incident occurred, ‘Whether it was really necessary to exclude the public which, of course, included the press, when the accused were arraigned upon the charges against them is not for me to say, but their exclusion not unnaturally produced the protest by Mr Sutton, the defending Solicitor .’75 The doubt was shared in the press and in Parliament, although the charges and the background to them were unknown. The local press took a keen interest in the case. On 18 August the Essex County Telegraph headlined ‘“Iron Curtain” at Court Martial’ and the following Friday both the Telegraph and the Essex County Standard covered the protests that followed the hearing, the Standard publishing what appears to have been the only photograph of Smith and Connolly arriving at the court under the headline ‘Two Colchester soldiers guilty of unknown offence.’ The protests, initially by Mr Sutton, the solicitor who represented Connolly and Smith, were directed at the decision to hold the court martial in camera, and the refusal to publish the charges against them.

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The Essex County Telegraph on 25 August covered Sutton’s ‘“Secret” court protest’ and as soon Parliament reconvened Labour MPs questioned John Strachey, the Secretary of State for War, about the secrecy asking Why it was necessary … for the charges to be kept secret, thus causing public speculation about their nature, which was unfair to the accused particularly in view of the fact that nationals of another country were brought in to give evidence; and if he will ensure that on all future occasions the charges are made public.

Strachey, on this and on the subsequent occasions when the matter was raised, argued that the specific charges and the evidence adduced to prove them contained information which could not, for reasons of security, and still cannot, be made public for reasons of security. Accordingly, the specific charges and the evidence could not be given in open court and the court was satisfied that, in the interests of justice, the trial, including the arraignment, must therefore be held in camera. The military authorities cannot, of course, themselves decide that a court martial is to be held in camera. This can only be decided by the court itself on a submission to them that certain information essential for the proper trial of the case cannot be made public. I have no doubt that courts martial will continue to decide to sit in camera only with reluctance and if they are convinced that they must do so in the interests of the administration of justice.76

When Conservative MP Sir Herbert Williams asked for the charges to be made public Strachey refused, but noted that the press had since been informed that they related to malicious damage to property. When Williams returned to the issue the following day, asking ‘why it was that the charges were so serious, yet the sentences were so light?’ Strachey replied In this case it was not a question of the seriousness of the charges. It was a question of the considerations of security which arose, in consideration of the charges, which caused the competent military authority to inform the court that they could not make the charges in open court.77

Other Labour members joined in and pressed their criticism that the charges should have been made public at the time of the court martial. Initially, this was thought to be sabotage. Johnson’s initial report, forwarded by LeMay to USAF HQ, referred to the aircraft having been ‘sabotaged’ and to ‘the units of which the saboteurs [were] members transferred’.78 Johnson noted, however, that the men did not appear to

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be Communists. His later preliminary report offered the view that the draftees were ‘resentful’ at having ‘been ordered overseas’.79 The following day he elaborated: ‘Their confessions are generally that both men were “teed of[f]” at the sergeant of the guard for being posted to this duty and were also in a semi-intoxicated condition and they committed the offence for this reason.’80 Given the gravity of their action, the charges brought and the sentences handed out were remarkably light, although the decision to charge Smith under Section 41 (3) is intriguing and suggests a more serious intent than was recorded in contemporary accounts. It is of course possible that the investigation established that the two soldiers had acted foolishly rather than in any anti-American or anti-nuclear spirit. The only published authority, drawing on AFHRA sources, refers to the act of ‘sabotage’ in quote marks, and attributes it to ‘two drunken soldiers with no political motive, only pique at their sergeant’.81 The public and political attention the incident acquired owed much to the disparity between the weight of the charges and the secrecy of the trial. That secrecy followed from the necessity to prevent public knowledge of the nuclear capabilities of the USAF deployment. Naturally, there was open speculation, and the risk of Riflemen Smith and Connolly speaking of what they knew in open court was too great to take, given the extent of anti-American sentiment in the Parliamentary Labour Party at that time. As the senior military lawyer present in court that day recalls, ‘it was then thought undesirable that the public should know that the [USAF] strike force was based in this country’.82 Despite the multiple embarrassments of the Lakenheath episode, Anglo-American security cooperation was already developing rapidly, with the USAF Office of Special Investigations working closely with the Metropolitan Police Special Branch and the RAF Provost Marshal.83 Now there was set in motion, at Johnson’s request, a full review of the British bases’ vulnerability. The sources contacted in this review ranged as wide as MI5, the RAF Provost Marshal’s intelligence and counter-sabotage section; the FBI and CIA offices in London; the RAF intelligence section; the General Post Office (GPO) intelligence section; UK Immigration Services security section; the American Air Attaché in Dublin; 3rd Air Division intelligence; and the local constabulary at Sculthorpe, Mildenhall, Marham, Wyton and Lakenheath. Reporting in February 1951, the analysis evaluated the threat of a ground attack against the SAC bases, either by saboteurs or small-scale enemy forces infiltrating the United Kingdom, to judge whether a Soviet attacker could easily reach the SAC bases and do much damage to the aircraft there. The greatest threat would be from the attack of ‘a highly

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trained group of fanatically inspired special agents acting in concert against one or more of the bases simultaneously’. But the complexity of planning, coordination and movement which must precede an attack of this type would render it more liable to discovery by counter-intelligence agents: there were at least fifteen two-man teams of undercover agents from the Provost Marshal’s office constantly operating in Norfolk: In addition to this force, it is understood that MI5 has an undetermined number of agents also operating in the area [and] a stranger seen observing these bases from the surrounding countryside in East Anglia would probably run a great risk of being caught through his conspicuousness in the country.

As for the threat from the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), this was entirely discounted, as It is unlikely that the Soviet general staff would entrust what amounts to the success of their war effort, as well as the security of their homeland, to any group so untrained and unscreened as the British Communist Party … its 40,000 members are catalogued in the national security files and almost all are people of British origin … Furthermore, it was apparent from the talks held with British officials that British agents have been successful in infiltrating the local Communist Party and it can be assumed that the Soviets are aware that this can be and has been done. With British agents operating in the ranks of the party any information given to the party must be considered to have been given also to British military authorities and this fact operates to practically eliminate Soviet use of the British Communist Party in any sabotage attack connected with Soviet War plans.84

Measures had already been taken by the 3rd Air Division to improve security, with more extensive fencing, air police guards on aircraft, and guard dogs, and much more of the same was recommended, along with greater restriction of access by civilians. One very real problem, especially at Lakenheath, was that the low level of British security permitted the carrying on of civilian agriculture on SAC bases, and the use by the public of roads crossing them. With aircraft dispersal practically ruled out, Leon Johnson was now in a much stronger position to insist on improved security on those bases for which he was responsible.

Notes   1 Chiefs of Staff to Air Marshal Elliot, 24 August 1951, UKNA, AIR 75/107.   2 A typical reference came in Moscow’s Foreign Press Review in New Times, 51,

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1953, to ‘the British Isles … being converted into an American atomic aircraft carrier’.   3 S. Duke, ‘US basing in Britain, 1945–1960’, in S. Duke and W. Krieger (eds.), US military forces in Europe: the early years, 1945–1970, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1993, p. 120.   4 W. Barton Leach to Secretary Finletter, 4 October 1950, Harvard Law Library, Cambridge, MA, Papers of Professor W. Barton Leach, file 52-16.   5 J.F. Schnabel, The history of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: the Joint Chiefs of Staff and national policy, Volume 1, 1945–47, Washington, DC, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1996, p. 156.   6 Ross, American war plans, 1945–50.   7 K.W.Condit, The history of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: the Joint Chiefs of Staff and national policy, Volume 2, 1947–49, Washington, DC, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1996, pp. 297–301.   8 Maj.-Gen. J.H. Atkinson to LeMay (heavily redacted), 21 August 1950, LoC, Papers of General Curtis E. LeMay, B-6618, Box 196.   9 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Atomic Warfare: Revised Report by the Directors of Plans, 30 November 1951, para. 15, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 10 Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. 11 Ross, American war plans, pp. 3–20. 12 American bombers (formerly in Germany) and fighter aircraft based in the UK, 1948, UKNA, PREM 8/1566. 13 Memorandum for Colonel Nye from USAF headquarters, 28 April 1948, NARA, RG 341, Box 41. 14 A. Shlaim, The United States and the Berlin blockade, 1948–1949: a study in crisis decision-making, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1983, p. 238. 15 P.S. Meilinger, Hoyt S. Vandenberg: the life of the General, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1989, p. 97. Dr Meilinger, in later correspondence with the author, conceded that his informants were mistaken. 16 H.R. Borowski, A hollow threat: strategic air power and containment before Korea, Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1982, pp. 102–103. Others who dismiss the idea of a nuclear deployment include J.L. Gaddis, We now know: rethinking cold war history, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 91; G. Herken, The winning weapon: the atomic bomb in the cold war, New York, Alfred Knopf, 1980, p. 259; D. Miller, The cold war: a military history, London, John Murray, 1998, p. 133; R. Ovendale, British defence policy since 1945, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1994, p. 56; G.A. Larsen, ‘The B-29 atomic option during the Berlin airlift’, Friends Journal (USAF National Museum), 99 (4), 2005–06, pp. 37–42. Those who have written of the aircraft as ‘atomic capable’ or even ‘nuclear-armed’ include J. Pimlott and A. Mather, The cold war, London, Franklin Watts, 1987, p. 12; R. Harkavy, Bases abroad: the global foreign military presence, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 250; S. Twigge, The early development of guided weapons in the United Kingdom, 1940–1960, Reading, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1993, p. 69; and M.

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Walker, The cold war and the making of the modern world, London, Fourth Estate, 1993, p. 57. 17 W.A. Trest and G.M. Watson Jr., ‘Framing Air Force missions’, in B.C. Nalty (ed.), Winged shield, winged sword: a history of the United States Air Force, Volume 1, 1907–1950, Washington, DC, Air Force History and Museums Program, 1997, p. 428. 18 SAC was formed in March 1946 and transferred to USAF on its formation in September 1947. 19 Williamson and Rearden, Origin of US nuclear strategy, 48. 20 S. Greenwood, Britain and the Cold War 1945–91, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000, p. 63; Herken, The winning weapon, p. 259. 21 K. Young, ‘US “Atomic capability” and the British forward bases in the early cold war’, Journal of Contemporary History, 42 (1), 2007, p. 125. 22 Operations Record Books, RAF Marham (AIR 28/1076); RAF Lakenheath (AIR 28/1065); RAF Sculthorpe (AIR 28/1110); and RAF Scampton (AIR 28/1105), all at UKNA. 23 Report by Maj.-Gen. L.F. Whitten on a visit to the UK to discuss logistical aspects of the deployment, 15 July 1948, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 748. 24 Curtis E. LeMay, in R.H. Kohn and J.P. Harahan (eds.), Strategic air warfare, Washington, DC, Office of Air Force History, 1988, p. 85. 25 General Curtis E. LeMay, interviewed by John T. Bolen, 9 March 1971, March AFB, CA, USAF Oral History Program, p. 14, AFHRA. 26 Recollected in LeMay, daily diary for 17 June 1948. Sites from which an air campaign would be flown ‘have been finally selected and approved by almost all interested parties’. LoC, LeMay papers, Box 47. 27 Maj-Gen. Sam Anderson (Director of Plans and Operations) to Lt.-Gen. Lauris Norstad, 14 September 1948, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 353. 28 Telegram, BJSM to Air Ministry, 13 July 1948, UKNA, AIR 20/11312. 29 Telegram, BJSM to Air Ministry, 18 July 1948; ACM Medhurst (BJSM) to AM Robb (VCAS), Air Ministry, 22 July 1948, UKNA, AIR 20/11312. 30 Operations Record Book, RAF Sculthorpe, UKNA, AIR 28/1110. 31 Operations Record Book, RAF Lakenheath, UKNA, AIR 28/1065. 32 Recorded in Johnson to Vandenberg, 26 May 1950, NARA, RG341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 741. 33 R. Dingman, ‘Atomic diplomacy during the Korean War’, International Security, 13 (3), 1988/89, pp. 55–60. 34 W.S. Moody, Building a strategic Air Force, Washington, DC, Air Force History and Museums Program, 1995, pp. 340–344. 35 Memorandum by Chief of Staff, USAF, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on strengthening USAF capabilities in the UK, 6 July 1950, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 744. 36 Norstad to LeMay, 9 July 1950, LoC, Papers of Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Box 86. 37 Norstad to LeMay, 10 July 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86.

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38 Johnson to Norstad, 9 (?) July 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 39 Notes by Sir Norman Brook, Cabinet Secretary, 10 July 1950, UKNA, CAB 195/8. 40 Diary of Lt.-Gen. Leon W. Johnson, ,8–10 July 1950, pp. 120–121, in private hands. 41 Johnson diary, 11 July 1950, p. 123. Johnson’s subsequent recollection was less focused and cannot be relied upon. Johnson interview, August 1975, AFHRA, K.239.0512.865. 42 R.S. Norris, W.M. Arkin and W. Burr, ‘Where they were’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 55 (6), November–December 1999, p. 27. 43 Mirgon memoir, p. 16. 44 Records of HQ USAF (Air staff) incoming and outgoing messages, 22 July 1950, NARA, RG 341, top secret box 22. 45 Mirgon memoir, p. 17. 46 Norstad to Johnson, 12 July 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 47 Defence Threat Reduction Agency, Defence’s nuclear agency 1947–1997, Washington, DC, 2002. 48 Mirgon memoir, pp. 18–20. 49 W. Barton Leach, Special Consultant to the Secretary of the Air Force, to Secretary Finletter, 21 July 1950, Harvard Law Library, Barton Leach Papers. 50 Memorandum for Finletter from staff on defence of UK bases, 21 July 1950, LoC, LeMay papers, B-6004, Box 195. 51 Message to Johnson from LeMay, date unclear, probably August 1950, Records of Headquarters, USAF, NARA, RG 341, Box 23. 52 Telegram, date unclear, 1950 – LeMay to Vandenberg, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 195. 53 Records of HQ USAF (Air staff) incoming and outgoing messages, Redline Johnson to LeMay, date unclear probably August 1950, NARA, RG 341, top secret box 23. 54 Vandenberg to LeMay, 9 August 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 55 Johnson diary, 27 June 1950, p. 118. 56 Notes by Sir Norman Brook, Cabinet Secretary, 20 July 1950, UKNA, CAB 195/8. 57 House of Commons Debates, 24 July 1950, Explosion, Portsmouth Harbour, statement by the Prime Minister. 58 Summary of developments, P.E.C. Moore to First Lord, 18 September 1950, UKNA, ADM 1/23022. 59 Report by W.H. Bailey, ARE, 29 January 1951, UKNA, ADM 1/23022. 60 A Key Points sub-committee, possibly of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, had been set up early in 1949, UKNA, AIR 20/6555. 61 Johnson to LeMay, 12 June 1950, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 744. 62 Johnson diary, 8 August 1950, p. 132. 63 Report of the Provost Marshal and Chief of Air Force Police for the Year 1950, paras. 41–43, UKNA, AIR 20/12425.

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64 Methods of Guarding Key Points, Note by the Security Service, n.d., UKNA, ADM 1/23022; other papers at AIR 20/6555 and DEFE 7/22237. 65 RAF Lakenheath Operations Record Book, July 1950, UKNA, AIR 28/1065. 66 Johnson diary, 24 July 1950, p. 128. The damage was actually more extensive, and included the nose Plexiglas panels and a wing flap on one or more of the aircraft. Message, LeMay to Vandenberg, 26 July 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 67 Johnson diary, 24 July 1950, p. 128. 68 Johnson diary, 25 July 1950, p. 129. 69 Col. Thomas W. Steed HQs 301st Bombardment Wing to Maj.-Gen. J.H. Atkinson, 2nd Air Force, 28 July 1950; Atkinson to LeMay, 2 August 1950, LoC, LeMay Papers, B-6124, Box 195. 70 Johnson diary, 25 July 1950, p. 129. 71 ‘I claim it’s too easy to get near our atom-bombers – by Wing Commander Paul Richey’, Daily Express, 14 September 1950. RAF Board of Inquiry, UKNA, AIR 28/1065. 72 R.C. Halse, ‘Forty years on’, unpublished memoir of the Army Legal Services (of which Brigadier Halse was Director, 1955–62), c. 1968, p. 62. 73 Judge Advocate’s Register, 1950, UKNA, WO 82. 74 C.L. Stirling, Deputy JAG, to Brig. Shapcott, 23 August 1950, Judge Advocate General’s Letter Book, 1950, UKNA, WO 83/100. 75 Stirling to GOC-in-C Eastern Command, 5 September 1950, UKNA, WO 83/100. 76 House of Commons Debates, 18 September 1950, written answers, cols. 183–4. 77 House of Commons Debates, 19 September 1950, oral answers, col. 1697. 78 Quoted in Message, LeMay to Vandenberg, 26 July 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 79 Quoted in Message, LeMay to Vandenberg, 26 July 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 80 Redline to Norstad from Johnson, 27 July 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 81 Moody, Building a strategic Air Force, p. 345. 82 Halse, ‘Forty years on’, p. 62. 83 Headquarters 3rd Air Division, The Inspector General, Office of Special Investigations, Quarterly Historical Reports 1951, AFHRA. 84 The Defence of Strategic Air Command Bases in the United Kingdom, Operations Analysis Special Report No. 6, 15 February 1951, NARA, RG 341, Box 746, p. 58.

3 Here to stay?

We are not ‘occupying’ England. We are not ‘guests’. We are not ‘visitors’. We are not ‘transients’. Exactly what is the status of the USAF in England? Major-General Leon W. Johnson, 1949

When, ‘training’ visits aside, the B-29s were first deployed to England to meet the threat of the Berlin crisis, the 3rd Air Division of USAF in Europe was activated (that is, reconstituted), initially on a provisional basis, to support the units rotated to the UK and to manage the airfields. Major-General Leon W. Johnson was given command and, reporting to the Commander-in-Chief USAFE at Wiesbaden, presided over the elaborate programme of base extensions that followed. The build-up of the deployments was rapid, the corresponding programme of base improvements sluggish and the allocation of costs between the Americans and the British constantly contested. Soon made permanent, the Division was uprated to the status of a Major Command in 1949 until it was dissolved and replaced by the USAFE’s 3rd Air Force in May 1951. While this change increased the organisational weight of Johnson’s operation, it was counter-balanced by the activation in England of SAC’s 7th Air Division, with the reporting line going direct to LeMay. A high-level SAC presence represented by the 7th Air Division notionally removed impediments to SAC’s ability to muster resources for an atomic strike against Soviet targets. Of those plans, British officials and ministers remained in ignorance. But one question did loom large in their minds: were the Americans here to stay?

A permanent presence? The Berlin deployment pushed Strategic Air Command’s presence in the UK to the forefront of political concerns. As Foreign Secretary Bevin explained to US Ambassador Lewis Douglas in 1950,

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the British Cabinet had never yet accepted the principle that there should be a permanent American base in Great Britain. What we had done was to allow the B-29 groups to be brought here as a protection during the difficult time arising out of the Berlin blockade. But there had never been a decision taken by the cabinet regarding the permanent location of American bombers in this country; neither had we ever reported the question to Parliament.1

This did not mean, he explained, that the government were averse to making ‘an adequate, proper and agreed arrangement’, but British opinion had to be taken into account. ‘It would be unwise’, warned Bevin, ‘for the US government, having got B-29s over here for a specific purpose, to ask for too much.’ So far as the British government was concerned, the expectation was that all three groups of aircraft would remain in the United Kingdom only so long as the Berlin crisis continued: No definite proposal that one or more of the groups should be stationed in this country on a more permanent basis has yet been made, and … this is a question which can only be considered at a later date in view of the political situation then existing. It is always been made clear that it is no part of the intention of the United States government to maintain their air forces in this country if their presence is not desired.2

This reassurance might have mollified the opponents of the US presence, whose strength in the Parliamentary Labour Party was all too evident to cabinet members. But there were other issues to consider, issues that went to the heart of UK defence and which prompted a search, through 1949–50, for a firm agreement that would put the present peacetime arrangements on a more definite basis. In Washington, the National Security Council had already resolved that ‘the development of adequate airfields in the United Kingdom and in the Cairo–Suez area, required for emergency war plans, is in the interests of national security’.3 By this point the long-term interest of the UK required an agreement that would fully safeguard the country’s position, most especially in time of war. For on the one hand, ‘we had a great deal to gain in encouraging the Americans to base their air forces in the United Kingdom in peacetime’, while on the other, it was unclear by what means the UK could insist on an American withdrawal and, crucially, how to react were the US to decide to launch air strikes from United Kingdom airfields with the United Kingdom not yet at war.4 These would become matters of anxious debate over the next few years and were perhaps never finally resolved. Economic circumstances ensured that the Americans would have to

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be pushed as far as possible to meet the costs of facilities that they themselves had sought. On 24 January 1950 the British government issued a Unilateral Declaration that they were not in a position to undertake any further commitment in the form of mutual aid without endangering economic recovery. This opened a new chapter in the negotiations over facilities and costs and, in so doing, raised the expectation that the US presence would continue in the longer term. For on that same day, a Bilateral Agreement was signed with the US government, embodying a list of desired facilities, clearly defined both as to amount and duration. As a Foreign Office official pointed out, by agreeing on such a list ‘we shall automatically be agreeing to the continued presence of the US Air Force in this country for a period which is bound to be much longer than anything reasonably necessary to liquidate the Berlin airlift’.5 That was indeed the American expectation. Lieutenant-General Lauris Norstad, when USAF Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, had told Tedder that the United States wanted to maintain a permanent detachment in the UK consisting of one B-29 bombardment group and one fighter group ‘irrespective of whether an emergency in Western Europe existed or not’. Such a deployment would show the seriousness of the American intent, give the newly formed SAC some needed experience through rotations and, most importantly, get the aircraft established in place so they could become ‘an accepted fixture’ before the British could have a change of heart.6 While there was no sign of an imminent change of heart, the political situation in Britain was unstable. With characteristic bluntness, Bevin warned Ambassador Douglas that the continuation of the US presence at the bases was ‘a very difficult subject’ when they met in November 1949. But when he went on to assure the American that he was in favour of coming to an ‘adequate, proper and agreed arrangement’ Douglas interpreted this as unconditional acceptance of the USAF presence, and reported back accordingly, causing great consternation in Whitehall. Bevin’s answer had been framed in the light of the general election due in the summer of 1950: ‘yes, but not yet’.7 But did continuation imply near-permanency? Lest there be any doubt, Bevin explained to the Ambassador when they met again a few days later that the United States government would have to ‘take account of political opinion and constitutional practice in this country’.8 These issues naturally looked rather different from the standpoint of the commanding general on the ground in England. Major-General Leon Johnson, 3rd Air Division commander, was viewed with some suspicion in the Air Ministry, where he was seen as loud and pushy. To the Foreign Office, he was ‘inclined to be anti-British’, and ‘could stir up

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trouble in Washington’.9 Certainly Johnson was inclined to exaggerate his own influence and standing. But his grasp of the sensitivities of the 3rd Air Division’s position in England, as he explained it to Vandenberg, could not be faulted: USAF operations in England are different in many respects from most other major commands and the definition of the ‘what the USAF status in the UK is’ has presented some interesting problems. We do not enjoy diplo­ matic immunity. We are not ‘occupying’ England. We are not ‘guests’. We are not ‘visitors’. We are not ‘transients’. Exactly what is the status of the USAF in England? The answer to this question is neither black nor white. In certain respects we have to operate under the same governmental regulations as the British nationals – in other respects we enjoy certain privileges as Americans. In still other conditions we are financially penalized … However, each day has seen major strides in finding the answers to this question and the prospects of very little difficulty in the future are good.10

Johnson’s expectation though, was unambiguous: ‘We are assuming an indefinite stay now.’ RAF commanders were more circumspect. When Bomber Command’s chief Sir Hugh Lloyd visited Lakenheath in April 1950, he announced that the USAF would remain for ‘at least another year’ and their forces could be expected to steadily increase in strength.11 The January 1950 agreement had not been predicated on a permanent presence, although some of the internal Whitehall message traffic used the term.12 In part, this reflected uncertainty about how much the USAF would ask for, as despite the fact that the Secretary of State had made perfectly plain to the United States Ambassador that His Majesty’s Government were not committed to the principle of having the United States Air Forces here permanently in time of peace, the American Military, and in particular General Johnson, were still asserting in loud voices that we were so committed and were expressing increasing impatience at the Air Ministry’s unwillingness to get down to discussions about the aerodromes.13

The issue here was that SAC commanders aimed to retain the East Anglian bases indefinitely for the tanker and fighter escort units, while relocating the atomic bomb units to safer locations on airfields in the Midlands as and when access could be acquired.14 It was on the willingness of the UK to provide facilities on four further airfields in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Berkshire that the uncertainties about the future turned. At one level, these were administrative questions about the financial commitments for works services, the civil engineering operations to

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extend and strengthen runways and erect buildings and bomb stores. At another, these were matters of the highest political import, about completing these developments in order to ‘enable the US Air Forces to operate from UK or UK-controlled bases in the event of war’. The Bilateral Agreement and the Unilateral Declaration made in January 1950 ‘were carefully redrafted by us so as to ensure that we were not committed to provide the Americans with any facilities apart from the sterling element in their administrative costs, in return for the assistance which we are receiving’. It was accepted, though, that there would have to be negotiations over other, ancillary facilities which the USAF would expect Britain to provide.15 And so it emerged that the real argument was not between a ‘temporary’ and a ‘permanent’ presence, but between peacetime and wartime operations. While the Labour government insisted that they had not committed themselves in any way to allowing the permanent station of US Air Force squadrons in the UK in time of peace, ‘we should want them here in time of war’. The requirements for wartime deployment were very extensive. By late 1950, the war plan SHAKEDOWN envisaged the UK being able to accommodate, within the first 60 days alone, six medium bomb groups, two reconnaissance groups, five escort fighter groups, three defence fighter groups, one light bomb group, one troop carrier group, three depot wings and one reconnaissance technical squadron. It would be, in Johnson’s words, ‘a big undertaking’.16 The airfields in the Midlands would need to be extended and developed to allow the relocation of the B-29s and B-50s stationed in East Anglia. As an incentive, the American negotiators stressed the benefits to Britain of having these prime airfields for the RAF’s own modernised bomber force when it came into being, a point that rather lacked persuasiveness, unless it were assumed that they would indeed be vacated at some convenient time in the future. In the Air Ministry, the reasoning was both more basic and more urgent: ‘it is vital to our defence in war that the American Air Force should use this island as a main base for its strategic bombing offensive’.17 Did that prospect require an explicit agreement? With a general election imminent it seemed inopportune to propose such a commitment. It was uncertain whether a more appropriate occasion would arise and pending that, it seemed best to commence negotiations on costs and help the SAC forces improve their readiness and enhance their defensibility.18 But this was all based on the strict understanding that there was no publicity, and that the Americans should be told that no decision about the long-term basis of their peacetime presence had been taken. The moves towards establishing this very substantial increase in US air power

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were then to be ‘without prejudice to the question of principle whether American Air Force units should be stationed permanently in the United Kingdom in time of peace’.19 This was false reasoning. The international situation could deteriorate rapidly, and if SAC were to be ready and able to launch an atomic strike in response from their English bases, they would need fully developed, currently operational bases with infrastructure, pre-stocked hardware (a euphemism for inert atomic bombs) and personnel able to support frequent rotations of bomb groups in peacetime. A more satisfactory (and more anodyne) formula had to be found, and on 21 February 1951 Attlee told the House of Commons that USAF units would remain in the UK ‘as long as both governments consider this to be in the interest of their common defence’. 20 This remained the situation when the Labour government was defeated in the 1951 general election, and Winston Churchill returned as prime minister. Additional USAF bases were developed in the UK, while a Visiting Forces Act of 1952 was passed following agreement between Churchill and President Truman. Most of the questions posed by Leon Johnson were now settled. What remained was to negotiate the terms under which the major expansion on to the four Midland bases would be agreed.21

Acquiring new bases The USAF, troubled by the vulnerability of the East Anglian bases to surprise attack across the North Sea, had wanted to withdraw westward behind the air defence screen from the time they first arrived in 1948. It had soon become apparent that the exposed East Anglian airfields enjoyed little protection from existing UK fighter and radar defences, oriented as they were to the defence of southern England. Early in 1949, a National Security Council report proposed US funding for the development of airfields in the UK and the Cairo–Suez area, to a standard sufficient to support the Emergency War Plans. With the UK a major (in time the major) beneficiary of funding under the Marshall Plan, it was initially hoped that first resort could be made to Marshall Fund (Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA)) monies for this purpose. This proved unacceptable: it was too evident a diversion of reconstruction funds for military purposes.22 As a ploy it was anyway regarded rather balefully by the Treasury as ‘an attempt to get in by a side door when the front door has proved unyielding’ and ‘it has been made abundantly clear to the Americans that in either case they will be expected to

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pay’.23 The Treasury, moreover, refused even to consider funding USAF requirements without prior inter-governmental agreement. Defense Secretary James Forrestal pushed the issue up to the National Security Council after advice from Johnson that the British government would not commit funds without pressure from ‘high quarters in the United States’.24 With the support of the Secretary of the Treasury, President Truman on 18 April directed the Secretary of State to open negotiations with the British government.25 British officials acknowledged that ‘it would be easier to defend bases in Oxfordshire than East Anglia’.26 But financial considerations pressed hard. Negotiations would be difficult and subject to frequent revisits as Britain’s economic situation deteriorated. Matters were not eased by the informality with which they were initially approached: meeting US Defense Secretary Louis Johnson in November 1949, Chancellor Sir Stafford Cripps was shown telegram correspondence with Ambassador Douglas in which it was reported that there had been ‘a misunderstanding as to cost which Lew Douglas had cleared with Tedder and that Foreign Secretary said it would be alright’.27 Despite a decision to put matters on a formal basis, it was becoming increasingly unlikely that Britain would be able to contribute the sums demanded as their share of the airfield development. In the dying days of the Labour government the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell, pleaded in Washington for help to mitigate the British economic crisis. One move proposed was that the US government should meet the whole capital and maintenance costs of the works needed to create the USAF bases. The Air Ministry’s Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir James Barnes, followed up with the warning that Britain could not offer any financial contribution beyond committing the land: ‘it is impossible for the Air Ministry, with the best will in the world, to offer to share the cost of your new proposals in the way you suggested’. On the contrary, the US might have to be asked to consider ‘waiving the contribution the Air Ministry has already agreed to make to your existing programme’.28 When Leon Johnson met Barnes to discuss this withdrawal of support he urged that there should be some UK contribution ‘in order to continue the close relationship of the two countries in this defense effort’.29 While the agonised search for funding continued, the Air Ministry, together with the 3rd Air Division, carried out an extensive search for suitable sites, and identified the former RAF airfields at Greenham Common in Berkshire, Fairford in Gloucestershire, and Upper Heyford and Brize Norton in Oxfordshire as suitable. A major new construction programme was outlined to provide for the USAF’s expanding requirements. And with the January 1950 Unilateral Declaration that the UK

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government was not in a position to undertake any further commitment to mutual aid without endangering the country’s economic recovery, some hard-headed negotiations began. In March 1950, Ambassador Douglas and a party of American officers arrived to open negotiations. While matters might otherwise have been handled at official level it was decided to put up a minister, Aidan Crawley, the Under-Secretary of State for Air, to head the British side. After the initial meetings, Crawley circulated a memorandum to the Cabinet Defence Committee summarising reasons why the Americans should be refused permanent air bases in the UK. When judged against the matters that were at stake in this crucial period of rapidly mounting hostility between the Soviet Union and the West, his case for refusal was couched in terms that were, probably deliberately, trivial. First, argued Crawley, a permanent American presence might cause ‘bad feeling’ among people living near the airfields if they recalled that US military personnel were better paid than their British counterparts. Secondly, the USAF would demand a high standard of facilities, including visiting forces exemptions and jurisdictional rights. Thirdly, their presence would hand a propaganda opportunity to the Soviet Union, which could portray the UK as an ‘occupied territory’. Only his final reservation had real substance: that using the English bases for American USAF atomic bombing increased the likelihood that the UK would itself become a primary target for Soviet atomic attack. Against this he set the real point, that a basing arrangement with the USAF would enhance the strategic capability of the West, so clinching the case for agreement. The following month a deal was reached, and signed by the US Ambassador and (somewhat asymmetrically) by junior minister Crawley. It was not to be regarded as a formal agreement (Ambassador Douglas had urged that the terms of the document be kept ‘as vague as possible’) but as ‘complementary statements of the basis on which the two air forces are prepared to participate in a joint project’.30 The British side already had funds allocated for strengthening airfields for the RAF and proposed that this – a small proportion of the total cost – should be their contribution. The counter offer from Douglas’s side was to meet the actual dollar cost of the airfield work (something initially ruled out) and to contribute three battalions of US aviation engineers to carry it out. On the American calculation this would cover two-thirds of the cost, a proportion that later came to be seen as a considerable over-estimate. At this point, with both sides proposing only to contribute sums that, in combination, fell far short of meeting the total costs of the airfield developments, mutual irritation set in. In Washington, the British were seen as ‘penny-pinching’ in their approach to foreign and defence affairs.

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3.1  Major-General Leon W. Johnson introduces Prime Minister Clement Attlee to the crew of a SAC B-50 aircraft during his visit to 3rd Air Force at Marham in September 1949.

Ambassador Douglas thought Bevin had a limited imagination, and suspected that the British were trying to degrade the standards of the proposed runway improvements to the point that they would not be considered safe to use. For their part, the Foreign Office thought Douglas’s tone ‘disagreeable’, and his pressures ‘improper’. Nevertheless, Minister of Defence Shinwell, alive to the damage that could be done by the generation of further ill will, and tiring of ‘neurotic’ American demands, stepped in to make up the necessary shortfall from the defence budget.31 Consensus had been reached with deceptive speed, but this was by no means the end of the story. While Tedder rashly reassured Vandenberg that financial difficulties would not be allowed to stand in the way of progress and that the British were conscious of ‘the need to proceed with all speed in the preparation of these airfields’, in reality the project continued to be troubled by funding shortfalls and disagreements about standards.32 Washington was impatient. Having visited the UK, Air Force Secretary Finletter insisted that the plans for hardstandings on the Midland bases were inadequate, and more land would be needed to provide for adequate dispersal. ‘He stressed the point that half of Strategic Air Command was here and we must take care of this equipment’ and that ‘no cost is too great if it contributes at all to the security

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of the equipment located here’.33 It was becoming clear that the United States would pick up increasing proportions of the bill. It became all the more crucial, then, to identify the needs. Major-General Sam Anderson, Director of Plans and Operations at USAF HQ, reported on the inadequacies of the existing state of the bases and set out the criteria for a suitable base for SAC units. Mindful of the problems of getting a loaded B-29 into the air, he specified a minimum runway length of 8,000 feet with a width of 150 feet, constructed to a sufficient strength to take the weight, and with taxiway access. Control tower facilities would be needed, as well as air traffic control communications systems, radio or radar beacons, runway lights and all-weather ground control approach (GCA) equipment. The infrastructure would also serve B-50 flights although here he considered a 6,000-foot runway adequate for the more powerful aircraft.34 LeMay disagreed, rejecting 6,000 feet as acceptable only in emergency, with 8,000-foot runways, and 150-foot taxiways no more than an initial solution. Ideally all SAC bases, he claimed, should be capable of handling all types of aircraft, a reference to the massive B-36 heavy bomber.35 SAC’s demands for runway space continued to expand, notably with the introduction of the fast jet-powered B-47. Taking-off and landing the B-47 was a precarious undertaking, and still longer runways, of 10,000 feet, would be required. Where possible, the USAF sought to extend within the existing overshoot areas of the existing runways, minimising the loss of agricultural land but eroding the operational safety margins, although the runways completed at Upper Heyford and Greenham Common did extend to 10,000 feet with a further 1,000 feet run-off to accommodate the B-47.36 Chief of the Air Staff Slessor lamented that ‘we just cannot go on indefinitely meeting constant demand for bigger and better runways’. Yet he recognised that operational imperatives must prevail, as ‘the only way we can contribute effectively to the deterrent is to accept the disadvantages of these long runways in what is the most important strategic air base – the UK’.37 Requirements were being increased rather than diminished at this time, and LeMay’s main gripe concerned the slippage of the construction programme. The reasons for slippage were principally financial, and rose in large part from the increasing difficulties that the British experienced, or claimed to experience, in paying their share. In February, the Chancellor of the Exchequer advised his cabinet colleagues that the renegotiation of the UK’s share of the costs was more satisfactory than expected.38 Yet in the autumn of 1951 Slessor warned that, as the British contribution came out of the RAF budget, ‘the more we have to pay for USAF developments in this country the less I have to spend on the RAF’. It would

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not be possible to meet the needs of the programme even if it were allocated a greater share of the national building resources by cutting back civil investment, and even if the Air Ministry were to be given priority within the defence programme there would be ‘a very definite limit to what we can get done in the next two years’.39 LeMay, ever the strategic thinker, was far from satisfied with the construction plans and their faltering rate of progress. Once the 7th Air Division was operational, he had a direct line of command to the USAF presence in England and no longer had to tolerate what was seen as the sluggish progress under Johnson’s 3rd Air Force. Lieutenant-General ‘Shorty’ Wheless, at the time a colonel and Director of Operations to the 7th’s commander, Major-General John Paul McConnell, recalled a LeMay visit in which he was incensed by the failure to complete one of the facilities, almost certainly a photo-reconnaissance processing unit at High Wycombe. In a briefing that day he asked General McConnell to give him a date when it would be finished. General McConnell – after thinking for a few minutes – picked a date out of the air about two months in the future. LeMay pulled out a pad, wrote the date down, and turned to McConnell and said: ‘Fine. On that date you are fired if the facility is not completed.’ That, naturally, became kind of a key date for the 7th Air Division for the next two months! We did get it completed, but it was a close finish.40

The SAC commanding general’s uncompromising style of managing his senior men produced results, but he was less successful in the battles at levels above his own. LeMay made vigorous representations to Air Force Secretary Finletter and to the Air Staff in March 1951, highlighting the deficiencies of much of the worldwide base programme. He stressed the need for flexible deployment and access to intermediate bases, to which his forces could be withdrawn if forward bases were denied to SAC ‘by enemy action or through the reluctance or hesitancy of our allies’. The SAC requirements were increasing year on year as more aircraft became available and more of the newer types. The UK, he argued ‘is only now approaching the capability to accommodate the forces developed for deployment a year ago’. Characteristically, LeMay, mindful of the welfare of his men, also argued for adequate housing and ample recreational facilities to be provided on the bases.41 The USAF planners, he argued, had concentrated too much on the immediate strike requirements of the Emergency War Plans, instead of looking to the long-term needs. At around this time the USAF commissioned a study from the RAND Corporation on the selection and use of strategic air bases, a

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report which was not finalised until 1954, and which advocated major changes to the way in which SAC organised its overseas presence and operations.42 The Ambassador’s agreement, then, far from being the single landmark with which it is often credited, was no more than the end of the beginning. The expectation that the agreement could freeze a funding formula in time was confounded by progressive increases in the weight and importance of the USAF deployment. By 1953 this had increased from an intended 400 aircraft in peace and 1,500 in war, to 670 in peacetime and 1,800 in war.43 No sooner had the Ambassador’s agreement been signed off than Air Marshal Sir William Dickson and 3rd Air Division commander Leon Johnson were obliged to revisit the issue, recognise that the USAF would require considerably more accommodation than had been envisaged earlier, and agree to extend the original agreement to other airfields on the basis of the United States contributing 50 per cent of the capital costs of the construction. In April 1952 it was reported to the Air Council that the costs had risen from £35 million to between £70 million and £90 million, and efforts were being made to limit the UK contribution to £22.5 million.44 The whole programme was reconsidered by the Defence Committee and new negotiations on the financial aspects continued throughout the year, though on the basis of 80/20 split of funding. By the end of April 1952 the British offer on this basis had been reduced to £17.5 million. The United States was unable to accept this and proposed a new agreement. Between August 1952 and February 1953 further studies were carried out of the conditions under which the USAF could acquire further bases to meet their operational requirements, the Air Ministry recommending that some 25 bases be considered as possibly suitable for their operation.45 Secretary of the Air Force Finletter made a second visit to Britain to inspect the bases and reported back that, in consideration of Britain’s financial condition, any additional requirements should not be funded on the 50/50 basis earlier agreed, but instead met solely from US resources.46 Financial haggling meant that the project to develop the Midland bases to meet USAF requirements was now ‘seriously endangered by lack of firm financial arrangements’. Major-General John Paul McConnell who, as deputy commander of the 3rd Air Division, had taken part in the original financial negotiations, reported that the British were now unwilling to co-finance base development through 1952 and 1953. A new agreement, he argued, was needed and could only be achieved by ‘immediate and aggressive action in Washington. As the situation now stands we may be in grave danger of having the base

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development program come to a standstill primarily because of lack of a financial understanding with the UK.’47 While the existing agreement on cost-sharing applied to the Midlands bases for which it was originated, the Air Ministry refused to apply the formula to other bases. When the USAF sought to develop Chelveston in Northamptonshire as a B-47 dispersal base, the British sought assurance that the USAF would bear the entire cost of development. ‘They were adamant on this stand, and months were lost while 3rd Air Force expedited wires to headquarters USAF in order to get approval.’48 A new and more generous deal had already been proposed by Charles Spofford, deputy US representative to the North Atlantic Council, who was charged with examining base negotiations in the several European partner countries. Vandenberg, from the Chief of Staff’s perspective, drew a different conclusion from Spofford’s study, namely that the Europeans regarded the base development programme as a trading proposition, ‘and indeed they seem to be trading us up’. Arrangements fell far short of the requirement that European countries should provide a substantial part of their own defence and Vandenberg, sensitive to Congressional oversight, saw risks of ‘going far beyond our fair share’.49 From here on, the greater part of the financial cost of the USAF presence in the UK would fall on the Americans as approval was given for 100 per cent funding of some items.50 This increasing scale of SAC operations demanded greater fluidity in the financial arrangements and a Special Construction Programme was conceived to cover a new phase of expansion beyond the four Midland airfields.51 In September 1953 Secretary of State for Air Lord De L’Isle and Dudley and US Ambassador Winthrop Aldrich exchanged letters which recorded further detailed agreement – or as they preferred, an ‘understanding’ – for this greatly expanded programme.52 These letters were accepted as modifying, but not superseding, the earlier Ambassador’s agreement and the 1951 exchange of letters between Dickson and Johnson.53 Urgency drove the increasing American disbursement of funds, with LeMay a continuing critic of slow progress, and dissatisfied about delays to the deployment of his new B-47 Stratojet high-speed jet bombers.54 The first B-47s, 45 aircraft of the 306th Bomb Wing, deployed to Fairford in June 1953, bringing with them a fleet of KC-97 tankers, while the Military Air Transport Service (MATS) airlifted more than 1,000 personnel and around 680,000 lb of matériel to the base. This first deployment, while deemed a successful operation in terms of the bombing exercises undertaken, brought to the surface a number of shortcomings on the English bases and instigated more demanding requirements for support there.55 It was soon decided that deploying an

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entire wing with all its support was unwieldy. Soon, long-stay ground crews were in place ‘and they’d just bring the air crew, the crew chief and the airplane. We’d cock it for war.’56 SAC requirements for bases were expanding steadily but in time would change in nature. Strategic bomber forces overseas were run down and the B-47 expansion was followed by contraction as the missile force, both Intermediate Range and Inter-continental (IRBM and ICBM), came on stream. Medium bomber squadrons – principally of B-47, as there were few of the supersonic B-58 in service, and they were not deployed to overseas bases – would contract from 104 to 64; the KC-135 jet tanker would largely replace the cumbersome and less capacious KC-97. The US-based squadrons of B-52 heavy bombers would expand from 36 to 42, while the ICBM squadrons would mushroom from 7 to 32.57 In quantitative terms the requirement for bases in Britain would remain fairly stable, for as the strategic bomber force began to withdraw, the USAF presence on the bases was maintained by the growth of tactical fighter wings and reconnaissance aircraft.58 These had been present, on rotation, since 1948. June 1952 saw a major increase in their presence with the location of the 49th Air Division, consisting of the atomic-capable 47th Bomb and 20th Fighter-Bomber wings assigned to the 3rd Air Force.59 By 1955, the tactical air element was numerically predominant, with the B-45s and F-86s replaced by the much faster B-66 Destroyer and the F-100 Super Sabre. But accommodating them brought further difficulties, as security restrictions limited the Americans’ ability to brief the UK authorities about base requirements for these new deployments (especially weapon storage for tactical nuclear bombers), further delaying the construction programme.60 The tension between strategic and tactical forces was also an irritant to LeMay. While he conceded that the fighter-bombers had a useful role to play in the European air battle, ‘the B 47 can match every capability of the fighter, is not restricted by weather and range considerations … good judgement dictates that the bomber be given priority in weapon assignment ahead of any other delivery vehicle’. He insisted that ‘not one weapon’ should be allocated to the fighters or to the European theatre ‘until every combat ready SAC bomber is furnished a high yield weapon to perform its initial mission’.61 With numerical growth and the shift away from a strategic to a tactical role, the overseas base programme had expanded, if not haphaz­ ardly, certainly opportunistically. It seems likely that the process was not managed closely, for in 1955 Roger W. Fulling, a senior official in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Properties and Installations) and former construction superintendant on the Manhattan project, was dispatched to USAFE to investigate ‘certain alleged ­irregularities

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c­oncerning planning and construction in England and France’.62 In October 1956 President Eisenhower charged Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank C. Nash with making a comprehensive review of all elements of the US system of overseas military bases and operating facilities. This was the first attempt to map the extent of the network. Reporting in December 1957, the Nash study listed 28 facilities in the UK, 20 of them air bases, but also communications, headquarters and other facilities. A total acreage of 28,326 acres was in use by US forces by close to 100,000 military and civilian personnel and their dependents.63 Frank Nash died unexpectedly on 10 December 1957, having effectively completed his report, which was then finalised and submitted to the President by his executive assistant two weeks later. Eisenhower remitted the report to the NSC, but just two years later asked for the issues to be revisited in the light of the increasing importance of the missile programme. Submitted in April 1960, by a team led by William E. Lang of the Department of Defense, this second report took account of the changes that had taken place in SAC bomber deployment and the introduction of rapid response alert procedures as well as the continuing shift towards dependence on ballistic missiles. It concluded that while ICBMs would require no overseas base support, the US would require in Europe for the next three to four years ‘substantially the same number of bases it now utilises’ for the deployment of the IRBM and the possible reduction of some tactical forces. After 1963, the future tenure of strategic bases for the peacetime disposition of the B-47s was uncertain, but with further phasing out of the strategic medium bomber force, the base requirements overseas could be markedly reduced.64 Reflecting these changing requirements, SAC relinquished seven bases back to the RAF by 1960. The importance of Britain as a base for strategic nuclear retaliation would now begin to scale down.

Accommodating the deployments From the very first deployments spurred by the Berlin blockade it became clear that there was a major gap between what was needed for basing USAF wings and the actual provision of facilities on the ground. Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington, known for his concern for the welfare of enlisted men, made a close inspection of the maintenance base at Burtonwood at Christmas 1948 and was ‘appalled’ by what he found: Something like twenty men in one hut with mud all over the floor, only two dim lights in the barracks … Terrible lockers, bedding which they said

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was full of bedbugs … They showed us showers which were bad. They said there was little warm water. Dirt and mud [were] on the floors and the latrines were unspeakably filthy – worse than any I have ever seen on any base housing American soldiers.65

Symington demanded urgent remedies and worked through MajorGeneral Bill Tunner, then in charge of the Berlin airlift, to requisition better housing and emergency barracks construction. Poor conditions were the common experience. Among the several units that rotated through the English bases in 1948–49 was the 307th Bombardment Group (Medium), which located at Lakenheath and Marham between February and May 1949. Dissatisfaction with the facilities they encountered ran at high levels, and prompted the compilation, by the group’s own officers, of an extensive and lavishly illustrated report, showing just how primitive were the conditions at both bases. Not only was accommodation dirty, with cramped billet huts and squalid latrines, there were major operational inadequacies too, including bomb loading and fire fighting.66 If the point of the photographic record and accompanying text was to alert higher authorities, it certainly succeeded. The report soon found its way to LeMay, who responded by prompting more urgent action from Leon Johnson. The impression I receive is that the facilities and standards for the care and sustenance of officers and airmen of our rotating units are no better or are worse than during the war. Quarters are inadequate. Light, heat and sanitation are substandard; equipment is worn out or lacking, this in spite of the fact that we have been rotating through these bases since July 1948. I know that existing conditions are known to you and that you have taken steps to overcome deficiencies. If you will let me know what has to be done and what needs still to be done, I will endeavour to assist in securing the necessary help to bring standards and facilities up to those we require.67

It was another six weeks before Johnson replied, reporting ‘considerable progress’ in improving the conditions as outlined in the report. Substantial sums had been spent at Lakenheath and Sculthorpe – Marham was not mentioned – and several further projects were pending approval by the British Ministry of Works.68 In March 1949, Major-General K.P. McNaughton, USAF Director of Training and Requirements, made a tour inspection of USAFE and found much to criticise in England. The 3rd Air Division lacked a clearcut mission directive, was understaffed, and had to deal for planning purposes with three separate headquarters – USAF, SAC and USAFE. There were no firm agreements with the British government on rights

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of tenure and financial responsibilities and the RAF gave inadequate support to the bomb groups at Sculthorpe, Marham and Lakenheath. He recommended increasing Johnson’s personnel strength by more than 400, with more staff on rotation to the English bases, to ensure that the Emergency War Plan could be enacted.69 Eighteen months passed, and Lieutenant-General Sam Anderson made his own inspection of conditions on the European bases. He found living conditions still needed urgent improvement, but his principal concern was with the logistics of operations. The transportation situation was ‘deplorable’ and ‘could not possibly support the SAC deployment as now contemplated … Almost everything is … under-manned’. He found widespread problems with refuelling and fire-fighting: Every refueling unit I have inspected on our bases leaks. These leaks range from constant seepages to actual flows of raw fuel during refueling operations. I seriously considered stopping all refuelling at Lakenheath … This remains a constant worry.

He also visited the Midland bases and disagreed flatly with Johnson’s opinion that they could be made operational within 48 hours of the declaration of an emergency.70 If these failings were put down to Johnson he could expect to be censured, but the major hold-ups on the required works were attributed to the British government, while the local weather continued to impede construction. At the same time, the incoming SAC units were unimpressed with the performance of Johnson’s people. Colonel Don Flickinger, a leading USAF air surgeon, flew in with one of the Korean crisis deployments and complained bitterly to 8th Air Force commander Major-General Archie J. Old: Probably the first gripe and the one which still continues in undiminished force is that neither the RAF nor 3rd Air permanent party were prepared to receive the units … Base services which included messing, housing, washing and latrine facilities were simply not geared to the overnight increase which was put on the bases … The most discouraging thing however is that there seems to be a great difference in viewpoint between the SAC units and the people in 3rd Air and the RAF.

Although a plan had been put to the 3rd Air Division to relieve the overcrowding as yet there have been no discernible efforts made to follow out either [this] plan or any substitute. Somewhere along the line someone has gotten the wrong word and we are all wondering whether it is us or the people out

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here. There are many other problems of even more tactical importance dealing with dispersion and security but this is not the time nor am I the person to discuss these problems. However, from where I sit they seem to be highly important and significant ones.

Flickinger’s views commanded respect and his complaint to Old soon found its way to LeMay.71 The result would be continuing pressure upon the British authorities to improve the accommodation of SAC deployments on the 3rd Air Division’s bases.

Notes   1 United States Air Force Bases in the United Kingdom, 17 January 1958 (summary), UKNA, AIR 8/2394.   2 Draft dispatch by Bevin to Washington, 26 November 1949, UKNA, PREM 8/1566.   3 National Security Council, ‘Airfield construction in the United Kingdom and in the Cairo-Suez area: a report to the President by the National Security Council’, 15 April 1949.   4 Minutes of Defence Committee, 18 March 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1566.   5 Memorandum by E.L. Rose, 11 January 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90015.   6 W. Millis (ed.), The Forrestal diaries, London: Ernest Cassell, 1952, p. 430.   7 Sir E. Shuckburgh (Head of Western Division, Foreign Office) to F. Cooper (Air Ministry), 17 March 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90016.   8 United States Air Force Bases in the United Kingdom, 17 January 1958 (summary), UKNA, AIR 8/2394.   9 Shuckburgh to Jebb, 26 January 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90015. 10 Vandenberg visit to 3rd Air Division (1949), Presentation by Johnson, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 66. 11 Operations Record Book, RAF Lakenheath, UKNA, AIR 28/1065. 12 Elliot to Shuckburgh, 11 January 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90015. 13 Shuckburgh to Jebb, 26 January 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90015. 14 Director of Operations to Director of Plans, 21 June 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 198. 15 Memorandum by Shuckburgh, 30 January 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90015. 16 Johnson to Landon, 3 November 1950, NARA, RG 341, Box 749. 17 Memorandum by Shuckburgh, 30 January 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90015. 18 Memorandum by Shuckburgh, 30 January 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90015. 19 Minute by Jebb, 30 January 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90015. 20 House of Commons Debates, 1950–51, vol. 484, 21 February 1951, col. 208. 21 Jackson, United States Air Force in Britain, p. 17; Duke, US defence bases in the United Kingdom, pp. 86–92; see also J. Colman, ‘The 1950 “Ambassadors Agreement” on USAF bases in the UK and British fears of US atomic unilateralism’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 30 (2), 2007, pp. 285–307, although this

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article contains a number of important errors, not least confusing Leon Johnson with Defense Secretary Louis A. Johnson. 22 Johnson to Vandenberg, 21 January 1949, NARA, RG 341, Box 748. 23 Compton to Humphreys-Davies, 19 June 1949, Humphreys-Davies to Compton, 20 June 1949, UKNA, T 225/705. 24 Forrestal to Executive Secretary, NSC, 17 March 1949, Documents of the National Security Council, 1st supplement, Policies of the Government of the United States of America Relating to National Security, volume 1, 1947–1948. 25 Documents of the National Security Council, 1st supplement, Policies of the Government of the United States of America Relating to National Security, volume 1, 1947–1948. 26 Barnes (Air Ministry) to Brittain (Treasury), 8 February 1949, UKNA, T 225/705. 27 Cripps to Attlee, 29 November 1949, UKNA, PREM 8/1566. 28 Barnes to Johnson, 5 October 1951, UKNA, AIR 20/7604. 29 Memorandum for the Record, 9 October 1951, Johnson diary, p. 182. 30 Notes of a discussion between Douglas and Crawley, 20 March 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90016; Crawley to Douglas, 15 April 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90017. 31 Shuckburgh to Strang, 31 March 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90017. See also Colman, ‘Ambassador’s Agreement’, pp. 296–298. 32 Tedder to Vandenberg 15 August 1950, NARA, RG 341, Box 749. 33 Johnson diary, 21 August 1950. 34 Anderson to Commanding General, 3rd Air Division, 17 March 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 49. 35 Power to Anderson, 10 April 1951, reporting LeMay’s views, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 49. 36 7th Air Division, Command Summary, 9 December 1951. 37 Slessor to Secretary of State for Air, 20 June 1952, UKNA, AIR 75/113. 38 Cabinet Defence Committee, 21 February 1951, UKNA, PREM 8/1566. 39 Slessor to Vandenberg, 8 October 1951, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 746. 40 Wheless to Col. Ervin Wursten, date illegible, Karsteter correspondence, AFHRA, K416.03–168. 41 LeMay to Twining, 5 April 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 60. 42 A.J. Wohlstetter, F.S. Hoffman, R.J. Lutz and H.S. Rowen, Selection and use of strategic air bases, Santa Monica, CA, RAND Corporation, 1954. 43 Sir James Barnes to Secretary of State for Air, 29 July 1953, UKNA, AIR 8/1804. 44 Air Council, conclusions of meeting 7(52), UKNA, AIR 20/7604. 45 USAF/RAF Joint Survey of Selected Airfields in the United Kingdom, NARA, RG 341, Box 749. 46 For General White, Re: Sir John Slessor’s letter of 8 October Reference Air Force Requirements in the UK, 12 October 1951, NARA, RG 341, Box 746. 47 McConnell to LeMay, 20 May 1952, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 55. 48 History of the Seventh Air Division, July–December 1952, p. 3, AFHRA. 49 Vandenberg to Johnson, 21 June 1951, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86.

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50 White to LeMay, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 61 (White). 51 Duke, US defence bases in the United Kingdom, pp. 86–100. 52 Aldrich to De L’Isle and Dudley; De L’Isle and Dudley to Aldrich, 9 September 1953. The series of charts headed ‘Funding and relations with the British’, produced by the 3rd Air Force in April 1953, summarised the continuous reconstruction of the financial relationship in Britain’s favour between the time of the Ambassador’s agreement and the De L’isle-Aldrich agreement. NARA, RG 341, Box 749. 53 United States Air Force Bases in the United Kingdom, 17 January 1958, UKNA, AIR 8/2394. 54 Le May to White, September 1952, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 61 (White). 55 Select B-47 Operational Exercises (January–July 1953), Historical Branch, Strategic Air Command, 1953, pp. 26–47. 56 Interview with Chief Master Sergeant Glen Hendrix, 27 September 1988, AFHRA. 57 Development of Strategic Air Command, 1946–1976, Office of the Historian, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, 1976. 58 Report to the President, Review of United States Overseas Military Bases, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, Records, 1952–61, p. 11, Eisenhower Presidential Library. 59 Short History and Chronology of the USAF in the United Kingdom, Historical Division, Office of Information, Third Air Force, May 1967. 60 Vandenberg from Landon, 23 August 1952, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 87. 61 LeMay to Twining, 6 June 1955, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 205. 62 Message to General Tunner, CINCUSAFE, 10 August 1955, LoC, Papers of General Nathan F. Twining, Box 100. 63 Report to the President by Frank C. Nash US Overseas Military Bases [1957] (1) (2) (Ann Whitman File), Administration Series, Box 27, Eisenhower Presidential Library. 64 Report to the President, Review of United States Overseas Military Bases,p. 11. 65 G.M. Watson Jr, The Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, 1947–1965, Washington, DC, Department of the Air Force, Centre for Air Force History, 1993, p. 81. 66 Report, Operations in England, 13 February–7 May 1949, NARA, RG 341, Box 743. 67 LeMay to Johnson, 19 August 1949, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 54 (Johnson). 68 Johnson to LeMay, 29 September 1949, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 54. 69 Brief of General McNaughton’s report on his visit to Europe, 25 April 1949, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 748. 70 Anderson to LeMay, 23 February 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, B-10041, Box 197. 71 Col. Don Flickinger to Maj.-Gen. Old, passed to LeMay, 15 August 1950, LoC, Le May papers, Box 57 (Old).

4 Rehearsing for war

[T]he US bombers now in this country were ordered a week ago, presumably by LeMay, without any reference to us, to be at operational readiness … surely the least they could have done would have been to inform us of their intentions. Chiefs of Staff Telegram to Lord Tedder, December 1950

As we have seen, preparing for the USAF strike forces to meet the challenge of delivering the Emergency War Plan involved lengthy and sometimes inconclusive negotiations with the British over the necessary infrastructure – not just runways and hardstandings, but also housing, maintenance facilities, leisure provision and supply. Readying the SAC units and their aircraft was, in comparison, a more straightforward matter. Training and frequent exercises required action only by the USAF and its (sometimes rival) commands and divisions with scant or no reference to the British hosts. To that extent, the British found they had little control over developments and the sense of being at the mercy of events – or rather, of the American response to them – led to a mounting sense of unease. The American concern in contrast focused on the effectiveness of the deployed forces and their potential vulnerability. The arrival, in large numbers, of the high-speed B-47 medium bomber required a major change in the way in which SAC forces were deployed. To an even greater extent than before, SAC had become dependent on in-flight refuelling using, initially, the slow and cumbersome piston-engined KC-97. ‘We built’, complained 2nd Air Force commander MajorGeneral Frank Armstrong, ‘and are continuing to build our strategy around refuelling’: As of today, the ‘tail is wagging the dog’. In other words our bombing capability depends not on the bomber but on the tanker … The whole thing boils down to this. B 47’s are dependent upon tankers. Tankers are dependent upon forward bases or islands from which to operate. If either

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is denied the bombers cannot carry out the mission completely … If we lose our refuelling bases, SAC cannot strike.1

Forward bases such as those in England were on this analysis even more necessary than had been hitherto appreciated, and still more vulnerable. LeMay’s own view was that dependence on overseas bases for launching strikes should be phased out in favour of flight-refuelled missions mounted from the Zone of the Interior.2

Training for readiness The training that SAC aircraft and crews underwent before, during and after international crises – Berlin in 1948 and 1961, Suez in 1956, Lebanon in 1958, Cuba in 1962 – was to ensure their readiness in time of war. The first deployments of the B-29s and B-50s experienced considerable technical problems in achieving an acceptable state of readiness, with problems with the radar bombing equipment, malfunctioning bomb release and bomb doors freezing shut.3 So far as the crews were concerned, intensive training meant simulating wartime conditions as closely as possible. Lieutenant-General Sam Irvine recalled the impact LeMay had when taking over SAC: ‘he said we were going to stop boring holes in the sky and start running missions that are the best simulation we can get of the assigned mission’.4 In LeMay’s own recollection: We had a training plan that was rigidly followed. We had a war plan of how we were going to fight the war. [Interviewer]: Was the plan your own, or did it come from Washington? [LeMay]: It was ours. There wasn’t anything that came out of Washington. As a matter of fact, I don’t think we got anything out of Washington other than maybe a little guidance on targets that should be hit. We did the plan right up till the time I left in 1957.5

LeMay’s priority throughout this period was to direct his strike forces to airfields – bomber and primary defence bases – adding, during the mid-1950s, the Soviet atomic delivery capability, including missile sites and production facilities.6 In a 1957 briefing, LeMay reported that SAC had developed an ‘Air Power Battle Target System’ focused on the Soviet long range air armies (‘their SAC in being’), their bases, their support networks, control and communications, weapons stockpile and production facilities. Destruction of these resources was at that time based on 1,539 desired ground zeroes, ‘of which 954 require immediate attack’, a figure expected to rise with improvements in Soviet air defences.7

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In the period prior to the Berlin crisis the non-nuclear B-29s practised a range of weapons and navigational exercises. In addition to their primary atomic strike role, the deployed bomb wings maintained a high state of training and preparedness by precision bombing exercises. The B-29s of the 92nd Bombardment Group at Sculthorpe (and, presumably, those elsewhere) were kept fuelled with 5,400 gallons while on 24-hour alert, with the group required to dispatch 90 per cent of their aircraft in the event of an alert being called.8 During the immediate post-Berlin phase the emphasis was on practising loading and flying dummy atomic bombs, for the most part the M-107, otherwise known as the ‘Pumpkin’. The ‘Pumpkin’ replicated the weight and aerodynamic characteristics of the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb, most often filled with solid concrete and used for training ground crews in loading procedure, and aircrew in bombing practice. Earlier versions, containing 5,500 lb of high explosive, had been dropped on Japan prior to the atomic attacks, it having been ‘in the interests of security that the ostensible mission of the 509th Composite Group [was] to deliver Pumpkins in battle’ as a diversion from their ultimate purpose.9 Inert ‘Pumpkins’, on which airmen trained with the electronic systems of the real bomb, were regularly used in loading training at the English bases prior to 1950 and for a while thereafter, and extensively in bombing practice.10 Sam Irvine, who was at that time Colonel commanding the 509th Bombardment Wing, recalled the intensity of that training: We were over there in position with concrete bombs … Every day we ran a practice loading mission using one aircraft of one squadron. We put up all sorts of screens, kept everybody away, and had people walking around with guns. We would take the concrete bomb out, check the monitoring system, and put it back in there.11

The screens were a standard procedure to shield the aircraft and the bomb trailer and elevator from view as the bomb was rolled in position, lowered, then raised into the aircraft. The secrecy of the procedure had an unintentional effect in persuading curious local observers that the atomic bomb was present on the English bases and used for regular rehearsals. That the practice loading involved just one aircraft at a time reflected the considerable limitation of the pit and elevator system devised for Tinian, as only one pit had been created at Sculthorpe and one at Lakenheath. Mounting an atomic strike for real or in practice would require a faster and more flexible system. The AFSWP experimented with loading a bomb into a B-29 using a standard hoist within the aircraft to lift the bomb from a deep trench.12 This held little promise, but

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with the introduction of the B-50 aircraft in 1949, the cumbersome pit technique was replaced by the simpler and far quicker process of jacking up the nose of the aircraft, using large 20-ton jacks manufactured by the Malabar Machine Company, a pioneer of heavy duty aircraft handling equipment. The jack created enough space to allow the bomb to be hoisted directly from a simple wheeled trolley (or ‘dolly’). When the B-50s of the 97th Bomb Group deployed to England in July 1950, Malabar jacks, bomb hoists and slings were airlifted in advance by support aircraft.13 Mirgon describes the process followed in an exercise mounted some five or six weeks after his arrival in June 1950. Complex, certainly, but less so, and more flexible than the former pit and elevator technique: Loading an assembled weapon into a B-50 required the removal of one bomb bay door, jacking the nose of the aircraft high enough to allow the weapon be placed in the bomb bay, lowering the aircraft over the positioned weapon, then suspending the weapon on the shackle, removal of the roadable dolly, replacing the bomb bay door, then fuelling the aircraft for the mission.14

It was on such an operation undertaken by the 509th that LieutenantGeneral Sam Anderson reported to LeMay in 1951, illustrating the amount of preparation that could be accomplished in a short space of time, despite some apparent problems with the jacking operation: ‘All loading was accomplished between 0300 and 0700 on M+3. Considering the jack problem, I feel that the loading went fairly well. Average time was one hour and thirty minutes.’15 Exercises such as these – and they were frequent – brought the SAC strike force to a high state of readiness, although the hard-driving LeMay sought constant improvement. LeMay’s relentless programme of training took the form of frequent exercises to simulate, as far as possible, the move to wartime conditions. W. Barton Leach was highly critical of SAC’s ‘instrumental’ approach to the use of aircrews, warning of the consequences for morale and effectiveness.16 For their part, the UK Chiefs of Staff were nervous about the alert status of the SAC forces in Britain: the US bombers now in this country were ordered a week ago, presumably by LeMay, without any reference to us, to be at operational readiness and at a few hours notice for operational missions. There could be no point in alerting bomber formations in this way if there was no plan for their employment at short notice in an emergency … surely the least they could have done would have been to inform us of their intentions so that we could either dissuade them or make some arrangement to keep more or less in line with them.17

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Of course such a plan existed. And it was wholly dependent on frequent rehearsals to identify and deal with any frictions in the process. Frictions with the British were another matter, less readily eased, and when in May 1951 Leon Johnson authorised an alert, he ordered his commanders not to ‘bring the RAF into the picture’.18 The practice at this time was to load and fly bombs with dummy nuclear capsules. A typical signal received at SAC HQ in March 1952 ordered a ‘full scale test’ of methods and procedures for delivery of atomic weapons: ‘Actual atomic weapons (less nuclear components) should be used for all phases of full-scale test except flight opns. Actual drops should be with conventional weapons.’19 The capsules – plutonium spheres – in use at this stage of atomic weapon development had to be made available at the operational bases. It was the responsibility of the Military Air Transport Service (MATS) to devise an operational plan that met the needs of SAC. Composed in October 1950, that plan provided for the airlift of 60 nuclear capsules to the UK. On the order to release the capsules they would be collected from storage at Campbell AFB on the Tennessee–Kentucky border and flown to Westover AFB, Massachusetts. Under SAC operational control, 15 transports, mainly C-54 flying with additional crew members and a SAC courier, would deliver the capsules to Lakenheath, Sculthorpe and Marham.20 By 1954 a number of B-47s were designated as high speed capsule courier aircraft under the direct control of SAC.21 Until 1957, the similarly sized ‘Mark 3–0’ and Marks 4 and 6 versions of the Fat Man bomb constituted the USAF armoury, and arrangements had to be made for the separate transfer, on presidential release, of the plutonium capsules to bases where the other bomb components (listed elliptically in an official 1977 review as ‘non-nuclear bombs’) were stored.22 Truman authorised the release of inert bombs for storage on overseas bases in 1952, when anxieties about the course of the Korean conflict were mounting.23 Authority to deploy complete atomic systems in a ready-to-use state to Britain came only in April 1954.24 In summary, These early weapons were assembled without their nuclear physics packages, or capsules. The non-nuclear components, including the large highexplosive lenses, were assembled and stored separately from the nuclear material and components that turned them into nuclear weapons. The devices, assembled without their nuclear cores, were known as sub-­ assemblies or mechanical assemblies. Were a weapon to be used, it had to be partially disassembled, the nuclear core inserted, and the weapon reassembled. Sealed-pit weapons – weapons with their nuclear components installed during assembly – did not enter the stockpile until 1957.25

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Prior to 1957, then, the capsules were separate from the ‘cold bomb’, while the next generation of bombs, the Mark 15 carried by some B-47s, contained a plutonium sphere, but one activated by a separate detonator that could be carried on the aircraft. This separation – initially of core, later of detonator – enabled the USAF to assure the British authorities that there was no chance of a catastrophic accident on UK soil. This was an unjustifiably optimistic claim, and when sealed pit weapons were introduced they were deployed in complete form, so that fissile material would always be present when the bomb was flown. Whitehall may have felt reassured, but public opinion was far more volatile, and became increasingly so. A flicker of alarm occurred when, in December 1954, Major-General John D. Stevenson, commanding general of the 49th Air Division’s tactical fighter bombers at RAF Bentwaters, in an unauthorised statement of deterrent preparedness, announced to the press that he had under his command aircraft committed to delivering an immediate atomic attack against the Soviet Union.26 Recognised as a loose cannon, Stevenson had already been reprimanded by Griswold for a number of wayward actions.27 His boast provoked an immediate protest note from the Soviet government.28 Other generals showed a defter touch, and ‘Bim’ Wilson, who succeeded Griswold as 3rd Air Force commander from 1954 to 1956, recalled disobeying orders at the time of the Hungarian crisis in that latter year. With Soviet troops and tanks suppressing the uprising in Budapest, Britain and France intervened in Egypt in collusion with Israel, and in Moscow Bulganin issued a blustering threat to attack Britain and France with missiles. Wilson recalled risking court martial by refusing to arm and disperse his aircraft, judging it necessary to avoid alarming the British public.29 Wilson escaped his court martial, but his judgement of the need to avoid alarming the British civilian population – later confirmed by his son – went unrecorded.30 Episodes of apparent US over-readiness continued to trouble British politicians as late as 1958, when Prime Minister Macmillan’s dexterity was tested to the limits as he strove to build an effective partnership with the United States while keeping the lid on dissent at home. Macmillan fretted over what he saw as bellicose statements, not least those by SAC commander Lieutenant-General Thomas Power about 24-hour alert patrols, and about sensational press comment following an opening up of SAC’s Omaha headquarters to journalists.31 He wrote rather plaintively to remind Eisenhower about ‘the talk we had in Paris about troubles in which we both got involved owing to so many soldiers making so many speeches’. The British political context was very different from the American one:

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Everything that these people have said was very comforting to me because I’m glad to know how great your state of readiness is. One cannot fail to be impressed by the precautions which are taken for our safety, while at the same time maintaining the deterrent. It is very difficult without breaches of security to give absolutely full information to the press, and a little knowledge can be very dangerous as a further difficulty is that many of the people, at any rate in this country, who are briefed, do not wish to be reassured but merely want material for making trouble. I am, therefore, sure that it is really better to give as little information as possible about all the detailed arrangements of Strategic Air Command.32

Annoyed that Power was proposing to arrange a tour of SAC bases for American journalists, Macmillan complained that ‘all these probings and ferretings, however good their intention, will do harm and make our task more difficult’. Apart from sensitivities about the American presence, British officials were hoping that recent alarm about the hydrogen bomb would abate, and feared any publicity that would arouse public attention again. One task that was certainly made more difficult was public relations promotion for RAF Bomber Command, whose readiness did not yet bear comparison with that of SAC. Frank Cooper, at that stage a key Air Ministry official, asked the Foreign Office to press the US authorities not to mount a public relations tour as it would be ‘probably undesirable politically in this country’, and comparisons between the readiness of the two Commands ‘could be a highly embarrassing subject’.33 Eisenhower obligingly responded to Macmillan’s concerns by arranging to exclude the UK from the SAC tour.

Accidents and the nuclear risk Public, political and press concern centred on the risks of a nuclear accident as the SAC presence built up. Although Sculthorpe and Lakenheath had been prepared for the assembly and testing on the Mark 3-0, essentially the same weapon as had been used at Nagasaki, the deployments in 1950 were of the Mark 4 bomb, the regular production version of the Fat Man. That the aircraft flew them safely without nuclear risk arose from the fact that the AEC had custody of the plutonium sphere, which would only be released, with presidential approval, if conflict were imminent. The Mark 4s were therefore flown over the UK, if at all, as inert bombs. The Mark 3.0 was armed on loading, after which it was dangerously ‘live’ while the Mark 4 was designed for in-flight insertion of the capsule – again, a procedure that would

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4.1  SAC B-47s on alert.

be performed only when going to war. The Mark 6, a further development flown by the B-47, continued the practice of a separate capsule not normally carried on board the aircraft. These safety aspects, of course were not publicly known at the time, adding to the gradual rise of concern, itself fed by awareness of the increasing number of both weapons and aircraft and the apprehension that a catastrophic accident might happen. While there was opposition to the noise generated by USAF aircraft, especially the B-47 bombers, the extension of the nuclear presence to include the tactical, or theatre aircraft of the 49th Air Division, initially carrying the lightweight Mark 7 bomb, increased the number of weapons on site in the UK and so multiplied the possibility of matters going wrong. Butch Griswold, commanding the 3rd Air Force at this time, had his own concerns about the deployment of these theatre aircraft. The 49th commander, John Stevenson, was not an easy man to manage, having his own way of doing things. But with nuclear weapons arriving at Sculthorpe and Bentwaters, Griswold was concerned about their safety. He sent Colonel Richard Ellis – a future SAC Commanderin-Chief – to Stevenson’s bases to check. Ellis saw that the storage

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bunkers were in poor repair, leaky, open to the sky in parts and needed a great deal of work. In retirement, he recalled the assignment: this was what we were going to store our weapons in. Griswold wanted to know if we were ready for them, and I said, ‘Yes, Sir.’ He said, ‘I don’t know how to put this to you, Ellis’ – these are not his exact words, but this was the impact of his words – ‘but there is a lot of sensitivity to bringing these things over to the UK and having them stationed here permanently. [The British] are raising all kinds of questions about things that could go wrong. I don’t have all the answers. You guys are supposed to be the experts down there, and if anything goes wrong, it’s your ass. Not Stevenson’s, not mine, yours!’34

Ellis nevertheless chose to play down the unsatisfactory storage conditions he had seen. There were no nuclear accidents in England, but lesser and still dangerous events did occur.35 The publicity surrounding them prompted Parliamentary and press comment and would in time arouse intense, but not widespread, opposition to the US nuclear presence. Between 1949 and 1952 there were four crashes of SAC aircraft in the UK.36 In 1951 a B-36, testing the approach to Boscombe Down at night, undershot by three-quarters of a mile, ploughed through several fields and crossed a main road to halt in a field, some way short of the runway but virtually undamaged, before the eyes of astonished locals. In July 1953 one of the new B-47s crashed on approach at Upper Heyford. In February that same year came the first deployment of the massive B-36s. One such, deployed to Fairford as part of a simulated combat mission codenamed ‘Operation Styleshow’, flew on for some 30 miles after the crew had baled out, to crash, mercifully without causalities, in the Wiltshire countryside near the village of Laycock.37 Several more serious B-36 accidents occurred in the United States, revealing safety problems with the aircraft, in particular relating to fuel leakage, the flammability of magnesium components in the engine bay and control loss following engine fires. With remarkable verisimilitude, Paramount’s feature film Strategic Air Command, in which James Stewart plays a reserve officer recalled to fly the B-36, portrays such an episode of progressive engine fires leading to most of the crew baling out in a hostile Arctic environment before the aircraft, in this case, successfully crash lands. Real airmen were not so lucky. In August 1953 an RB-36 en route to Lakenheath suffered just such successive engine fires over the Atlantic before control loss caused it to crash into the sea. Of the 23 crew men on board, most baled out and were lost. Of those who ditched, just four survived. The navigator, Major George B. Parkes, one

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of the fortunate four, would publish an eloquent and affecting account of the episode as it unfolded.38 These early accidents did not, however, in themselves excite much concern in Britain about atomic safety, although there was a bedrock of anti-Americanism on the Labour benches in the House of Commons, which in the course of time would sustain continuous criticism of the atomic partnership. In a foreign policy debate in the House of Commons in the autumn of 1946 this political tendency signalled its opposition to the Atlanticist policies of the Attlee government, with large numbers declining to go through the lobby in support. Concern was registered in Washington about the implications of this dissent. Later, Parliamentary questions were frequently put by MPs on the far left of the Labour Party, typically asking for termination of the American basing agreement, questioning the supply and storage of nuclear weapons in Britain, and seeking assurances that the UK would not be the target of a hostile attack in the event of the United States becoming involved in a war in which the UK was not a belligerent. At this time Churchill, as prime minister, stonewalled in defence of the arrangements and praised the previous Labour government for its courage in establishing them.39 Two later and particularly controversial events did excite concern, both involving the fast but difficult-to-operate B-47. Highly effective at speed, where initially it could outrun all but the fastest fighters, the B-47 was difficult to get airborne, difficult to refuel in-flight and even more difficult to land, particularly in adverse circumstances. Despite being powered by six turbojets, the aircraft was underpowered relative to its loaded weight, and often needed the provision of assisted takeoff using water-methanol injection or rocket assisted takeoff (RATO) using a jettisonable rocket pack. Engine fires and failures on takeoff were not infrequent. The landing approach could also be difficult as these early jet engines experienced a lag of up to 20 seconds on spooling up to speed, impeding control on final approach, while the uniquely configured ‘bicycle’ landing gear meant that the aircraft had to be placed exactly right on the runway. Around 12 per cent of the entire force of more than 2,000 B-47s was lost through accidents, many of them taking place under such circumstances. Retired Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Mac’ McGill published a vivid account of the difficulties of flying this aeronautical ‘femme fatale’.40 In similar spirit of rueful recollection, another former crew member recalled ‘the B 47 was demanding and unforgiving, especially on landing’: Once committed to landing, the skill of the aircraft commander (or the copilot if he was the one making the landing), was put to the test. Everything

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had to be right or the aircraft, due to its bicycle landing gear, would balloon into the air if the front wheels hit first. A good hard landing thump meant you were on the ground, and going to stay there.41

At Lakenheath in July 1956, a B-47E of the 307th Bomb Wing crashed on landing. After touching down the aircraft ballooned on its undercarriage, cart-wheeled, crashed and skidded into one of the nuclear weapon storage igloos. The aircraft fuel ignited, the blaze threatening to engulf the weapons stored within. The cryptic signal sent to LeMay summarised the incident: The B-47 tore apart the igloo and knocked about three Mark sixes. A/C then exploded showering burning fuel over all. Crew perished. Most of A/C wreckage pivoted on igloo and came to rest with A/C nose just beyond igloo bank which kept main fuel fire outside smashed igloo. Preliminary exam by bomb disposal officer says a miracle that one Mark 6 with exposed detonators sheared didn’t go.42

It was not a ‘nuclear explosion’ that was avoided here by heroic efforts on the part of the fire-fighting crew, but the prospect of ten tons of high explosive detonating in close proximity to stored plutonium spheres. The Mark 6s involved in this incident were developed from, and were close to the dimensions of, the original Fat Man bomb. Each probably contained 8,000 lb of high explosive although their nuclear cores were normally stored separately in another igloo.43 While the B-47B introduced in 1955 was configured to carry the 7,600 lb Mark 15 bomb, a smaller and lighter device than those of the Mark 3 to 6 generation, the Mark 6 was still being carried by B-47s; indeed, one of a flight of four en route to England in 1958 accidentally released an unarmed Mark 6 over Mars Bluff, in Florence County, South Carolina.44 A later Greenham Common event played an important part in arguments against the American nuclear presence and sustained the peak of opposition through to the later years of the twentieth century, when opposition centred on the deployment, to Greenham Common and elsewhere, of the mobile, ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM). The February 1958 episode developed as follows. A heavily laden B-47, fuelled for the return flight to the US, suffered an apparent double engine failure shortly after takeoff and turned back across the field. Procedure in these circumstances was to reduce the fuel load by jettisoning the external tanks. On instruction from the tower, the aircraft commander did so, but the fuel tanks missed the designated drop zone, falling instead on the airfield. One hit a hangar, setting it on fire, the other hit a second B-47 on the ground, engulfing it in flames. The aircraft burned for several days and two men died.

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Some years later allegations emerged of an unusually high incidence of childhood leukaemia in the surrounding district. Bereaved parents led a campaign that was taken up and promoted by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).45 While the official USAF accident report, classified at that time, made no mention of a nuclear weapon, popular belief that radioactive material from a weapon on board the aircraft had been distributed by the fire was reinforced when it emerged in the late 1990s that scientists from the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) at nearby Aldermaston had found evidence of contamination in the vicinity of the airfield in a 1961 study. As public and press criticism of the USAF mounted, the neighbouring local authorities commissioned independent scientific surveys of the area. The first, a study of airborne elements by Glasgow University, concluded: On the basis of the results, Newbury District and surrounding areas represent an area with low environmental radioactivity compared with national and European averages. There is no evidence to substantiate fears about the quality of the radiation environment in the vicinity of Greenham Common.46

The second study, by the University of Southampton, measured ground level deposits and found ‘no evidence to support accidental weapon damage at the Greenham Common airbase’. Low levels of leaf contamination were possibly traceable to releases of enriched uranium from Aldermaston itself.47 Although the Greenham Common incident was widely publicised by CND as a ‘nuclear’ accident, neither the eventually declassified report on the matter, nor the DoD listing of nuclear accidents, nor the reaction of the 3rd Air Force at the time indicated that this was so. Indeed, there is a marked contrast with an admitted nuclear weapons incident at Sidi Slimane in Morocco, earlier that same year. In that case, a B-47 carrying a nuclear weapon caught fire on the ground after a wheel failed on takeoff. There was no explosion, but the plutonium core of the weapon melted down, leaving a hole in the runway. The base was evacuated and the surrounding area put on alert.48 None of these things happened at Greenham Common and it is reasonable to surmise that no nuclear material was involved. Personal experience is pertinent here. This author, then a teenager, visited Greenham Common shortly after the incident and spent several days there as a guest of the USAF. Life on the base seemed entirely normal, with none of the activity that would be expected to follow from a possible release of radioactivity.

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Public and political concern Concern about the safety of SAC’s training flights was not new, and can be traced back to the early 1950s. Greenham Common, located as it was on the outskirts of a substantial town, excited particular concern from the outset, with delegations from Newbury protesting to the Secretary of State for Air about the danger to the town of heavy bomber operations. Johnson promised to arrange flight patterns to minimise the danger to Newbury but insisted there could be no strings attached to the USAF occupancy of the bases.49 As early as 1951 it was widely assumed that the American presence on these bases was atomic-capable. Were nuclear weapons being flown and, if so, since when? Labour’s front bench spokesman and former Air Minister, Arthur Henderson, insisted in a 1957 foreign policy debate that American aircraft never carried atomic bombs in British airspace during the lifetime of the Attlee government – that is, prior to October 1951. He spoke according to the best of his knowledge. But when Sir Richard Powell, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Defence called the Pentagon for confirmation, in case an answer needed to be given in the Commons, he received a less than reassuring reply: ‘the answer is that we did in fact have atomic bombs in Britain prior to 1951 and that we did occasionally carry them’.50 Although the information had been relayed from LeMay’s office, it was probably a carelessly phrased answer.51 Flying in deliveries of bomb components, or flying part-completed bombs on exercises, was a far cry from flying the intact bombs. But practice was changing with developments in bomb technology, whereby weapons would come to be delivered and flown in a complete state. In December 1957, General Nathan Twining sent CAS Sir William Dickson an unequivocal declaration that is worth quoting in full: Third Air Force fighter-bombers and bombers permanently based in the United Kingdom NEVER carry nuclear weapons when flying over England. These units practice loading of weapons on US bases in East Anglia but they ALWAYS offload weapon before takeoff. SAC units rotating through UK bases may or may not have nuclear weapons aboard. If such weapons are aboard they are always ‘nuclear safe’ and an accidental atomic detonation in England is impossible. United States bombers never ‘patrol’ over England carrying nuclear weapons. In order to maintain the deterrent, SAC forces must be ready at all times and they must retain the necessary flexibility. However, under procedures currently in effect a catastrophic accident in England cannot happen.52

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Twining’s assurance, loading practice apart, related to the movement of weapons to and from the UK bases, and USAF records contain many references to the transport of special weapons to the UK in the early period. Alerts were another matter, and the tactical fighter-bombers of the 49th Air Division were, by 1956, carrying the lightweight (1,200 lb) Mark 12 bombs, with a yield of up to 14 kilotons. At the time of the Hungarian uprising, the 49th was put on alert. ‘Bim’ Wilson, 3rd Air Force commander, recalled: I got a message from USAFE to immediately disperse the atomic weapons for fear that [they] might have a sneak attack [by the Soviets] and be destroyed. And I wouldn’t do it; I didn’t do it because of several things. We had practised and practised and we could get off the ground very quickly. So I concentrated them instead and put the weapons on the airplanes, and the crews slept under the airplanes. I knew I could get them off the ground before they were attacked. Also, [I] was afraid if I started dispersing these atomic weapons British nation would have complete haemorrhage. I could just see it! So I didn’t do it[,] I wired General Norstad and said ‘This is a point here; are we at war or are we at peace? And what do I do?’ He wouldn’t answer me. I was facing, of course, a court martial from USAFE for deliberately disobeying their orders. So that was trouble. After it was all over, I went over to SHAPE to see ‘Larry’ Norstad, who is a good friend. He said ‘well what do you expect? … You are a general officer. You’re supposed to make a decision, and if you are right, you are a hero, and if you’re wrong, you are a bum.’53

When progress in weapon design enabled SAC strategic bombers to fly complete weapons on exercises from the English bases, SAC adopted a more comprehensive programme of air exercises using live, though ‘safe’ – that is, unarmed – weapons. This raised in more acute form the possibility of an accident leading to the release of fissile material. Apart from the possibility of a crash, an in-flight emergency might sometimes require a weapon to be jettisoned. On this, SAC had procedures, with designated over-water ‘weapon jettison areas’. As SAC’s Commander-in-Chief, Lieutenant-General Tom Power assured USAF Chief of Staff White that ‘weapon jettison over friendly land masses is prohibited’.54 Prohibition, of course, did not exclude the possibility of just such an inadvertent event, as had happened over US territory. During January through March 1958 a series of SAC ‘operational support’ exercises were to be carried out involving very large numbers of B-47s flying thermonuclear weapons into the UK. Similar exercises had been carried out in October and November 1957. In response to urgent representations,

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it was agreed that future exercises would be subject to some form of consultation with the British government.55 The first of these planned exercises in January was cancelled on presidential order pending agreement with Prime Minister Macmillan on those planned for February and March going ahead.56 A draft communiqué for Macmillan was prepared for Eisenhower’s signature, giving the fullest account of the next exercises in a planned series of ten. For February, 190 B-47s and 35 B-52s (introduced 1955), would fly in, and for March 280 B-47s. Most of these aircraft would carry high-yield weapons throughout the exercise, but in such condition that the planes would have to land in order that the weapons could be made ready for firing … The primary reason why the weapons must be carried in these exercises is that the readiness of this significant portion of Strategic Air Command must be maintained at all times.57

While Macmillan was seeking to regularise the arrangements, American officials wavered between proposing consultation with the British and simply notifying them of the upcoming movement of weapons. The British government was concerned to contain any political backlash, but there were also practical concerns about safety in the event of an accident outside the territory of an air base (though these too were, legally, on British soil). It was initially proposed that SAC should notify the RAF with details of hazardous flights and provide information on fire-fighting, with discussions remitted to a re-started series of Anglo-American technical level talks.58 Two senior officers from SAC’s 7th Air Division met for that purpose with British officials in July, at which the British sought to extend the existing system of notification of forthcoming exercises to include a coded warning if nuclear material was to be carried. The two American colonels present protested that the information was unnecessary, and would add nothing to existing safety precautions. While the UK traffic control centre at Uxbridge in west London had a duty to alert the emergency services, the Americans thought it would be sufficient to pass on a warning after an accident had occurred. They were clearly unwilling to go any further than this, in the light of security sensitivities; guidance on fighting fires involving nuclear weapons earlier provided to the Air Ministry was abruptly withdrawn as classified information.59 British officials continued to have concerns about this reluctance, reiterating the Prime Minister’s interest and insisting that his approval would be needed for any proposed scheme.60 After hard bargaining, an agreed ‘summary of procedures agreed between the United States Air Force and the Air Ministry for advance

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notification of flights by United States Air Force aircraft over the United Kingdom with nuclear weapons or radioactive materials’ was produced in October and welcomed by Macmillan as satisfactory.61 Yet what was satisfactory as an intergovernmental agreement was by no means shorn of domestic political implications. Stephen Swingler, a left-wing Labour MP, was one of a number of critics who continued to ask for assurances that American aircraft were not carrying nuclear weapons over the UK. While his questions were rebuffed by the Air Minister, George Ward, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence recognised the need to formulate ‘an appropriate public line’.62 For that, though, there was little to go on beyond General Twining’s earlier assurances. The British government sought something more substantial and in 1960 Defence Minister Harold Watkinson relayed the rising concern to Secretary of State Dulles. The response, drafted by Twining, assured that ‘the concern of your government in the matter of alerts which affect elements of the United States Air Force stationed on British bases’ was ‘readily appreciated’. An alert could only be called by the respective Commanders-in-Chief, SAC or USAFE, by the President, the Secretary of Defense, or the Joint Chiefs. It would suffice, he suggested, should one of the commanders ‘be compelled to direct the alert of his forces’, for the British Minister of Defence to be notified.63 This formulation obscured the distinction between an alert as a training exercise, an alert in response to a real international crisis, and the standing alert – Operation Reflex – that SAC introduced in 1957. Training alerts as a test of readiness were a regular monthly feature of the SAC deployment to overseas bases. The action required might range from scrambling crews to their aircraft, to start-up, taxi and – the highest level of alert – getting the aircraft airborne. Emergency alerts occurred on a number of occasions: in 1948 and 1961 over Berlin, in 1950 over Korea, 1956 over Suez, in 1958 over Lebanon and 1962 over the Cuban missile crisis. The need for a rapid response to any sign that conflict was imminent was embodied in the appropriately named Reflex. Achieving quick reaction was the first priority of Lieutenant-General Thomas S. Power when he succeeded LeMay as SAC Commander-in-Chief in July 1957. LeMay had promoted the concept vigorously, engaging USAF headquarters with characteristic assertiveness when the programme was approved, but only ‘within resources available to your Command’, and without authority to construct the necessary support facilities.64 The essence of the alert programme was the ability to make an immediate retaliatory response to Soviet aggression from bases close enough to the Soviet Union to deliver the initial strike, ahead of the B-52s, the long-range

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bomber aircraft flying from United States. An effective response, though, involved protecting the strategic force from surprise destruction on the ground. To LeMay’s chagrin, the approval of the principle by USAF headquarters fell far short of approving the physical facilities: the hardstandings, the hangars, the revetments and extensive security measures required. The alert programme that Power inherited from LeMay kept SAC bombers and tankers ready with weapons loaded and crews ready for immediate takeoff, the goal being to have one-third of the command’s aircraft on ground alert at all times. Tests undertaken at three SAC bases in the United States established the feasibility of the concept and Power directed ground alert operations to begin on 1 October 1957. In November, he went public with an announcement that SAC aircraft stood at the end of runways, bombs loaded and crews nearby. On ten forward bases – four in the United Kingdom, three in Spain and three in Morocco, SAC deployed the B-47s in sufficient numbers to constantly maintain six aircraft on alert at each. Each deployment was for just 21 days, in contrast with the normal 90-day rotation that had been instituted in 1948.65 The Reflex alert posture at these bases enabled the bombers to be airborne within 15 minutes of a warning being first received.66 At least 12 English bases saw the deployment of B-47s, but only Brize Norton, Fairford, Lakenheath and Upper Heyford were designated in 1959 as Reflex bases. The institution of 21-day deployments for Reflex purposes meant, of course, more frequent traffic into and out of these four bases, inescapably raising the profile of the SAC presence. The Reflex deployments were complemented by a phasing out of the 90-day rotations, the last of which was at Brize Norton between January and April 1958.67 Initially 11 per cent of SAC’s bombers were on alert but the percentage would grow to reach 33 per cent by 1960 and, under Secretary of Defense McNamara, to half of SAC bombers and tankers. The end of the greatly expanded B-47 force was already in sight by the time Reflex was introduced. The phasing out and end of Reflex operations came in the mid-1960s with the introduction of the Minuteman ICBM and an alert regime for the SAC missile force. When it was announced that the B-47s would be withdrawn from Britain, Whitehall reacted rather queasily. The USAF presence (of which the B-47s were but a part) brought financial benefits in the order of £55 million annually. Relinquishing bases brought neither financial nor military benefit.68 The manned heavy bomber force of B-52s continued to be based primarily in the US, a proportion flying airborne alerts for a few more years.69 These changes marked the beginning of the end of SAC’s strategic presence in Britain,

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and they ran in parallel with the deployment there, and subsequent withdrawal, of the Thor Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM).

Missiles come to England As the missile age became a reality, the prospect of basing medium or intermediate range missiles in England on an existing USAF base was raised as early as 1955.70 Delays in the development of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile during the 1950s meant that the perceived US missile deficit – a political, more than a military concern – would need to be covered by shorter range missiles on overseas bases as a stopgap. Recommendations that intermediate range missiles (IRBM) should be developed were pushed hard by James Killian, presidential scientific adviser in January 1955, through the Office of Defense Mobilization’s Scientific Advisory Committee. Killian’s Technological Capabilities Panel reported to the President the following month, urging the development of IRBMs for land and sea basing.71 Inescapably, an IRBM capability was predicated on the availability of overseas land bases and was thereby likely to bring the UK, with its extensive pre-existing infrastructure, into the frame. Anxiety about Soviet advances gave the IRBM project considerable momentum. In November 1955 Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson directed the Air Force to proceed with the Thor IRBM and a development contract with the Douglas Aircraft Corporation was let the following month. When Neil H. McElroy took over as Secretary of Defense in October 1957 he ordered the Thor and Jupiter IRBMs into production in order to achieve early deployments.72 Yet despite the powerful budgetary and technical push for IRBM in Washington, there was very little enthusiasm within the USAF. The SAC commanders were at best lukewarm in their enthusiasm for Thor and in January 1959 Tom Power, SAC Commander-in-Chief, recommended terminating the IRBM programme. ICBM development was getting closer to operational status and the Thor and Jupiter missiles were fragile, vulnerable, difficult to fuel and too slow in alert reaction.73 Public comment in America, probably informed by USAF leaks, was similarly unfavourable, accurately describing the missile as ‘a typically unstable liquid fuelled rocket of low reliability, unknown accuracy and high launching time’.74 As ICBM introduction drew near, Secretary McElroy publicly admitted that overseas IRBM deployment was coming to seem less attractive. Was it worthwhile? Again, the answer was political rather than strategic. As the Thor

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deployment plan progressed, its strategic value – never especially persuasive to the Air Force – was overshadowed by the politics of the alliance, with the State Department taking over as the lead negotiator from the Department of Defense. In proceeding with the IRBM programme, the principal concern of State Department officials was whether the overseas bases necessary to this limited range missile would be available.75 With Thor, and the comparable Jupiter, likely to come on stream in the very near future, the USAF urged the Department of Defense to ‘insure expeditious action by the Department of State in the attainment of base rights’ in those countries which most nearly satisfied the operational requirements and appeared to promise the right political conditions. England, Germany, Libya, Turkey, Formosa, Korea and Japan would provide coverage for a large percentage of the strategic targets for both general and local war conditions.76 Of them all, England offered the most attractive prospect, strategically and politically. When the proposal was first floated to London, Chief of the Air Staff Boyle warned that the IRBM would increase the liabilities of Britain as a target for Soviet attack.77 Such initial caution about a possible British deployment was present on both sides of the Atlantic, reflecting the strength of the British government’s commitment to their own Blue Streak.78 Similar in concept and propulsion, Blue Streak was a Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) of greater range than that offered by Thor; indeed, the American missile fell well short of meeting the British target requirements. Yet while the Conservative government was strongly committed to Blue Streak at this point, Thor would be available five years earlier as a stop-gap. In March 1956 the USAF recommended beginning negotiations for basing IRBM in the UK and a number of other countries. In July Air Force Deputy Secretary Donald A. Quarles visited London to discuss with British officials the possible deployment of Thors on British soil, ostensibly to fill the gap until Blue Streak was ready.79 From the British point of view the IRBM – whether British or American – appeared to offer a cheap alternative to purchasing another generation of manned bombers, while some American officials appear to have seen the offer of Thor as a means of further discouraging Britain’s unilateral missile development, a factor not lost upon Air Ministry proponents of the indigenous programme. The Blue Streak programme – eventually to be terminated – was not having an easy ride in Whitehall, and in 1956 ministerial alarm about research and development expenditure apparently running out of control prompted consideration of purchasing Thor from the US instead of continuing Blue Streak. Such thoughts brought to the surface the extent to which Britain was

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prepared to become dependent on the United States to maintain its position as a nuclear power. To this, there was strong internal opposition. At the time of the initial proposal Ministry of Defence civil servant Richard Chilver argued that since ballistic missiles are a cheap way of maintaining thermonuclear deterrent (because a stock with a long useful life and low maintenance costs can be built up gradually over a long period) it is open to us eventually to produce on our own account a deterrent which is sufficient without American help … The issue whether we should ask the Americans to let us have a supply of medium-range ballistic missiles is a separate one. To obtain American supplies would not reduce the case set out above for developing our own. I can see no particular advantage in obtaining American supplies. We should not be increasing the size of the AngloAmerican deterrent. It would not help us to obtain by these means a saving in the choice of targets, because the missile is not really accurate for the attack of airfields. And we should not gain prestige: on the contrary I think we should appear rather childish in wanting to have them.80

Nevertheless, the prospect of Thor continued to call into question the wisdom of proceeding with the indigenous Blue Streak.81 An informal ministerial meeting convened by Prime Minister Anthony Eden in September 1956 recognised that ‘if we were to allow the United States to site ballistic missiles in this country … It should be possible for us to give up the manufacture ourselves of these missiles.’82 The attractions of accepting Thor deployment or even purchasing the missile outright ‘rose in proportion to the falling prospects of Blue Streak’.83 Atomic Energy Authority scientist Sir William Cook argued that to purchase (without political strings) and fit a British warhead ‘would be the quickest way of providing a British deterrent of sufficient range’. This was technically doubtful, although British ministers and officials seemingly continued to toy with the idea well into 1958. Their desire to bear down on the costs of weapon development converged with the American concern – part strategic, increasingly simply political – to acquire overseas bases for the IRBM. The deployment gained a little more traction after the Suez crisis (and the departure of Eden) when Eisenhower saw a formal Thor agreement as an opportunity to mend fences with the British. A joint meeting was planned for January 1957, attended by Duncan Sandys, the UK’s new defence minister. Secretary Wilson was eager to push quickly ahead with the deployment, partly because its value would diminish as ICBM in-service dates approached, and partly because the British interest in Thor would erode as progress was made on Blue Streak.84 Deployment was gaining momentum

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as a package was prepared for discussion between Eisenhower and Macmillan when they met in Bermuda in March. The outcome of that meeting was to be four squadrons of Thors to be placed in Britain for joint operational control, financed by Plan K funding.85 Procedural obstacles remained; Peter Portanova, the Douglas Aircraft Corporation’s Thor engineer deployed on-site to get the system operational, commented wryly that ‘when President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Macmillan agreed to base IRBMs in England, they had only the barest understanding of the specific issues that set in motion for their people to deal with’.86 Apart from the formidable construction issues that had to be faced and resolved at the sites and launch complexes, operating Thor would require the British to be provided with programming, scheduling and operational policy information that went well beyond the existing US disclosure policy. New guidelines had to be produced to permit the wider information exchange that was now required.87 In January 1958 the UK Chiefs of Staff parted company with the political drive to establish Thor in the UK. Led by Dermot Boyle, the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), they expressed concern that Britain was being railroaded into a commitment that served American ends rather than British. The advantages to Britain were debatable, as the missiles were highly vulnerable and increased the attractiveness of the UK as a target for Soviet attack. There was also concern that the missiles would fall eventually under the operational control of SACEUR. The cabinet was unimpressed with these reservations and went ahead to approve the draft agreement in February of that year, under which the 3rd Air Force would assist in the construction of the four sites and deliver the missiles as announced in a White Paper at the end of that month. The Thor deployment under the innocent code word ‘Project Emily’ was now public knowledge.88 Four existing RAF stations were prepared for the deployments – Driffield, Hemswell, Feltwell and North Luffenham, each with missiles dispersed on to satellite stations. Deploying Thor to Britain provided the British government with an opportunity to portray the decision, subject as it was to a formal agreement, as a negotiating triumph for newly appointed UK Defence Minister Duncan Sandys, and as a demonstration of renewed AngloAmerican amity, a patching up of the Suez rift. Yet placing the IRBMs in the UK had been planned well before the Suez crisis. An initial oper­ ating capability (IOC) plan for IRBM deployment had been formulated in March 1956, envisaging eight SAC squadrons being supported from three bases in the UK. Following the Sandys–Wilson talks a preliminary understanding was signed by the British ambassador Harold Caccia and US Secretary of State Christian A. Herter in February 1958, but

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the signing of the final bases agreement was delayed until 26 June. The American assumption was that at least the first 30 missiles placed in Britain would be US-manned in the interests of speedy deployment. The British government dissented, wanting the Thor squadrons to be RAF rather than USAF-manned ‘in order to give some semblance of UK control’.89 The matter was not raised with the UK authorities until July, when it became apparent to the Americans that the RAF would want British crews to man at least some of the squadrons.90 Target assignment would be an RAF command decision based on agreed war plan requirements although SAC insisted upon the ‘availability of supervisory levers’ to monitor targeting.91 The costing of the deployment was unusually haphazard, even by the standards of Anglo-American defence relations. USAF Colonel Edward Hall was charged by Deputy Secretary Quarles to produce arrangements for the Thor deployment, and given several alternatives: time was short, and the fastest route was to plant the missiles, using only US resources, and regardless of cost. A second option was for the costs to be shared with the British, using British resources wherever possible to minimise the burden on the US budget, and pay no regard to delay. Hall prepared the plans, which Quarles shared with Eisenhower and Macmillan at their Bermuda meeting. The outcome was an order to achieve the speed of the first plan at the cost of the second. ‘I can’t do it’, the hapless Hall reported to the furious Quarles. Yet ‘In the end I was told to go over to England and do it … needless to say it took some time.’92 Direct action political protest was growing, and anti-nuclear activists were concentrating on the Thor sites, adding to both governments’ unease.93 The conclusion of the Thor deployment was further delayed through the idea becoming enmeshed with a separate proposal to deploy IRBM in Europe under NATO control. The Joint Chiefs wanted all IRBMs based in Europe, including those in the UK, to be under operational control of SACEUR in both peace and war, and Twining was asked to estimate the ‘difficulties with the British in eliminating unilateral British national control of UK based units’.94 Lauris Norstad naturally wanted to see SACEUR control rather than a series of bilateral arrangements.95 Norstad did not win his argument, and instead of SACEUR, SAC, with the support of the State Department, retained control of Thor in the UK through the 7th Air Division. The political push to rebuild the bilateral relationship was paramount, and so the deployment of Thor to the UK became hostage to the politics of a wider NATO IRBM programme.96 Disagreements in the autumn of 1959 between SAC and the RAF over a number of areas relating to Thor’s operational status, of which

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4.2  A USAF Globemaster delivers the first Thor missile to RAF Lakenheath in 1960.

the most intractable concerned the installation of the warhead on the missile, stalled progress. For the British government, safety precautions were a paramount concern, with a succession of anxieties about a lightning strike to an armed missile, the possibility of radioactive contamination, a nuclear accident during system testing and the risk of accidental launch.97 The principal problem, though, was the readiness target. The claimed 15 minutes readiness of Thor was entirely dependent on the location of the warheads. If stored at Lakenheath, it was estimated that it would take 57 hours to make Thor operational, 24 hours if warheads were stored at the main bases. The 15-minute capability required warheads to be installed on the missile. Safety apart, this was legally problematic, as the warheads could hardly be considered to remain in the exclusive custody of the USAF officers if they were already fitted. Yet if they were not fitted and readied for arming Thor would be unable to respond within the limited warning time expected, the sole military advantage claimed for Thor.98 In January 1960 USAF headquarters affirmed that there should be strict compliance with the custody requirements with separate guarding of the warheads; SAC officers argued that the presence of the USAF launch control officer at each complex was sufficient to satisfy the custodial requirements.99 Headquarters USAF instructed on 11 February

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that no warheads be mated until a decision was formulated on final custodial procedures. The outcome was that Thor’s 1.44 megaton warhead remained under the control of the American custodial officers. British crews would man the missile sites while the United States would retain custody of the warhead following installation, both governments having to consent to the firing in practice through a dual key system.100 In effect, this meant that the RAF key started the launch procedure while the US key armed the warhead.101 The dual key system was organised in such a way as to give each government right of veto over the launch. Operational orders were transmitted simultaneously for the USAF from headquarters SAC to the 7th Air Division and thence to the squadrons; for the RAF from the Air Ministry through headquarters Bomber Command to the squadrons.102 These arrangements would remain through the Cuban crisis in 1962, when the RAF Thor squadrons demonstrated a remarkable level of readiness, to the withdrawal of the missiles the following year.103

Notes 1 Armstrong to LeMay, 18 July 1955, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 205. 2 The Operational Side of Air Offense: Remarks by General Curtis E. LeMay to the USAF Scientific Advisory Board at Patrick AFB, Florida, 21 May 1957, p. 4. 3 Johnson to Vandenberg, 2 October 1950, Johnson diary. 4 Lt.-Gen. C.S. Irvine, interviewed by Robert M. Kipp, 17 December 1971, March AFB, CA, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, p. 22. 5 Kohn and Harahan (eds.), Strategic air warfare, p. 90 (emphasis added). 6 History of the Strategic Air Command, Historical study 73A: SAC Targeting Concepts, Historical Division, Office of Information, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, n.d. 7 The Operational Side of Air Offense: Remarks by Gen. Curtis E. Lemay, p. 3. 8 Readiness Plan, RAF Station Sculthorpe, 17 March 1949, AIR 28/1110. 9 Note by Brig.-Gen. Lauris Norstad: ‘509th Composite Group: Special Functions’, 29 May 1945. 10 History of the Seventh Air Division, Command Summary, 27 June 1951. 11 Lt.-Gen. C.S. Irvine, interviewed by Robert M. Kipp, 17 December 1971, March AFB, CA, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, p. 20. 12 Defence Threat Reduction Agency, Defence’s Nuclear Agency 1947–1997, p. 62. 13 History of the 97th Bombardment Group (Advanced Echelon) for July 1950, AFHRA. 14 Mirgon memoir, p. 21. 15 Anderson to LeMay, 17 March 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 49.

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16 Memorandum, W. Barton Leach to McCone (Under-Secretary, Department of the Air Force), 6 July 1950, NARA, RG 341, Box 2. 17 Telegram, MoD for Tedder, 22 December 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1383. 18 Johnson diary, 9 May 1951, p. 176. 19 LoC, LeMay papers, B-17045, Box 200. 20 Brief of MATS Operational Plan No. 33–50, 17 October 1950, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 747. 21 Brig.-Gen. James C. Selser Jnr., Commander, 7th Air Division, to LeMay, 20 February 1954, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 204. 22 R.S. Norris and H.M. Kristensen, ‘US nuclear weapons in Europe, 1954– 2004’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 60 (6), November–December 2004, pp. 76–77. 23 A special committee of the NSC recommended a number of transfers of a number of non-nuclear components for this purpose in June and July 1952, Truman approving on 22 July. Memoranda for the President from James S. Lay, Truman Presidential Library, Papers of Harry S. Truman: President’s Secretary’s Files. 24 L. Wainstein, C.D. Cremeans, J.K. Moriarty and J. Ponturo, ‘The evolution of US Strategic Command and Control and Warning, 1945–1972’, Institute of Defense Analyses, Study S-467, June 1975, pp. 31–33. History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons (U), July 1945 through September 1977, Office of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy) February 1978. 25 R. Ullrich, ‘Tech Area 11: a history’, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, July 1998. 26 Twining to Tunner, 17 December 1954: Bradley (chairman, JCS) to Twining, 22 December 1954, LoC, Twining papers, Box 100 (messages). 27 Griswold to Stevenson, 19 August 1952, History of the Third Air Force, January–June 1952, AFHRA. 28 New York Times obituary, 3 November 1995. 29 Lt.-Gen. Roscoe C. Wilson, interviewed by Lt.-Col. Dennis A. Smith, 1–2 December 1983, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, p. 128. 30 Dispersal ‘would have scared the British half to death’, R.L. Wilson, ‘Third Air Force years remembered’, in S.C. Kelly (ed.), Home bases: memories and stories of US military bases around London, New York, Bayberry Books, 2014, p. 263. 31 ‘Fail Safe: the safety catch on the deterrent’, Time, 28 April 1958. 32 Macmillan to Eisenhower, 25 April 1958, UKNA, FO 953/1850. 33 Cooper to Hooper, 1 May 1958, UKNA, FO 953/1850. 34 Gen. R.H. Ellis, interviewed by Lt.-Col. Maurice Maryanow, 17–21 August 1987, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, pp. 85–86. 35 For an account of the more serious incidents elsewhere, see E. Schlosser, Command and control, London, Allen Lane, 2013. 36 Jackson, United States Air Force in Britain, p. 32. 37 History of the Seventh Air Division, July–December 1952, chapter 3, pp. 89–91.

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38 G.B. Parkes, ‘It couldn’t happen to me!’, Combat Crew, April 1954, pp. 6–10, Strategic Air Command, Offutt AFB, Nebraska. I am grateful to the late Maj. Parkes’s widow, Marice, for an extensive collection of press cuttings, reports and articles dealing with this incident. 39 For example Emrys Hughes MP on 21 November 1951, House of Commons Debates, col. 378; Arthur Henderson MP, Woodrow Wyatt MP and William Warbey MP, on 23 March 1954, House of Commons Debates, col. 1052. William Warbey MP and Sydney Silverman MP, on 1 April 1954, House of Commons Debates, cols. 2238–2240. 40 E.J. McGill, Jet age man: SAC B-47 and B-52 operations in the early cold war, Solihull, Healy and Co., 2012. 41 http://b-47.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Memories.pdf, accessed 4 August 2014. 42 Signal, Col. Walsh to LeMay, July 1956, LoC, LeMay papers, B-55745, Box 206. 43 Narrative Summaries of Accidents Involving US Nuclear Weapons, 1950– 1980, Department of Defense, April 1981. 44 www.florencemuseum.org/artifacts/mars-bluff-bomb/, accessed 4 August 2014. 45 www.cpeo.org/lists/military/1996/msg00205.html 46 D.C.W. Sanderson, J.D. Allyson, A. Cresswell and P. McConville, An airborne and vehicular gamma survey of Greenham Common, Newbury District and surrounding areas. Project Report, Scottish Universities Research and Reactor Centre, Glasgow, 1997, p. 1. 47 I.W. Croudace, P.E. Warwick, R.N. Taylor and A.B. Cundy, ‘Investigation of an alleged nuclear incident at Greenham Common air base using TI-mass spectrometric measurements of uranium isotopes’, Environmental Science and Technology, 2000, 34, 4,502. 48 http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/atomic-energy-act-preventsdeclassification-of-site-of-1958–broken-arrow-nuclear-weapons-accident/ 49 Memorandum for the Record, 19 March 1951, Johnson diary, p. 172. 50 Walworth Barber to Robert Murphy, 20 December 1957, with attached memorandum, University of Southampton, Hartley Library, Slater papers. 51 White to LeMay, 11 December 1957, LoC, Papers of General Thomas D. White, Box 5. 52 Memorandum from General Twining to Secretary of Defense dated 31 December 1957 reproduced in Irwin to Murphy, 9 January 1958, NARA, RG 59, Box 3197. 53 Interview of Lt.- Gen. Roscoe C. Wilson by Lt.-Col Dennis A. Smith, 1–2 December 1983, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, p. 128. 54 Power to White, 27 February 1959, University of Southampton, Hartley Library, Slater papers. 55 Farley to Secretary of State, Proposed series of operational support exercises by the Strategic Air Command, 3 January 1958, NARA, RG 59, Box 3197. 56 Fisher Howe to Secretary of State, 13 January 1958, NARA, RG 59, Box 3197.

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57 Draft message to Macmillan by John Foster Dulles for Presidential signature, 21 January 1958, NARA, RG 59, Box 3197. 58 Farley to Secretary of State, Standardisation of Procedures for Flights of Aircraft Carrying Hazardous Cargo to the United States and United Kingdom, 6 June 1958, NARA, RG 59, Box 3197. 59 Carriage of nuclear weapons over the United Kingdom, note of meeting held at the Foreign Office 23 July 1958, NARA, RG 84. 60 Airgram, American Embassy, London, to Secretary of State, 3 October 1958, NARA, RG 59, Box 3197. 61 John Foster Dulles, memorandum for the President, 30 October 1958, NARA, RG 59, Box 3197. 62 Telegram, US Embassy, London to Secretary of State, 20 March 1959, NARA, RG 59, Box 3197; House of Commons Debates, 25 March 1959, col. 1298. 63 Twining to Secretary of Defense, ‘The United Kingdom’s Concern with Increases in the Readiness Posture of U.S. Forces Based Therein’, 16 June 1960, LoC, Twining papers, Box 113 Memos. 64 www.secretsdeclassified.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100617-106.pdf, accessed 4 August 2014. 65 History of the Strategic Air Command, Historical Study 73A, SAC Targeting Concepts. 66 Review of United States Overseas Military Bases … 1952–61, April 1960. 67 Development of Strategic Air Command, 1946–1976. 68 ACM Foxley-Norris, Assistant Chief of Defence Staff, to CDS, 5 April 1963; McDonnelly to Hockaday, 9 April 1963, UKNA, DEFE 25/65. 69 Strategic Air Command and the Alert Program: A Brief History, Office of the Historian, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, 1988. 70 J. Boyes, Project Emily: Thor IRBM and the RAF, Stroud, Tempus Publishing, 2008, p. 45. 71 L.P. Temple III and P.L. Portanova, ‘Project Emily and Thor IRBM readiness in the United Kingdom, 1955–1960’, Air Power History, 56 (3), Fall 2009, p. 29. 72 R.F. Futtrell, Ideas, concepts, doctrine: basic thinking in the United States Air Force, Volume II, 1961–1984, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, Air University Press, 1989, pp. 5–6. 73 Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force 1945–1960, Office of Air Force History, USAF, Washington, DC, 1989, p. 232. 74 Quoted in S. Twigge and L. Scott, ‘The other other Missiles of October: the Thor IRBMs and the Cuban Missile Crisis’ (electronic), Journal of International History, 3, 2003, para. 4. 75 J.Melissen, ‘The Thor saga: Anglo-American nuclear relations, US IRBM development and deployment in Britain, 1955–1959, Journal of Strategic Studies, 15 (2), 1992, p. 176. 76 Twining to Secretary of the Air Force, 28 March 1956, LoC, Twining papers, Box 92, Top Secret.

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77 Note by Boyle, 18 July 1956, UKNA, AIR 19/942. 78 Melissen, ‘The Thor saga’, p. 175. 79 R.J. Watson, Into the missile age, 1956–1960: history of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Volume 4, Historical Office, Washington, DC, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1997, p. 512. 80 Chilver to Cabinet Secretary, 31 July 1956, UKNA, CAB 21/4054. 81 Sir Richard Powell to Minister of Defence, 6 August 1958, UKNA, DEFE 13/194. 82 Brundett to Hunt, 21 September 1956, UKNA, CAB 21/4054. 83 I. Clark and D. Angell, ‘Britain, the United States and the control of nuclear weapons: the diplomacy of the Thor deployment, 1956–1958’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 2 (3), 1991, p. 165. 84 Watson, Into the missile age, p. 513. 85 Watson, Into the missile age, p. 515. 86 Temple and Portanova, ‘Project Emily’, p. 42. This paper is, on technical issues, the most detailed and penetrating of the several studies of the Thor project. 87 Memorandum from Assistant Secretary Horner for Chief of Staff, USAF, 17 July 1957, NARA, RG 340, Box 252. 88 J. Wilson, Launch pad UK: Britain and the Cuban missile crisis, Barnsley, Pen and Sword Books, 2008, p. 49. 89 Melissen, ‘The Thor saga’, p. 190. 90 Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, pp. 160–165. Twining, memorandum for Secretary of the Air Force, 28 March 1956, LoC, Twining papers, Box 92. 91 Ballistic Missiles in United States Air Force, p. 217. 92 Interview with Col. Edward Hall, 11 July 1989, AFHRA. 93 Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, p. 210. 94 Joint Chiefs to Norstad, IRBM Program, 2 January 1958, LoC, Twining papers, Box 115. 95 Watson, Into the missile age, p. 517. 96 Clark and Angell, ‘Britain, the United States and the control of nuclear weapons’, p. 157. 97 Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, p. 210. 98 Twigge and Scott, ‘The other other missiles of October’, para. 4. 99 Ballistic Missiles in United States Air Force, p. 213. 100 Ballistic Missiles in United States Air Force, p. 223. 101 J. Boyes, ‘The Blue Streak Underground Launchers’, Journal of the Royal Air Force Historical Society, 58, 2014, p. 89. 102 Twigge and Scott, ‘The other other Missiles of October’, para. 10. 103 Boyes, Project Emily, pp. 129–145.

5 Difficult relations

There is a lethargy prevalent which is obvious to anyone who stays around here very long … I think it probably stems from the original instructions Johnson was given when he came here, that his primary mission was to get along with the British. That still seems to be the primary mission and I say to you, not them, to hell with the British. Major-General Archie Old, May 1951

Managing the relationships between the separate elements of the USAF in Britain challenged military leadership, while managing relations between them and their British hosts required continuous patient diplomacy. Quite apart from the uncertainties about duration of stay and the widespread dissatisfaction with the conditions the American airmen encountered on their arrival, the initial USAF deployments were bedevilled by vague and conflicting responsibilities. When a mission statement was assigned to the 3rd Air Division in January 1950 in response to Major-General McNaughton’s trenchant criticism of the organisation, it provoked a turf war with the US Army’s European command. The designation of Leon Johnson as the sole point of contact with the British government in relation to US Army and Air Force requirements was hotly opposed by Lieutenant-General Wedemeyer, the War Department’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Combat Operations, on the ground that it impinged upon the command prerogatives of CINCEUR.1 Johnson argued vigorously that he should retain primary responsibility for liaison with the British.2 In his support he invoked Tedder as having told him ‘I can only deal with you if you have direct access to Van[denberg]’ and protested: I think it is advisable to point out that the 3rd Air Division is, in fact, more an air force mission to the UK than an actual command … Any organisation which prevents direct contact between the 3rd Air Division and headquarters USAF can only slow down our operation and make us resort to

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the subterfuge, which it was necessary to use when we were organizing, of having the Air Attaché send messages direct to headquarters.

The Division was operating in ‘a smooth and efficient manner’ and as its commanding general he was distressed that proposed changes would interfere with its ‘efficient working relationship with the British’.3 When finally resolved, Johnson’s mission was restricted to the coordination of Air Force requirements, and negotiation with the British Air Ministry to ensure they would be met, but his reporting lines remained intact. Johnson’s other major responsibility was to ensure that the Emergency War Plans could be implemented, by arranging for the accommodation and logistical support of SAC units as and when they were deployed.4 Instructions from USAF or SAC headquarters would from time to time test his skills. SAC had plans for deployment of the strike force in the event of an emergency, and he was briefed personally by LieutenantGeneral Thomas S. Power, SAC vice-commander.5 Following that briefing, Johnson was asked in June 1949 to ensure that bases in the UK could accommodate an immediate ‘crash plan’ deployment of six medium bomber groups, one of RB-29s, and two fighter groups on the outbreak of war. The UK’s Directors of Plans objected strenuously that this request exceeded anything earlier agreed, would entail a major change of RAF dispositions to accommodate them and would incur a considerable financial burden. Their protest went as far as the US Joint Chiefs, and reassurances had to be provided through the BJSM, that this was no more than a ‘highly tentative’ proposal from ‘SAC to Gen. Johnson for planning purposes’. It would be for him to soothe ruffled feathers locally.6

Divided command LeMay’s over-riding concern was that SAC should have no impediment to its immediate readiness to launch an atomic attack, if necessary from the barely ready English air bases. Direct control of the bases was his preference, but it continued to elude him. SAC units had the status of visitors to bases which remained under the control of Johnson’s 3rd Air Division, and LeMay had earlier urged, without success, that the Division be assigned to SAC.7 Subsequently, Major-General Sam Anderson, USAF Director of Plans and Operations, proposed the creation of a new division within SAC to take control of base development.8 Two factors drove the acceptance that responsibilities for operations from England would best be revised. The first was the need to get SAC units properly operational from these bases, which meant overcoming

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their manifest deficiencies. The second was to ensure that the British delivered on their side of the bargain. This was not something for SAC commanders to deal with as, from LeMay downward, they were not noted for their diplomatic skills. Johnson, however, was a continuing presence. Responsibility for dealing with the British government rested with him and some at least had high regard for his diplomatic skills and experience in handling it. But not all: to the UK Chiefs of Staff Johnson was a ‘first class operational commander’ who had been called upon to deal with high policy issues for which his rank did not qualify him: ‘The problems are getting too big for him.’9 This was perhaps an unduly snooty judgement by the Chiefs. A similar spirit of ‘rank-matching’ led to the smooth and well-connected William Elliott being promoted to Air Chief Marshal (the knighthood followed) in advance of his appointment to BJSM, Washington, although there the extra ring on his sleeve availed him little when up against the combined might of the US Joint Chiefs. In this case, the (relatively) lowly two-star Johnson appears from the files to have consistently punched above his weight in dealing confidently and persuasively with London’s top officials. Slessor came to appreciate his deft touch when, at the end of his period of command, Johnson proposed that the RAF ensign should be flown together with the stars and stripes at those bases that had been ceded to the USAF.10 Moreover, Air Force Chief of Staff Vandenberg (to whom Johnson was now personally connected by the friendship and eventual marriage of their children) continued to throw his weight behind the man who had been on the spot since the first deployments and who had built up experience of dealing with the British hosts. Johnson, answerable to Norstad, now Commander-in-Chief of USAFE, and not to LeMay, in turn made the most of his ‘man on the spot’ status against his impatient SAC colleagues: Because this is the first time the US has had troops stationed in another major country during peacetime, we have been slowed somewhat by the lack of precedent. This has necessitated the establishment of most of our ground rules from the basic. Because the RAF and Air Ministry are only sub-departments of the British Government, it has been necessary for our proposals and tentative agreements with the RAF and Air Ministry to be ratified by the Executive Branches of the British Government. Because the bulk of the UK-US war time agreements have lapsed it has been necessary to renegotiate many of the joint agreements … In some cases this has approached the magnitude of treaty negotiation. The problem of ‘who pays for what’ has also been complicated. Despite the fact that the policy was established that we would have to pay for any services, supplies of

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equipment which were furnished us over and above the RAF standard, it has not been a simple proposition.11

In the spring of 1951, and in response to Sam Anderson’s criticisms, Vandenberg moved to re-organise responsibilities for the USAF in England, giving Major-General Paul T. Cullen, then deputy commander of the 2nd Air Force, a brief to establish SAC’s 7th Air Division, working alongside Johnson’s 3rd Air Force. Tragically, Cullen, his command staff and a sizeable group of personnel from the 509th Bomb Group were all lost en route to England on 23 March 1951 when their aircraft caught fire and ditched in the Atlantic with the loss of all on board. Faced with this setback, Vandenberg moved quickly, shifting Major-General Archie Old, 8th Air Force commander, into the role on a short-term appointment. The previous December he had discussed the SAC–USAFE relationship with LeMay and Norstad, who subsequently set out a scheme for dividing responsibilities between a permanent SAC division in England and the 3rd Air Force.12 Norstad had conceded that ‘it is impossible to draw a sharp line in such a matter’ but his scheme would, in his view, ‘maintain reasonable order in the Air Force organisation in Europe’ while giving SAC ‘the necessary control of its units’.13 While LeMay welcomed a decision to establish a SAC air division in the UK, he objected strenuously to Norstad’s proposal that SAC’s authority would be restricted to operational and technical control over bases designated for its use as a departure from what he understood had earlier been agreed in Washington. It would be ‘highly undesirable’ were Norstad to place theatre units on these bases, in which case they should be regarded as SAC’s tenants.14 When this spat was over, a detailed transfer agreement was issued, setting out those responsibilities – notably the preparation of the EWP – that would be transferred out of Johnson’s control. LeMay’s protest over getting less than total control was bitter, and there was seemingly some ongoing animus between the two generals.15 Indeed, their styles could not have been more different. LeMay, the rough-edged self-made engineer whose ruthless dedication to prosecuting war took him to the top of the military profession; Norstad, the smooth, socially competent diplomat who had long enjoyed the Washington insiders’ dinner party scene where he mixed with politicians and journalists. The general tenor of the relations between them can be gleaned from the experience of future SAC commanding general Colonel (as he then was) Richard Ellis, sent to negotiate between the two on the division between theatre operations and SAC’s own sphere:

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I recall Norstad calling me in one day and saying ‘I want you to go in and brief LeMay on our position on what our responsibilities are and also give him a rundown on our war plan while you are about it. He said ‘Now, when you get there, you tell Curt what I said’ – these are not his exact words – ‘Knock off this crap about SAC owning the world. We’ve got our responsibilities over here and we’re not going to delegate them to anybody.’

Having delivered his message in the more judicious terms appropriate to a colonel addressing a four-star general, he received the response to carry back to USAFE: ‘Well, you tell Norstad to keep the hell out of my business. We’ll handle the thing, and you guys in the theater stay in the theater and leave us alone.’16 The relations between SAC and USAFE, as custodians of the English bases, were bound to need careful management, and were not improved by the ‘arms-length’ nature of the relationship between the two mutually hostile commanders.17 Although disgruntled, LeMay had won most of his points in the resolution of this reallocation of responsibility, but much was left to be resolved by downstream negotiation. Vandenberg recognised that defining the degree of command that SAC would have over UK bases, and thereby the residual authority that would rest with Johnson, could prove awkward.18 As he explained to a sceptical Norstad, problems of adjustment between Johnson, now commander of the 3rd Air Force, and Old, as commanding general of SAC’s own air division in the UK, were bound to arise. Both commanders would need to cooperate wholeheartedly under the directive, under which SAC assumed command of the bases, the complement of personnel at UK bases transferred to the 7th Air Division, and the base commanders were provided by SAC. Old’s responsibilities would be limited to operational matters. This does not mean that Johnson will have no command authority over the responsibility for SAC UK bases … Johnson in effect is your commander of Air Force units in the UK, and as such must have sufficient stature to take command over all American forces there. On the other hand it must be clearly understood by both Old and Johnson that Old will be held responsible by LeMay for all operational matters, but that Johnson is the boss of the area for all administrative action.19

Vandenberg’s concern was to keep the command channel for SAC operations clear, with the line running from the SAC commanders in the field to LeMay and thence to himself. He wanted to keep SAC out of ‘the military-diplomacy or real estate business in overseas theatres’ and these SAC weaknesses were seen as Johnson’s strengths. Norstad, who was losing effective control over UK operations, saw

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matters differently. He wanted Johnson to control the base commanders, but SAC was continuing to gain organisational muscle, and the commanders of SAC wings occupying those bases would now exercise that command, while reporting through the SAC air division commander to Johnson ‘in all matters which are appropriately his’.20 Johnson himself, like Norstad, saw many problems arising from this ambiguous division of responsibility, and the Chief of Staff’s insistence that ‘two smart wellintentioned general officers’ could work out the lines of division between managing military installations on the one hand and operational matters on the other assumed more goodwill than actually existed. ‘I am going to leave it to you’, Vandenberg advised Norstad, ‘to straighten these two gents out, making sure that there is a clear operational line from LeMay to Old, and that Johnson facilitates his operations in every way, but that Old indicates by his action in the UK that Johnson is the Air Force boss.’21 Faced with such an evident recipe for muddle, Old struggled to make SAC’s bid for pre-eminence in England stick. It is obvious that neither General Norstad nor General Johnson are completely sold on the organisation of the Seventh Air Division but I believe it is equally obvious that they will both exert every effort to make it work. There are three things that I am particularly stressing to our people. First, that we eliminate duplications of functions as much as possible; second, that we work wholeheartedly without any mental reservations with 3rd Air Division and stay out of their backyard; third, I am taking the approach that a simple explanation of this organisation, as far as the UK is concerned, is that General Johnson is the Theatre Commander and I am commanding a separate Command in his theatre.22

This formulation did little to assist Old in his discussions with Johnson. I discussed the matter at length with General Johnson. I told him that in the first place his primary mission had been to support SAC; that the majority of the people in his Headquarters had been made available for that purpose; that you and I felt like we were entitled to a proportionate share of these people with ‘know-how’ concerning the various problems in this theatre … It is my opinion, and supported by the opinion of your four officers here, that the 3rd Air Division staff is very unhappy about the 7th Air Division being over here and it is obvious they intend to cooperate with you the minimum amount possible and not the maximum. I discussed this very frankly with General Johnson personally … I am going to make it plain that I will not tolerate this petty bickering and fighting between officers and airmen of the two commands … General Johnson himself is rather unhappy about the formation of the 7th Air Division and its mission,

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but he has been told explicitly what is expected of him and I know he will cooperate but it has to go down much further than that for us to be able to do the best job possible.23

The struggle was resolved only by Old craftily invoking Vandenberg’s insistence that the two should make the division of roles work. He claimed to have inside information that if they did not, Vandenberg’s intention was to fire both of them. ‘I can’t believe Van would do that to me’, replied the startled Johnson, who was unaware that Vandenberg had indeed raised that possibility in writing.24 In any event, the threat had the effect of lubricating the relationship; ‘we worked it out pretty damn fast’, recalled Old.25 The pressure to do so was intense, and Old’s Director of Operations, Colonel ‘Shorty’ Wheless, recalled the intense arguments as to what the command jurisdiction should be in the UK.26 When it came to making the new arrangements work, most of Old’s forebodings dissolved, due largely to the skills of Johnson’s deputy, Brigadier-General John Paul McConnell: The 3rd Air Division staff has been working with us very well the last week and I believe the instructions that General Johnson and General McConnell have passed on to their staff are taking effect. General McConnell is particularly cooperative … As I told you before, responsibilities between 7th and 3rd Air Divisions is going to work out much easier than a lot of people first thought.27

Later, ‘McConnell will do a very fine job for you here. Of all the other officers who have been in the 3rd Air Force, he is the one that we have thought we could depend on the most in the past.’28 In February 1952, when both Johnson and Old were re-assigned, McConnell moved up from deputy commander of the 3rd Air Force to command both the 3rd Air Force and the 7th Air Division and oversee their working relationship, and now found himself on the other side of the argument as to the command relationships in England. His working relationships were put to the test, as he reported separately to LeMay on the 7th Air Division and to Norstad on the 3rd Air Force, conscious that his two superiors were not well disposed toward one another. McConnell’s organisational skills were well regarded, though the acerbic Old was privately dismissive of this stubborn West Pointer who would go on (Old claiming the credit for pushing him) to the highest rank, ending as Chief of Staff, USAF.29 Old had particularly appreciated not having to deal with the British.30 He was critical of Johnson’s close involvement with the UK authorities, which seemed to him to involve too much sharing of information. He complained to LeMay’s Chief of Staff, Major-General ‘Augie’ Kissner,

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that ‘the way the 3rd Air Force has been operating over here, cutting the British in on practically everything with the exception of SAC operational plans, created quite a few problems’.31 Later, to LeMay, I estimate that we are getting about 40–50% utilization of our resources on our stations here in the UK. There is a lethargy prevalent which is obvious to anyone who stays around here very long … I think it probably stems from the original instructions Johnson was given when he came here, that his primary mission was to get along with the British. That still seems to be the primary mission and I say to you, not them, to hell with the British.32

Had Old stayed in post longer, he would likely have acerbated these delicate relationships. McConnell did not share Old’s view of how relations with the British should be conducted. Rather, he had a highly developed sense of propriety. One incident illustrates his more diplomatic, conciliatory style. At the time of his period in command, the Mark 4 bomb was stockpiled on the USAF bases. While weapons had been returned when the immediate Korean crisis stabilised, in July 1952 Truman authorised the transfer of ‘additional non-nuclear weapons components to the Department of Defense for overseas storage to meet deployment requirements’.33 McConnell, whose responsibility it was, as 7th Air Division commander, to oversee weapons storage on the English bases, recalled that ‘nobody was supposed to tell any Englishman we had weapons there’, But, Jack Schleser [sic] was Chief of Staff of the RAF at that time. I knew him. But I sat around for a couple of weeks and obeyed my instructions that I wasn’t to tell anybody that we had any bombs over there. G’dammit you can’t keep another airman whose airbase you’re on from knowing you’ve got something hidden under that damn pile of brush out there. And I got worried about it. So I violated my instructions and I made an appointment to see Mr Churchill and I went over and gave him a briefing.34

This is not quite what happened. McConnell had been meeting with Lord Cherwell, Paymaster-General and Churchill’s confidante on defence matters. He had persuaded the sceptical Cherwell that SAC could find and hit its targets in the Soviet Union, at which point a briefing was arranged for the Prime Minister. McConnell, accompanied by the 3rd Air Force commander, Major-General Francis ‘Butch’ Griswold, gave a presentation that made so great an impression that Churchill asked for a repeat performance for NATO deputy commander Viscount Montgomery; Chief of the General Staff, Field Marshal Slim; and other army generals, which the Prime Minister again attended.35 It was in the course of these meetings that McConnell would have released the

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information about bomb storage. It was surely not a matter of surprise to British officials and probably the least important matter he revealed; in any event the admission related only to inert ‘bombs’. Yet McConnell felt compelled to admit his indiscretion and confessed, with some ­trepidation, to LeMay. To his surprise and great relief, the SAC Commander-in-Chief ‘never said a word’.36 Old would not have conducted relations with this degree of sensitivity. The matter of over-riding importance to him when he arrived as 7th Air Division commander had been that the facilities should be set up as rapidly as possible to carry out the Emergency War Plan. So far as the British were concerned ‘it is time they started bucking in and doing their part and quit retarding our progress with regard to getting our bases more operational’. He also had to integrate the resentful former 3rd Air Division personnel into SAC and this would require ‘a considerable amount of tail kicking initially to get people off their bottoms’. They had to understand that ‘they are now in SAC, a damn tough league, and have severed all connections with the 3rd Air Force and will have absolutely no responsibility to the 3rd Air Force’.37 In May 1952 Butch Griswold, a trusted LeMay man, took over the 3rd Air Force; he would later join LeMay at Omaha as Vice-Commander. McConnell, having proved his merit, would eventually also join the SAC headquarters team. Overall, these changes in organisation, command and personnel represented a considerable gain for LeMay, and a year after the reorganisation went live he reported his satisfaction with the pre-eminence that SAC had achieved: one of the primary reasons for establishing 7 Air Div in UK was to eliminate confused lines of command resulting from Johnson’s multiple responsibilities and wide variety of duties with which he was charged. Two years ago nothing was being done to improve Strategic Air Command’s readiness in the UK yet I could not pin the responsibility clearly on any one person and take the necessary corrective action. With the establishment last year of 7 Air Div we have finally been able to show some progress in the UK.38

It was, though, a source of continuing frustration to LeMay that these organisational changes did not bring stability. When, in 1953, Lieutenant-General Bill Tunner succeeded Norstad as commander of USAFE, rumours abounded that the 7th Air Division was to be closed and the SAC bases in England placed under the 3rd Air Force. LeMay protested to Vandenberg that ‘the command structure and set-up presently existing has been continuously examined and re-examined’ and ‘it is what the Air Force requires to do its job’.39 Butch Griswold, leading the 3rd Air Force, flew to Wiesbaden to meet Tunner, his commander,

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yet reported on his meeting to LeMay in a handwritten personal letter which he asked him to ‘tear up … and don’t give anyone the impression you know in general what went on at Wiesbaden’. Much of the meeting was about the cost savings that might flow from rationalisation, Griswold defending apparent duplication and admitting that while his 3rd Air Force could ‘do as good a job as the 7th’, this was a view that ‘would not be shared by SAC’. Reassuring LeMay that Tunner seemed not to be pressing the case for rationalisation, he speculated that he had inherited a Norstad initiative.40 Other plans being aired at this time sought to resolve the duplication of command lines in the contrary fashion by a possible dissolution or reduction in the role of the 3rd Air Force. Vandenberg moved to block this proposal as unnecessarily complicating the USAF–UK relationships, emphasising, yet again, the importance of those 3rd Air Force functions which involved contact and relationships with the British: it had, he insisted, ‘over the past years, built up a position which commands the respect and confidence of the British and hence immeasurably facilitates the efficient discharge of USAF responsibilities’.41 That confidence was very much a matter of personalities. Johnson had done particularly well, Griswold appeared to have good relations with the RAF chiefs, and Major-General Roscoe C. ‘Bim’ Wilson, former AFSWP deputy commander, who took over the 3rd Air Force in 1954, was especially skilled at operating across boundaries. Working round the lines of command with USAFE, he contrived to have the 49th Air Division transferred to his command: he found relationships were a problem but not a large one and not a difficulty. It was part of the job. I think we got along very well. The SAC 7th Air Division commander had his headquarters right adjacent to mine, and we were in yelling-out-of-thewindow reach of each other.42

Turbulence continued, however. In 1961 USAFE transferred operational control of 3rd Air Force units to the 17th Air Force, with the 3rd Air Force left to concentrate on base support and relations with the British government. This again proved awkward to sustain, and in 1963 USAFE returned operational control of UK-based units to the 3rd Air Force. The nature of the relationship with the British, summarised with all its ambiguities by Johnson in 1949, was greatly complicated by matters of authority in respect of the bases themselves. To hand over responsibility for the bases in full to the USAF was a logical progression from the original situation, where an RAF station commander could struggle against the assertiveness of unit commanders arriving on temporary duty, concerned only to fulfil the SAC mission. Johnson first raised the possibility

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that the British would be prepared to cede control of the bases to his 3rd Air Division, after Air Chief Marshal Sir George Pirie had approached him privately, seeking ‘any relief you could give us in the manning of the three stations, Lakenheath and Marham and Sculthorpe’: you are, I know, conscious of the acute manpower shortages with which we are faced in the RAF … I should be most grateful therefore if you would favourably consider relieving us of the bulk of this burden, limiting our commitment to the filling of say 50 posts at each of the stations … I am not pressing you to do this as once you told me how embarrassing that would be, but perhaps you could manage it over a period of months.43

Handing over control would save the RAF in total around 1,000 posts. It took some time to make satisfactory arrangements, but in 1951 seven bomber airfields were handed over to the 3rd Air Force. The bases would continue to be known as RAF stations, and the senior RAF officer on site would assume the title of ‘RAF commander and senior liaison officer’. The estate, right, title, interest or right of possession remained vested in the Air Ministry, and the length of tenure of the USAF would be for as long as their presence was considered desirable in the interests of the common defence.44 Johnson and his staff welcomed the change, which was expected to put the Midlands and East Anglian airfields on ‘the same basis as we ran our stations in the UK during the war’, although the retention of the RAF title was a prudent face-saving departure from wartime practice.45 With the Air Ministry urging the earliest handover due to shortages of RAF staff, a change of considerable practical and political significance had been made in the interest of small financial savings.

Working with the British Despite top-level concordats, local frictions remained between the USAF and the British authorities. One example was the reluctance of the British government at lower levels to allow the urgencies of American deployment to take precedence over matters of established procedure. Trivial in themselves, these tensions indicate just how restricted was the understanding of the strategic interest that the UK had in the USAF presence. One of the more bizarre aspects of the early relationship was the lack of any appreciation by the UK’s non-military authorities of the need to accommodate the frequent visits of senior American officers, who regularly flew in to near-London airfields for conferences and consultations in the capital. In June 1947 an agreement had been made to use

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Northolt, an airfield west of London managed by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MCA), for this purpose. A ‘limited number of free landings’ had been offered, but encountered objections from Treasury officials, who argued that ‘the USAAF have no right to demand the waiver of landing fees at MCA controlled airports, and they ought to use the nearest RAF aerodrome if they wish to avoid being charged’.46 After a number of landings at Northolt, the Air Attaché at the US embassy received, in May 1948, a bill from British European Airways (BEA) for some £548 for aircraft handling charges there.47 When the perplexed US Air Attaché, who could not conceive how this airline would be handling USAF aircraft, complained, the Air Ministry surprisingly replied that they had no knowledge of any landing agreement, and instead offered the use of RAF Lyneham, some 60 miles from London, limited to twice monthly flights but with landing and parking fees waived. Coming as it did at the height of the Berlin airlift, this apparently obtuse lack of cooperation caused considerable irritation at the US embassy, where a copy of the agreement was readily produced for the Air Ministry’s enlightenment and where Brigadier-General Thomas S. Power, the Air Attaché (and future SAC Commander-in-Chief), lodged objections to USAF aircraft being liable for charges for landing at an RAF station. At the same time it was conceded that with the increasingly frequent use of Northolt as a point of entry for these meetings, the estimate we made in May of 1947, that USAF landings at Northolt would average not more than fifteen per month, is very low. We are certainly making far more than this number of landings at Northolt at present and are expecting to do so for some time to come. These movements are necessary for the transportation of key United States Air Force personnel to and from the London area where they have business with the Air Ministry.

Power hoped that the increase in the landing facility that he sought would not cause ‘dissatisfaction’ on the part of the Ministry of Civil Aviation.48 Air Ministry staff worked with senior officers of 3rd Air Division and the embassy to find some suitable arrangement under which the USAF could continue to use Northolt at the rate of 50 flights per month for aircraft arriving in the UK, and for routine communication flights on the part of the 3rd Air Division. General Power was assured that the charges would be cancelled.49 Despite this promised concession, the bills continue to come.50 In December of that year a further large bill was presented for landings at Prestwick in Scotland, and the charges sought from the United States now totalled around £4,000.51 If these charges were not sufficient irritation, the temperature rose in

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January 1949 when the Air Ministry officials were obliged to apologise for failing to persuade the Ministry of Civil Aviation that the charges were inappropriate; the US embassy was advised to take the matter up through the Foreign Office. An incredulous Colonel Ackerman, who by now had bills for £5,000 on his desk, protested that these relatively trivial sums could hardly be taken seriously in the light of the high-level discussions between US Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington and Lord Tedder to settle the financial aspects of USAF operations in England.52 His arguments did not prevail. American planners, 3rd Air Division commander Johnson and SAC officers were striving to assemble a formidable atomic strike force on the English airfields. The British Chiefs of Staff and cabinet ministers stressed how vital was their presence to the security of the UK. Yet the Ministry of Civil Aviation pursued a ‘business as usual’ line, prioritising their first concern, civil airline operations. The insouciance of their response must surely have flabbergasted the Americans: the proposals for expanded use of Northolt had been ‘examined sympathetically’ within the Ministry ‘but it is regretted that they are unacceptable to this Department’. Northolt was a busy civil airport and civil airline schedules had been ‘upset by unexpected arrivals of non-scheduled military aircraft’. There were also administrative difficulties with even the current level of arrivals. Customs, immigration and health staff were overloaded and when diverted to deal with military passengers, ‘serious delay and inconvenience are caused in the civil terminal area’. On these grounds, it was ‘impossible to accept a further increase in non-scheduled military aircraft movements’. 53 Meanwhile, BEA continued to submit charges for aircraft handling.54 On this, too, the Americans received professions of sympathy but no redress. At the Air Ministry, Air Vice-Marshal A.P. Davidson, DirectorGeneral of Organisation, and a veteran with more than enough experience to address conflicts of this sort, was ‘most sympathetic about your difficulties over the bills with which you have been presented’ but simply returned them for payment. ‘With the best will in the world’, he lamented ‘I do not know what I can do.’ He feared that if the bills were not paid by the USAF, BEA might seek to recover the charges by legal action against individual pilots. To avert this eventuality he proposed that the Ambassador should write to Lord Pakenham, the Minister of Civil Aviation, requesting him to intervene, ‘as this is really not a matter on which I or indeed the Air Ministry can take any action’.55 While struggling with BEA, the USAF ran into problems with the other state airline, the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). When in April 1949, Major-General ‘Hamp’ Atkinson and a party of officers landed at Heathrow Airport, London, aboard a B-29, his party received

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hospitality in the VIP lounge, to be presented with an account which was settled with BOAC some months later. Subsequently, the BOAC Traffic Handling Unit submitted a more substantial bill for ‘general facilities’ for the aircraft, and, unaware of the earlier agreement, refused to waive the charges.56 These episodes were no more than irritants, and were resolved as the USAF gained more control over their own facilities, but they did little to endear the more peripheral aspects of the British state to American officers and officials. Of far greater importance was the degree of cooperation – or lack of it – that the units received on the bases. Initially, relations there depended to a considerable extent on the willingness of the RAF station commanders to accept the American presence and facilitate their mission. In 1951 effective control of the bases began to pass from the RAF to American base commanders, but as late as the autumn of 1950 Johnson was complaining to LeMay that the RAF station commanders in charge at Lakenheath and Sculthorpe were less helpful and less cooperative with the USAF wing commanders than their opposite numbers at Mildenhall and Marham. Pressure would have to be put on RAF Bomber Command ‘to ensure acceptable support at these bases’.57 In fairness, all the RAF station commanders and their personnel faced enormous and unaccustomed pressures as the SAC forces arrived in strength. The Operations Record Books of all of the stations involved provide stark evidence of the stress. At Scampton for example, confirmation was given on a July day in 1948 that a contingent of B-29s was to arrive in the early hours of the following day. The first aircraft landed at 07:25 and a further 13 came in later that day. Another 14 B-29s landed the following day as soon as visibility cleared, together with four C-54 transports and, next day, two more B-29s and two more C-54s. The RAF station commander had additionally to cope with the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Bomber Command, Air Marshal Sir Aubrey Ellwood, turning up to greet the first arrivals and to welcome senior USAF officers, while American press reporters arrived in force, with ‘swarms’ of them around the control tower.58 Although Johnson had identified Marham as a base where relations were unproductive, the official record gives a very different impression. It was to Marham in April 1949 that the 509th (atomic) Bombardment Group deployed. When they left in August Colonel John B. Ryan, the group commander, sent Leon Johnson, who in turn forwarded it to Ellwood at Bomber Command, a generous letter of appreciation of the cooperation he found there. Marham’s station record book contains repeated references to the excellent relationships between the RAF and USAF personnel on the base.59 A similar warmth was expressed by

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Colonel Stanley Wray, when the 2nd Bombardment Group bedded down at Lakenheath. Writing on behalf of generals Vandenberg and LeMay, Wray lauded the ‘courtesy, efficiency and willingness with which the US personnel were met, processed and cared for’ at Lakenheath. He graciously praised by name five ordinary aircraftmen who worked on the homing station to talk down a group of B-29s in very low visibility over a period of four days, during which they were on almost continuous duty.60 For the most part, activities on these bases involved receiving the incoming units, housing the officers and men, supporting the training flights, and dispatching them as their rotations came to an end. In most cases the peaks of work that arose seem to have been managed, and in very few cases did the stress outweigh the capability of the host officers to cope. Sculthorpe, though, was one such. Placed on a care and maintenance basis in May 1944, Sculthorpe reopened in December 1948 and was one of the two sites, the other being Lakenheath, where the atomic bomb loading facilities were by that stage in place. An advance party arrived from America in January 1949, and the first B-29s, the 92nd Bombardment Group, flew in on 7 February. Following the 90-day rotation, the 92nd were followed by the 98th, and, in August, by a squadron of nuclear-prepared B-50s of the 43rd Bombardment Group. In May 1950 ‘a great number of transient aircraft. Including C-97s, C-47s and civilian operated DC-4s’ were reported as the deployment rapidly built up, and throughout that month ‘a large number’ of transport aircraft arrived from the US with personnel and matériel. Group Captain Parker, the station commander at Sculthorpe, was the focal point of the frictions between the two air forces. In December 1949 he complained that ‘the somewhat extraordinary habit of the USAF to keep information of the movements of visiting squadrons to themselves has proved a great handicap’. As the deployment built up he evidently felt overwhelmed by the guests. In February 1950 he recorded that a more complete takeover of the station by the USAF still remains a threat and the morale of the RAF has undoubtedly suffered … In addition the somewhat arrogant manner of the USAF Base Complement Squadron who take the line ‘we shall alter all this when we take over’ does not make for easy administration’.

In August Parker insisted that ‘cooperation between the RAF and USAF gets less and less as time goes on. Orders issued by the RAF are disregarded.’ Outraged, he complained that he had been denied access to sections of his own station, undoubtedly those parts where atomic weapons were stored, prepared or loaded. In September he referred darkly to USAF ‘infiltration’.

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Matters continued to deteriorate as the unfortunate Parker struggled to cope with a political situation that he clearly did not understand. In October The USAF are taking even less notice of RAF orders and instructions. The authority of the station commander is being further undermined by the USAF commanders going direct to the highest authority in their request for additional buildings. The overbearing and threatening attitude of some of the USAF officers has made liaison and co-operation practically impossible. The menial tasks on which the RAF are employed further lowers the chance of mutual co-operation and respect. It is considered that the RAF personnel should be withdrawn before morale sinks any lower.

The following month Parker complained of frequent breakdowns of electrical supply due to the USAF continuing to use electricity at ‘an excessive rate’. Relations between RAF and USAF personnel were worsening further and, with the prospect of the USAF eventually taking over the station ‘they have taken even less notice of RAF orders, instructions and requests, and have dealt direct with the higher formations on matters that would normally be settled at station level’. Group Captain Parker grew increasingly desperate: by December 1950 he reported that RAF morale was ‘at its lowest ebb’. Having achieved their build up, the Americans have no use for the RAF who are no longer worth the space they occupy. This openly hostile attitude is a great pity as the RAF now have a profound contempt for the one nation with whom friendly relations should be the most cordial.61

It was doubtless a source of relief to Parker when, in February 1951, Sculthorpe transferred to the 3rd Air Force and he was re-assigned. These frictions were distinctively those of a relationship going through its early developmental stages. In the course of time much stronger relations were built and many of the problems of collaboration made more manageable. Bim Wilson, commanding the 3rd Air Force between 1954 and 1956, Anglophile and self-confessed history buff, accomplished much, and enjoyed a particularly close relationship with CAS Sir William Dickson. His return to the United States was marked by a warm commendation from the US ambassador for his work on relations with the British. While in post, Wilson contributed to one of the most striking memorials to the American presence in Britain, the rebuilding of the bomb damaged church of St Clement Danes in the Strand. Consecrated as a memorial to airmen of the RAF and other countries who lost their lives in the Second World War, St Clement Danes became the RAF church. Wilson recalled with pride:

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they asked the 3rd Air Force if we would like to put some kind of memorial or something in their chapel. I asked our troops if they would, and they decided that they would like to give an organ to that chapel. The organ cost £75,000, which was an awful lot of money. The 3rd Air Force made it a kind of Air Force wide effort. They gave tea parties and raffles … They not only raised £75,000, but they raised over £100,000 … I just thought it was the tremendous effort on the part of our people. We have a book in there of remembrance of all the airmen who died in World War II out of Britain, and deeply carved into the wall behind it is [an extract from] Lincoln’s Gettysburg address … That was a contribution from the United States Air Force to Great Britain, and I think it was a great project.62

If in these and other ways the relationship between US servicemen and their British hosts continued to grow closer and more confident as the Cold War progressed, they were at the same time put at risk by politicised anti-Americanism.

The threat of anti-Americanism The handover of the bases to the USAF was a milestone in the relationship between the American strategic forces and the British hosts. It also marked the beginning of a period of political unrest and uncertainty, raising new questions about the acceptability of the American presence. These were not questions for government. By and large, the uncertainties of the late 1940s had been settled as Whitehall and Westminster acknowledged the facts of the defence dependency. Nor was significant public concern registered. As Major-General David Schlatter, the senior Air Force member of the AEC’s Military Liaison Committee commented in 1948: ‘No furore is created by our armed B-29s being present on training manoeuvres in the UK or Germany, but the movement of one A-bomb would cause some world-wide repercussions.’ Crucially, he asked, ‘would we use them against friendly nations that had been overrun by an enemy, as we bombed France in the last war?’63 Even without that inflammatory question being posed, the sense of matters being far from settled began to gather within the Labour movement. The strong and pragmatic Atlanticism of the Attlee government was challenged by splits within the government itself, as three ministers, led by Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan, resigned in protest over reductions in social spending and increases in defence spending. The 1951 general election saw an exhausted and divided Labour Party lose office and, in opposition, be riven by splits, notably over foreign affairs, the role of NATO and the American nuclear presence.

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During the early 1950s the US embassy and intelligence agencies watched closely as anti-Americanism gained traction within the Labour Party and, to some extent, among the wider public. During this period, three forces converged. First was Communist Party (CPGB) agitation against the American presence. Public resentment, almost entirely confined to the localities of the bases, and probably never more than a minority concern, was the second factor. The third was the political platform associated with the name of Bevan and characterised by a strong strand of neutralism. The first, while regretted, had to be largely discounted, although ‘we are still on the defensive in combating the “Hate America” campaign’.64 The second had to be countered by good public relations and the political education of the American servicemen themselves. The third represented a potentially important political threat to the American presence. The mouthpiece of the Communist Party was its daily newspaper, the Daily Worker. Together with speakers at rallies and the publication of pamphlets and leaflets, the Daily Worker ran a virulent campaign for an American withdrawal under the theme ‘Yanks go Home’, a slogan readily reproduced as graffiti by local activists. The influence of the CPGB in its own right was probably minimal, but it helped intensify the pinpricks of resentment generated by relatively trivial matters which were then easily exploited. When Aidan Crawley cited the irritations of envy and resentment as a factor speaking against accepting the longterm acquisition of air bases in the Midlands he was building a straw man argument by setting the relatively trivial against the strategically important. The relatively trivial factors were nevertheless real and gained significance over time. A briefing document prepared for personnel of the 7th Air Division summarised ‘the great sociological experiment’ of deploying more than 45,000 American servicemen and their 9,000 dependents into the British countryside in terms of its impact on ordinary life, as reflected and amplified in the press: Much emphasis was given to the problem of Americans and young British girls. There were stories about Americans raising the rent levels, black-­ marketing cigarettes, being involved in automobile accidents, running ‘nude’ shows on bases, brawling with British civilians and generally behaving in a manner detrimental to good relations … Americans were looked upon as being overpaid and also obsessed with the material side of life. They were still looked upon by many as arrogant, loud in conversation and indifferent to the needs of others. They are considered coarse in manners and vulgar in speech … They were felt to be overly proud of things

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American and constantly in the habit of comparing European articles and methods with their American counterparts.65

These resentments could take a political form even on the centreleft. Writing in the New Statesman Norman Mackenzie, a former Communist, long-time fellow-traveller and anti-nuclear activist (who doubled as an MI6 informer), distinguished between the social irritants and the substantive question: a serious political issue and mere xenophobia have become confused. Most of us are at heart uneasy about the presence of American atom bombers on British airfields, feel that they make our commitment to American strategic intentions too unqualified, and fear swift and devastating retaliation against our industrial centres if a conflict should begin … But this argument is in danger of being diverted from the real issue into mere prejudice against the Americans as individuals – a stupid piece of political symbolism. And a proper understanding of what is at stake is being blocked by the demagogy of certain popular newspapers, which seek readers by denouncing the GIs as a tribe of drunken spendthrift lechers, yet blithely accept without question the policies that brought them to Britain.66

Such mainstream concerns were readily exploited by the CPGB. As ­summarised by 7th Air Division historian, William R. Karsteter: the Yanks were in Britain to spread American imperialism. They were using scarce building materials to airbases which could have gone into housing or flood defences. They were corrupting British girls. They were debasing British children with comic books. They are generally disrupting the British way of life. They were being financially supported by the taxes of British workers. They were using Britain as a shock absorber for the atomic war that was being planned by Wall Street.67

An article in the Manchester Guardian in October 1952 by a former American serviceman with a background in public relations achieved widespread notice and a great deal of favourable comment. The thrust of David Lampe’s argument was that anti-Americanism was on the rise, and that this delighted only the Communist Party. He dismissed organisations working to improve Anglo-American relations as largely worthless and sometimes even harmful in their ‘spinsterish’ attitude that Americans collectively ‘are a social problem to be dealt with discreetly and cautiously’. Most significantly, the American authorities for their part were doing little to encourage good Anglo-American relations: Neither the expanding of clichés about brotherly love nor the refusal to admit that an Anglo-American problem exists will help resolve a situation

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which, allowed to grow worse, will weaken that international amity which is doing much to prevent the outbreak of war in this hemisphere.68

The threat of resentment taking political form was serious enough for 3rd Air Force commander Butch Griswold to establish a Commanders’ Conference in November 1952 specifically to address these issues. The conference received a detailed report by the 3rd Air Force InspectorGeneral which dealt with the recognised sources of concern but also proposed administrative action to deal with each.69 British officers, however, were less convinced by this public portrayal of ­anti-Americanism. ‘I wonder if you are really right about this’, wrote CAS Jack Slessor: ‘I do not recall seeing anything at all “anti” in the reputable papers.’ Indeed, he added ‘“Anglo-American relations” tend to suffer from being talked about too much.’70 Real or not, for the USAF the danger was that these matters would become politicised. The threat came not from the Communist Party, but from the changing currents of opinion within the Labour Party. Specifically, the threat was that posed by Bevanism, as the former minister gathered support for thinly veiled proposals for withdrawal. He was quoted as warning that the American presence in Britain was ‘tolerated but not accepted’. If tolerance were to slide into active resentment ‘then they will have to withdraw … Because a military base is useless if surrounded by a hostile population.’71 The potential political challenge alarmed some. In Washington, influential journalists, the Alsop brothers, foresaw the fall of the Churchill government and the return of a Labour government ‘dominated by Bevan, who would be likely to cancel our air base rights in Britain and thus … cripple the retaliatory strength which is the heart of all Western strength’.72 The prospect of neutralism had serious implications for USAF planning. ‘If England is neutral’, LeMay was warned, ‘our ZI [Zone of the Interior] first strike bombers will not be allowed to make the return flight’ to recover on UK airfields.73 The implication was that they would make that strike, although a neutral – or unilateralist – Britain would presumably have already cancelled the agreement to use the bases and expelled both strategic and tactical forces. Stoking hostility, promoting neutralism and advocating Britain’s unilateral nuclear disarmament were the stock in trade of the Bevanite left, until derailed by the 1957 Labour conference when Bevan abruptly changed direction and warned the delegates that a vote for unilateralism would ‘send a Labour Foreign Secretary naked into the conference chamber’.74 Bevan’s volte face mended fences with anti-Communist leader Hugh Gaitskell and cemented the Labour leadership’s ­acceptance

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of the USAF presence. Yet opposition continued to flourish in the Labour grassroots, community groups and in parts of the trade union movement. As unilateralism enjoyed little support in public opinion at large its expression was largely confined to demonstrative and direct action politics. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), formed in 1958, aimed to rally and shape public opinion and, especially, the formal policies of the Labour Party, in favour of unilateralism, while the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War and, latterly, the Committee of 100 sought to frustrate the operations of the USAF in Britain.75 The unilateralist case was summarised in the Observer as an expression of a moral, political, strategic and economic rejection of nuclear weapons, whether American or British: Unilateral disarmament would involve the abolition of all bases in Britain whether British, American, or Anglo-American, for bombers missiles and missile carrying submarines. After disarming herself, Britain should pursue a foreign policy independent of both the American and Russian power blocs.76

Recognising that this position enjoyed only minority support within Britain, the 3rd Air Force nonetheless worried about the potential of a small and vigorous minority to make further inroads into the broadbased tolerance of the American nuclear presence.77 While direct action led to a number of large-scale but readily frustrated attempts to penetrate USAF bases, CND worked through the representative mechanisms of the Labour Party and the trade union movement to achieve, in time, considerable successes against the Atlanticist Labour leadership. Widespread public concern about thermonuclear weapons and the hazards of fallout provided a fertile base for CND campaigning. Accidents involving USAF aircraft were readily identified as ‘nuclear’ accidents, leading to mounting concern within the Conservative government that adverse publicity could lead to a damaging rift over the USAF nuclear presence in Britain.

Notes   1 Wedemeyer to Anderson, Coordination of Activities in the UK, 6 May 1949; Wedemeyer to Norstad, 9 August 1949, NARA, RG 341, Box 748.   2 Memorandum for Gen. Anderson, 23 August 1949, NARA, RG 341, Box 749.   3 Johnson to Vandenberg, 21 March 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 195   4 Directive, Mission of 3rd Air Division, 17 January 1950, NARA, RG 341, Box 748.

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  5 LeMay to Norstad, 19 March 1949, NARA, RG 341, Box 748.   6 Capt. (RN) R.D. Coleridge to Admiral Glover (BJSM), 3 June 1949, with attachments, NARA, RG 341, Box 744.   7 LeMay to Norstad (then Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations), 15 December 1948, LoC, LeMay papers, B-1300.   8 Lt.-Gen. Hewitt T. Wheless to Col. Ervin Wursten, date illegible, Karsteter correspondence, AFHRA, K716.03–148.   9 Telegram, Chiefs of Staff to Tedder (BJSM), 28 July 1950, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 10 Note by Slessor, 7 February 1952, UKNA, AIR 75/113. 11 Vandenberg visit to 3AD (1949), Presentation by Johnson, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 66. 12 Norstad was appointed Commander-in-Chief, USAFE, with headquarters at Wiesbaden, Germany and on 2 April 1951 assumed additional duty as commanding general of the Allied Air Forces in Central Europe under the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe. He was designated air deputy to the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, SHAPE, on 27 July 1953. 13 Norstad to Vandenberg, n.d., Strategic Air Command, History of the Seventh Air Division, 20 March–31 December 1951, Appendix 2. 14 LeMay to Vandenberg, 6 February 1951, History of Seventh Air Division, 20 March–31 December 1951, Appendix 2. 15 Gen. J.P McConnell, interviewed by Dr Edgar F. Puryear Jnr., 1975, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, pp. 26–27. 16 Gen. R.H. Ellis, interviewed by Lt.-Col. Maurice Maryanow, 17–21 August 1987, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, pp. 80–81. 17 Gen. R.H. Ellis, interviewed by Lt.-Col. Maurice Maryanow, 17–21 August 1987, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, p. 108. 18 Vandenberg to Norstad, 7 April 1951, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 19 Vandenberg to Norstad, 11 April 1951, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 20 Vandenberg to Norstad, 3 May 1951, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 21 Vandenberg to Norstad, 11 April 1951, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 22 Old to LeMay, 20 April 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 57 (Old). 23 Old to LeMay, 25 April 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 57 (Old). 24 Lt.-Gen. Archie J. Old Jnr., interviewed by Hugh N. Ahmann, 26 October–2 November 1982, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, p. 401. 25 Lt.-Gen. Archie J. Old Jnr., interviewed by Hugh N. Ahmann, 26 October–2 November 1982, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, pp. 385–386. 26 Lt.-Gen. Hewitt T. Wheless to Col. Ervin Wursten, date unknown, Karsteter correspondence, AFHRA, K716.03–148. 27 Old to LeMay, 2 May 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 57 (Old). 28 Old to LeMay, 22 May 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 57 (Old). 29 Lt.-Gen. Archie J. Old Jnr., interviewed by Hugh N. Ahmann, 26 October–2 November 1982, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, pp. 387–392. 30 Old to LeMay, 16 May 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 57 (Old). 31 Old to Kissner, 17 May 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 57 (Old). 32 Old to LeMay, 22 May 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 57 (Old).

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33 Memorandum, ‘Overseas Storage of Atomic Weapons’, James Lay to Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett and AEC chairman Gordon Dean, 2 July 1952, Truman Presidential Library, Papers of Harry S. Truman: President’s Secretary’s Files. 34 Gen. J.P. McConnell, interviewed by Edward F. Puryear Jr, 1975 [the only date on the typescript] USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, pp. 35–36. 35 Cherwell to Churchill, 20 June 1952; AM Ralph Cochrane (VCAS) to Churchill 22 August 1952; private office to Churchill 20 October 1952, UKNA, PREM 11/308. 36 Gen. J.P McConnell, interviewed by Dr Edgar F. Puryear Jnr., 1975, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, pp. 35–37. 37 Old to LeMay, 22 May 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 57 (Old). 38 Le May to Vandenberg, date unknown, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 61 (Vandenberg). 39 LeMay to Twining, 10 December 1953, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 60 (Twining). 40 Griswold to LeMay, 15 January 1954, LoC, LeMay papers (Griswold). 41 Norstad to Twining and Tunner, 12 February 1954, LoC, Twining papers, Box 102, Redlines File. 42 Lt.-Gen. Roscoe C. Wilson, interviewed by Lt.-Col. Dennis A. Smith, 1–2 December 1983, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, p. 131. 43 Pirie to Johnson, 19 August 1949; Johnson to Chief of Staff, USAF, 26 August 1949, NARA, RG 341, Box 749. 44 United States Air Force bases in the United Kingdom, 17 January 1958, UKNA, AIR 8/2394. 45 Memorandum for the Record by Gen. McConnell, 28 September 1950, Johnson diary, pp. 141–142. 46 Peters (Treasury) to Kitts (Air Ministry), 4 February 1948, UKNA, AIR 2/10858. 47 Col. W.B. Keiffer, Office of the Air Attaché, American embassy, to Air Cdre. G Harcourt-Smith, Air Ministry, 12 July 1948, UKNA, AIR 2/10858. 48 Power to Tucker (Air Ministry), 6 August 1948, UKNA, AIR 2/10858. 49 Power to AVM A.P. Davidson, 4 October 1948, UKNA, AIR 2/10858. 50 Ackerman to Davidson, 8 December 1948, UKNA, AIR 2/10858. 51 Ackerman to Air Cdre. G.E. Nicholetts, 29 December 1948, UKNA, AIR 2/10858. 52 Ackerman to Davidson, 21 January 1949, UKNA, AIR 2/10858. 53 Ministry of Civil Aviation to Secretary, Air Ministry, 5 February 1949, UKNA, AIR 2/10858. 54 Ackerman to Davidson, 29 April 1949, AIR 2/10858. 55 Davidson to Ackerman, 10 May 1949, UKNA, AIR 2/10858. 56 Johnson to Davidson, 1 September 1949, UKNA, AIR 2/10858. 57 Signal, Johnson to LeMay, 18 September 1950, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 196. 58 Operations Record Book, RAF Scampton, UKNA, AIR 28/1877. 59 Operations Record Book, RAF Marham, April 1949–March 1950, UKNA, AIR 28/1076. 60 Operations Record Book, RAF Lakenheath, UKNA, AIR 28/1065.

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61 Operations Record Book, RAF Sculthorpe, January 1949–January 1951, UKNA, AIR 28/1110. 62 Lt.-Gen. Roscoe C. Wilson, interviewed by Lt.-Col. Dennis A. Smith, 1–2 December 1983, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA, pp. 133–134. 63 Maj.-Gen. D.W. Schlatter, address to the Naval War College, 15 December 1948, in Lilienthal to Clifford, 13 January 1949, Truman Presidential Library, Papers of Clark M. Clifford. 64 Psychological Strategy Board, Progress Report on the National Psychological Effort for the period 1 July 1952, through September 30, 1952, submitted to the President and National Security Council, 30 October 1952. 65 The US Air Force in Britain 1948–1954: its impact on Anglo-American Relations, Historical Division, 7th Air Division, December 1954, p. 14. 66 N. Mackenzie, ‘The men who flew to dinner’, New Statesman and Nation, 29 November 1952. Mackenzie’s chequered political career is summarised in his Daily Telegraph obituary on 5 July 2013. 67 The US Air Force in Britain 1948–1954, p. 10. 68 D. Lampe, ‘The “GI problem” in Britain: an American view’, Manchester Guardian Weekly, 2 October 1952, and responses 9, 16, 23 October. 69 Report to Commanders’ Conference on Critical Relations with the British, 14 November 1952, AFHRA. 70 Slessor to Secretary of State for Air, 19 December 1952, UKNA, AIR 75/107. 71 Quoted in The US Air Force in Britain 1948–1954, p. 10. 72 New York Herald Tribune, 26 August 1952. 73 Maj.-Gen. Frank Armstrong to LeMay, 18 July 1955, National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, DC, 00486/2. 74 L. Hunter, The road to Brighton pier, London, Arthur Barker, 1959. 75 J. Burkett, ‘Direct action and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1958– 1962’, in N. Crowson, M. Hilton and J. McKay (eds.), NGOs in contemporary Britain: non-state actors in society and politics since 1945, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 21–37. 76 Observer, 10 December 1961. 77 Nuclear Disarmament Demonstrations at United States Bases in the United Kingdom, 1961, Historical Division, Office of Information, Headquarters 3rd Air Force, 1962.

6 A vulnerable island

The British further insist that it is unrealistic as well as impractical to set up and maintain an adequate defense against a surprise attack. This basic divergence of views is largely responsible for the fact that the British and American preparations for the defense of the SAC bases are out of step with each other. The Defense of Strategic Air Command Bases in the United Kingdom, 1951.

Having accepted the deployment of American strategic forces in 1948, the British government had no room for illusions about the extent to which the UK would be implicated in any future nuclear exchange. The corollary of the American readiness to go nuclear at the outset from English air bases was that these in turn would be an immediate target for Soviet air attack. England could be defended – but only for a while. A short-range emergency war plan formulated in 1948 envisaged five bomber groups and one fighter group operating from the UK during the initial phase of a conflict. After 12 days, none would still be there.1 The war plan envisaged that the UK would have to be held for that period as a staging and operational base from which to retard a Soviet advance in Western Europe, deploying five medium bomber (B-29) groups.2 Preliminary ‘training visits’ to the two atomic-prepared airfields at Lakenheath and Sculthorpe had already been made in 1947, while the Berlin crisis of 1948 saw substantial deployments of B-29s to England, providing proof of concept for the logistics. But in any such conflict, the advantage would lie with the aggressor, and it was reckoned that a war would initially go badly for the United States and its allies.3 American planners expected the Soviet Union to give high priority on the outbreak of hostilities to ‘neutralising’ the UK, and reckoned that by 1948 they would probably be strong enough to succeed. Such assessments became still more pessimistic after the first Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. The extreme vulnerability of the British Isles

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raised questions in American minds about whether the British could be counted upon in what might be an existential crisis. The hard strategic realities were grasped by those senior Royal Air Force officers who met with their American counterparts, and were explicitly acknowledged by Chief of the Air Staff Tedder when in 1948 he met LeMay, recently appointed as commanding general of Strategic Air Command.4 RAF officers worried, though, whether their political masters would accept the consequences.5 These concerns shone through an assessment made jointly by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and the Joint Planning Staff (JPS) in January 1948 as a basis for exchanges between the two countries’ Chiefs of Staff. Their assessment warned that: ‘Her Majesty’s government in the United Kingdom … would have to consider the repercussions if they authorised the initial use of weapons of mass destruction’ in line with American military judgements that the immediate use of the atomic bomb was essential to securing a decisive victory against Soviet forces in Europe. Not only would this be condemned by a proportion of the people as morally wrong and inhumane, but it would inevitably cause Soviet retaliation which, even if insufficient to win the war for Russia, might well so devastate the United Kingdom and so decimate the population that the country would never recover from victory. It is therefore the only safe presumption that His Majesty’s Government in the UK would be most reluctant to authorise the use of weapons of mass destruction in the early stages of a war.6

Whether or not these particular observations were intended to find their way to the United States, they did so and with considerable negative impact. While a copy of the JPS-JIC study was passed to Washington prior to bilateral talks in April, Major-General Charles P. Cabell, USAF Director of Intelligence, had seen an earlier draft which he read as implying that the UK government would need to be ‘convinced of an absolute requirement’ for the use of nuclear weapons. He forwarded the passage quoted above with a dire warning: The train of thought of this paper raises the question as to the reliability of assurances given by the British military or even by the British government itself, that plans for the utilisation of British bases for atomic bomb attacks can be implemented in time. The British people will be conscious of the fact that the Russians would hold the British responsible for American atomic bombs lifted from British bases.7

Last-minute protests, he thought, could prevent the UK government from acquiescing in such an operation. Given that risk, Cabell made

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a recommendation that challenged the entire basis of the SAC deployments to Britain: ‘in spite of any British military or governmental assurances as to the availability of British bases for atomic attack, alternate plans be prepared providing for the utilisation of other than British bases’.8 Despite Cabell’s proposal to ditch the unreliable ally, the USAF commanders held their nerve. For their part, British planners had become increasingly anxious about the possibility that the Americans would be willing to contemplate a pre-emptive war in the shrinking interval before the Soviet Union became a major nuclear threat. It was a reasonable anxiety. Pre-emption had been contemplated by the Joint Chiefs in 1945, while preventive war continued to have its advocates during the period when US atomic supremacy was indeed ‘a wasting asset’.9 Despite this rising sense of vulnerability, talks about coordination in war remained at a highly general level. British and Canadian officials had taken part in discussions on the war plan OFFTACKLE in 1948, but were expected to infer from those discussions a concept of operations to shape their own national plans.10 During the early 1950s, the Soviet threat rapidly developed beyond that of a ground assault on Western Europe.11 The Soviet Air Force soon became substantial enough to overwhelm UK defences, even before the introduction of fast jet bombers. The quality of their fighter aircraft was demonstrated in the Korean conflict, and the British contribution to the air defences of the UK was slow to gather strength, having nothing comparable to put into the air. American help was forthcoming, but responsibility lay primarily with the British, and the British Isles were effectively undefendable against the Soviet air attack. While American officers fretted about the over-sanguine approach of the UK authorities to fighter defence, to radar interception and to sabotage, British political opinion was moving towards an acceptance of vulnerability, a downgrading of air defence and an exclusive reliance upon nuclear deterrence. The Air Staff despaired as economy-minded politicians assumed that they could minimise active defence. In so doing they were playing for the highest stakes – national survival. Were there any realistic alternatives? This small and heavily armed island had become a prime target – indeed, the ‘bull’s eye’ in Churchill’s words – for a Soviet atomic attack. A chilling risk had been readily accepted as the price of reviving the wartime strategic alliance on the cheap. There were dissenting voices raising doubts about the American presence as well as American scepticism about ‘English dependability in case of emergency’. Slessor mentioned to Leon Johnson a discussion at the Cabinet Defence Committee in May 1950 at which one of

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the members asked whether he ‘didn’t think it rather dangerous, from the British point of view, to have the American bombers based here – weren’t they encouraging aggressive action by the Russians?’ This unidentified minister supposed that ‘we were merely antagonising the Russians by showing this small force over here’, but was seemingly reassured by Slessor’s vigorous account of the USAF plans to counter Soviet aggression.12

Emergency War Plans and the Soviet threat to the UK The immediate post-war planning assumptions were predicated on an American nuclear monopoly sufficient to overcome the ability of the Soviet Union to launch a massive ground attack on Western Europe. Air strikes against the UK, and against the American held air bases in particular, were expected from the initial stages of a conflict, increasing in intensity as Soviet forces captured territory closer to the British Isles. The nature of the threat changed dramatically once it became clear that the Soviet Air Force was gaining a nuclear capability. Curtis LeMay warned that ‘verification of an atomic explosion in the USSR highlights the requirement to accelerate our preparations for the conduct of atomic warfare’. Presciently, ‘As the Soviet stockpile of atomic weapons grows, the possibility, as well as the wisdom, of using the United Kingdom bases as launching sites becomes less certain.’13 Concern about the risk of a pre-emptive attack to disable the SAC forces in England continued thereafter at a high level. LeMay’s shortterm scheme was to place the entire striking force in the UK and direct all strikes from there, as the only feasible option until such a time as the necessary communications became available for an alternative plan. He was strongly advised against this course. The USAF InspectorGeneral visited the East Anglian airfields late in 1950 and reported that Sculthorpe, Marham and Waddington were all were vulnerable to attack, with warning and anti-aircraft (AA) defences inadequate to prevent ‘the neutralisation of these bases and the destruction of the aircraft parked upon them’.14 Major-General ‘Hamp’ Atkinson echoed his concern, warning that ‘we are all concerned with the possibility of the UK becoming untenable in a very short time after E day’. He suggested dispersing some of the strike force, to get the maximum utilisation of UK bases for launching attacks at the outset: ‘I think it quite possible that through enemy action we would not be able to get more than the equivalent of two of the three groups in the UK off on the E + 3 strike’ and then be ‘forced to withdraw after the first strike’.15 Mindful of the

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status of the UK as a disposable forward base, LeMay pressed for the development of a long-range striking force that could operate independently of bases in Europe.16 Uncertain strike capability apart, the value of the forward bases in the UK to LeMay was essentially twofold: ‘meeting political commitments to the alliance’ and ‘complicating the Soviet’s defensive and offensive problems’ by target multiplication.17 By 1955, he judged that Western Europe as a whole was no longer defensible, and any force modernisation ‘will undoubtedly be overtaken by Soviet IRBMs … I cannot rely on success by these forces’. With the likelihood that Soviet missiles, equipped with three megaton warheads, would have adequate range to cover all the UK, Spanish and Mediterranean bases, as well as those at Thule, Keflavík and the Alaskan complex, ‘tankers and bombers within missile range will probably be lost and the bases rendered untenable’. Not for the first time LeMay questioned SAC’s dependence on the forward bases to support the strike force. Looking to the period from 1960 on, he argued ‘we must plan to launch our alert forces from the relatively more secure ZI and Canadian bases’.18 For the time being, though, and until long-range bombers and, especially, missile forces were fully in service, the effectiveness of the US war plan would depend on the continued use, under hostile conditions, of the forward bases. In January 1951 LeMay reported that SAC could deliver 135 atomic bombs in six days, 60 of them in the first three days, the vital ‘E+3’ criterion on which planning was based. With sufficient warning to pre-position weapons, the 135 could be delivered in three days. These were plans. Realisable or not, in practice LeMay thought these numbers of weapons grossly inadequate to the task of retarding a Soviet advance.19 And everything depended, he added, on the forward bases from which the attacks would be launched basis remaining ‘tenable’.20 It became less clear that they could as the magnitude of the assessed Soviet atomic threat grew rapidly. Even when, after 1957, the Reflex plan provided for one-third of the B-47 force to be launched within 15 minutes of a warning to maximise the chances of a strike being successfully mounted, the problem remained of recovery of the strike force to a country that might in the meantime, have been devastated by Soviet nuclear attack. All post-strike SAC aircraft were scheduled to land at 20 designated SAC overseas bases. There was, however, ‘a distinct possibility that when post-strike aircraft arrived at the recovery base they would find it unusable due to enemy action’. Alternative landing fields were required, and under a scheme dubbed ‘Jack Pot’, a schedule of 156 adequate landing strips, all within one hour’s flight of the designated recovery base, was drawn up

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by the Air Attachés of the US embassies, although ‘foreign governments were not informed of SAC’s Jack Pot investigation’.21 Six months after the outbreak of the Korean conflict, a Colonel Preston, reporting on the deployment to the UK of the 93rd, 97th and 301st bomb wings, commented that ‘our groups now in the UK are extremely vulnerable to attack’.22 Harvard law professor Barton Leach, in his capacity as a reserve Brigadier-General, was dispatched to England to make his own assessment. His report was alarming. Given that half of SAC’s total strike force would be launched from the UK, the three groups deployed in eastern England were vulnerable to enemy bombing and strafing ‘as well as other overt and covert enemy action’. Measures to enhance base security would improve the chances of launching the initial strike, as the UK groups would remain exposed to attack for the three critical days which would elapse before the arrival of the nuclear components from the US. At the present time, he argued, ‘the success of the strike from the UK is imperilled’.23 An earlier report to the National Security Council that same year had warned that were the Soviet Union to strike a strong surprise blow and, were its atomic attacks to meet with no more effective defence than the United States and its allies had planned, ‘the results of those attacks could include … laying waste to the British Isles and thus depriving the Western Powers of their use as a base’. The possession by the Soviet Union of a thermonuclear capability in addition to their substantial atomic stockpile ‘would result in tremendously increased damage’.24 In March 1951 a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that The Soviet Union has and will continue to have the capability in aircraft and trained crews to enable it to launch against North America and the United Kingdom the full stockpile of atomic bombs that are and will become available.25

Subsequent NIE estimates credited the Soviet Air Force with a remarkable rate of growth in strategic power, attracting in turn sharp criticism of the tendency to misread the signals and overestimate bomber numbers. Paradoxically, the central USAF concern with the long-range bomber threat and the strategic vulnerability of the North American landmass led to their overlooking the growth of medium and light tactical bomber forces – the principal threat to the English air bases. The fast Tupolev TU-16 ‘Badger’ and the more basic Ilyushin IL-28 (the first Soviet jet bomber, in service as early as 1949) were produced in large numbers – more than 1,500 of the former in the decade to 1963, and more than 6,000 of the latter. These aircraft represented a quite

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­ ifferent, and more immediate, threat to the West’s striking power in the d European theatre.26 In 1952 the USAF assessed that In addition to the substantial numbers of medium bombers which could operate from bases within the Soviet Union and Soviet occupied Europe against the United Kingdom, significant numbers of light bombers could reach the United Kingdom on D-Day with only minor redeployment taking place prior to the attack. The weight of air attack would increase substantially as the Soviet ground forces moved across Western Europe and acquired bases nearer the United Kingdom. Some jet light bombers in Europe are believed probably capable of carrying some form of atomic bomb.27

Growing Soviet military and economic strength, particularly in atomic weapons, was expected by mid-1954 to ‘materially enhance’ Soviet ability to conduct aggressive operations including ‘aerial bombardment against the British Isles, with initially up to 350 medium bombers, 500 light bombers and 500 fighters’. If the Channel ports fell to Soviet forces, then a full-scale sea and air offensive against the British Isles including an attempted invasion could be expected.28 Were that invasion to be successful, and the UK occupied by Soviet bloc forces, then it would be necessary to launch a Normandy-style amphibious operation to expel them, something for which planning was instituted as early as 1946.29 Moreover, In view of the threat which an American atomic offensive would pose to the security of the Soviet Union in the event of major hostilities, it should be expected that blunting this atomic offensive at the source – before it could be launched – would be a high priority task of the Soviet Union. If surprise could be achieved, this probably would warrant expenditure of at least a portion of the stockpile of Soviet atomic bombs against Strategic Air Command bases or comparable targets in the United States and against overseas bases which cannot be reached by Soviet light bombers or neutralized by Communist saboteurs.30

The implications for the defence of these bases were all too evident to US military leaders. ‘For some time I have been gravely concerned about the vulnerability of our aircraft based in the United Kingdom’ wrote Major-General John Paul McConnell, who had succeeded Johnson as 3rd Air Force commander. This concern is occasioned by the possibility that an enemy would launch an attack against SAC-UK Atomic Bomb Wing bases without a formal declaration and the SAC will thus lose essential aircraft and launching bases in the United Kingdom. The latest Intelligence Estimate of the Situation

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reports that seventy-six (76) IL-28, twin engine jets, are within 500 NM and approximately seven hundred twenty-five (725) TU-4s are within 1200 NM of SAC-UK bases. This threat when matched against the UK and Western Europe’s meagre defense capability points up a most serious situation.31

A detailed assessment made in a 7th Air Division special intelligence brief concluded that an effective defence of the UK could be mounted only against the obsolescent TU-4 type aircraft – the B-29 clone – and that only under good conditions and under the control of an efficient and complete radar network. In any case, even those (non-existent) capabilities would not be able to deflect an attack by the jet powered IL-28 light bombers which, while of limited range, would be able to reach the SAC bases before or shortly after interception.32 What effect might such a surprise assault have on the USAF’s striking power? If SAC was to be at a low state of readiness, with just one bombardment group in England on rotation, LeMay could expect to lose around 12 per cent of his total force, and 13 per cent of the Command’s tanker force. For these reasons, he was cautious about the timing of deploying forces – and weapons – to the UK. He opposed forward storage due to the limited scale of the US stockpiles and their exposure to attack. ‘I still consider’, he advised, ‘that forward overseas storage in significant numbers of nuclear components would destroy our flexibility and would subject ourselves to unwarranted risks.’33 If in crisis the forces had been deployed, but were caught on the ground, SAC could lose well over half of the B-50 bombers and KB-29 tankers. It would be a crippling blow. It could be even worse were SAC forces to be attacked at the point of maximum vulnerability – the loading of weapons. Partially assembled – or ‘cold’ – bombs, deployed to the forward bases, were stored securely and withdrawn for the final assembly around 48 hours before loading. Once assembled, these ‘hot’ bombs would be held in a dispersal area until loading operations commenced. The loading and take-off period for atomic operations is by far the most critical time. Present operational concepts will necessitate simultaneous loadings of numerous aircraft on each station, thereby bringing the ‘hot’ bombs so close together that the explosion of one bomb would undoubtedly result in detonation of the others, which would result in a major catastrophe, seriously reducing the effectiveness of the atomic offensive.34

Such a catastrophe could be brought about by a successful conventional Soviet air attack.

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Reducing vulnerability was so great a concern that the USAF commissioned an operations research study from the Air Force-sponsored RAND Corporation. The study, led by Albert Wohlstetter, looked forward to the deployment of the B-47 force. The report posed a direct challenge to the way SAC used its overseas bases. Wohlstetter argued forcefully that deploying the strike force in this way maximised vulnerability. The present basing pattern, operating from forward bases, was both costly and vulnerable, and the risks were assessed to become ‘unacceptably high’ by 1956. The alternative of an air-refuelled force based in the United States would cost too much. The optimum solution, he argued, was to confine the strike forces to US operating bases and provide them with the refuelling facilities they needed on the ground at the overseas bases.35 The USAF response to this criticism, submitted in 1953 (the report was finalised in 1954), was signed off by General Thomas D. White, Acting Chief of Staff, and James Douglas, Acting Air Force Secretary. They approved lukewarm recommendations from the Air Council: vulnerability should be ‘recognised’; construction of ground refuelling bases was ‘consistent’ with SAC war plans; pre-stocking of overseas  bases should be minimised; and priority should be given to hardening bases to a degree reflecting their specific, local vulnerability factors.36 These considerations prefigured an important shift in the SAC posture in the opposite direction from that favoured by Wohlstetter, and towards continuous alert for a large and growing proportion of the B-47 force on ZI and overseas bases alike – the so-called ‘Operation Reflex’. As a response to the fatal vulnerability to an attack with minimal warning identified in the RAND report, Reflex was intended to get aircraft off the ground before it arrived. Reflex launching of the bombers to avert catastrophe on the English air bases needed to be complemented by active fighter defence, but such improvements entailed a greater financial burden than the UK was prepared to assume. USAF fighters would have to be a key part of the defensive system. A British civil servant argued that the country ‘had a great deal to gain’ from the American military presence, not least ‘a very large increase to the fighter defences of the country in the very early stages of hostilities when these would be weak’.37 It was, of course, a circular argument. The level of fighter defences required to secure the bases was occasioned by the USAF presence upon them.

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Securing the bases The prime American concern was to protect the vital asset represented by the English forward bases, for on their defence rested the success of the then current Emergency War Plan. In LeMay’s words, The importance of the initial atomic offensive in the allied war effort has been recognized in combined emergency war plans. In this connection, the air defense of Strategic Air Command operating bases will be a significant factor in the effectiveness of this campaign … it is believed that a firm policy should be adopted regarding this requirement and that action be taken which would result in the British placing the continuous fighter defense of Strategic Air Command bases on a high priority and giving an overriding priority, including standing fighter patrols, to the defense of atomic bases during the critical periods.38

This requirement was far beyond what would or could be provided. The inadequacy of the defensive arrangements had nagged away at American confidence from the time of the very first ‘training’ deployments of B-29s in 1948. When the EWP was tested out in a wargame – ‘Padrone’ – that summer, it showed that the UK bases could not be considered secure ‘under any stretch of the imagination’ and the EWP ‘is resting on the flimsiest of foundations’.39 In 1949 the American joint planners had enquired as to the British provision of defensive measures, and could not have been encouraged by the response. The UK JIC took the view that there was no evidence of preparedness for a Russian offensive in the near future … We, therefore, feel that it is reasonable to assume that some prior warning of attack would be received and there would be time to mobilize the air defence … Nevertheless although it is difficult to envisage the Russians achieving absolute surprise, if attacks commence without warnings, no fully effective fighter defence will be possible in the initial stages.

Taking into account fighter strength, radar cover and both light (LAA) and heavy (HAA) anti-aircraft artillery, their conclusion about such an eventuality was bleak: ‘In the event of a surprise attack, no organized fighter, AA or ground defences would be available initially … Our available fighter force is far below the strength required for adequate defence.’40 Deeply concerned about these disavowals, Johnson lobbied Vandenberg for a detailed professional investigation of the 3rd Air Division’s vulnerability on the ground.41 This was undertaken by a team

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of operations analysts, whose lengthy report presented in 1951 set out in detail a number of by now familiar issues: The British defense system will not arrive at a well-rounded peak of peacetime efficiency for about two years, but even then the Royal Observer Corps (ROC) and light anti-aircraft (LAA) units will not be fully manned unless mobilization has taken place in the United Kingdom [and] cannot be expected to operate at full effectiveness unless advance intelligence warning of an impending attack can be obtained.

The UK fighter interception system could be effective against jet attacks on the Oxfordshire bases, but it would not be effective against jet attacks on the East Anglia bases unless early warning were to be provided. And that would also require the radar early warning net and the ROC to be fully manned and alert, fighters properly located with respect to the bases to be defended, and the fighter and LAA defences properly coordinated.42 Thus ‘any SAC forces stationed in the United Kingdom for the next year or so are in serious danger of being crippled before carrying out the first atomic strike’.43 The report also homed in on one of the recurrent frictions in American and British approaches to threat assessment and pulled no punches regarding the root of the problem: The RAF and USAF views on the subject of intelligence warning are quite different: While the USAF people in the UK hold that a Soviet attack is quite possible with very little warning, the Air Ministry believes that an advance intelligence warning of an impending Soviet attack will be obtained far enough in advance to enable the preparation of the British defenses to be completed. The British further insist that it is unrealistic as well as impractical to set up and maintain an adequate defense against a surprise attack. This basic divergence of views is largely responsible for the fact that the British and American preparations for the defense of the SAC bases are out of step with each other.44

This had been the case from the outset of the Cold War. It would remain largely so in the years that followed.

The consequences of attack What, though, did vulnerability mean in this context? The military discussions on both sides of the Atlantic focused on the survivability of the air bases and their capability of mounting an initial and, perhaps, a second strike. In the pre-atomic age this ensured agonised discussion of

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the Soviet Air Force order of battle in relation to the paucity of British air defences. With the advent of the Soviet Union as a nuclear power and the prospect of a devastating atomic attack on the air bases, it became vital to ensure that the strike aircraft could be got airborne in time to escape it. This became the central question in the jet age, and still more urgent in the missile age, with the variously named quick reaction procedures of both SAC and RAF Bomber Command. There came at this time a change in tone and a wider sense of what vulnerability meant: that a thermonuclear strike upon the UK not only would be impossible to avert if it were to be launched, but would effectively ensure the destruction of normal life on the British mainland. British planners – not surprisingly, perhaps – initially had difficulty coming to terms with the nuclear age. With the Second World War not long behind them, the tendency was to think of a nuclear assault as simply faster-paced and more comprehensively destructive than the conflict that had just ended. A Soviet attack would be the Blitz writ large. The JPS put forward a notion of an initial, vastly destructive exchange, followed by a period of ‘broken backed’ warfare in which sea power would play an important role, followed by a phase of recovery. While up to this point it had been assumed that Britain would have six months’ warning of an attack – an assumption decisively rejected by US officials – the expected warning period was now reduced to seven days. The emphasis for survival would be placed on the peacetime economic strength of the UK rather than the scale of attack to be expected.45 These assumptions did not survive the gathering pace of nuclear confrontation and, in 1953, the cabinet’s Home Defence Committee established a working party under Robert Hall, head of the Cabinet Office’s economic section, to examine more closely what that first phase of nuclear onslaught might be like.46 The working party’s report on ‘The Initial Phase of a War’ took as its planning assumption a more or less simultaneous air attack in which nuclear bombs of Hiroshima power – about 15 kilotons – were delivered against 132 urban-industrial targets and 40 nuclear facilities. Thirty-two of these would be delivered against London, leaving only small enclaves of the capital relatively untouched.47 The main concern of the report was with what was termed ‘the civil economy’, and the focus was on the infrastructure, public services and public morale. The calculations – based on the impact of 132 airbursts against the cities – were chilling. One and a quarter million would die from flash and blast injuries. A further 800,000 would be seriously injured. The damage to health facilities would be such that only about one-sixth of the injured could be treated, the others being left to die, with severe effects on public morale.

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Some five million people would have been evacuated from the cities during the warning period. But as many as another seven million would flee after the bombing, not necessarily to places of safety, and severely hampering movement. Eight million would be made homeless. Something like half the population would be unable to continue normal life. Government would effectively collapse. In an emergency power would pass to Regional Commissioners (who would operate with military commanders and have the power of life and death over miscreants) but their offices too might not survive, and in any case they could not receive guidance or commands from the centre. Local authorities, as the providers of public services, would be destroyed in the cities and overwhelmed by refugees in the rest of the country. Water supplies would be severely affected, with little available to fight fires, and none to drink. Water tankers would not be able to get through the rubble of the cities. The majority of gas supplies would be damaged, and two-fifths of the electricity supply. Around 60 per cent of the food stocks would be lost, and the transport system would be unable, at least initially, to distribute food. Farm produce would be available, but the facilities for processing food would be unlikely to function. Stocks of tea were singled out, for a breakdown of the distribution of tea would be ‘a particularly severe blow to British morale’. Tea aside, how would Britain bear up? In a disarmingly quaint vignette, the report profiled ‘John Smith’, the exemplary citizen, who stays put and conscientiously attempts to go to work although he cannot find out whether his factory still stands. In this great ‘test of British staunchness’ he displays the grit and resolution of the official version of Britons under attack by the Luftwaffe. However, nothing comparable has ever happened before, and … without underestimating in any way the British capacity for ‘taking it’, it cannot be assumed that all the millions of the inhabitants of the bombed areas are John Smiths.

Rather, the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki provided pointers: a panicked flight of the population, including the officials and public service workers. The report, in a rare flash of drama, asked ministers and officials to consider the explosions themselves, the nerve-racking effects of blast, the fires raging everywhere, the sight of the injured whom no help can reach – above all perhaps the dread of the unknown and the terror of radioactive effects. It is a shattering prospect, and it is a bold man who would deny the probability of mass flight, set off by the instinct of self-preservation, and the possibility of serious panic.48

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The conclusions of the study were limited to the need to disperse food supplies, secure communications within government, and assume powers to direct labour in rescue and reconstruction. There was clearly much work left to be done in thinking through a credible home defence policy, attending to evacuation, considering shelters, and taking measures to control the mass flight of population. But this discussion was overtaken by the advent of the thermonuclear age before it even began, for the Hall report coincided with the supposed first Soviet thermonuclear test in August 1953 which, while not in the megaton range, was taken to be a turning point. The second scenario, then, followed on the heels of the first and was radically different in character. It was propelled by a concern about fallout, a by-product of nuclear explosions that was amplified by the larger yields now available with thermonuclear weapons as demonstrated by the US tests of early 1954. The unexpectedly wide and deadly effects of fallout were already attracting public comment in the US and Britain. AEC chairman Strauss had contributed to the ‘panic’ (Defence Minister Macmillan’s term) with his public announcement that a single Soviet megaton bomb could destroy the New York Metropolitan Area, while he had earlier privately downplayed the effects of radioactive contamination. Three issues now came to the fore. First, the urgent need to obtain scientific information about nuclear effects, particularly fallout, from the United States. Secondly, how should government respond to the very much greater vulnerability of this small island, rich as it was in targets? Thirdly, a thermonuclear attack would pose even more severe challenges for public information and public order. On the first of these, the United States had begun a series of studies as early as 1949 under the title ‘Project Gabriel’, set up by the AEC. The objective of Project Gabriel was to evaluate the radiological hazard from the fallout of debris from nuclear weapons detonated in warfare.49 RAND held a short conference of selected consultants to make an overall review of ‘Gabriel’. The conference recommended that current studies should be supplemented by a world-wide estimation of the distribution of Strontium-90 from the nuclear tests which had taken place. This further, more limited study – ‘Project Sunshine’ – was undertaken jointly by RAND and the AEC and was completed in August 1953.50 The British government obtained a copy, but it proved to be heavily edited, with specific information about the effects of megaton bombs redacted.51 The indications of the report were that the kind of nuclear exchange likely at that time – even with the very limited stockpiles of the US and Soviet Union – would distribute life-threatening fallout across all

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the populous regions of the northern hemisphere. British officials chafed at the lack of detailed information.52 We have allowed the United States to occupy bases in this country from which, in the event of Soviet aggression and with our consent, they could deploy thermonuclear weapons. Yet they have not, so it seems, been able to give us some of the basic information available to them on the effects of such weapons, although everybody realises that we are a likely target. This seems very one-sided. Great secrecy on manufacturing techniques seem inevitable, but secrecy on effects seems untenable.53

Prime Minister Churchill lobbied for the release of US studies against the resistance of AEC chairman Lewis L. Strauss.54 One concern was that the US government would not consult the British government before issuing its own statements about possible effects on the American population, with all the ensuing risks of alarm, confusion and embarrassment in the UK. In the light of these limitations, a second study group was set up as a matter or urgency, under the chairmanship of William Strath, a Treasury official. The Strath Report on ‘The Defence Implications of Fallout from a Hydrogen Bomb’ was a milestone. Its conclusion – that ‘fallout, combined with the vast explosive power of the hydrogen bomb, presents problems of a revolution­ ary character for the defence of this country and a threat of the utmost gravity to our survival as a nation’ – was so shocking that it retained a high security classification for almost half a century.55 Strath’s planning assumption was taken from the Joint Intelligence Committee and anticipated future developments. Because it was judged feasible to construct an air-delivered bomb with a yield as great as 10 megatons, the assessment was based on an actual attack by such weapons – just ten of them, air and ground burst. The Strath group called upon the best available scientific knowledge within Whitehall to estimate the consequences of such an attack, including short-term lethality, long-term sickness and longer-term genetic effects. Leaving aside the effects of heat and blast, they concluded that fallout from one such bomb would endanger the life of those in open ground over some 2,000 square miles. There would be fatalities and considerable sickness suffered by even those taking shelter over some 400 square miles.56 In all, Life and property would be obliterated on a large scale. No part of the country would be free from the risk of contamination … the attack would deny us the use for varying periods of thousands of square miles of agricultural land.

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Open water would be undrinkable. Animals in areas of contamination would be severely affected by fallout, as neither water nor herbage would be safe. Their milk would be especially dangerous to children.57 Standing crops would be contaminated over a large part of the country and rendered unfit for consumption. Arable land would remain contaminated and un-farmable for long periods. Something like a quarter of agricultural potential would be lost. Accordingly, livestock would die and crops would have to be destroyed. Food stocks would be lost in areas of devastation. Distribution channels would be disrupted and imports from food-producing areas elsewhere could not be made. Aid would be unlikely to materialise in the short term, and those who survived the attack ‘would have to live for a considerable period under siege conditions, and the risk of starvation would be very real’. People would have to keep under cover if they were to avoid contamination. All population movement would cease. Survivors would be isolated from one another. Community would be dissolved and ‘The household would become the unit of survival.’ Rescue and relief efforts would be impossible for a time, and in any event ‘The preservation … of those who had escaped the initial attack in a reasonably fit condition would be the paramount requirement.’ They could not be wasted on rescue operations. In all, without prior defensive preparation, it was estimated that such an attack would kill 12 million people and disable 4 million others – nearly one-third of the population and a disproportionate share of the skilled manpower. Could any measures be taken to mitigate such a catastrophe? Evacuation, shelter, the decentralisation of government and the improvement of fire-fighting capabilities all had to be considered. Unlike the 1953 study, Strath gave close consideration to evacuation. While in theory planned dispersal from the towns might be the best form of protection – after all, blast and heat, not fallout, would account for most of the casualties – this was not an option for Britain. While the US was adopting a policy of scatter evacuation, in Britain’s case the warning period would be so short that ‘any attempt at mass movement at the last moment would serve only to add to the peril’.58 While young children and their mothers, expectant mothers, the aged and infirm could be moved in a period of tension to designated evacuation areas, most people would be required to stay in place. Although there was no means of protecting the population in or anywhere close to the ground zeros, outside the areas of complete devastation simple shelters would afford a modicum of protection. As people would need to stay under cover until the fallout hazard had abated, the best form would be refuge rooms in brick-built houses. Strath urged

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the government to consider making such structures a requirement for all newly built houses. Massive stocks of building material would be required, and trench shelters, with earth covers, dug on a large scale if an attack was imminent. Strath recognised that ‘the fire hazard from nuclear attack dwarfs all previous experience to insignificance … The heat flash from one hydrogen bomb would start in a built-up area anything up to 100,000 fires, with a circumference of between 60 to 100 miles.’ Fire precautions outside these areas needed to be rethought, and members of the public instructed in how to deal with smaller fires. But the water supply for fighting major fires would not exist, and huge quantities of water would also be required for decontamination purposes. There remained the problem of public understanding and public order. Many of Strath’s proposals looked to ordinary citizens to provide for themselves, building shelters, storing food and fighting fires. This could only be achieved with a far-reaching programme of education, instruction and training. However, here lay a conundrum: information would have to be provided in a way that did not spread despondency or cause panic. And ‘however successful the educative process might be, it would still be impossible to forecast how the nation would react to nuclear assault. The effect of this on dense populations would remain beyond the imagination … In some parts of the country … there might be complete chaos for a time and civil control would collapse.’59 The service ministries were exhorted to review their plans in the light of a thermonuclear attack; across Whitehall the response was that Strath’s analysis was entirely realistic, and rendered existing planning nugatory. Would it be any different in the US? It appeared that US policy was to publicise information about the effects of thermonuclear weapons, while withholding information about the large areas over which those effects would be felt. This worried British ministers, who feared they would be seen as conspiring with the Americans to suppress unpleasant truths of paramount public interest: ‘we must be able to show that we are not unprepared for these problems in new defence policy’.60 Even so, they were in a quandary: inform the public and risk a backlash, perhaps against the Western Alliance itself? Or allow them to remain in ignorance, with the risk that the consequences for an unprepared population would be all the more appalling, should catastrophe come. Two years later the milestone 1957 defence White Paper reflected the influence of Strath in admitting that there was no conceivable defence against nuclear attack. Effort would instead go in to forestalling it by developing strong deterrent forces. Deterrence would have to work. If it failed, the British people could not survive.

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That the consequences of a nuclear and, especially, a thermonuclear attack would be dire indeed was well understood in both London and Washington. A formal assessment made later in the next decade by the JIC and Chiefs of Staff Committee multiplied the number of likely targets tenfold in a manner more realistic than Strath’s assumptions, and overlaid that comprehensive target list with the new realities of thermonuclear attack. On those assumptions, Britain would be devastated.61 Even before that point, Strath’s report brought a realisation that there could be no ‘absolute’ defence against thermonuclear weapons. The immediate impact on the government was a decision, first manifested in the 1955 Parliamentary defence debate, to ‘educate’ the British public on their vulnerability in a thermonuclear age. It would take another two years for this to be made explicit. As the decade progressed, Britain became a nuclear power in its own right, with its own strategic medium bomber force. It was no longer the American presence alone that invited a pre-emptive strike. But while the USAF and the RAF adopted quick reaction alert procedures to get aircraft off the ground before an attack arrived, notions of defensibility continued to differ. From 1955 the UK would shift towards putting exclusive reliance upon the power of the deterrent, and the ability to launch a devastating ‘counter-value’ attack upon Moscow and other urban centres. Such a deterrent needed credibility, and so a degree of survivability. That might mean air defence. Meanwhile, SAC’s strategic operations from the English bases continued to be a part – although a swiftly diminishing part – of American war plans. They still required defence for the strategic force, raising demands for extensive interceptor and radar coverage, and protection against ground attack. Whether the UK was willing or able to meet this side of the bargain would soon be put to the test.

Notes   1 LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 38, ‘Blitz’ file, April 1948.   2 Condit, The history of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Volume 2, pp. 297–301.   3 Schnabel, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Volume 1, p. 156.   4 S. Twigge and L. Scott, Planning armageddon: Britain, the United States, and the command and control of Western nuclear forces 1945–1964, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000, pp. 30–31; Richard A. Best Jr, Co-operation with like-minded people: British influences on American security policy 1945–49, New York: Greenwood Press, 1986, p. 79.   5 Notes of informal meetings … 10–12 May 1948, Records of US Army Plans and Operations Division, NARA, RG 319, Box 106.

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  6 Basic Assumptions for Planning: Joint Report by the Joint Planning Staff and the Joint Intelligence Committee, 8 April 1948, UKNA, DEFE 6/5.   7 Director of Intelligence to Director, Plans and Operations, 27 May 1948, NARA, RG 341 Box 4 (original emphasis).   8 Director of Intelligence to Director, Plans and Operations, 27 May 1948, NARA, RG 341 Box 4.   9 R.K. Betts, ‘A nuclear golden age? The balance before parity’, and M. Trachtenberg, ‘A “wasting asset”: American strategy and the shifting nuclear balance 1949–1954’, in S.M. Lynn-Jones, S.E. Miller and S. van Evera (eds.), Nuclear diplomacy and crisis management, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1990, pp. 39–68 and 69–113. 10 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Atomic Warfare: Revised Report by the Directors of Plans, 30 November 1951, para. 15, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 11 For an authoritative review, see P.A. Karber and J.A. Combs, ‘The United States, NATO, and the Soviet threat to Western Europe: military estimates and policy options, 1945–1963’, Diplomatic History, 22 (3), 1998, pp. 399–429. 12 Reported in Johnson to Vandenberg, 26 May 1950, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 741. 13 LeMay to Gen. Muir S. Fairchild (Vice-Chief of Staff, USAF), 16 November 1949, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 61 (Wolfe). 14 Memorandum for Deputy Inspector-General, USAF: report on SAC capabilities to initiate and sustain combat operations, date unknown, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 197. 15 Maj.-Gen. J.H. Atkinson to LeMay (heavily redacted), 21 August 1950, LoC, LeMay papers, B-6618, Box 196. 16 LeMay to Fairchild, 16 November 1949, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 61 (Wolfe). 17 LeMay to Lt.-Gen. Anderson, Director, Weapon Systems Evaluation Group, probably 28 September 1956, LoC, LeMay papers, B- 58735, Box 206. 18 LeMay to Twining, Impact of Forward Bases Vulnerability on SAC Strike Capability, undated (1955), LoC, LeMay papers, Box 205. 19 Curtis E. LeMay lecture, ‘Essential considerations in the conduct of strategic air operations’, Air War College, 9 January 1952, LoC, LeMay papers, B-15376, Box 199. 20 LeMay to Vandenberg, 15 January 1951, LoC, LeMay papers. 21 History of Strategic Air Command: Historical Study 73A, SAC Targeting Concepts, Historical Division, Office of Information, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, n.d., pp. 12–13. 22 Air Force and Wing Commanders’ conference, 6–8 December 1950, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 100. 23 Comments on the initial atomic strike capability of SAC, 11 September 1950, LoC, LeMay papers, B-7081/2, Box 196. 24 Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, 14 April 1950, NARA, CIA Papers.

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25 NIE-30: Soviet Capabilities to Interfere with US Delivery of Atomic Weapons to Targets in the USSR, 9 March 1951, NARA, CIA Papers. 26 J. Prados, The Soviet estimate: US intelligence analysis and Russian military strength, New York, The Dial Press, 1982, p. 50. 27 USAF Contribution to NIE-64 (Part I), Soviet Bloc Capabilities through Mid1953, 28 April 1952, NARA, CIA Papers. 28 The Strength and Capabilities of Soviet Bloc Forces to Conduct Military Operations against NATO, SE-16, Central Intelligence Agency, 12 October 1951, NARA, CIA Papers. 29 Minute by JIC to Chiefs of Staff asking for approval for topographical surveys of possible invasion targets on the British coast, 30 July 1946, UKNA, ADM 326/1314. 30 NIE-30: Soviet Capabilities to Interfere with US Delivery of Atomic Weapons to Targets in the USSR. 31 McConnell to LeMay, 12 September 1952, NARA, RG 341, Box 746. 32 Air Attack Vulnerabilities of SAC-United Kingdom bases, 7th Air Division Special Intelligence Brief, Strategic Air Command, September 1952, NARA, RG 341, Box 745. 33 LeMay to White (Director of Plans), 7 May 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 197. 34 LeMay, to Director of Plans and Operations, Headquarters United States Air Force, 23 February 1950, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 744. 35 Wohlstetter et al., Selection and use of strategic air bases, p. xxxi. 36 Vulnerability of the Strategic Striking Complex, 2 November 1953, LoC, Twining papers, Box 103. 37 Shuckburgh to Jebb, 26 January 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90015. 38 LeMay, to Director of Plans and Operations, Headquarters United States Air Force, 23 February 1950, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 744. 39 Critique of War Game ‘Padrone’ (gaming FLEETWOOD), 1 July 1948, NARA, RG 319, Box 110. 40 R.D. Coleridge, Captain, RN, British Joint Services Mission to Admiral Glover, 15 March 1949, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 744. 41 The Defense of Strategic Air Command Bases in the United Kingdom, Operations Analysis Special Report No. 16, 15 February 1951, NARA, RG 341, Box 746. 42 The Defense of Strategic Air Command Bases in the United Kingdom, Operations Analysis Special Report No. 16, 15 February 1951, NARA, RG 341, Box 746, p. 8. 43 The Defense of Strategic Air Command Bases in the United Kingdom, Operations Analysis Special Report No. 16, 15 February 1951, NARA, RG 341, Box 746, pp. 10–11. 44 The Defense of Strategic Air Command Bases in the United Kingdom, Operations Analysis Special Report No. 16, 15 February 1951, NARA, RG 341, Box 746, p. 33. 45 M. Grant, After the bomb: civil defence and nuclear war in Britain, 1945–68, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p. 46. 46 Grant, After the bomb, pp. 47–51.

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47 The Initial Phase of a War: Report by the Home Defence Committee Working Party, 24 July 1953, UKNA, CAB 21/4054. 48 The Initial Phase of a War: Report by the Home Defence Committee Working Party, 24 July 1953, UKNA, CAB 21/4054, paras. 44 and 75. 49 Report on Project Gabriel, US Atomic Energy Commission, Division of Biology and Medicine, Washington, DC, July 1954. 50 www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2008/R251.pdf, accessed 27 August 2014. 51 Cockroft to Brundett, 13 December 1954, UKNA, CAB 21/4054. 52 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Exchange of Atomic Information between the United Kingdom and the United States: Note by Sir Frederick Brundrett, 11 August 1953, and Internal draft minute, undated, UKNA, DEFE 13/60. 53 Robertson to Strath, 4 January 1955; note of [ministerial] meeting held in the Foreign Secretary’s room, 9 December 1954, UKNA, CAB 21/4054. 54 Notes prepared by Admiral Strauss, Bermuda, 5 December 1953, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954. Western European Security, Volume 5, Part 2, Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1983, Document 343. 55 The Defence Implications of Fallout from a Hydrogen Bomb: Report by a Group of Officials, December 1954, UKNA, CAB 134/940 (hereafter ‘Strath report’), p. 2. 56 Strath report, para. 18. 57 Strath report, paras. 60–63. 58 Strath report, para. 75. 59 Strath report, paras. 99, 134, 135. 60 Fallout: draft memorandum by the Minister of Defence, November 1954, UKNA, DEFE??/3145. 61 Probable Nuclear Targets in the United Kingdom: Assumptions for Planning, 1967, UKNA, HO 322/785.

7 Defending the strategic force

The RAF are not under any local or general alerts and we have recently just gone through a British Bank holiday during which practically all the RAF left the bases for 4–5 days without any apparent concern over the international situation. Colonel Don Flickinger, August 1950

In December 1946 the UK Chiefs of Staff asked their joint planners to assess the likely future scale of air attack on Britain in 1951 and 1956.1 The planners made two key assumptions: that ‘Russia will reach the West Coast of Europe comparatively quickly (within, say, two months)’ and that the United States would be allied to Britain ‘and prepared to contribute in some degree to the defence of the United Kingdom from the outset’.2 No reference was made to the American imperative to defend their forward bases in East Anglia. Nor were these atomic strike installations, by this time well advanced at Sculthorpe and Lakenheath, identified as target priorities. Officially non-existent, they were not taken into account. Rather, it was anticipated that the Soviets would prioritise morale targets, bombing London and other cities, followed by industrial installations and communication links. Soviet forces were expected to have up to 25 atomic bombs available by 1951, delivered under cover of conventional attacks by more than 600 heavy bombers. By 1956 up to 80 per cent of air attacks by piloted aircraft and flying bombs would reach their targets. How would the UK be defended? There would be no defence ‘against rockets or jet assisted shells [sic]’.3 As to defence against attacking aircraft, some 80 fighter squadrons would be required. The planned complement of 35 regular squadrons and 16 auxiliaries fell far short of this need. The strategic imbalance was not just a matter of numbers. ‘A comparatively limited number of atomic bombs might decisively affect the war-making capacity of this country.’4 The survival of the UK would depend on allied air forces (America having been assumed to

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enter the war at the outset) achieving local air superiority. These bleak ­assessments suggested a sense of urgency that paradoxically waned in the next few years, leaving the USAF, having deployed their key strategic assets to England, as the principal advocates of more effective air defence.

The deficiencies of defence Countering the strategic vulnerability of the UK would require a vast investment in air defences, both fighter aircraft and radars. While fighter defence had to be largely dependent on US deployment or on US aid, early warning radar defence remained firmly in British hands, to the great irritation of USAF officers who, throughout the first post-war decade and beyond, considered the cover to be inadequate to the threat level. Their problem was to persuade the UK authorities of the extent of the mismatch between the threat and the capability to meet it. Early in 1949 the US joint planners had asked their British counterparts for information on what US help would be required ‘to ensure the initial security, including defence against both high and low level air attacks’ of the SAC forces in England. Although a lengthy reply was prepared, it made no reference to the problems of radar cover other than reiterating the need for adequate warning if radar and fighter defences were to be brought to war readiness.5 At the outbreak of the Korean conflict in June 1950, the East Anglian bases were seen as especially vulnerable to a pre-emptive air attack across the North Sea by Soviet aircraft aiming to disable the forwarddeployed US nuclear forces. In September, Vandenberg instituted a new system of quarterly reports on the deficiencies of all his major commands. Leon Johnson’s first response was a comprehensive catalogue, highlighting the vulnerabilities of the 3rd Air Division’s English bases to air and ground attack and making 12 urgent recommendations. The risk of low-level attack was his most pressing concern, Johnson advising that ‘launching of the Strategic Air Offensive could be indefinitely delayed by a vigorous and continuous attack on these bases’.6 A preemptive Soviet strike could neutralise SAC’s ability to strike the Soviet Union. Anti-aircraft artillery (AA) was effectively non-existent, with the British heavy AA ‘unmanned and not even on location’, while the light AA battalions were to be withdrawn as soon as the US Army replacements arrived.7 In response, urgent discussions on airfield defence were put in hand, and the RAF reluctantly agreed that radar cover would be increased to 12 hours a day – an issue of continuing contention between

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the two air forces. Johnson shared his concern about the inadequacy of the airfield defences with the US ambassador, but RAF colleagues appeared on the surface to be sanguine, taking the view that a Soviet air attack on the UK would take some time to mount. Intelligence would see it coming, even if the radar could not.8 At this stage in the Cold War British and American intelligence assessments differed widely. The British record did not inspire much confidence among 3rd Air Division and SAC commanders, their having foreseen neither the closure of access to Berlin in 1948 nor the launch of the North Korean assault on the south. When the British and American intelligence communities worked together in this period, they could derive different conclusions – for example on the likely date of future conflict – from the same evidence.9 Security threats are commonly counted in terms of an adversary’s capabilities and their intentions. British officials made more optimistic estimates of Soviet capabilities, and saw little evidence of imminent hostile intent. US planners, accepting that assessing intent was a matter of groping in the dark, placed greater emphasis on capabilities and extrapolated from them to get a measure of possible intent. From that perspective, the growth of the Soviet bomber force from 1948 indicated a shift in Soviet air power doctrine from augmentation of a ground assault to a more strategic purpose. It was against that threat that USAF commanders in Britain urged enhanced defence.

Radar cover Whatever complacency about British defences might have been apparent to frustrated USAF officers, at the centre of government there was deep concern. Prompted by vigorous attacks from Churchill’s opposition Conservatives, Prime Minister Attlee called for reports to ascertain the extent of the weakness. The state of radar cover beyond the metropolitan area was worse than American officers had suspected, with the ability to man stations in most of the region to be covered in an emergency limited to seven-and-a-half hours in every twenty-four. There was no radar chain for most of the country and a plan to provide it would take at least five years to accomplish. The radar chain covering the metropolitan area ‘could be easily outflanked’.10 The state of anti-aircraft provision was similarly ‘disturbing’.11 Leon Johnson used his reports to Vandenberg to urge improvements in US assistance to the defence of the British Isles, pointing out that ‘there is virtually no means of obtaining early warning against low-flying aircraft’.12 As proof of the point, USAF F-84s made a ‘sneak attack’ on

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the East Anglian bases in ‘Exercise Emperor’, without being detected in time. Air Marshal Basil Embry responded by changing sector boundaries and deploying mobile radars to fully cover East Anglia. These were marginal changes to a limited capability.13 Another exercise by F-84s the following year drew forth a protest from the RAF on the grounds that the aircraft had flown with loaded guns, and that the exercise was run without ‘due consideration and control by the Fighter Defense Commander’ – arguably an inappropriate condition for an exercise of this type, although the American response was soothing.14 A USAF staff study was conducted late in 1951 at Johnson’s behest following conferences at USAF headquarters on the limitations of the UK bases.15 The review severely criticised British capabilities, citing the most serious deficiency as being in the depth and breadth of coverage against low-level attack, to remedy which would require extensive timeconsuming modifications to existing radar equipment, or the design, manufacture and installation of new systems. Work was under way on a joint British-US project to modify existing radars to increase their range from the present 25 miles to 60 or 75 miles against ‘on the deck’ attacks, but delay in the implementation of a programme to improve all types of radar ‘is a dangerously weak link in Air Defense of the UK’.16 More funding would be needed to enhance the protection of USAF bases, for while the RAF and the USAF had ‘fully integrated the air defences of the UK’ to cover the US bomber bases, ‘We are not (rpt not) however satisfied that the protection for these bases is sufficient today nor that the plans for the next year are adequate.’17 McConnell, now 3rd Air Force commander, reported to LeMay a year later, advising that the Western Europe early warning system was substandard and ‘not operated with the same degree of alertness and effectiveness exhibited recently by the Soviet system’. Nor was it tied in effectively with the UK system, which was still ‘meager and ineffective’. British radar defence was not continuously manned, and the Second World War era radar equipment would not be able to detect very high or very low fast flying attack aircraft. Moreover, there was no up-to-date system for the identification of aircraft as friendly or otherwise. Modern IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) equipment had been urged by the USAF for the UK defence system but had not been adopted. McConnell saw no way forward without the US assuming some of the responsibilities of the UK, to strengthen the British early warning system with modern, effective radar equipment, ‘if necessary, manned by USAF personnel in order to provide a degree of alertness commensurate with the warning necessary’ and to provide essential IFF equipment to the UK ‘in order that an acceptable control system can be employed’.18 Air

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Force Chief of Staff Nathan F. Twining, lobbied by LeMay on these issues, stonewalled. Beyond assuring LeMay that his ‘grave estimate’ of the vulnerability of SAC aircraft in the United Kingdom was shared by USAF headquarters, and reiterating that some modern radar equipment had been supplied under the Mutual Defence Assistance Programme (MDAP), Twining had nothing to offer. He rejected McConnell’s proposal that enhanced radars should be manned by US forces. The air defence of the UK, and the creation of a capability to provide for it were, he insisted, British responsibilities.19 Existing and planned British defence capabilities had been taken into account when the USAF presence had been established in the UK, and that presence was not conditional on additional help from the British.20 This was cold comfort to LeMay and his commanders, who continued to stress the risks of an inadequately secured deployment of SAC forces: The capability of this command to carry out its wartime mission is seriously threatened because of completely inadequate warning nets and defense forces in the UK area. The need for a modern, well equipped, fully manned early warning system in Western Europe tied in with a similar system in the United Kingdom and backed up with efficient active and passive defense forces cannot be overemphasized.21

By 1953 Soviet capabilities were rapidly improving, yet the British radar defence network and its associated systems were still of limited efficiency due to ‘inadequate funds, unskilled personnel and obsolescent equipment’. The ground-controlled interception net was only partly operational, and during the hours of darkness was operated on a standby basis. Yet another USAF report warned ‘this system would be saturated by an attack in force’.22 Despite his dismissal of McConnell’s pleas a year before, the problem of air defence of the United Kingdom remained ‘a matter of major concern’ to the Chief of Staff.23 Improvements had been slow to implement and the UK authorities remained, in American eyes, vague and evasive. Seeking an update on the 1951 assessment of defensive capabilities after two years had passed, Butch Griswold, commanding the 3rd Air Force (but soon to join SAC as LeMay’s Vice-Chief) reported that ‘Air Ministry representatives seem reluctant to pass us complete information on their air defense capabilities and limitations.’24 Despite this apparent resistance, CAS Sir William Dickson was certainly alive to the problem. In a note on the need for early warning against attack by low flying aircraft, he stressed the need for adequate defence – for both US and UK airfields:

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This weakness is of great importance, and one might almost say crucial, in the case of the United Kingdom where attacks by low flying enemy aircraft can be mounted from the Continent of Europe and a final approach can be made at low altitude over the sea … Nor is it a problem that affects the U.K alone. Inasmuch as the United Kingdom is being used as an air base for a substantial portion of SAC forces, the protection of this country as a whole, and of the air bases in it in particular, is a problem that is common both to the UK and to America.25

These, though, were generalities, and did not meet the American need for a more detailed grasp of what was lacking in the UK. Hard information on radar cover continued to prove difficult to wrest from the British. Radar maps were handed over, but these were unchanged from those provided to Leon Johnson in 1951. ‘We have found’, wrote Griswold, ‘that the information provided on this occasion has been insufficient for preparing a sound evaluation.’ The reason, he suggested delicately, might be because Air Vice-Marshal Harry Broadhurst, the ACAS (Operations), had ‘apparently elected to omit most of the details concerning the Defense Committee’s appreciation of the actual threat of attack’. This being the case, ‘there appears to be no acceptable way of determining the size of the gap, if any, between what the British can provide versus what is required for adequate defense of the UK’.26 Griswold also suspected that British reticence might have been a ploy on the part of those in the Air Ministry who, suspecting that the USAF was planning to withdraw four fighter wings from the UK, chose to emphasise their own weakness. Never reluctant to press for greater US commitment, RAF officers had also been making their own exploratory enquiries about the possible provision of American Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft to make up their radar deficit, for ‘the British are still not convinced of their ability to pick up aircraft approaching the UK with present and currently planned facilities’. AEW would specifically improve the ability to detect low-level attack, providing surveillance and plotting capability with reports being transmitted to control centres on the ground. In 1953, under the MDAP, an allocation was made of 52 P2V5 Neptune aircraft. Most were designated for antisubmarine operations with RAF Coastal Command but some, equipped with radar which gave a sufficient surveillance range, were to be used for the detection of aircraft attack.27 Airborne early warning could only be part of the defensive coverage, and a continuing concern was the lack of 24-hour ground radar operation. In 1950 Vandenberg had warned that the British ‘cannot

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provide the additional personnel for either anti-aircraft defense or full time operation of their warning system without mobilization. This they are not willing to do at this time.’ Helpless in the face of intergovernmental niceties, he warned that ‘the military cannot importune our State Department to insist on such action by a sovereign power’.28 A greater investment of equipment and personnel might have extended the radar coverage, but USAF officers arriving in Britain were perplexed by the relaxed attitude of their hosts, even at the height of the Korean War scare, when SAC deployed its nuclear assets for the first time to England: The RAF are not under any local or general alerts and we have recently just gone through a British Bank holiday during which practically all the RAF left the bases for 4–5 days without any apparent concern over the international situation. Many of the people in 3rd Air give the impression that we are whistling up a storm … We are constantly reminded that (a) we are tenants here (b) that we cannot offend the British (c) that it was not their fault that the bases were not prepared for the sudden increase in planes, weapons and personnel (d) that it is very unlikely that we are going to be attacked anyway. All of which may be perfectly true but it just doesn’t jibe with what the majority of our personnel thought they were being rushed out here for.29

Mindful of that complaint, during Christmas 1950 the RAF rallied behind the 3rd Air Division. Fighter Command defensive provision was continued across the holiday and while the Air Ministry had stood down the RAF from 23 December, Bomber Command committed sufficient support to enable the existing state of readiness to be maintained, and undertook to recall all personnel from leave should there be any indication of an emergency arising.30 Yet the radar situation was little changed by 1955, leading LieutenantGeneral Bill Tunner, now USAFE commander, to fume: The RAF still operates its radars on a part time basis. It assumes Intelligence will provide sufficient advance warning of an intended enemy attack to permit going into a full scale, twenty-four hour operation whenever the exigencies of the moment may so dictate. I consider this approach unacceptable and dangerously unrealistic … A twenty-four hour operation on the part of the RAF AC&W system is mandatory if we are to … provide an acceptable degree of Air Defense in the Central area, and defense in depth for our forces in the United Kingdom.31

This gap between American assessments of the threat, and British willingness to meet it, lay at the heart of the demand for extensive assistance

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to be provided under the MDAP. It undoubtedly sustained American suspicion that British negotiators were playing on their m ­ ilitary ­weakness in order to maximise US aid.32 As the 1950s advanced, the gap between American and British perspectives on the problem of air defence widened, with British opinion moving towards a fatalistic acceptance of the doctrine that ‘the bomber will always get through’.

Fighter defence The slide towards fatalism came gradually. In September 1949, when the Chiefs of Staff were considering Anglo-American planning in advance of a joint meeting with the US Joint Chiefs, they came to ‘general agreement that the British Empire and Commonwealth should be primarily responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom and the Middle East, while the United States should be responsible primarily for the defence of the Western European continent’. Such a neat separation of roles was wildly optimistic in terms of the resources available for home defence.33 A review of the state of the RAF was ‘exceedingly alarming’ and ‘if it in any way became well-known, it would be fatal to the government’. Further ‘the existing deficiencies would prejudice the objective of the Force, even in its reduced form, to take an effective part in the carrying out of Allied air strategy’.34 The most severe limitation revealed was manpower, but although plans had been approved to double the number of jet fighters by September 1950, production difficulties would slow the re-equipment, and many of the squadrons receiving the aircraft would be (volunteer) auxiliaries rather than regular units. Shortages of money and manpower were crippling air defence, and ‘the small existing front line could not be maintained during war’.35 Little improvement could be expected. Leon Johnson warned in October 1950 that ‘the number of British security fighters (approximately 200) is wholly inadequate for the defense of England’.36 Moreover, the shortcomings were not just those of numbers: ‘The British Fighter Command is not adequate to the job of defense of the United Kingdom even in fair weather. In adverse weather they will be completely ineffective with the equipment they now have.’37 Although British assurances about progress in fighter modernisation were usually taken by the Americans at face value, SAC aircraft in the UK were still ‘extremely vulnerable … the success of the Soviet attack is probable and such an attack would lose essential SAC launching bases and equipment in the UK’.38 The situation improved slowly over the decade, but at no point in these early post-war years would defences be

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deemed adequate to hold the line. In 1948, it had been estimated that without substantial air defence reinforcement, the UK would succumb to a Soviet air attack and be rendered unusable as an air base in just six days, a dramatic reduction on the forty-five days estimated the previous year.39 The decision to deploy USAF F-84E fighter aircraft to Britain in 1948 had been urged by LeMay because ‘for the next year at least we must rely upon the United Kingdom as the primary launching area for the atomic offensive. We feel its security and the security of our bases there are of the utmost importance.’ Yet the USAF fighters that arrived were not primarily for air defence, but to provide escorts to SAC bombers.40 Without escorts it was estimated SAC’s attack would be seriously blunted. Three years later, high casualty rates on bombing missions in the Korean War would confirm that ‘unescorted formations of B-29s in daylight … suffer serious losses in penetrating a modern air defense system’.41 Without resort to the dedicated F-84s, other UK-based interceptors were required to secure the forward bases. A meeting with USAF officers at RAF Fighter Command HQ in December 1949 addressed itself to ‘the problem and necessity of providing adequate fighter defense of SAC bases in the United Kingdom’ and agreed that Fighter Command would provide special air defence protection for the USAF bomber bases ‘on call’ from the designated American commander, a vague agreement that ‘leaves much to be desired’. Under the circumstances, the local air defence of bomber bases ‘should be augmented by using SAC escort fighters when not otherwise employed’.42 Not until 1951 were fighter interceptor units allocated to the 3rd Air Force, to be responsible to the Commander-in-Chief Fighter Command specifically for the air defence of the USAF bases in time of war.43 It was made clear to Fighter Command that these deployments would not be used for the overall defence of the UK, for ‘the only possible justification for sending fighters from the American defense of American cities’, insisted Leon Johnson, ‘would be the defense of our airbases’.44 This point was sometimes lost on the British, to whom the deployment of USAF fighters seemed a reasonable quid pro quo for allowing the bomber presence, the Defence Committee of the cabinet concurring that ‘we had a great deal to gain in encouraging the Americans to base their air forces in the United Kingdom in peace-time’ as it would be paralleled by ‘a very large increase to the fighter defences of the country in the very early stages of hostilities when these would be weak’.45 Just how deficient was the RAF? A USAF planning staff study in 1951 reviewed the strength of RAF Fighter Command and pointed up the

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‘critical shortage of fighter aircraft in the United Kingdom to perform the accepted minimum role of defense’: minimum fighter requirements in the event of war totals 66 Squadrons of Day and All-Weather fighters consisting of 1,056 aircraft, and 6 Squadrons of Intruders consisting of 96 aircraft – or an aggregate of 1,152 defensive fighter aircraft. This requirement is conceivably low when related to the subsequent rapid build up of enemy air forces beyond 1949 estimates.

Optimistically, though, it was considered to provide ‘an adequate basis for planning when related to British production capacity and programmed fighter output’.46 Numerical shortages were in any event compounded by the inadequate performance of many of the UK air defence aircraft. Night attacks posed a particular problem, and a Fighter Command report on night fighters during ‘Exercise Bulldog’ showed the defences to have limited effectiveness against 353 sorties flown by bombers of USAF and Bomber Command, with the wartime Mosquitoes unable to intercept B-50s flying at speed and altitude.47 In May 1948 exercises, the first jet-equipped squadrons of Meteors and Vampires had only variable success intercepting the B-29s. In the autumn 1948 air exercises, ‘kills’ were recorded against only 15 per cent of the attacking B-29s.48 To American officers, British Intelligence reports understated ‘the full portent and significance of the Soviet capability’ and assumed better air defence capability than they actually possessed. They had ‘only outclassed types of defense aircraft in their operational units and … relatively few of those’.49 Notwithstanding the shortcomings of British fighter defences at the time of the Korean crisis, the squadrons were mobilised in response to the possibility of a surprise attack on the East Anglian airfields. On 19 July Minister of Defence Shinwell, with prime ministerial support, approved the draft of a top secret special order (‘to be kept in a special order book and signed by anyone who has to know’) to Fighter Command’s squadron commanders. Their aircraft were already on readiness, with loaded guns. Now came clear advice to the pilots. If scrambled to investigate unidentified aircraft with Russian markings, single aircraft should be forced to land, and fired on if they attempted to escape. Formations of such aircraft could be fired on once they had crossed the coast, and if they in turn fired on the fighters or appeared to make bombing attacks, they should be shot down. The risks of a leakage of this information were extremely high in terms of interna­ tional relations and public alarm. Accordingly, those signing the order (‘in absolute secrecy’) were ‘on your honour to keep this absolutely to

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yourself. You are not to mention it to anyone – your wife (if you have one) or your best friend, even if he himself has signed this order – except to your squadron commander.’50 This order was an exception to the general placidity of the British response to the global threat, and was prompted by concern that the Soviets might act to interdict the imminent arrival of the SAC strategic force. Had such action been required, would it have been effective against the weight of attack expected? Fighter Command’s jets numbered less than 600 and were types that were soon to be decisively defeated by the MIG-15 in Korea.51 Not until the spring of 1952 was RAF Fighter Command’s outdated air defence force of Meteors and Vampires – both Second World War designs, with the Meteor having ‘already shown itself to be totally unsuited to the air superiority role in Korea’ – ­augmented by the arrival of six USAF squadrons of swept-wing F-86 Sabres and their assignment to UK air defence.52 This commitment, however, did not add to the air defence strength of the UK as much as might have been expected. When the United States earlier announced a plan to send four groups of fighters, some 300 aircraft, to the UK, the Air Ministry responded by cutting their own order for RAF fighters by 200 aircraft, the resulting number far below what had hitherto been considered the essential minimum limit.53 Now the CAS, Jack Slessor, had to acknowledge that the F-86s were ‘the only element of our fighter defences now capable of dealing on level terms with the MIG-15’. For the RAF to provide an equivalent to the USAF fighters ‘would be far beyond our resources both in manpower and material’.54 In 1952 the RAF’s combat ready status was estimated to be as low as 60 per cent, while normal working hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., five days a week, prevailed.55 The UK was effectively undefendable by the RAF alone. Yet the American insistence that air defence should be a British responsibility had to be accepted, even if its fulfilment was initially heavily dependent on American assistance.56 The uneasy partnership was taken forward by assigning the American fighter interceptor wings to the jurisdiction of the 3rd Air Force while making them directly responsible to the Commander-in-Chief Fighter Command in the event of war, or for operational training in time of peace. As the historian of the 81st Fighter Interceptor Wing put it, ‘the Wing was placed under the operational control of the Royal Air Force as soon as the wheels of the Sabres touched British soil’.57 In contrast, for the 406th Fighter Bomber Wing, flying F-84s out of Manston in Kent, the air defence of the United Kingdom was a secondary role, although they could be diverted to a defensive purpose.58 At 3rd Air Force headquarters at South Ruislip, SAC headquarters

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in Omaha and USAF headquarters in Virginia, anxiety about the vulnerability of the UK bases and the weakness of British defence was a constant through the first post-war decade. British officials continued to be sanguine about the likelihood of a Soviet attack, and faced American criticism for not taking into account the likely impact of an atomic offensive on air defence capabilities. ‘For the next few years’, advised an Air Ministry civil servant in 1949, ‘we do not rate very highly the strategic offensive which the Russians could mount against this country.’59 Yet the air exercises repeatedly mounted since then showed just how limited was the capability of repelling any such attack. Indeed, a major exercise, ‘Ardent’, conducted in October 1952, showed that while large formations of B-29s and B-50s could be successfully intercepted well clear of the coast, fast and high-flying RAF Canberras simulating an attack on Birmingham were able to evade the fighter defences.60 These dilemmas of defence had been summarised in a 1951 USAF staff study in four points. First, that responsibility for air defence of the United Kingdom remained with the British. Secondly, that security of the UK as a major forward operating base had a high priority in the USAF EWP. Thirdly, that neutralisation of the UK, including USAF installations, would probably be the enemy’s primary objective. Fourthly, that the risks involved in deploying US defence forces after the outbreak of conflict were so great that they should be put in place beforehand.61 Leon Johnson added political concerns, arguing that the agreement struck with the British on the deployment of the bombers at the outbreak of the Korean hostilities had been eased by a promise of substantial US fighter cover, and reneging on that would create a ‘very delicate’ situation.62 Moreover, additional fighters were sorely needed. Lieutenant-General Sam Anderson joined in support, arguing that the British bases ‘are open to attack now and will be for some time to come unless we provide fighter defences’. He judged that RAF Fighter Command could not come up to strength in the near future and asked for four defensive fighter groups to be deployed to the UK in advance of a crisis for ‘we cannot afford to gamble on the hour the attack will come’.63 These pleas fell on deaf ears at the Pentagon. The principle of British responsibility pointed in a different direction, to US aircraft being flown in RAF colours by RAF aircrew. The Mutual Defence Assistance Programme, launched in February 1950, made this possible, with 370 Canadian-manufactured F-86E Sabres supplied in 1954.64 Of the 370 F-86Es committed to the UK, most were allocated to the 2nd Tactical Air Force in Germany, the remainder to augment USAF and Royal Canadian Air Force F-86s already stationed in the UK.65 More were

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promised, but this was a temporary measure pending the modernisation of RAF Fighter Command with the swept-wing Hawker Hunter and Vickers Supermarine Swift. In these early post-war years, there was political support for the modernisation and strengthening of UK fighter defences, although on account of the economic crisis, planning had to be for the longer term, and little attention was given to the immediate strengthening of air defence capability. A ‘defended area’ had been defined for the southeastern sector of England in 1945, although in practice manpower reductions left Fighter Command with only 36 operational radars, insufficient to cover even the defended area. While from 1948 attention focused on the acquisition of the Midland air bases as being in a more easily defendable location than those in East Anglia, British officials warned that unless the strength and efficiency of Fighter Command was brought up to scratch ‘it will not matter much whether the USAF bases are in front of the fighter belt or behind it’.66 A presentation by an experienced fighter wing commander in 1953 gave an eloquent account of the problems of high altitude interception in the early British jets. ‘We feel slightly ashamed’, he confessed, ‘that we only have four aircraft in Fighter Command that can operate against a 50,000 feet threat’ when the USAF and Communist MIGs were fighting at these heights in Korea. Experimental flying with specially prepared Venoms (the faster, developed form of the Vampire) showed that the finest judgement was required to retain control at the limits of performance at 40,000 feet. The aircraft were inadequate to the task. He sketched out the performance requirement for effective high-level interception – an adequate operational ceiling and a very high rate of climb – and asked: ‘Will our Hunters and Swifts come up to these [required] figures next year? We know they won’t.’ He was correct. The Hunter’s initial rate of climb compared poorly with the MIG-15 and the F-86. The requirements Wing Commander Bird-Wilson had in mind were better met by the American F-100 Super Sabre with twice the rate of climb, ‘and they are pouring off the production line at 40 a month. Sirs, I put it to you, where are the RAF Super Sabres?’67 The question was rhetorical, but in this period proposals for highly advanced interceptors were put forward in the Air Ministry only to make limited progress before being cancelled on cost grounds.68 By 1955 a review of fighter requirements against the likely threat came to the alarming conclusion that the effectiveness of the aircraft in service, or due to come into service in the next few years, would be ‘marginal’ against the existing threat, and ‘quite inadequate’ against the future high speed, high altitude, Soviet bombers.69

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Trade or fighter defence? Although American concern to reinforce UK air defences ran throughout the first post-war decade, the Attlee government chose different priorities, placing short-term trade interests above long-term defence. Nowhere was this gulf so wide as in the case of the British government’s grant of export and manufacturing licences for the Rolls-Royce Nene and Derwent jet engines to the Soviet Union in 1947, coupled with extensive aircraft sales to Soviet bloc countries and elsewhere, in some instances selling aircraft of more advanced specification than those available to Fighter Command. At the time, the Air Intelligence Division of the USAF warned that such sales harmed the security of the United States by enhancing the capabilities of the Soviet Air Force at the expense of the RAF, whose ability to defend the UK and the USAF aircraft deployed there was unquestionably weak. The Command’s strength was in any event judged inadequate to the defence of UK airspace and the engine exports drastically slowed the production of aircraft for that purpose. The admission of Soviet officials to British aircraft factories and the possible leak of US classified data supplied to the British were also acute concerns.70 Faced with strenuous protestations from US Ambassador Douglas and Secretary of State Byrnes, Foreign Secretary Bevin, who had been outmanoeuvred by his cabinet colleague, Trade Minister Sir Stafford Cripps, confessed himself ‘embarrassed’ and ‘disturbed’ by the sales. Cripps had appealed to the Prime Minister, who reversed an earlier decision by junior Foreign Office ministers to block them. Bevin in return urged a policy of close coordination with the United States and the reexamination of ‘the question of supplying the Soviet government with valuable war material and generally with machinery and equipment vital for building up Russia’s war potential’.71 The USAF view of these sales was bleak. In a coruscating assessment of British decision making, Major-General ‘Augie’ Kissner, Chief of Staff at USAFE, argued that by selling front-line aircraft to a wide range of countries ‘in a desperate attempt to salvage its national existence’ the UK would ‘liquidate its military security’. The delivery commitments – totalling some 390 advanced jet fighters – would seriously hamper the build-up of UK air defences from their ‘meager’ level and would guarantee that potential enemies would fly aircraft at least as good as those of the RAF. Most seriously, the advantages obtained by the Soviet Union could result in those weapons causing ‘high British and US attrition rates in war’. The British stance was ‘indefensible’. There were ‘grave’ implications for the security of the United States, and it was ‘doubtful

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if the United Kingdom could be preserved as an advanced air base for operations by a foreign country’.72 The matter continued to reverberate and provoked further exchanges between Tedder and Spaatz, framed in terms of their earlier protestations of mutual passion for inter-service collaboration. Tedder, who had originally supported the sales, gradually became alarmed by the proposal to sell Meteor and Vampire fighters, as well as engines, to the Soviet Union. The Ministry of Supply permitted Soviet engineers to receive technical training on the assembly and operation of the engines by Rolls-Royce and while Tedder took it upon himself to explain the British government’s actions, and the part the RAF played in protesting them, he could do little to repair the damage to Anglo-American relations caused by the sales.73 The Spaatz–Tedder correspondence seems to have been unusually ‘candid and confidential’, with Spaatz promising to respect his confidences, while earnestly hoping that the current policy would preclude any further sales.74 Indeed, shared intelligence assessments at this time downplayed Soviet bloc jet aircraft development, judging the ‘non-availability’ of the promised Rolls-Royce Nene a constraint on their progress.75 Shortly after the Spaatz–Tedder exchanges, the UK Chiefs of Staff took steps to lay down some principles governing the export of arms and equipment. A report by the Joint Planning Staff had been sought on the long-term strategic factors to be taken into account in such exports. A set of priorities was proposed, in which countries whose efforts directly affected UK security would have a high priority. With the political importance granted to the export efforts probably in mind, the JPS argued that healthy overseas markets would strengthen the British armaments industry. Yet their report, and the Chiefs of Staffs’ own discussions, did not venture into what might be construed as a challenge to the much criticised policy of permitting technology transfer to the Soviet bloc. American concerns were acknowledged only in a proposal to work closely with them in assessing the requirements of Allied forces. Critical by implication rather than explicitly, this was a generalised think piece that did little to address the urgency of the matter.76 Indeed, little was to change in the course of the next two years. A State Department aide-mémoire delivered to the British Foreign Office regarded the lack of progress in controlling strategic exports to Communist countries ‘disappointing’, arising from what was seen as the narrower view of strategic value adopted by the British.77 The matter was more fiercely criticised elsewhere in America, and the issue became inflamed after 1950, when Soviet MIG-15s, powered by an adapted version of the Rolls-Royce Nene, out-ran and out-climbed Western

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aircraft over Korea, in many respects outperforming the state-of-the-art F-86 Sabres that had been rushed to the peninsula.78 Secretary of State Marshall made repeated representations to the UK government through the US embassy in London, while the USAF’s World Survey Branch concurred that ‘such a policy motivated by economic nationalism will affect UK security and possible future military relationships with the US’, with ramifications that would be ‘detrimental in any future conflict’.79 The episode was taken as confirmation, not just of the unreadiness, but of the political unreliability of the British.80 US officials criticised pro-Soviet sentimentalism on the part of the responsible cabinet ministers, singling out Cripps in particular for his ‘personal sympathy for the Soviets’.81 The Foreign Office attempted to act as a brake on the Board of Trade’s ambitions, allegedly by tipping off the manufacturers to go slow on the delivery of orders. The Air Ministry fretted over an order for an additional 40 completed engines on the grounds that the numbers were sufficient for the Soviet Air Force to equip a combat unit with them. The Ministry of Supply tried to block the sale by giving Rolls-Royce sufficient orders to forestall deliveries to the Soviet Union although this tactic soon ran up against financial limits.82 The outcome was a weak compromise. Although existing contracts would be honoured, the Foreign Office would endeavour to delay their fulfilment, would no longer issue visas for Soviet personnel to visit British aircraft factories, and would in future make no sales abroad without prior discussion with Secretary Marshall.83 American expressions of concern over this apparently deliberate weakening of UK defence capability encountered British resentment. In Washington, Air Marshal Victor Goddard was reported as challenging US officials as to ‘why their noses were so long’.84 For the United States, the wartime relationship with the Soviet Union had been one of wary and temporary co-belligerence, while for some British policymakers providing material help to the Soviet Union during the post-war period of reconstruction was a natural extension of a fraternal alliance. Spokesmen for manufacturer Rolls-Royce grumbled that it was ‘very easy to be wise after the event … two years ago both the US and Britain officially still regarded Russia as “our glorious ally”’.85 This sensitivity was not echoed by the UK Chiefs of Staff when in 1950 CAS Sir John Slessor lamented that the MIG-15, on the basis of its performance in Korea, ‘is faster than anything we are building today … The Russians, therefore, have achieved a four-year lead over British development in respect of the vitally important interceptor fighter.’86 Later, Slessor pushed the point still further: the USAF squadrons already in the UK amounted to ‘the only element of our fighter defences now

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capable of dealing on level terms with the MIG-15’.87 The Chiefs may have been shocked, but the Security Service had been highly critical of the engine sales from the outset, the enviable performance of the MIG-15 leading MI5 deputy director Guy Liddell to reflect ‘how stupid we were to sell Nene engines to the Russians … At the time we recommended against this proposal on the ground that it was teaching the Russians the ABC in jet propulsion.’88 Liddell saw beyond the immediate issue of the MIG-15. The Soviets had formed a long-range air force as early as 1946 on the basis of their TU-4, reverse-engineered from captured B-29s, but were committed to the development of a new generation of indigenous fast jet bomber aircraft. Jet engine technology was crucial to achieving that aim, and in 1949 the first Soviet jet bomber, the Ilyushin IL-28, was powered by an adapted form of the Nene engine. By 1953 Soviet engineers had built upon Britain’s technology transfer to develop the high-thrust engines required to propel their high-speed bomber designs.89 Britain’s enthusiasm for profitable technology transfer had not only driven the development of a superior interceptor, the MIG-15, but also this new generation of fast jet bombers, with the IL-28 comparable to Britain’s Canberra. They posed an immediate threat to the strategic forces based there.

Dropping the guard Despite the American pressures to strengthen and modernise UK fighter defences, selling equipment and reducing expenditure had greater political priority. This austerity hit Fighter Command’s plans to introduce the required faster swept-wing aircraft – the British Hunters and Swifts and the American F-86 Sabre – particularly hard. So far as aircraft were concerned the 1953–54 expansion plan was wholly in terms of the slower Meteors and Vampires although towards the end of the period Americansupplied F-86s and some Swifts would come into the picture. Six months into this plan, when Fighter Command should have expanded by close to 100 aircraft, it had managed to gain only four night/all-weather fighters. The principal constraint on the expansion of squadron strength was manpower, and up to this point aircraft were not being released to units unless manning of the stations had reached a suitable level.90 From 1952 onward Air Marshal Sir Dermot Boyle, the C-in-C Fighter Command, struggled to balance the expansion of the Command’s strength and the modernisation of its facilities in the face of stringent budget cuts.91 The first of the eventually disappointing Supermarine Swifts were expected to be in place in mid-1953 and the first Hawker Hunter

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s­ quadron early in 1954, but the programme was severely compromised by these budget constraints.92 Funding cuts deprived the service not just of the aircraft themselves, but of the manpower needed to maintain and fly them. Even with requirements cut back as far as possible, ‘unless the minimal additional need is met we will not be able to maintain our new [day] fighters except perhaps at the complete expense of our existing night fighter squadrons … That is the sort of thing we may have to face if we do not get the extra manpower.’93 The United States’ vital interest in Britain’s air defence strength came to be expressed in an elaborate assistance arrangement – Plan K – to meet a proportion of the cost of expanding and modernising the RAF, with priority for Fighter Command. Assistance would take the form of financing the construction of fighters, notably the well-regarded Hunter, for RAF use in a NATO context, as well as for airfield expansion and upgrading. In 1954 the United States government undertook to provide a total of £75 million ($210 million) over a period of three years for the purchase of aircraft and equipment. It was, however, agreed between the US and UK negotiators that this additional American funding would ‘not result in any decrease in the air defence effort that the government of the United Kingdom plans to finance from its own resources’. But when the RAF front line was adjusted in favour of all-weather fighter squadrons, this ‘rebalancing’ was used to justify a reduction in Fighter Command strength from the planned 792 aircraft to 576. With other adjustments the RAF front line would be smaller by 200 aircraft in comparison with the approved Plan K. Despite the reduction in numbers, the cost of the plan would be no less than the original.94 The reduction in the numbers of Hunter day fighters was accompanied by a hint that their primary role might be ground support in Europe, rather than air interception. Together with reliance for future all-weather and night defence on the heavy Javelin – an aircraft negatively evaluated in US appraisals and rejected for Plan K funding – these changes did not inspire confidence in the qualitative or quantitative aspects of UK provision. British ministers were aware that they might be sailing very close to the financial wind when they looked for still more economies in the aircraft programme, and in June 1956 proposals to make reductions in bomber aircraft orders were rejected in cabinet due to fears of a serious US reaction, possibly leading to the loss of the whole of Plan K funding.95 As the post-war Anglo-American relationship moved into its second decade, the gulf between the approaches to air defence of the two allies widened. In autumn 1955 the American embassy in London reported that relaxation of relations between the UK and the Soviet Union,

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coupled with the government’s ‘unremitting search’ for coexistence with the Soviets, led to an ‘idyllic’ atmosphere in which the existing defence effort would not be sustained.96 These were portents of what became a more sweeping reduction in UK air defence. Harold Macmillan, who would assume the premiership in January 1957, had long been suspicious of the degree of political protection enjoyed by Fighter Command. Even the provision of US aircraft under the MDAP did not soften his opposition. As Chancellor of the Exchequer (and a former Minister of Defence) he sought in June 1956 to reduce the size of Fighter Command, at that time dependent for gap-filling on American F-86s, arguing with characteristic insouciance that the mere fact that the Americans are paying for the machines does not mean that we must man them all or keep them continually in the air. To be given an aeroplane is rather like being given a yacht. It is a nice gift, but you have to keep it going. It is paying for the crews and the oil which costs so much.97

A review was launched in response to the Chancellor’s target of reducing defence expenditure. General Sir John Whiteley, UK representative to the NATO military representatives committee, told his French and American colleagues that severe cuts in the number of fighter aircraft would follow as reliance switched to the nuclear deterrent. Leon Johnson, now the US representative there, challenged that the UK were depending for their defences on US strategic forces, reporting his concern to the State Department in Washington.98 US Ambassador Winthrop W. Aldrich was irate, mocking the British belief that ‘with the advent of atomic equation and tactical changes in Soviet policy, imminence of Soviet attack has diminished to vanishing point’. The direction of policy impelled him to warn that ‘continuance of this current trend will inevitably jeopardise reliance of the US on the Anglo-American alliance’.99 Radical change in the British approach to air defence followed after the suave Macmillan assumed the premiership in January 1957. Led now by the new defence minister, Duncan Sandys, the review overrode the opposition of the Air Ministry and service chiefs and the expressed concerns of US officials, to sweep away the conventional war fighting doctrine and impose a new and exclusive dependence on nuclear deterrence, advancing the view that the manned aircraft was obsolete and would be replaced for both offensive and defensive purposes by missiles. With remarkable candour, Sandys’ White Paper declared It must be frankly recognised that there is at present no means of providing adequate protection for the people of this country against the consequences

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of an attack with nuclear weapons. Though, in the event of war, the fighter aircraft of the Royal Air Force will unquestionably be able to take a heavy toll of enemy bombers, a proportion would inevitably get through. Even if it were only a dozen, they would with megaton bombs inflict widespread devastation.100

For the time being, the fighter defence of the UK airfields remained shrouded in uncertainty. The introduction of surface-to-air missiles equipped with nuclear warheads was expected to provide a degree of protection for both American and British airfields, but there were doubts about the range of the system and it would not come into service for several years. The air defence of the UK faced a serious gap, not just because of the transition to a new system, but because fighter numbers had already been progressively reduced and there were no firm decisions on the commissioning of a high-performance interceptor to meet the coming Soviet threat. In advance of the proposed introduction of missile defence came further sweeping cuts in RAF fighter defences, resulting in a fierce Whitehall battle whose existence was thought best concealed from the American allies. The 1957 Defence White Paper announced that the role of Fighter Command would be confined to protecting the strategic bomber airfields. Within months Sandys was seeking support from the Cabinet Defence Committee, on the authority of the prime minister, for final proposals to reduce the front-line strength of Fighter Command to 280 aircraft (from an Air Ministry figure of 755) on grounds ‘which, in his view, seem to justify the abolition of our fighter defences’. Sandys maintained that with bomber dispersal and a sufficient warning period from continental radars the RAF V-force would be able to fly off from their bases before a Soviet attack could arrive. Contrary to American thinking, the possibility of a surprise attack was dismissed, and ‘can reasonably be excluded from our calculations’. Therefore, the UK’s fighter defences accordingly ‘do not fulfil a really essential function’.101 These sanguine sentiments, aired through the autumn of 1957, appalled Air Ministry officials and RAF officers alike, especially when Sandys pondered whether even the limited role he had ascribed to fighter defence was ‘any longer worthwhile’, a speculation that hardened to a proposal for dispersal and improvements in the readiness of the V-force – the RAF’s own nuclear force – in preference to endeavours to defend that force’s own bases with fighters: ‘fighter aircraft should no longer be provided for the defence of airfields in Britain’.102 To CAS Sir Dermot Boyle, the Sandys proposals ‘entail basing our strategy on the deterrent on the one hand while inviting attack on the other’.103 Air Minister

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George Ward told Macmillan that ‘I must leave you in no doubt that my advisers and I disagree entirely with this recommendation.’104 The Air Ministry’s alternative was to stress the flexibility of interceptors against the rigidity of a fixed surface-to-air missile system. The Sandys argument that the future threat would come only from Soviet missiles, not manned aircraft, was ridiculed: throughout the history of air power ‘effective defence’ has always been relative; perfectionism would no doubt have called for the disbandment both of Fighter Command and Anti-Aircraft Command in 1945 on the strength of the possession by the Germans of the V2 rockets; or of Fighter Command in the interwar years prior to its re-equipment with the Spitfire and Hurricane.105

While the Air Ministry, recognising the intensity of the financial pressures, offered some considerable numerical reductions in fighter strength, their main response was to fight back, making a case for a new generation of high-performance interceptor aircraft capable of meeting Soviet supersonic bombers.106 While these Whitehall arguments were going on, a proposal was received to transfer the F-86D aircraft of the 406th Fighter Interceptor Wing, based at Manston in Kent, to Fighter Command.107 The hard-nosed British reaction was that they would not want these aircraft unless the wing was first converted to the delta-wing supersonic F-102A, an all-weather interceptor introduced to replace the F-86D in the USAF, the specification of which was well in advance of anything the RAF was flying. This demand was not favourably received.108 In a tactic almost unknown in British government, Boyle and the ACAS, Air Vice-Marshal Kyle, spoke publicly at a conference attacking the premises of the 1957 White Paper and arguing that a new generation of manned bombers and fighter aircraft would be needed.109 Boyle came under intense criticism for his ‘unconstitutional’ actions, while Sandys and Air Minister George Ward went head to head on this issue. A response prepared by the Air Ministry questioned ‘If the air defence of the UK is to be put virtually into cold storage for the next five years, how is this to be explained to the Americans, to NATO and to the British public?’110 The prospect did not disturb the Minister of Defence: while it was recognised that ‘a decision to disband Fighter Command might be badly received by the United States, who look to us to defend their bomber bases in Britain … Nevertheless if the arguments for dispensing with fighter defence are militarily sound, it should not be beyond our ability to convince our allies of this.’111 The Americans would deliver their own judgement, but Air Ministry

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officials were not convinced. Air Marshal Sir Claude Pelly, Controller of Aircraft and the senior official who oversaw procurement for the service, protested that the Ministry of Defence proposals ‘consist of a series of superficial and oversimplified arguments, most of which can be easily demolished’. While he agreed that even the next generation of interceptors, the supersonic English Electric P1, which would enter RAF service in 1960 as the Lightning, would be of marginal effectiveness against a subsonic bomber at 50,000 feet, to abandon it and replace it with a surface-to-air missile system ‘would be merely building a very expensive fence with holes in it’.112 Nevertheless, the qualitative improvements in Soviet strength had to be recognised as challenging the viability of UK defences against air attack. While the Air Ministry’s own figures estimated that between 50 and 70 per cent of a Soviet manned bomber attack would reach their targets, the Radar Research Establishment considered the probable kill ratio with either fighters or the planned missile defences to be very much lower.113 Despite the intense pressure to find substantial savings in the defence budget, by the end of 1957 the Air Ministry contrived to hold the line against the most severe fighter cuts. Chancellor of Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft was unimpressed: ‘we need good aeroplanes and we have got them; but in such circumstances we should not demand the best at whatever the cost’.114 When the final Sandys proposals were presented to Macmillan, to the Chancellor and to the Foreign Secretary, they sensibly concluded that the complete abolition of fighter defence would be ‘political dynamite’.115 The RAF had to accept, though, a reduction in the numbers of aircraft in service, together with cancellation of some other types and of a large number of air-to-air missiles, along with reductions in flying training and in the consumption of aviation fuel, spares and ammunition. Realistically, in the light of those cuts, warned Boyle, ‘we could not disguise this as an Air Defence System of any kind’.116 Boyle’s despairing dismissal was echoed on the other side of the Atlantic. The possibility of a negative response by allies – in particular the United States – had been a factor in these internal arguments. The American reaction was indeed wholly negative. In September 1958 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff made their own estimate of the near-term overall military capabilities of the UK, concluding that ‘the British were reducing their forces to the point where they could no longer be considered a major reliance in dealing with problems around the world’. The assessment of British capability was ‘so bad’ that Defense Secretary McElroy declined to circulate it, limiting copies to the Secretary of State and the President.117 The Joint Chiefs judged the implementation of the Sandys policies to have resulted in ‘a significant decrease in the current overall military capa-

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bilities of the United Kingdom’. The modernisation of Fighter Command was proceeding too slowly, their being ‘still equipped with obsolescent aircraft and until such time as reconversion takes place the combat effectiveness of the Fighter Command is estimated to be almost negligible’. The early warning and ground control interceptor system was only semi-operational and had ‘severe limitations in its effectiveness at low altitudes’. In sum, ‘the anti-aircraft defences of the United Kingdom are outmoded for modern warfare and could provide little or no real defence against Bloc air attack’.118 Twelve years after the first negative assessment of Britain’s air defence capability the vulnerability of this island, and of the USAF forces deployed there, remained little changed.

Notes 1 Chiefs of Staff Committee, 2 December 1946, The Future Scale of Air Attack upon the United Kingdom: Report by the Joint Planning Staff, UKNA, CAB 79/54/5. 2 Draft memorandum from the Chiefs of Staff to the Home Defence Committee, 2 December 1946, UKNA, CAB 79/54/5, para. 3. 3 Draft memorandum from the Chiefs of Staff to the Home Defence Committee, 2 December 1946, UKNA, CAB 79/54/5, para. 19. 4 Draft memorandum from the Chiefs of Staff to the Home Defence Committee, 2 December 1946, UKNA, CAB 79/54/5, para. 28. 5 Capt. R.D. Coleridge, BJSM, to Admiral Glover, 15 March 1949, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 744. 6 Johnson to Vandenberg, 2 October 1950, Table 2, ‘Operations’, Johnson diary. 7 Johnson to Vandenberg, 2 October 1950, Johnson diary. 8 Johnson diary, 27 June 1950. 9 M.S. Goodman, The official history of the Joint Intelligence Committee: Volume I: From the approach of the Second World War to the Suez crisis, London, Routledge, 2014, pp. 257–264. 10 Arthur Henderson (Air Minister) to Attlee, 22 February 1949, UKNA, PREM 8/926. 11 Emmanuel Shinwell (Secretary of State for War) to Attlee, 31 January 1949, UKNA, PREM 8/926. 12 Johnson to Vandenberg, 2 October 1950, Table 2, ‘Operations’, Johnson diary. 13 Johnson diary, 15 November 1950. 14 Memorandum for the Record, 7 March 1951, Johnson diary. 15 LeMay to Vandenberg, 25 April 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 197. 16 Staff Study, Air Defense Forces for the United Kingdom, not dated (April 1951?), NARA, RG 341, Box 746.

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17 Unknown author to Secretary of State, 17 August 1951, NARA, RG 341, Box 744. 18 McConnell to LeMay, 12 September 1952, NARA, RG 341, Box 746. 19 Twining to LeMay, 21 November 1952, NARA, RG 341, Box 746. 20 Vandenberg to LeMay, 9 August 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 21 Defense of SAC Strike Capability in the United Kingdom, Note to Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations, 3 October 1952, NARA, RG 341, Box 746. 22 Estimate of the Air Defence Capability of the Royal Air Force in United Kingdom, Report by Maj.-Gen. H.B. Thatcher, Deputy Director of Plans, USAF, 20 March 1953, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 745. 23 Twining to Landon, 22 May 1953, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 746. 24 Griswold to Landon, 18 June 1953, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 746. 25 Correspondence with ACM Dickson, Provision of Early Warning Against Low Flying Aircraft, February–March, 1953, Loc, LeMay papers, Box 60. 26 Griswold to Landon, 2 March 1955, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942– 54, Box 746. 27 McConnell to LeMay, 5 March 1953, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 55. As CAS, Dickson sought to augment the Neptunes with a squadron of the radar-carrying AD4W Skyraider, a proposal that had little support among his RAF and USAF colleagues. 28 Vandenberg to LeMay, 9 August 1950, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 86. 29 Col. Don Flickinger to Maj.-Gen. Old, passed to LeMay, 15 August 1950, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 57 (Old). 30 Memorandum for the Record by Brig.-Gen. McConnell, 12 December 1950, Johnson diary. 31 Tunner to Twining, 8 January 1955, LoC, Twining papers, Box 75. 32 Note to Secretary of State. 17 August 1951, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 744. 33 Chiefs of Staff Committee, confidential annex to meeting held on 8 September 1949, UKNA, CAB 4. 34 Lord Addison (Lord Privy Seal) to Attlee, 19 January 1949, UKNA, PREM 8/926. 35 Air Ministry, State of the RAF, January 1949, UKNA, PREM 8/926. 36 Johnson to Vandenberg, 2 October 1950, Table 2, ‘Operations’, Johnson diary. 37 Johnson to Vandenberg, 2 October 1950, Johnson diary. 38 McConnell to LeMay, 12 September 1952, NARA, RG 341, Box 746. 39 ‘Brief of Emergency Short-Range Emergency War Plan’ (HALFMOON), 6May 1948, Para. 15 (c). A 1947 assessment by the Joint Intelligence Staff had put the survivability of the UK under Soviet air assault at 45 days; see Ross, US war plans, 53. 40 LeMay to Norstad, 15 December 1948, LoC, LeMay papers.

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41 Report by Dr Robert Stearnes evaluating effort of the USAF in the Korean War, cover letter to LeMay, 24 January 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 197. 42 Maj.-Gen. Anderson, Director, Plans and Operations, to LeMay, 27 March 1950, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 744; Note on fighter defence in support of SAC operations from the UK, 27 March 1950, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 195. 43 Organisation: Air Bases and Air Units: Fighter Interceptor Wing, Historical Division, Office of Information, Headquarters 3rd Air Force, September 1951. 44 Memorandum for the Record by Maj.-Gen. Johnson, 14 November 1950, Johnson diary, p. 149. 45 Minutes of Defence Committee, 18 March 1950, PREM 8/1566. 46 NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 746. 47 September 1949, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans,1942–54, Box 741-A 48 M.J.F. Bowyer, Force for freedom: The USAF in the UK since 1948, Yeovil, Patrick Stephens, 1994, pp. 20–21. 49 McConnell to LeMay, 12 September 1952, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 746. 50 Shinwell to Prime Minister, 19 July 1950, UKNA, FO 800/456. 51 Estimate of the Air Defence Capability of the Royal Air Force in United Kingdom, report by Maj.-Gen. H.B. Thatcher, Deputy Director of Plans, USAF, 20 March 1953, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 745. 52 Jackson, United States Air Force in Britain, pp. 26–28; the judgement is Jackson’s, in his F-86 Sabre: the operational record, Shrewsbury, Airlife Publishing, 1994, p. 60. 53 DO (51) 3rd Meeting, Minute 1, 21 February 1951, UKNA, PREM 8/1566. 54 Airfield requirements: note by CAS, 19 May 1952, UKNA, AIR 75/113. 55 Air Attack Vulnerabilities of SAC-United Kingdom Bases, 7th Air Division Special Intelligence Brief, Strategic Air Command, September 1952, NARA, RG 341, Box 745, drawing in part upon a June 1952 Air Ministry report, RAF Order of Battle and State of Readiness. 56 Jackson, United States Air Force in Britain, pp. 17–18. 57 History of the 81st Fighter Interceptor Wing, 1 October–31 December 1952, quoted in History of the Third Air Force, July–December 1952, p. 85, AFHRA. 58 History of the Third Air Force, July–December 1952, p. 86. 59 Barnes (Air Ministry) to Brittain (Treasury), 8 February 1949, UKNA, T 225/705. 60 ‘RAF Marshals “Shocked”: Canberras “bomb Birmingham in biggest “test” since Battle of Britain’, Sunday Express, 5 October 1952. The Daily Telegraph, 9 October 1952, reflected the official, more positive, line with ‘Air defences improved’. 61 Staff Study, Air Defense Forces for the United Kingdom, not dated (April 1951?), NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 746. 62 Johnson to Norstad, 17 February 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, B-9920, Box 197. 63 Anderson to LeMay, 19 February, 23 February 1951, LoC, LeMay papers, B-9920, Box 197.

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64 Twining to LeMay, 21 November 1952, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 746; H. Leigh-Phippard, Congress and US military aid to Britain, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1995. 65 Estimate of the Air Defence Capability of the Royal Air Force in United Kingdom, report by Maj.-Gen. H.B. Thatcher, Deputy Director of Plans, USAF, 20 March 1953, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 745. 66 Barnes (Air Ministry) to Brittain (Treasury), 8 February 1949, UKNA, T 225/705. 67 ‘Some aspects of high altitude interception’, by Wing Commander H.A.C. Bird-Wilson, not dated, UKNA, AIR 64/167. 68 D. Wood, Project cancelled: the disaster of Britain’s abandoned aircraft projects, London, Tri-Service Press, 1986. 69 Review of Interceptor Fighter Requirements 1955 to 1962, Note by DCAS, 11 June 1955, UKNA, AIR 6/113. 70 11 July 1947, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 747. 71 Cripps to Bevin, 27 September 1946; Bevin to Cripps 30 September 1946; Bevin to Attlee, 1 October 1946, UKNA, FO 800/501. 72 Gen. Kissner to Gens. Weyland and Lindsay, 13 October 1947, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 747. 73 Orange, Tedder, London, Frank Cass, 2004, pp. 322–323. 74 Spaatz to Tedder, 8 January 1948, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 747. 75 Response to questions from the Air Ministry by Lt.-Col. Jack E. Thomas, 21 July 1948, NARA, RG 341, Box 42. 76 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Supply of Arms and Equipment to other Countries: Report by the Joint Planning Staff, 25 March 1948, UKNA, DEFE 6/5. 77 Conversation between the Minister of State and United States Minister: Control of Strategic Exports to Communist-dominated Areas, 7 July 1950, UKNA, FO 800/517. 78 K.P. Werrell, ‘Aces and -86s: the fight for air superiority during the Korean War’, in J. Neufeld and G.M Watson Jnr. (eds.), Coalition air warfare in the Korean War, 1950–1953, Washington, DC, US Air Force History and Museums Program, 2005, pp. 53–68. 79 Security implications of British sales of military equipment, November 1947, NARA, RG 341, Box 747 80 J.A. Engel, Cold war at 30,000 feet: the Anglo-American fight for aviation supremacy, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. 81–124. 81 Report by US Ambassador to London, 11 July 1947, NARA RG 341, Box 747. 82 Col. J.T. Hill, World Survey Branch, USAF to Gen. Lindsay, 10 November 1947 and attachments, NARA, RG 341, Box 747. 83 Lt.-Col. Swan to Brig.-Gen. Cabell, 12 November 1947, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 747. 84 Col. J.T. Hill, World Survey Branch, USAF to Gen. Lindsay, 10 November 1947 and attachments, NARA. RG 341, Box 747. 85 Aviation Week, 9 August 1948, p. 15.

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86 Chief of the Air Staff to CoS Committee, September 1950, UKNA, AIR 75/117. 87 CAS to AMSO, 19 May 1952, UKNA, AIR 75/113. 88 Guy Liddell diary, 1950, UKNA, KV4/472. 89 Prados, The Soviet estimate, pp. 38–40. 90 Re-equipment, Expansion and Formation of Squadrons under Plan ‘K’ – March 1953 to December 1954, 28 October 1953, UKNA, AIR 16/1189. 91 Study of Economies in Fighter Command Airfields – Plan ‘K’, 23 October 1953, UKNA, AIR 16/1189. 92 Re-equipment and Deployment of the Regular Day Fighter Squadrons, 17 December 1952, UKNA, AIR 16/1187. 93 Re-equipment of Wings with Swept Back Wing Aircraft, 31 December 1952, UKNA, AIR 16/1187. 94 US Aid to UK: Plan ‘K’ Assistance to Allow the RAF to Purchase Aircraft and Equipment, September 1955, UKNA, FO 371/116058. 95 Cabinet Minutes, 19 June 1956, UKNA, CAB 195/15. 96 Possible reduction in UK military establishment, dispatch from London to State Department, 14 September 1955, NARA, RG 59, Box 3194. 97 Macmillan to Prime Minister, 10 June 1956, UKNA, PREM 11/1191. 98 Johnson to Timmons (State Department), 11 June 1956, NARA, RG 59, Box 3194. 99 Ambassador to Secretary of State, 29 June 1956, NARA, RG 59, Box 3194. 100 Defence: The Outline of Future Policy, HMSO, Cmnd. 124, 1957, para. 12. 101 Fighter Defence of Britain, 2 December 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 102 Fighter Defence of Britain, 2 December 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 103 CAS to Secretary of State for Air, 2 December 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 104 Ward to Prime Minister, 20 December 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 105 The Air Defence of the United Kingdom, Note by the Air Ministry, 20 September 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 106 Draft minute prepared for discussion with the Minister of Defence, 24 October 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 107 The 406th Fighter Bomber Wing was re-equipped with the F-86 and redesignated 406th Fighter Interceptor Wing in 1953. 108 Withdrawal of 406th Fighter Interceptor Wing from the UK, 18 September 1957, Records of the Secretary of the Air Force, General Correspondence, NARA, RG 340, Box 245. 109 Telegram, US Embassy, London, to Secretary of State, 8 May 1958, NARA, RG 59, Box 3195. 110 Memorandum, Ward (Air Minister) to Sandys (Defence), Air defence of Great Britain, 26 October 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 111 Fighter Defence of Britain, 2 December 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. Author’s emphasis. Sandys did not however advocate that all fighter defence should be dispensed with, although this was one of a number of ‘drastic steps’ which he advised the Prime Minister should be considered. S.J. Ball, ‘Harold Macmillan and the politics of defence: the market for strategic ideas during the Sandys era reconsidered’, Twentieth Century British History, 6 (1), 1962, p. 97. More

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generally, L. Martin, ‘The market for strategic ideas in Britain: the “Sandys era”’, American Political Science Review, 56, 1962, pp. 23–41. 112 Brief for comments on Ministry of Defence paper on Future of Fighter Defence, November 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 113 Air Minister to CAS, 12 November 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 114 Thorneycroft to Prime Minister, 27 December 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 115 CAS to DCAS, 18 November 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 116 CAS to DCAS, 25 November 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/1938. 117 Memorandum by the Counsellor of the Department of State (Reinhardt), 11 September 1958, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960. Western Europe, Volume 7, Part 2, Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1993, pp. 821–822. 118 JCS estimate of the current the near-term overall military capabilities of the United Kingdom, 8 September 1958, NARA, RG 59, Box 3195.

8 Towards atomic partnership

[T]he primary purpose of our friends is no longer benign use but, on the contrary, the production of plutonium for bombs … Once the manufacture of plutonium in quantity is out of our hands, security is also out of our hands and beyond our control forever. AEC Commissioner Lewis L. Strauss, 1948

For the United States, realigning itself to a new strategic posture as the Cold War commenced, Britain was a convenient helpmate, providing not just bases but, in the course of time, an additional strike capability as atomic-capable aircraft came into service. In the carefully nuanced language of the nuclear alliance, US assistance, by 1958, enhanced Britain’s contribution to the joint deterrent, but not the independent British contribution – ‘a point of some political content’ in the words of the UK Air Council.1 For their part, when the US came to provide atomic weapons for carriage by the Royal Air Force, it would be under strict and elaborate conditions. The origin of that arrangement, however, had more to do with attempts to preserve an American monopoly of atomic power than to establish a partnership in deterrence. For the RAF, the US weapons would be a boon – but only until Britain achieved nuclear self-sufficiency. Accepting them meant accepting the conditions that would be attached, and the British government was at no time minded to accept all-encompassing conditions: a nuclear power had to have freedom of action in its own right if it was to be any kind of power at all. A twin-track strategy, combining dependence and independence was a satisfactory, if perhaps over-subtle resolution. To accept US largesse over a longer period of time would not only compromise that freedom, but raise the uncomfortable question of whether, given the crippling expense, it was sensible for Britain to develop its own thermonuclear armoury. But ministers, Air Ministry officials and service chiefs were for the most part adamant that US assistance should not be used as a lever to curtail or terminate British production. On the c­ ontrary,

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they saw the prospect of assistance as enhancing the British effort, as exchanges of technical and scientific information were taking place, at first on a limited basis, later to be greatly expanded after the second amendment of McMahon’s 1946 Atomic Energy Act in 1958.

Britain demands help The relations between the US, Canada and the UK in all atomic matters were first codified in the agreement signed in August 1943 in Quebec. The Quebec agreement, as it become known, committed the parties to the acceleration of the Tube Alloys project, to forbear from using the resulting ‘agency’ against one another, not to use it against third parties without each others’ consent, and not to share information with third parties except by mutual consent. The last two of these would prove problematic in the post-war years, and another source of eventual dispute was the provision that ‘in view of the heavy burden of production’ falling upon the United States, ‘any post-war advantages of an industrial or commercial character’ would be dealt with on terms specified by the President of the United States. Signing for Britain, Churchill disclaimed any interest in these aspects beyond what the President considered appropriate.2 Thus, by this agreement, made under the urgency of war conditions, assisting post-war Britain’s nuclear developments was left to a future US president’s favour. It was put to the test shortly after the end of the war, when Vannevar Bush reviewed the agreement for Secretary of State Byrnes in advance of a meeting between Truman, Attlee and Canadian premier Mackenzie King. Bush advised that while some of the provisions had automatically expired with the end of conflict, others could prove ‘embarrassing’. He argued for renegotiation to replace the agreement with a simple document covering sharing of uranium, with ‘political clauses and the sharing of information to be worked out on a more general international basis’.3 Official-level discussions in support of this meeting produced a draft Memorandum of Intention, declaring the desire of all three parties for ‘full and effective co-operation’. This formulation – reproducing that in the Quebec agreement – turned out to be dangerously ambiguous. It was clear that the British wanted a form of words to replace the Quebec agreement that was ‘quite informal, more in the nature of a very general statement of broad principle’ so as to maximise their latitude, while Major-General Leslie R. Groves, Manhattan Engineering District director – who was no admirer of the British – wanted specific, binding provisions.4 In the spring of 1946 President Truman and Prime Minister

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Clement Attlee followed up with a telegraphic exchange about atomic energy information. Truman was adamant that the Quebec agreement had expired and that there should be no misunderstanding of what the United States owed to Britain.5 This rebuff put Anglo-American atomic relations on a more precarious basis, and the nature and limits – indeed, the continued applicability – of the spirit of the agreement would be put to the test as Britain’s atomic project got under way. Attlee, in a long, justificatory complaint, rehearsed what he considered to be the debt that America owed Britain, claiming implausibly that ‘we had the resources and the scientific skill that would have enabled us to embark on the development of the [atomic bomb] project in this country’ had it not been agreed with Roosevelt that resources were best pooled. Crucially, while ‘It is not for me to try to assess what [UK] assistance was worth’ ‘we gave it in the confident belief that the experience and knowledge gained in America would be freely available to us’. Attlee went on to explain that Britain had relied on the terms of the Quebec agreement and the goodwill of the President of the day: ‘we felt that we could rely on the provisions of the agreement to ensure that we would not suffer, that we should be given full access at the highest level to the knowledge of all sections of the project’. He ‘could find no support’ in the record of the November 1945 meetings for the view that ‘there was no obligation to exchange information about to construction of large-scale plants’ and he could not agree with Truman’s arguments.6 Having received no reply from Truman, Attlee returned to the subject again at the end of that year, acknowledging that the passage of the McMahon Act had stalled progress, but insisting that wartime agreements acknowledged that partnership could and should be continued.7 Then, early in 1947, he sought once again to redeem what he considered to be the debt incurred through British participation in the Manhattan project by pressing the United States to provide information for the manufacturing and industrial aspects of atomic energy and enable Britain to construct large-scale atomic energy plants. Advised by the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, the US Joint Chiefs took a highly negative view of the implications of a UK atomic programme for US security, and vigorously opposed it.8 From a United States point of view, a large-scale atomic energy plant in the UK would be within easy range of attack and seizure from the European continent. Its successful development would require technical atomic secrets to be shared, increasing the danger of leakage to other, hostile, nations, not least because British atomic security was regarded as deficient. Moreover, the US interest required access to the maximum amount of fissionable material; none should be spared for British processing.9

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Behind this response lay the American determination, confirmed back in 1945, to preserve a monopoly of atomic information in the face of enthusiastic proposals to internationalise atomic energy.10 Churchill had pressed President Roosevelt to sign at Quebec an agreement to ensure ‘full and effective co-operation’ on nuclear matters, through an officiallevel tripartite Combined Policy Committee (CPC). The Committee would agree the work programme to be carried out, allocate material and plant, and provide – another hostage to post-war relations – for ‘full and effective interchange of information’.11 The CPC survived the successful culmination of the Manhattan project, and persisted into the post-war years. Far from recognising a ‘debt’ to British science, the key US atomic policy-makers decried the British contribution and manoeuvred to keep the importunate British beyond the wall of secrecy. Whatever the intended role of the CPC, the security concerns of the forceful Leslie Groves took precedence. Groves’s view was that the British contribution had not been substantial, a point conceded by some British scientists, who recognised that Groves ‘held the key to immediate post-war co-operation’. Groves had been hostile to the Quebec agreement and to Churchill’s subsequent attempt to cement the basis of post-war collaboration through an informal agreement made with Roosevelt in the garden of the President’s Hyde Park home. Under Groves’s leadership, the British ‘were almost totally cut off from areas dealing with the large-scale construction and operation of plants. In addition, strenuous efforts were made to isolate them from all plutonium work. The result was that after the war, British scientists returned home with only piecemeal knowledge of the atomic bomb project in which they had participated.12 Meanwhile, the revelation to the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in May 1947 of the Quebec agreement’s terms – the mutual veto on the use of the bomb, the sharing of military and industrial information – infuriated congressmen. The hearing ‘erupted in indignation and anger’ recalled Gordon Arneson, and ensured a continuing atmosphere of hostility to British ambitions.13 Having made no progress with Attlee’s initial post-war approach, the British response to the curtailment of cooperation imposed by the expiry of the Quebec deal was to propose a further formal agreement, setting out a basis for cooperation within the strict limits of the McMahon Act. Signed in January 1948, this ‘Modus Vivendi’ addressed those issues of atomic energy concern that were common to the United States, Britain and Canada. The Modus Vivendi was in two parts, the first dealing with raw materials, the second with the exchange of information, although this latter excluded atomic weapons information.14 However,

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while Anglo-American collaboration in the detection of distant nuclear explosions had been used as a political argument for selling the Modus Vivendi to Congress, the spirit of cooperation it purported to express was rendered nugatory by persistent opposition in Congress and beyond, the more intense as the British representatives pushed to extend the boundaries of cooperation. The epicentre of this opposition was Lewis L. Strauss, the hard-line member of the AEC. Strauss appeared to accept the Modus Vivendi, but maintained that the 7 January 1948 agreement was reached in the general atmosphere of understanding that the overseas atomic developments are primarily oriented to industrial purposes, specifically to power production. To that end we agreed to make certain fundamental physical data available … We are now asked for various engineering and technical details not in the nature of fundamental physics, and these enquiries are concurrent with our discovery that the primary purpose of our friends is no longer benign use but, on the contrary, the production of plutonium for bombs. The research information which we are presumably to receive as the quid pro quo is no measure of exchange for the sacrifice of security. Once the manufacture of plutonium in quantity is out of our hands, security is also out of our hands and beyond our control forever.15

Strauss’s fellow Commissioners were incensed by this apocalyptic representation of the problem. Chairman David Lilienthal urged that the UK plan to produce plutonium for military purposes ‘does not change the basis of technical cooperation so far as the Commission itself is concerned’. But, it being ‘conceivable’ (it was in fact an inescapable implication) that Britain’s atomic ambitions might have ‘bearing or relevance upon the situation from the viewpoint of foreign policy and national defense’, the Commission, ‘out of an abundance of caution’, consulted State and Defense through the US members of the Combined Policy Committee, who argued that the UK plans to produce plutonium did not justify the repudiation of the Modus Vivendi or it’s renegotiation. Given that the British had the ability to manufacture plutonium and access to raw materials, ‘refusing to supply information would not prevent them from manufacturing it in quantity’.16 Major-General Kenneth Nichols, who had succeeded Groves at Los Alamos, also objected to the Modus Vivendi with particular vigour. While he considered the agreement to be probably illegal, his chief objection concerned the impossibility of defining areas of collaboration which excluded the military aspect of atomic energy. He foresaw the time when British success in developing the atomic bomb would be followed by congressional questioning whether it had been aided by

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US-supplied information. Given that the only possible answer was in the affirmative, the Modus Vivendi would probably be held illegal by Congress. Whatever their views on the merits of cooperation, this was not a risk that officials and officers were willing to run.17 At the time, Nichols’s objection to the Modus Vivendi was overruled but, before long, American opinion moved in his direction, leading to an eventual breakdown even before the agreement expired.18 Its ambiguities were soon apparent, and were captured in subsequent guidance proposed by US officials to cover all discussions and nip any creeping exchange of weapons information in the bud: While recognising that a distinction between atomic energy matters of military significance and of non-military significance cannot be clearly made, all exchanges shall be governed by the general criterion that information specifically relating to weapons or to the design or operation of present plants for production of weapons materials or weapons parts is not subject for discussion.19

It was not a satisfactory situation. While the flow of technical and scientific information was useful to the UK’s own programme of atomic energy development the veto on exchange of information on atomic weapons would have at some point to be challenged – or circumvented – and that would mean moving beyond the Modus Vivendi to find an entirely different basis for agreement. Moreover, it would expire in any event at the end of 1949, and a return to the pre-existing situation would suit neither nation.

Extending the request Within a few months of the Modus Vivendi being signed, and responding to the insistence of the prime minister, Defence Minister A.V. Alexander set out a new case to James Forrestal, the US defense secretary, asking for collaboration to be extended to include information on atomic weapons: The atomic weapon which the United States already has and the United Kingdom will have in the not too distant future, is likely to be the greatest single factor in deciding the outcome of any future world conflict. It must, therefore, play a vital part in all United States and British strategic thinking, in the framing of defence policy, in the shaping of strategical and tactical plans, in the planning of the war potential, in the design of equipment, in the training of the men who will use it, and in planning the protection of

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those who may have to withstand the weight of its attack from the enemy. If we fail to prevent war and are to make the best use of the weapon in war, it is vital that we should share our knowledge of it and concert our thinking on every aspect of its development … the full and unfettered exchange of information on the military uses of atomic energy is of fundamental importance to both our countries. I realise however that such a policy, however desirable, may be difficult to implement quickly.20

The difficulties with this proposal would have been apparent from a cursory scan of the extensive memorandum he submitted to Secretary Forrestal, which covered the metallurgy and methods of fabrication of plutonium for use in bombs; the design of proximity fuses; arming and safety devices in the aircraft in order to permit carriage of US bombs in British aircraft; conditions of peacetime storage for HE components and data on replacement rates; storage conditions for components at an operational base; methods of inspection and transportation; the assembly of the weapon at an operational base and the methods of training personnel; the general features of future weapons as affecting the longterm design of aircraft; and measures to protect combat personnel from radiation and the extent of contamination expected from air and water weapon bursts.21 The receipt of this wish-list occasioned great surprise in Washington, not least because the dispatch of the UK proposal had crossed with a cable from the embassy, warning London that US opinion was hardening against expanding the exchange of information. This clumsy approach was thus neither welcome nor timely, and the Scientific Attaché at the embassy, Dr F.N. Woodward, had a difficult meeting with Defense Department official William Webster. While his US counterpart stalled, Woodward was obliged to equivocate about UK nuclear aspirations. Mounting a vigorous defence of British security, he protested the suggestion that any information passed to the UK might be in danger of leaking to Moscow. UK security standards, he claimed, were adequate in respect of atomic matters and in some respects better than those of the US. Significantly, though, Webster hinted that US atomic weapons might be provided to the UK in return for an abandonment of their atomic programme.22 Even this kite-flying went far beyond the emerging opinion in the United States defence and atomic establishment. A high-level response to Alexander’s importuning was nevertheless required, and in November 1948 Forrestal, accompanied by General Gruenther, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, visited London to meet him and the UK Chiefs of Staff. There, Tedder pressed the case for future British bombers being equipped to carry US atomic weapons, for which

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technical details would be needed at the aircraft design stage. But while Forrestal was prepared to speculate that the law might permit technical details to be given to the RAF on the ground that this contributed to the security of the United States, American opinion remained hostile to the UK’s ambitions, and to the duplication of effort represented by the British intention to build an atomic pile. Discussions reached stalemate as the UK side indicated that they would insist on independent development of atomic energy for both military and industrial purposes.23 American objections to the construction of atomic energy plants in the UK did not soften.24 In the coming months, though, the British pile and the offer of weapons supply were played off one against the other. As US opinion moved more strongly towards encouraging the UK to forego atomic weapons and rely instead upon the US to provide them in an emergency, Tedder’s continued advocacy of a weapons loan to the RAF was a point of vulnerability, for were the UK to agree to abandon the atomic energy programme and rely on the US for a supply of weapons it could not be sure that any agreement would be binding on the United States in all circumstances. Such an assurance could be terminated or repudiated at any time, and the Chiefs of Staff thought it incompatible with ‘our status as a first-class Power to depend on others for a weapon of this supreme importance’. 25 The British government was prepared to push ahead with plans to build a further pile using Low Separation Diffusion (LSD) technology.26 This was a particular goad to a broad range of congressional opinion. The AEC had had a very difficult time with many congressmen in getting them to agree to extend their own isotope plant at Oak Ridge against demands that additional diffusion plants should be built at other sites in the USA. The AEC had won the argument on the grounds that there would be a great increase in efficiency in extending the existing plant at Oak Ridge. From that premise, Senator McMahon argued that it would not be efficient for there to be an LSD plant in the UK, maintaining that any agreement between the countries should provide for the US to be the sole centre for the production of enriched material, however that material might subsequently be distributed between the two countries.27 The situation was fluid, however. In Washington, the State Department thought the issue so important that it should be discussed in relation to other foreign policy issues in the National Security Council. President Truman appointed a special committee of the NSC, headed by Dean Acheson.28 This was a formidably powerful group, whose members included Secretary Forrestal, Sumner T. Pike and David Lilienthal from the AEC and Admiral Souers from the NSC, and which drew in General

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Dwight D. Eisenhower, together with George Kennan and Gordon Arneson from the State Department, William Webster and Kenneth Nichols from Defense, and Carroll Wilson and Joseph Volpe from the AEC staff. Their report, approved by the President at the end of March 1949, recommended cooperation on all atomic energy matters including extensive cooperation with the UK and Canada, while production plants, energy facilities and stockpiles should be largely located in the United States or Canada. This proposal ran into insuperable difficulties when discussed at a Blair House meeting under the President’s chairmanship in July. The hoped-for consensus on assistance to Britain sought with the congressional leaders present could not be found. Nor could it at a subsequent meeting with the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which turned out to be ‘a failure just short of a disaster’. The temperamental, oppositional Defense Secretary Louis A. Johnson could not be constrained from breaking ranks and playing to the congressional gallery.29 Thereafter, the chastened advocates of nuclear cooperation retired to re-group, while low-profile talks with the British continued on an exploratory basis.30 The fierceness of congressional opposition to nuclear cooperation with the British led to a notable retreat by the administration, who in Acheson’s view had been seen to ‘run for cover’ under questioning. Truman issued a statement simply summarising the history of cooperation, noting that the Modus Vivendi was limited in both scope and duration, and that the exploratory conversations under way about its replacement would not result in commitments without further consultation with Congress.31 These conversations in fact went somewhat beyond where the more cautious figures would have wished. New – albeit tentative – proposals for weapons supply were privately made by American officials in the autumn of 1949, conditional on the UK postponing the building of the third pile. In return, full technical cooperation including design, storage and delivery of atomic weapons was offered, together with possible supply of material and components of improved weapons, while objections to storing atomic weapons in the UK would be withdrawn.32 The Chiefs of Staff considered these proposals to be ‘a very substantial improvement on anything hitherto envisaged’. Under this scheme the UK would have ‘the latest type of bomb now being developed in the United States … This would more than compensate for the abandonment of the project to build the extra pile.’33 While the Chiefs of Staff’s original advice was that a sovereign power could not forego the advantages of developing the atomic bomb, the whole UK project might now be revisited. The planned production programme was throwing a heavy

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strain on the UK’s scientific manpower and financial resources. If an agreement could be reached on the lines proposed by the US, consideration could be given to scaling down the production programme, or even ‘abandoning atom bomb production altogether for the time being and concentrating on atomic research’.34 These were official-level reflections and cut little ice with Attlee’s ministers, who were already irretrievably committed to production of the atomic bomb. In October 1949 Alexander followed up with a trip to Washington for talks with Defense Secretary Johnson, only to find the earlier quid pro quo being pushed. Johnson, with the apparent prior approval of the President, posed two possibilities. The first was meeting the British demand for a comprehensive pooling of resources. This would require amending legislation, and had little chance of acceptance by Congress. The second option would not need amending legislation. Under this scheme weapons production would be confined to the United States, rather than being shared with Britain. This fell far short of British conceptions of joint working; in the event of an emergency Britain would need a stockpile of the weapons at her disposal.35 It also fell far short of where the British thought negotiations were going. Johnson was personally hostile to UK ambitions, and near contemptuous of Britain’s ability to perform in a crisis. State Department officials were appalled by an ‘outburst’ from the Defense Secretary in which he declared that our position on the tripartite talks was quite wrong and that he did not feel he should go along with it. He said that the United Kingdom was finished, there was no sense in trying to bolster it up. .. Even the Canadians, and he said he had talked with the Canadian Foreign Minister just recently, were disturbed with the prospect that we might give atomic secrets to the British. He felt that while we would be glad to use any part of the British Empire that was valuable to us in joint defence plans, as the Empire disintegrated we should write off the United Kingdom and continue cooperation with those parts of the empire that remained useful to us.36

Confronted with such intransigence, from this the most intransigent member of the administration, Acheson and his special assistant Gordon Arneson concluded that unless Johnson was prepared to back any new agreement before Congress, the whole issue might have to be put on ice.

High hopes and low suspicions More encouraging to the British were two meetings the following month between Nichols and Michael Perrin, the civil service head of the UK

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atomic programme, ostensibly arranged to discuss atomic energy intelligence. Nichols foresaw that no full agreement on cooperation and interchange of information would be reached. He instead proposed a separate arrangement for military applications, including full exchange of information on ‘the optimum method of using an atomic bomb, operational procedures, selection of target systems and intelligence’. Such an arrangement, he argued, would be more logical than the Modus Vivendi’s attempt at defining boundaries.37 But Nichols’s real purpose was to stress the strength of congressional opinion against the proposed diffusion plant.38 The third pile was the sticking point for the powerful congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), which had already blocked the proposals put forward at the Blair House meeting. There was wide opposition to atomic partnership with Britain in Congress as well as within the administration; moreover, the Joint Committee was led at that point by its Republican chairman, Iowa Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper. Hickenlooper was implacably opposed to the State Department’s and Atomic Energy Commission’s urging of full partnership on atomic matters with the British. Led by Hickenlooper, the JCAE warned the AEC that ‘there is no present authority [for the executive] to exchange weapons information with the United Kingdom’.39 Hickenlooper went further in public, telling an American Legion audience that the United States should keep ‘atomic secrets’ from England and Canada ‘as long as we can’.40 Much of the American press shared Hickenlooper’s concerns, playing on fears of espionage and the latent – and sometimes manifest – distrust of the British and their Labour government. In a national opinion survey carried out in September 1949, 72 per cent of those polled thought the United States should not ‘share our atomic energy secrets with England’ while 81 per cent opposed the deployment of atomic bombs to England.41 It was in the face of this discouragingly hostile climate that the British renewed their bid for integration of weapons production when the next round of negotiations began in November 1949.42 By now the discussions were greatly complicated by the news that the Soviet Union had successfully tested an atomic device in August. The effect in America was a heightened sense of insecurity, popular and official. This atmosphere was not conducive to joint working with any other power. The paradoxical effect in the UK, however, was to encourage a view that a new overture to the Americans would be timely: Not knowing exactly what the significance was of this explosion we assumed that the combined resources of the Americans, Canadians and ourselves still gave us a substantial advantage over the Russians. We

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t­herefore decided to exploit this advantage to the full by pooling our resources and [those of] the Americans under a policy of full integration.43

The prospects of such an agreement were not strong, and the Chiefs of Staff insisted on retaining the right ‘to undertake all the essential processes in the construction of atomic weapons in case … agreement breaks down’.44 Nevertheless, a series of meetings between a team of British officials led by Lieutenant-General Sir Gerald Templer and the US delegation, chaired by General Burns of the Secretary of Defense’s office, did reach agreement on the need for ‘full and frank interchange to the greatest practicable degree of all classified military information and intelligence’, although atomic intelligence was a notable exclusion.45 These highly restricted discussions were more significant to British ears than to those on the other side of the Atlantic. There, opinion was already hardening further. AEC Commissioner Strauss persuaded his colleagues to resist parallel US/UK weapons programmes, their being ‘neither as economical nor as effective as a joint programme’.46 Such reservations about Anglo-American nuclear cooperation in late 1949 turned into outright opposition in the New Year. In January 1950 the revelation that leading German/British nuclear physicist and Manhattan project member Klaus Fuchs had for some years been a Soviet agent, passing important scientific material to his handlers, reverberated through Washington. Fuchs’s recruitment to the Manhattan project in 1943 had given him access to a wide area of the most vital weapons information.47 Fuchs had returned to the UK in 1946 to become head of theoretical physics at the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, but confessed to having passed atomic information to the Soviet Union during and after the war before being arrested and charged on 3 February 1950.48 An immediate and potent response to the Fuchs revelations in the United States came from Strauss, who proposed, without success, that cooperation with Britain on atomic matters, which he saw as carrying the potential for future threats to the security of the United States, should be suspended forthwith.49 This was his consistent, indeed insistent, opinion. In the run up to the 1948 presidential election, he had used the knowledge he gained as an AEC Commissioner to lobby Republican candidate Dewey about the dangers of sharing information with the UK. After Dewey’s defeat, he pressed his concerns upon President Truman.50 But even without Strauss’s strident advocacy, the Fuchs affair ‘caused such a violent reaction’ that ‘the talks on atomic co-operation came to an immediate halt’.51 From his Washington vantage point as head of the BJSM, Air Chief Marshal Sir William Elliot warned that

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The Fuchs case … is certain to produce strong reactions which, indeed, are already reaching us from America … Whilst it is still too early to say what the effect of this case will be, it can, nevertheless, be assumed that the two main objects of our [recent] conversations with the Americans – ­complete interchange of information and an earlier stockpile of bombs in this country, will now be more difficult to obtain.52

Events unfolded so as to confirm that forecast. In March that year, Prime Minister Attlee appointed former Marxist writer John Strachey as Secretary of State for War.53 This provided a new pretext for Strauss’s campaign to isolate the British from atomic information: It is not conceivable that we would clear an American citizen to access to classified information if he had a similar record … under present conditions, we are continuing to pass classified information under the technical co-operation program … Regardless of how great the damage already done by the treachery of Fuchs, it is prudent not to continue to place classified data in danger of compromise … I therefore recommend that, pending a review of the situation caused by recent events, technical co-operation be temporarily suspended.

Other Commissioners argued that the AEC could not unilaterally renounce cooperation as this was a matter for the Combined Policy Committee. Abandonment would also be costly, as the US received uranium ore under the still-operational Modus Vivendi. Positive proof of danger would be needed to suspend the programme, so the Commission agreed to continue, with Strauss in a minority of one.54 Nevertheless, the political weather had changed for the worse, and seemingly irretrievably. In the spring of 1950 a State Department paper on ‘essential elements of US-UK relations’ was given rough treatment by the Joint Chiefs; the UK’s role as ‘our principal partner in strategic planning’ was demoted to ‘an important partner’, while a call for ‘a continuance and expansion of the practice of intimate discussion, consultation and collaboration’ as exemplified by the joint military planning resulting from the September 1949 AEC talks was replaced with a brief statement simply favouring ‘continuance of close military collaboration with the United Kingdom wherever appropriate’.55 In May, Dean Acheson, invited to an informal meeting with Foreign Secretary Bevin at his official apartment, found himself ambushed by the British and Canadian prime ministers and various senior officials urgently seeking a revival of the talks that had been interrupted by the Fuchs affair. Acheson lamented that the attempt to reach agreement had foundered but doubted it could be raised again: ‘It was a casualty of the

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Cold War.’56 The Fuchs affair, and the contrived storm over Strachey, could be counted on to pass over, but not before the British governments – that of Attlee and his successor, Churchill – had been induced to adopt far more rigorous security standards, most especially in atomic matters.57 By the autumn, the situation had changed again under the impetus of the Korean conflict, and the American members of the Combined Policy Committee rehearsed a new effort to secure British agreement to forego their own atomic bomb. The proposal was more specific than anything hitherto, and included transferring the custody and use of some US weapons to the UK. When Gordon Arneson, Acheson’s special assistant for atomic energy, met Tim Marten, a First Secretary at the British embassy in Washington, he revealed the extent of what was on offer, which went far beyond anything previously discussed: ‘The weapons transferred to the UK would be the best and most up to date weapons and they would become the absolute property of the UK.’ The proviso, Marten reported, was that ‘before they transferred the weapons to us in this way the Americans would however wish to be assured that they would be used as part of a joint strategic effort in war’. The US needed a guarantee that ‘we would use the weapons they had transferred to us (in conformity of course with agreed war plans) and would not decline to use them either for fear of retaliation or for some other reason’. In return, Britain would pass most or all UK-produced plutonium to the US, and not produce nuclear weapons. 58 When the US proposals were presented to the CPC, Attlee was advised to ‘welcome the new spirit which appears to be abroad in Washington and the opportunity of breaking the deadlock in the discussions which has lasted since January’. The tide was moving, it seemed, in favour of the UK, and ‘apart from the raw material aspect, the outline of the American proposals seems as favourable to us as we could hope’. American fears that Britain might hesitate to use the weapons as a way of averting a Soviet strike had to be acknowledged. But such was the extent of the transatlantic gulf that the UK Chiefs of Staff took the contrary view that ‘if these weapons are our property, it is up to us to decide when we should use them … the UK might wish to use them in advance of American involvement in a war’.59 This assertion would have been a red rag to Congress and, if communicated, the offer would have been abruptly withdrawn. But in reality, little had changed in the two sides’ bargaining positions. Because the British concern was to ensure that the UK could still produce the weapons should the Americans terminate any agreement, work would continue, against American urging, both on the development of a bomb and the selection of a test site.

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Cooperation resumed While the British insistence on atomic autonomy carried across from government to government, Labour’s defeat in the 1951 general election opened the door to a closer and more trusting relationship with Washington. When Eisenhower succeeded Truman in 1952, a new warmth and willingness infused Anglo-American relations. The British Chiefs of Staff seized the opportunity to press their own views of the strategic choices to be faced by the allies, Jack Slessor being ever-ready to both espouse and discern a policy convergence.60 The way was now open for Churchill to raise a number of British interests when he met Eisenhower in Bermuda in December 1953. The first concerned intelligence about weapon effects. Only basic information about the effects of the atomic bomb was available at this stage to the British planners, while the unparalleled effects of thermonuclear explosions were almost completely unknown. Assessing likely effects was particularly difficult for UK scientists, who lacked access to US studies. Strauss, who had returned to the Atomic Energy Commission as chairman, was present at this meeting and responsible for making the record. When Churchill pressed the matter of weapons-effects data, Strauss, obstructive as usual on matters of Anglo-American cooperation, retorted that while intel­ ligence findings were exchanged with the British, their evaluation would not be, on the grounds that the evaluation was extrapolated from data on the existing US weapons and passing it over would violate the statutory prohibition of the 1946 McMahon Act.61 The representations made by British officials reflected the sense of urgency stimulated by the supposed first Soviet thermonuclear test. A Soviet nuclear attack on the UK had been accepted as a near-certain immediate consequence of an outbreak of hostilities between NATO and the Warsaw Pact forces. There was an urgent need, therefore, ‘to discuss freely with the US the significance to be attached to the Russian atomic explosions’, as to defer such discussion ‘may well be dangerous both to the Americans and ourselves’.62 Strauss visited the UK the following year. With limited amendment of the Atomic Energy Act made at Eisenhower’s behest, the opportunity now arose to bargain information, releasing to the Americans information on Britain’s own kiloton bomb and the Aldermaston processes relating to the plutonium weapon core. ‘It would seem to be to our advantage’, wrote Sir Frederick Brundrett, chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, ‘that every possible improvement be made to US weapons. If this principle is accepted then if we have ideas new to the United States it is to our common advantage that the US should be told about these ideas.’ At the same time, the

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ability of the UK to bargain with the US for exchange of information on weapon design might be weakened ‘if we gave them an insight into our ideas without an immediate return. On the other hand if we show that our ideas are powerful and follow different lines from theirs, the US may well consider on balance that the case for collaboration has been strengthened.’63 There was a difficult line to tread, for Strauss would have to accept that information was passed to him on a personal basis, lest Britain were subsequently to be accused of laxity in handling highly classified information about atomic matters. The situation had been eased, and fuller cooperation made possible, by the partial amendment of the McMahon Act in 1954. In its original form, the McMahon Act prohibited the transmission of nuclear information to other states. However, Strauss persuaded members of the JCAE that some release of information – on size, weight and shape, method of attachment and release, and ballistic properties – was both necessary and permissible under the terms of the Act.64 British information needs were more extensive than this. In the summer of 1953 the Chiefs of Staff had asked Brundrett to advise on how their collation and expression might best be approached. A working party on the operational use of atomic weapons existed, and an extensive list of what needed to be known was prepared. The Chiefs of Staff glumly acknowledged that the list served only to catalogue the paucity of information the British had to offer in exchange.65 By the end of the following year, this wish-list had been submitted. Of breathtaking scope, it ranged from the evaluation of enemy capabilities and the effects of nuclear weapons, to aims and methods of delivering nuclear weapons, and the instrumentation aspects of both attack and defence. All aspects of training ‘in the means of using US weapons in UK aircraft and vice versa’ were included as was a catch-all demand for ‘information in all fields in which atomic aspects (although indirect and incidental) are relevant’.66 There was little expectation that the demands would be met. Negotiations on both civil and military cooperation were concluded in June 1955 under the amended Act.67 Three bilateral agreements on cooperation on the civil uses of atomic energy were concluded, each agreement providing for mutual cooperation between the governments.68 Cooperation still proved difficult to achieve in practice.69 The British government continued to press for full repeal of the McMahon Act, so as to remove the last obstacles to full nuclear sharing. This was a major priority for Harold Macmillan when he acceded to the premiership in 1957. With an urgent need to rebuild Anglo-American relations in the aftermath of Suez, he sent his newly appointed Defence Minister,

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Duncan Sandys, to meet US Defense Secretary Charles Wilson in late January 1957, when they discussed adapting RAF bombers to carry US nuclear weapons, and the storage of US nuclear bombs on British territory. Macmillan’s own meeting with Eisenhower in March in Bermuda followed, after which Eisenhower directed Strauss to provide the UK with the information required for the carriage of US weapons by the RAF, although the implementation of this too, proved to be a matter of continuing dispute in Washington. The Soviet Sputnik launch on 4 October 1957 had a major impact on US insecurities and Macmillan took advantage of the moment. He received a visit from AEC chairman Strauss, and sent through him a message to Eisenhower, pressing for a joint stand against the Soviet threat and for getting rid of the ‘quite absurd’ McMahon Act.70 He found Strauss sympathetic and apparently congenial, and when the AEC chairman sent details of proposed amendments to the chairman of the JCAE in the New Year, 11 days of hearings followed.71 When that same October the two leaders met in Washington, Macmillan found to his surprise, embedded in the wordy Declaration of Common Purpose, the promise of an end to the McMahon Act: ‘the great prize!’, he exclaimed. ‘There was a lot of chaff between us all’, recalled Macmillan, his grasp of political realities slipping momentarily, ‘about the “declaration of interdependence” as the title. The Pres[ident] rather liked the idea – but on reflection we all thought it a little too dramatic.’ 72 During the course of the Washington meeting, a new era of nuclear cooperation was inaugurated, with the setting up of joint working parties on weapon systems which would lead in time to even closer relationships – and some upsets, too. Eisenhower had given the reform of the McMahon Act his strong public support, signing the amendments into law on 2 July 1958. The following day, the two governments signed the Agreement for Cooperation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes, providing for wide cooperation and exchange of information, including the sharing of US nuclear weapons with the RAF. Under it, the number of US nuclear weapons held for all three British armed forces would rise to a peak of nearly 400 in the mid to late 1970s.73 Weapon supply remained a sensitive issue for both parties, and the road to nuclear collaboration remained long, arduous and strewn with practical, as well as political, difficulties.

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Notes   1 Air Council, conclusions of meeting, 6 (58), 6 March 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781.   2 Articles of Agreement Governing Collaboration between the Authorities of the U.S.A. and the U.K. in the Matter of Tube Alloys, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943, Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, 1970.   3 Bush to Byrnes, 5 November 1945, Records of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman’s file, 1949–53, NARA, RG 218, Box 7.   4 Interim Committee Log Memorandum for the Record, 17 October through to 16 November 1945, accessed at www.whistlestop.org   5 Telegram, Truman to Attlee, 23 April 1946, UKNA, FO 800/438.   6 Telegram, Attlee to Truman, 6 June 1946, UKNA, FO 800/438.   7 Attlee for Truman, via Ambassador, 13 December 1946, UKNA, FO 800/438.   8 Schnabel, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Volume I, pp. 135–137.   9 Memoranda, 26–29 February 1947, NARA, RG 341, Box 747. 10 Schnabel, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Volume I, pp. 116–118. 11 United States Department of State, The Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States, Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1970. 12 S.H. Paul, Nuclear rivals: Anglo-American atomic relations 1941–1952, Columbus, OH, Ohio State University Press, 2000, pp. 60–61. Groves’s per­ sonal office files are replete with examples of his resistance to collaboration with the British. 13 R. Gordon Arneson, 21 June 1989, Oral History Interview by Niel M. Johnson, Truman Presidential Library. 14 M. Gowing, Independence and deterrence: Britain and atomic energy, 1945– 1952: Volume I. Policy Making, London: Macmillan, 1974, pp. 241–272. 15 S.M. Neuse, David E. Lilienthal: the journey of an American liberal, Knoxville, TN, University of Tennessee Press, 1996, p. 206 (original emphasis). 16 Atomic Energy Commission, Records of the Office of the Chairman, 7 January 1948, NARA, RG 326, Box 4. 17 M.W. Perrin note of conversation with General Nichols, 1 November 1949, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 18 Paul, Nuclear rivals, pp. 109–142. 19 Memorandum of conversation with Dr F.N. Woodward, Director of UK Scientific Mission and Scientific Director Attaché at the British Embassy, 16 September 1948, General Records of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, General Records Relating to Atomic Energy Matters, 1948–62, NARA, Box 59. 20 Alexander to Attlee, 20 August 1948, UKNA, PREM 8/1100. 21 Memorandum for discussion with US Secretary for Defense, 20 August 1948, UKNA, PREM 8/1100.

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22 Memorandum of conversation with Dr F.N. Woodward, Director of UK Scientific Mission and Scientific Director Attaché at the British Embassy, 16 September 1948, General Records of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, General Records Relating to Atomic Energy Matters, 1948–62, NARA, Box 59. 23 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Minutes of Meeting 13November 1948, UKNA, FO 800/454; Note on the interim report by the official committee to the ministerial committee on the operation of the Modus Vivendi, 26 November 1948, UKNA, PREM 8/1552. 24 H. Godfrey to D.W.S. Hunt, ‘Exchange of information on atomic energy between the United States and the United Kingdom’, 23 August 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1552. 25 Chiefs of Staff Committee – confidential annex 27 January 1949, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 26 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Report by the Chiefs of Staff on Atomic Weapons Production Programme, 29 January 1949, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 27 Reported in M.W. Perrin note of conversation with General Nichols, 1 November 1949, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 28 D. Acheson, Present at the creation: my years in the State Department, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1969, p. 314. 29 Meeting with the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 20 July 1949, Atomic Energy Commission, Records of the Office of the Chairman, NARA, RG 326, Box 4. 30 Acheson, Present at the creation, pp. 314–321. 31 Atomic Energy Commission, office files of David E. Lilienthal, subject files 1946–50, NARA, RG 326, Box 18. 32 Note to Prime Minister on official committee on atomic energy, 28 September 1949, UKNA, PREM 8/1552. 33 Chiefs of Staff meeting, 28 September 1949, UKNA, DEFE 32/1 (original emphasis). 34 Notes of Chiefs of Staff’s meeting 28 September 1949 (secretary’s standard file), UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 35 Record of talks between Mr A.V. Alexander, UK Minister of Defence and Mr Louis Johnson, US Secretary of Defence on October 6th and 7th 1949, UKNA, PREM 8/1100. 36 Atomic Energy Commission, office files of David E. Lilienthal, subject files 1946–50, 12 August 1949, NARA, RG 326, Box 18. 37 M.W. Perrin note of conversation with General Nichols, 1 November 1949, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 38 Note of (second) conversation between Perrin and Nichols, 3 November 1949, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 39 Meeting with the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 20 July 1949, Atomic Energy Commission, Records of the Office of the Chairman, NARA, RG 326, Box 4.

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40 New York Times, 27 August 1949. 41 Public Opinion News Service, 8 September 1949, in General Records of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, General Records Relating to Atomic Energy Matters, 1948–62, NARA, RG 59, Box 58. 42 Memorandum for Chiefs of Staff, 17 November 1949, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. The schedule of proposals is not accessible, having been destroyed in 1966. 43 Chiefs of Staff Committee memorandum from Sir William Elliott, 10 February 1950, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 44 Note on Anglo-US/Canadian cooperation in atomic energy, ? November 1949, UKNA, PREM 8/1552. 45 Policy statement on exchange of classified military information (the ‘Burns Templer agreement’) with cover memorandum from Louis A. Johnson to Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force, 2 February 1950, NARA, CIA papers. 46 Atomic Energy Commission meeting No. 339, 2 December 1949, USAEC Records, US Department of Energy, Germantown, MD. 47 AEC press release, 3 February 1950, cited in R. Pfau, No sacrifice too great: the life of Lewis L. Strauss, Charlottesville, VA, University Press of Virginia, 1984, p. 124. 48 M.S. Goodman, ‘Who is trying to keep what secret from whom and why? MI5-FBI relations and the Klaus Fuchs case’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 7 (3), 2005, pp. 124–146. 49 Strauss’s relentless attempts to block the transfer of atomic information, however apparently innocuous, are documented in Hewlett and Duncan, Atomic shield, pp. 81, 109–110, 290–293 and ff., and in Strauss’s own memoirs, Men and decisions, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962, pp. 246–266. 50 Neuse, Lilienthal, p. 206. 51 H. Godfrey to D.W.S Hunt, ‘Exchange of information on atomic energy between the United States and the United Kingdom’, 23 August 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1552. 52 Chiefs of Staff Committee memorandum from Sir William Elliott, 10 February 1950, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 53 K. Young, ‘Cold war insecurities, and the curious case of John Strachey’, Intelligence and National Security, 29 (6), 2014, pp. 901–925. 54 Atomic Energy Commission meeting no. 380, 14 March 1950, USAEC Records, US Department of Energy, Germantown, MD. 55 Secretary of Defense’s Office, admin. secretary correspondence with central section numerical file, September 1947–June 1950, NARA, RG 330, Box 55. 56 Acheson, Present at the creation, p. 321. 57 Under American pressure, positive vetting was finally agreed by Attlee’s cabinet in October 1951, but remained to be introduced by the Churchill government in January 1952. P. Hennessy and G. Brownfeld, ‘Britain’s cold war security purge: the origins of positive vetting’, Historical Journal, 25 (4), 1982, pp. 965–974.

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58 Telegram from BJSM to Cabinet Office, 8 September 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1552, original emphasis. 59 Makins to Attlee, 18 September 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1552. 60 A.M. Johnston, ‘Mr Slessor goes to Washington’, Diplomatic History, 22 (3), 1998, pp. 361–398. 61 Notes prepared by Admiral Strauss, Bermuda, 5 December 1953, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954. Volume 5, Part 2, Western European Security, Document 343. 62 Ministry of Defence to Foreign Secretary, 19 January 1955, UKNA, DEFE 13/60. 63 Note by Brundrett, 21 September 1954, UKNA, DEFE 13/60. 64 Sir Roger Makins (Ambassador to the US) to Churchill, 23 January 1954, UKNA, DEFE 13/60. 65 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Exchange of Atomic Information between the United Kingdom and the United States: Note by Sir Frederick Brundrett, 11 August 1953; internal draft minute, undated, UKNA, DEFE 13/60. 66 AVM H.V. Satterley (ACAS (Organisation)) to DCAS, 3 November 1954, UKNA, AIR 2/13213. 67 J. Simpson, The independent nuclear state: the United States, Britain and the military atom, 2nd edn, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1986, pp. 114–116. 68 Draft press release on presidential statement, telegram from Washington to Foreign Office, 15 June 1955, UKNA, DEFE 13/60. 69 J. Baylis, ‘The 1958 Anglo-American Mutual Defence Agreement: the search for nuclear interdependence’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 31 (3), 2008, pp. 425–466. T. Botti, The long wait: the forging of the Anglo-American nuclear alliance, 1945–1958, New York, Greenwood Press, 1987. 70 Harold Macmillan Diaries, 9 October 1957, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 71 Hearings Before Subcommittee on Agreements for Cooperation, JCAE, Amending the Atomic Energy Act of 1954: Exchange of Military Information and Material with Allies, 85th Congress, 2nd session, 1958. 72 Macmillan Diaries, 24 October 1957. 73 R.S. Norris, A.S. Barrows and R.W. Fieldhouse, Nuclear weapons databook: Volume V, British, French and Chinese nuclear weapons, Boulder, CO, Westview, Press, 1994, Table 2.8.

9 Borrowing the bomb

if these [American atomic] weapons are our property, it is up to us to decide when we should use them … the UK might wish to use them in advance of American involvement in a war. UK Chiefs of Staff, September 19501

When in December 1953 Churchill met Eisenhower in Bermuda to discuss atomic cooperation, he also explained that the British bomber aircraft were designed and built with no knowledge of the characteristics of US atomic weapons ‘if they might ever be called upon to deliver them’ and pressed for the release of data on weights, dimensions and ballistics.2 In a follow-up letter he went further, and asked for ‘earmarking a certain number of atomic bombs and storing them in England, which could be used by our bombers in case of War’. For this purpose it would be necessary to modify British aircraft to carry US atomic bombs for which ‘we should obtain as soon as possible the technical information necessary to enable us to fit them into our planes’.3 The President, mindful of the constraints of the McMahon Act, agreed to consider whether sufficient detail could be provided to enable RAF aircraft to be adapted for this purpose. His initial willingness, following upon the repeated, albeit tentative, offers to provide atomic weapons to the British under his predecessor, set in motion a lengthy and detailed process of discussion and negotiation. To begin with, USAF leaders had already seen both advantages and drawbacks flowing from such an arrangement. Could sufficient reassurance be provided to ‘conclusively prove to the British that over-all USAF air plans envisioned attacks on the targets which threaten the destruction of the British Isles’, so obviating the need to hand over weapons? The downstream problems of arming the RAF were daunting: once one American A-weapon has been given to the British there will be no foreseeable end to this problem. Additional requests for training facilities, special equipment, decisions on employment, target allocation and future

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weapon allocation will constantly arise, while from a security point of view any combined atomic planning would be open to grave risks.4

These were indeed the issues that would have to be faced within a few years. For the British, the urgency of this matter lay in the slow build-up of the UK’s domestic stockpile. Whereas the Soviet Union was rumoured to have several hundred nuclear bombs, Britain would possess just ten by 1955, and a sluggish production rate was expected to raise this to no more than fourteen by 1956.5 The first five were delivered to RAF Wittering late in 1953, well in advance of their having any aircraft capable of flying them, in order to commence ground training. Not until June 1955 did Wittering receive its first Valiant for air trials.6 By the time the V-bombers came into service, only one in four would have a weapon to carry. While by 1960 the RAF had fourteen V-bomber squadrons, there were sufficient bombs for less than a quarter of the aircraft available, and up to a third and possibly more of the V-bomber force in the early 1960s was wholly dependent on US weapons.7 Without US help, it would be 1961 at the earliest before the RAF had one bomb for each V-bomber. This could hardly be considered the great deterrent by virtue of which Britain hoped to claim a place in a nuclear world. But with American help, the RAF would have sufficient nuclear weapons at least two years before UK production could catch up.8 There was then, a shortfall of weapons for the RAF’s V-force. Equally, the size of that force remained a matter of continuing uncertainty. Although 325 production V-bombers were built in all, there was never any intention that they should all be in service simultaneously, the Valiant being an interim development, to be phased out as the higherperforming Vulcans and Victors came into service. As late as mid-1955, a front-line force of 240 bombers was planned. This number was reduced to 184 in 1956 and to 144 in August 1957.9 In terms of total aircraft inventory numbers, the peak was reached at the end of June 1964 with 159 V-bombers.10 SAC’s numerical strength was of course far in excess of what the RAF could muster. Recognising the gap prompted General Thomas D. White, USAF Vice-Chief of Staff, to make another of the informal service-to-service overtures that characterised the alliance in these years. In May 1954 White approached the BJSM, Washington, with a tentative proposal to offer the RAF as many as 90 of the B-47 fast bombers that were coming off the production line. The offer was unusually generous: the aircraft would not be counted against MDAP allocation but would be additional aid worth around $400 million; the USAF would provide

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crew training in America and logistical support. According to White, the RAF and USAF ‘were playing in the same team and if the RAF was equipped with one or two wings of B-47s it would be a welcome strengthening to the side’.11 The offer was not well received, and was greeted with perplexity in London. There was unfounded suspicion that the offer might be a way of coping with the over-production of B-47s by disposing of the surplus to Britain. Internal Air Ministry discussions emphasised that the B-47s would not come into service ahead of the Valiants (although White had made a provisional offer of immediate supply of B-47s if the RAF could not wait). The B-47 was considered obsolescent, and inferior in performance – speed, ceiling and range – to the RAF’s own Canberras. These were strange judgements, as the B-47 and Canberra had similar top speeds (the American aircraft being slightly faster) and similar ceilings (though the Canberra could go higher). In reality the B-47, as a strategic bomber, had a very much greater radius of operation, used H2S radar navigation equipment and carried 20,000 lb of ordnance against the Canberra’s tactical limited range and 8,000 lb payload. Some of these points were made by Sir Hugh Lloyd, the AOC-in-C Bomber Command, the most relevant office-holder and the only officer of air rank to see advantage in the offer.12 The determining considerations, though, were the diversion of crew training on to the B-47 and the need for 10,000-foot runways. Some of those invited to comment stressed the RAF’s unhappy past experience with the operation of Americansupplied aircraft (notably the B-29, flown as an interim bomber by the RAF as the Washington, but also the P2V5 Neptune and F-86) and the loss of prestige that would result from accepting the offer. Underlying these concerns was a fear of losing independence: If we accepted these aircraft in place of Canberras, would not the US require that they be placed under the control of SACEUR? If so, our freedom to select targets of national importance would be impaired.13

Air Minister Lord de L’Isle and Dudley and Minister of Supply Duncan Sandys advised Churchill against acceptance and in June CAS Dickson thanked USAF Chief of Staff Nathan F. Twining, for the ‘generosity and magnificence of the offer’.14 One issue discussed within the Air Ministry, but not shared with the Americans, was the implications of B-47 loan for nuclear weapons policy. ‘It would be unfortunate’, advised the Director-General (Operations), Air Commodore Hyde, ‘if we had to use our own small stock of atomic weapons, that is, if the B-47 could carry them’.15 At this time, preliminary discussions on the provision of US weapons were already under

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way, although the connection between weapons and aircraft was not made in London. It may, of course, have been made in the Pentagon and at USAF headquarters. Had the RAF been able to accept the offer, overcoming the admittedly formidable hurdles to adopting this difficult aircraft, the provision of US nuclear weapons for British use would have been more immediate, less complicated and with none of the problems involved in modifying British aircraft. Originally a quid pro quo for the restriction of the British nuclear programme, atomic bombs were eventually provided liberally for the Canberras and Valiants, together with extensive training and technical assistance for the conversion of RAF aircraft to carry them. The operational conditions or ‘strings’ – that they could be used only in the European theatre and under the command of SACEUR – were not onerous, and freed up the UK’s own weapons development programme for the independent deterrent. But Project ‘E’, as the scheme became known, had a lengthy genesis, and progress was extremely slow. What eventually spurred matters on was the move towards agreeing a joint strike plan under which weapons supplied by the US would be targeted as directed by their commanders CINCSAC or SACEUR. As will be seen in the next chapter, while the British saw targeting and weapons supply as quite separate issues, their American counterparts viewed them as closely linked, with control over targets the natural corollary of weapon supply.

An American bomb for Britain? Eisenhower’s undertaking that Britain would, if possible, be provided with information to enable RAF aircraft to carry US weapons produced little early action. Not until preparations were being made for Churchill’s second visit in 1954 were the US authorities galvanised into action. Realising that there was no action to report at the upcoming meeting of the two leaders, Major-General Howard G. Bunker, former commander at Kirtland, and now the President’s Assistant for Atomic Energy, opened urgent discussions with the BJSM Washington. A detailed and extensive plan was quickly put together for approval by General Twining, the USAF Chief of Staff, under the terms of which the USAF would make available equipment and technical data to permit the modification of RAF aircraft to carry and deliver US atomic weapons. On paper, this was a sweeping commitment, covering the entire range of mechanical and electro-mechanical devices associated with the carriage of these hugely complex weapons – in effect, a total re-engineering

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kit. Drawings and samples of these components would be supplied to enable the design and production of ‘Chinese copies’ to be undertaken by the British. US personnel would be deployed to assist with the redesign of RAF aircraft and – startlingly – to provide technical assistance to the design of new aircraft, as well as to train and to provide guidance on operational equipment. Finally, the USAF would establish facilities to store, assemble and assist in loading US bombs on the grounds that these functions not only involved restricted information but were ‘too complex to permit hasty wartime indoctrination’.16 This remarkable bundle of assistance was offered in anticipation of the expected amendment of the Atomic Energy Act, which would broaden the scope of what could be released by the Americans to their British allies. A delighted BJSM signal reported that the USAF was ‘genuinely anxious to give us as much as possible as soon as possible’.17 High hopes were soon dashed, this time by the appointment of Brigadier-General Richard T. Coiner as Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations, for Atomic Energy at USAF headquarters. Richard Coiner, who had a long history of top-level involvement in nuclear matters at the AEC, at Sandia and at the Pentagon, rejected a lengthy list of information requirements submitted by the Air Ministry as incapable of being met under existing law.18 Not just the legislative constraints, but established procedures worked against the British. The deal offered by General Twining had been proposed under an existing provision, the Air Standardisation Committee procedure. This turned out to be far too slow and cumbersome, and uncertain of outcome. In Washington, Air Vice-Marshal Richard Atcherley, head of the RAF staff at BJSM, had further discussions with General White and the two agreed instead on single-point contacts at Colonel/Group Captain level as the best way for passing information, presumably limiting the flow to matters not ruled out by Coiner. Through this arrangement, a full range of technical characteristics of British aircraft would be provided to the US, before a US team arrived to study the problem at first hand. A Colonel and two Majors from the Pentagon and the Special Weapons Project (or AFSWP) arrived in London incognito, wearing plain clothes, meeting discreetly in places remote from the Air Ministry ‘where the movements of the team will be less conspicuous’, and given technical briefings at their quiet Kensington hotel. The number of British officers and officials aware of their visit was kept to a minimum, and the US Air Attaché and embassy staff were not told about the visit. On the British side, the security requirements laid down by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) were bypassed in the interests of speed and in order to keep the circle of people aware of the

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visit to a bare minimum, although casual references in circulated interdepartmental minutes rather gave the lie to these elaborate subterfuges.19 The American officers spent two weeks studying RAF aircraft to assess just what weapons they could carry and what modifications to them would be necessary. But capability, once achieved, did not confer possession. Reporting to Churchill, the Secretary of State for Air, Lord deLisle and Dudley, reflected that There is thus a prospect that, in war, we may be able to obtain some nuclear bombs from the United States stockpile in this country. But I do not think we can count upon the Americans changing their present attitude so as to allow us to acquire physical possession of any of their bombs in peace.

Overall, though, the United States was ‘doing something to implement the understanding you reached with the President’.20 Was that something enough? It fell to Air Chief Marshal Sir William Dickson, appointed Chief of the Air Staff in 1955, to firm up details of Project ‘E’ with the Americans. Of the Chiefs of the Air Staff in this period, Dickson was, after Tedder, the most sympathetic to cooperation with the USAF and had already prepared the ground prior to his appointment with a visit to SAC headquarters at Offutt AFB.21 Once in post as CAS he held further informal meetings with his USAF counterpart, General Twining.22 A major factor limiting Dickson’s discussions with the Americans was the – at that time – severely limited capability of Bomber Command. Full service strength for the V-force was some way off, and there would be a lengthy interval before an arsenal of British atomic bombs was built up for them. By November 1955 the basics of an agreement had been reached, although Dickson’s successors in the Air Staff were noticeably less warm to the arrangement. And considerable security, technical and political problems had to be overcome. Not the least of these was the need to put flesh on the bones of a broad statement of intent which was by no means evidently deliverable. Officials struggled to work out details of a scheme ‘as far as this can be done within the existing laws of the two countries’.23 In December 1956 the US Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs approved terms of reference for the provision of the weapons in the event of general war. With approval of the British government, the Joint Chiefs authorised SACEUR, General Lauris Norstad, to collaborate with the RAF to put the necessary arrangements in place. These provisions were incorporated in a letter from General Twining which was approved the following year by Minister of Defence Duncan Sandys and US Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson, who nonetheless

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entered the last-minute caveat that custody of the weapons could only be transferred to the RAF by presidential action ‘in strict accordance with his constitutional and legislative authority’.24 For the Air Ministry, the negotiations on Project ‘E’ could be claimed within Whitehall as support for the UK deterrent, for any Treasury attack on the planned numbers for that force could now be presented as inconsistent with the allied plans.25 As one official advised, the need to press ahead with converting the Valiants to carry US weapons under Project ‘E’ was essential not only from the operational point of view but also because of alliance considerations.26 This much had been foreseen when the SAC approach was first made, and the prospect of an agreement provided powerful arguments at our disposal that … the American willingness to play ball with us is largely dependent on the efforts we have made and are making to build up a nuclear strike potential of our own … I think it is important that the Prime Minister should be aware of the arrangements … as soon as possible. I understand that he has lately been showing an interest in the proposed size of the V bomber force, and he should therefore see these papers as soon as possible before any hasty decisions are taken on reducing its size and cancelling production orders.27

In similar vein, Sandys warned Macmillan in May 1957 that ‘failure to be specific about the strength of our bomber force … would create practical difficulties in our discussions with the Americans about the coordination of the bombing plans which have been agreed in principle at Bermuda’.28 The prospect of future joint operations could be used to protect V-bomber production from the depredations of the Treasury and the sniping of rival service chiefs. The Treasury, never happy with the reasoning behind the size of the V-force demanded by the RAF, were sceptical about the scheme to supply US weapons. In the first place, no attempt had been made to secure US aid to cover the cost of converting the aircraft. A Treasury official warned that the proposed dollar bill would be very difficult for us to swallow, and I thought that, if it were proceeded with at all, we should be satisfied that every effort had been made, or was being made, to secure US aid … I would not take any further action on the proposal until I had before me the information which they were trying urgently to secure about the production situation in the U.S.A.29

It was not just the Treasury who were concerned about the cost of Project ‘E’. Whereas the Americans were supplying the bombs and the

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personnel to manage them, the necessary works – including storage areas – were now to fall to the British depite the original, more generous, offer. Nevertheless, the Air Council was sensibly advised that they could not go back on Project ‘E’ and should make preparations to receive US weapons.30 At the end of the day there were savings on the expenditure that the UK would have incurred had these arrangements not been made, for Project ‘E’ represented ‘a very substantial addition to the deterrent at very little cost’.31 This was, of course, the clinching argument. Throughout these discussions, an atmosphere of secrecy permeated Whitehall, where an Air Ministry official advised that ‘certain aspects of this subject … should be known to as few people as possible’.32 Even in discussion with US officers, the UK’s own weapon stocks were not to be disclosed.33 Yet security and public relations concerns ran counter to one another and, on behalf of the USAF, Brigadier-General Coiner urged a public announcement of this new form of Anglo-US cooperation. The Air Ministry, conceding that the absence of an announcement would fuel speculation, had considered announcing the agreement when it was first reached in November 1955. The announcement – in the form of a planned press leak – duly occurred on 8 June 1956, when the Daily Telegraph ran a piece, the New York Times doing so the same day. The Pentagon routinely denied the story on 9 June.34 Publicly, Project ‘E’ did not exist.

Project ‘E’: the initial phase In the spring of 1957 the Joint Chiefs authorised Major-General Wilson, 3rd Air Force commander, to open detailed discussions with the RAF about the supply of US atomic weapons to Bomber Command.35 As an engineer and former USAAF liaison officer on the Manhattan project, ‘Bim’ Wilson was particularly well placed to coordinate this development. The first British aircraft to receive US nuclear weapons would be the Canberra. Up to four squadrons of Canberras on Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) were assigned US weapons in 1958. In January 1960 they were joined by three Valiant squadrons assigned to SACEUR in the tactical role, and based at Marham in Norfolk on a 15–minute QRA.36 That bald statement of the publicly known facts glosses over the practical problems of implementing the Project ‘E’ agreement. By the end of June 1957, modifications to enable 28 Canberra B(I) Mark 8 aircraft – the night interdictors – to carry nuclear weapons had been completed. A further 50 Canberra B.2 aircraft remained to be modified. As all the interdictors provided with an atomic c­ apability

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under Project ‘E’ were assigned to SACEUR, the other 50, which would contribute towards the termsof the Baghdad Pact, would carry the UK’s own Red Beard bomb. The aircraft were intended to be able to carry either US or UK weapons, but the urgency of achieving a nuclear capability meant that the Project ‘E’ modifications were given priority.37 The modifications were undertaken by aircraft engineering specialists Marshalls of Cambridge and, as the Mark 8 was a new variant of the Canberra, the first ones to be modified were delivered there direct from the manufacturer. They would initially carry the Mark 7 weapon, a 1,700 lb fission weapon and, later, the Mark 28, a 2,000 lb thermonuclear bomb.38 Storage was needed for these weapons, as was accommodation for the American teams who would have charge of them. Under US law American atomic weapons had to be married to the RAF delivery aircraft by having both physically located on the same base. The division of responsibility was such that the RAF was assigned responsibility for operational delivery and loading capability, while the USAF would retain physical possession and authority over US atomic weapons and perform all functions incident to storage, maintenance, modifications, operational readiness and internal security … and ensure that weapons in storage and up to transfer to the RAF will be maintained in a completely safe configuration, e.g. there will at no time be a possibility of inadvertent nuclear explosion.39

HQUSAFE insisted that ‘this agreement be referred to as an “arrangement” to avoid the need to register the agreement with NATO’.40 Storage to American standards would be required at Binbrook and Upwood in the UK, and Laarbruch, Wildenrath, Bruggen and Geilenkirchen in Germany by the end of 1957. At each of these sites, accommodation for 54 men and five officers was needed, with the men housed and messed separately.41 This last was a security provision that originated in the first atomic deployment to Tinian in 1945, when the atomic trained personnel were quarantined, but in the RAF context the requirements were exasperating. Weapon storage and accommodation were among several issues where British officers considered the USAF had ‘laid down the standards which they consider politically and administratively most convenient from their point of view, and regardless of cost to us’.42 Initially, at least, conventional ordnance displaced in Germany would have to be accommodated elsewhere, while the separate accommodation demanded might require expensive new building. While US Air Police would control the Project ‘E’ compounds, the UK

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would still need to augment RAF Police and security at the sites.43 Some grumbled: The USAF are trying to drive a very one-sided bargain – all they appear to be willing to pay for is the weapon and to provide specialist personnel. If we were intended to have unrestricted operational use of the weapon this might be justified but, in the circumstances, I cannot see why they should not be required to pay a substantial contribution to the total cost.44

This turned out to be an over-reaction. On the British and the German sites it proved possible to adapt the existing bomb storage buildings to enable the storage of UK weapons when Project ‘E’ expired. And it turned out that no new accommodation building would be required in the UK or Germany, where existing barrack blocks could be converted for US airmen. The overall cost was likely to be less than the £1.65 million previously estimated.45 The nuclear-armed Canberras of Bomber Command and the 2nd Tactical Air Force (2TAF) were to be deployed for low-level operation, using the ‘toss bombing’ technique whereby the attacking aircraft approached the target at low level, released the weapon in a climb and turned away to escape the blast. Specially designed Low Altitude Bombing System (LABS) bombsights were required for this, and the Air Ministry needed to purchase a sufficient number of them from Honeywell Brown to equip the Canberras. In this case, Treasury approval was repeatedly withheld, and eventually given only after an extended battle in which ministers were forced to intervene.46 The belief that the new CAS (Sir Dermot Boyle) was ‘nothing like as keen as the previous CAS [Dickson] on this project’ had seemingly influenced the Ministry of Supply to assume that the scheme now lacked urgency.47 Financial concerns satisfied, technical obstacles nevertheless per­ sisted. The Canberra light bomber had been designed well in advance of Britain’s nuclear capability, but in common with ‘Red Beard’ bombs, the relatively small size of the new US weapons meant they could be loaded into the Canberra’s bomb bay. Or so it was supposed when data on aircraft dimensions were first supplied to the US engineers. The design opening width of the Canberra bomb doors was 52 inches, against a bomb width across the tail fins of between 50.36 and 50.69 inches. However, loading trials revealed the aperture on the aircraft to vary between 50.50 and 51.19 inches, meaning that bombs had to be individually matched to aircraft, a potentially huge operational problem. The manufacturers, English Electric, and the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough investigated methods of obtaining the maximum bomb door opening, reducing the thickness of the rubbing strips on each door

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to alleviate the problem. Any further modification of the bomb doors would be a major task delaying the arming of the aircraft by up to 18 months. As a further stopgap measure, half an inch was to be cut off each bomb fin.48 One important technical obstacle arose less from engineering considerations than from the politics of Britain’s ambiguous posture on nuclear independence. This required the Canberras to be capable of switching from US to UK weapons ‘in case of urgent national need’. Nuclear and conventional weapons alike were carried on a removable spinal beam fitted inside the Canberra’s bomb bay, ready fitted with the carriage and release mechanisms and associated electrical circuitry, which was itself integrated with the aircraft’s electrical system. The electro-mechanical configuration would be specific to each type of weapon carried, and once the aircraft were modified, the carriage mechanisms had to be readily substitutable. In the event, priority was given to making the aircraft operational with US weapons to reinforce NATO. Indeed, such was the urgency attached to achieving ‘the earliest possible provision of a nuclear capability’ that the German-based Canberra B(I)8s were hurriedly modified to take only US bombs. Other Marks, and later production aircraft, were prepared to carry either US or British Red Beard weapons.49 The scheme moved forward with painful slowness. While Farnborough had forged ahead with the technical development of equipment, reproducing control panels and circuitry to pattern, administrative problems remained which required an Air Staff directive to resolve them. Bomber Command and the Ministry of Supply’s Armament Engineering Directorate urged the Air Staff to call a coordinating conference, as the lower-level working meetings with the Americans were failing to resolve the issues. The USAF representatives were gaining an impression that the RAF was ‘dragging its heels’, but the deputy director of Armament Engineering, Group Captain Patmore, pointed the finger at the US authorities themselves as well as at the Air Staff who he saw as being ‘either unable or unwilling to make any policy decisions’ while ‘the Commands want to know what the chances are of provision in quantity and in time of all the various special equipments associated with Project “E”’. Above all, he complained, ‘no single person appears to be in a position to state whether the equipment will be adequate in quantity or when and where it will be delivered’.50 Seventeen months later Air Minister George Ward was himself complaining that the Americans were anxious to speed up the project and were critical of the lack of firmness in the detailed timetable for its completion.51 As late as December 1959 the monthly progress meetings between RAF and

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USAF officers showed that many issues, from accommodation for USAF special weapons teams to clearance of the weapon system in Canberra configuration were still unresolved.52

The strategic aspect of Project ‘E’ For the British, borrowing the bomb was only an interim measure, conditioned by the over-riding need to retain a capability for unilateral action. Converting Canberras and, later, the Valiants for NATO was a starting point for a far more ambitious plan to enhance Bomber Command’s strategic capability when the more advanced V-bombers, the Vulcan and the Victor, came into service. Following the second round of Bermuda talks, an immediate production order for the equipment required to adapt the V-force became essential. With the Americans’ assurance that the weapons would be made available, the Air Ministry agreed to send updates on the readiness of the RAF aircraft to use US weapons at sixmonthly intervals.53 Nevertheless, as late as November 1957 the operational concept of Project ‘E’ for the V-force had yet to receive Air Council approval, the Ministry of Defence insisting that ‘in discussion with the USAF we must make it plain that there is as yet no financial authority to authorise expenditure’.54 The Treasury were reluctant to give that authority as long as the Air Ministry and the RAF were unable to provide them with convincing detail. So far as the Treasury officials could see, ‘all that appears to be available on this point, is the understanding between General Twining and Air Chief Marshall Dixon [sic] when he was Chief of the Air Staff’.55 The Air Ministry urged speed as it was ‘essential to give the Valiants an early capability … because of the American slant’. Yet the haste with which the Canberra modifications had been pushed through made the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence far more cautious about extending Project ‘E’ conversions to the V-bomber force.56 For while the Vulcans and Victors – and initially the Valiants – would be the mainstay of the UK independent nuclear deterrent, the aircraft had to be readily convertible back from US weapons fittings (which could only be used in a NATO context) to British, for the V-force had to be ‘constantly on call’ for use in the UK’s own national strike plan.57 Dual use, and ready conversion, implied much greater cost. Engineering costs were only part of the picture. Throughout this period, the project lacked staff and for that reason proceeded more slowly than had been hoped. The Ministry of Supply’s director of Armament Engineering, who coordinated implementation, appealed

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for more staff, complaining that his request for an additional officer had been rejected and warning that as the number of aircraft involved increased, progress on the V-bombers would not be as fast as that on the Canberra. But such engineering staff as his Directorate had – and their number was very limited – was fully occupied in dealing with conventional weapons and preparing for the carriage of British nuclear weapons. ‘Unless staff are provided’, warned Air Commodore Wyley, ‘it will not be possible to meet the Air Staff requirements in time.’58 Engineering work to convert the aircraft had begun at Farnborough in February 1956, and the USAF, concerned to encourage Britain’s capability, eagerly cooperated to equip the V-bombers for Project ‘E’. By August, American instructors were training crews at Boscombe Down, and Valiant flight trials with dummy bombs were imminent.59 After 12 months’ work on the conversion at Farnborough and at the manufacturer’s works, the first three aircraft were ready. By October 1957, the first 28 V-bombers were to be modified to carry US weapons, and a further 44 by January 1959.60 With trials completed, the Valiant was cleared to fly the US 6,000 lb weapon, with Vulcan clearance to come by the end of the year. Initially, Project ‘E’ did little to enhance the RAF’s strategic capabilities. Bomber Command’s targeting policy was, by this date, directed against the Soviet cities, and aimed to deter aggression by the threat of massive civilian destruction. For that purpose neither the UK’s own Red Beard nor the US kiloton weapons were sufficiently powerful, while the latter was not available for unilateral use in any event. For ‘city busting’, a megaton weapon was required. For that reason the development of UK megaton weapons was to be given higher priority than readiness for Project ‘E’.61 Despite that commitment, as late as January 1959 the Ministry of Supply was still warning that ‘any unnecessary priority on “E” weapons tended to delay our own weapon development’.62 When the US agreed in 1958 to supply megaton, in place of kiloton, weapons for the V-bomber force, a Treasury official, mindful of the huge cost of Britain’s thermonuclear programme, enquired whether this might eliminate the requirement for UK megaton weapons.63 Clearly, it could not. Project ‘E’ weapons were subject to US control and to rely exclusively upon them was incompatible with maintaining the UK’s freedom of action. A further problem was that by May 1957 Project ‘E’ had already become thoroughly entangled with joint strike planning. A visit to Washington by DCAS Geoffrey Tuttle somehow galvanised discussions: henceforth weapon supply and strategic plans were to move on in parallel. When Tuttle returned from his Pentagon visit, he bubbled

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with enthusiasm. His US colleagues, he reported, ‘were terribly keen to deal with the supply, storage and control of US weapons and terribly keen that we should have them’. It seemed a generous arrangement to a Bomber Command whose effectiveness was severely curtailed by their having few bombs to drop, for It is quite clear that the American plan allows for considerably more bombs than bombers and that a one to one ratio of American bombs to modified British bombers would in their view be insufficient. This is, of course, extremely attractive in view of our limited stocks of fissile material and the need to use some of it in other roles. It was, however, clear that they did not, and never will, wish to know our stockpile. All they will wish to know is how many British weapons we intend to issue to Bomber Command for the first strike, and that in general, we should plan the first strike as we wished and state how many American weapons we would require to implement our own plan. After that, co-ordination would start as could the first steps regarding the issue, storage and control of the American weapons. The first thing we shall have to do is to send them a programme stating the likely availability of compatible British bombers at six monthly periods … the modification of these bombers is a matter which should have the greatest pressure put upon it.64

The formal agreement approved in outline at that meeting provided that the SAC Commander-in-Chief would justify the agreement on the number of weapons to be supplied, and formally request the Joint Chiefs to earmark that number and include them in his allocation.65 If the number of bombs allocated to SAC for onward transmission to the British followed from the number of aircraft fielded by Bomber Command, then that number needed to be known. No one, however, was in a position to be confident about what that number might be. Negotiations to make Project ‘E’ viable had to run in parallel with continuous Air Ministry pressure to get final agreement on the size of the V-force front line. But as the American authorities had agreed to supply megaton weapons for the V-bomber force, so vastly increasing Bomber Command’s striking power, it was deemed sufficient to convert no more than 72 aircraft to carry them.66 Achieving the planned megaton weapon for each V-bomber – building up from 26 in 1960 to 158 in 1963 with a mix of US and British weapons – was looking increasingly distant.67 This continued reliance on the US placed the Air Staff in a quandary. At root, Britain could enjoy independence in weapon supply by an early date only by restricting the inventory to kiloton bombs. Even there, the extent of Britain’s actual dependence was becoming more apparent, with the considerable design problems of the UK’s own Red Beard

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kiloton bomb frustrating its introduction into service. None had been delivered by October 1959 due to design weaknesses revealed during environmental tests. Short-term modifications were made to bring Red Beard into service, although these imposed severe restrictions on use, while longer-term modifications to make the bomb safe to fly would take another 18 months to prove.68 If the RAF was content to rely on UK kiloton weapons, it would be possible to give up Project ‘E’ early in 1961. If they waited for British megaton weapons to become available, they would have to retain all 72 US weapons until the middle of that year, and could not complete the process of substitution until some time in 1962.69 On those grounds, Project ‘E’ weapons were to be retained for at least a further year. It was around this point that the limits of substitutability between US and UK weapons were reached. With limited resources, the Air Ministry had to balance the temptations of American largesse against the basic commitment to achieve nuclear independence. For example, storage facilities were limited, and as UK weapons came off the production line ready for delivery, room had to be found for them.70 On the other hand, the Treasury would be quick to question the need for a British ‘H bomb’ programme once US megaton weapons were on offer. As a guideline, making progress on British weapon development was to be accorded higher priority than equipment and conversion to carry US weapons but, given the US pressure, this may well have been a case of wishful thinking.71 Project ‘E’ was supposed to be a stopgap measure, to provide nuclear cover pending the build-up of the UK stockpile. US controls over the use of Project ‘E’ weapons rendered British independence nugatory, but for the Air Ministry these considerations did not weigh heavily against what was believed to be the greatly superior yield of the American bombs.72 As with the Canberra, money needed to be spent on necessary works at the airfields designated for the nuclear forces. The additional capital costs for three sites were initially estimated at less than £185,000, with recurrent annual expenditure of £30,000.73 Experience showed these to be unrealistic estimates. One factor never far from the minds of those officials involved in the financial planning was the temporary nature of Project ‘E’. Works put in hand to house US weapons had eventually to benefit the British stockpile, and care was taken to design facilities that could revert to UK use without undue modification – ceiling heights, door clearances and overhead gantries were at issue. But there was a prospect of unexpected bonuses here. The storage standards laid down by the US caused British officials to conclude that their own might be too strict, offering scope for economies in the domestic provision. The USAF stored their bombs more intensively,

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and are prepared to store nine … bombs in one ‘D’ type building and keep up to 35 cores in a single secure locker … This information leads us to question whether our own storage criteria are not over stringent … in terms of separation distances and the numbers of weapons permitted to be stored in one building, [and] should be seriously re-examined.74

If it were indeed permissible to increase the number of UK weapons stored in one building by adopting US standards, that would minimise new construction, help to resolve a difficult storage problem and save costs. This proposal was not wholeheartedly welcomed: ‘it is prudent to treat with some reserve the relaxations which the Americans would permit themselves, in what, to them, is an overseas operational theatre, and which might be unacceptable in their own country’.75 Storage arrangements were further complicated by the requirement that US bombs should be stored on site, with all the security of an operational airfield. This meant that for the duration of Project ‘E’, or until sufficient secure space for V-force support had been constructed, British nuclear weapons would have to be stored at remote maintenance sites, inaccessible for immediate use, as US weapons occupied all available airfield space.76 Special arrangements had to be made against the supposed eventuality of a national emergency in which access to US weapons was withheld or could not be provided in time to permit the dispersal of armed aircraft.77 Under these conditions, ‘weapons must be held at readiness as a necessary safeguard against failure to obtain the release of US weapons in time to meet the UK dispersal and for maintenance of the national deterrent’.78 That meant bombs held in depot would have to be maintained, assembled and ready for immediate issue to Bomber Command.

Safety and security Safety procedures and the security of US weapons claimed increasing attention as planning progressed. A series of ‘phasing conferences’, attended by USAF engineering officers from the Directorate of Engineering Liaison, was held at the Air Ministry, and the first of these meetings identified the problem of applying RAF handling, loading and in-flight safety procedures to virtually unknown weapons. The Americans insisted that safety was the primary concern of US procedures but there was little possibility of exchanging information at the required level of detail within the limits imposed by the McMahon Act, even as amended. Loading trials would be set up in order to reveal safety

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issues, and it was recognised that some potential problems would only come to light when live weapons were flown.79 The USAF were often unhappy with RAF safety procedures. Colonel Teubner, the USAF Director of Engineering Liaison, wrote a strong report warning that ‘absolutely rigorous’ agreed procedures were required if Bomber Command were to fly US weapons. The RAF’s draft loading procedures would be closely checked by SAC, and post-loading procedures needed to be ‘accurate, complete and rigidly followed’. He insisted the two sides agree this ‘extremely vital document’. His RAF counterpart advised that Teubner was perturbed about the shortcomings of UK procedures and had expressed himself verbally far more strongly: [Teubner] emphasised that in his opinion nuclear weapon procedures were of such importance that every drill from start to finish should be covered in the mandatory document, or series of documents, to ensure safety and reliability.80

The formal bilateral agreement under which US weapons were provided laid down the responsibilities and procedures which were to be followed to ensure the safety, custody, security and proper release of atomic weapons. Complying with United States approved atomic weapon safety rules, they were considered the minimum necessary to safeguard and control the atomic weapons involved, and Teubner could raise the requirements on his own authority. The procedures were also designed ‘to prevent nuclear incidents or accidents which might reflect unfavourably on the United States or user NATO Nations’.81 During 1958 and 1959, avoiding such incidents loomed large in the discussions between the two teams of air force officers dealing with Project ‘E’. The British were highly sensitive to operational risks, particularly those of the crash of a nuclear armed aircraft. The incidents in 1957, when a SAC B-47 had crashed on landing at Lakenheath, the resultant fire engulfing a nuclear weapons store, and in 1958, when another B-47 dropped a fuel tank on an aircraft waiting to take off at Greenham Common, had given unwelcome publicity to nuclear weapon carriage. Faced with an eruption of public alarm, the two governments had formulated a policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of a nuclear weapon in future incidents. Even privately, in service-to-service discussions, US officers remained reticent about how crashes of nuclear-armed USAF aircraft in Germany were handled.82 Beyond accidents, there remained the threat of sabotage or terrorism. Here there was a fundamental difference between the two parties on

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the extent of the security threat. The American authorities in the British view had ‘proposed criteria appeared to be based on what could happen (the worst case) and not what is likely to happen’. The British insisted that the security precautions taken should be in accordance with a realistic assessment of the threat against which they were mounted. The risk of sabotage on UK bases, other than in Northern Ireland, was assessed as minimal. There was a far greater security threat in Germany but the American position did not recognise the difference.83 The standard of security required by US law was higher than that applied to the protection of British nuclear weapons, with electric fences, a controlled single point of entry, alarms and CCTV to cover areas not under direct USAF view.84 The security of weapons deployed abroad could not be less than that required within the United States itself. Problematic as they were, these arrangements for safety and security were based on the assumption that they would apply to permanent bases on which American weapons were kept ready for British use. The practicalities collapsed when confronted with the separate policy of emergency dispersal of the V-force to satellite airfields. The US commanders urged strongly that the V-force should operate from dispersed sites in order to minimise their vulnerability to a pre-emptive strike. But dispersal raised issues of the custody of the weapons, which remained in US hands until loaded and armed, a procedure that would become unworkable on remote and scantily serviced airfields. Seeking more freedom of action, Duncan Sandys met Wilson to impress upon his opposite number ‘the problems which we are faced with over our bomber dispersal plans in relation to the movement of Project ‘E’ weapons’.85 In their own meetings with American officers, Ministry of Defence officials argued that ‘operational planning is nonsensical’ without UK custody.86 This was not going to happen, but ‘No formula has yet been found to reconcile the requirements of U.S. law with our own dispersal and alert plans.’87

Notes   1 Makins to Attlee, 18 September 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1552.   2 Notes prepared by Admiral Strauss, Bermuda, 5 December 1953, United States Department of State, Foreign relations of the United States, 1952–1954. Volume 5, Part 2, Western European Security, Document 343.   3 Churchill to Eisenhower, 7 December 1953, Strauss papers, Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, IA, Box 21 (Bermuda).   4 Participation of the RAF Bomber Command in Strategic Operations, 10 June 1952, NARA, RG 341, Air Force Plans 1942–54, Box 746.   5 Simpson, Independent nuclear state, pp. 254–225.

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  6 Note by AM R.O. Jones, 20 October 1953, UKNA, AIR 2/13781; H. Wynn, RAF nuclear deterrent forces: the RAF strategic nuclear deterrent forces. Their origins, role and deployment, 1946–69, a documentary history, London, HMSO, 1994, pp. 87–91.   7 D. Campbell, ‘Too few bombs to go round’, New Statesman, 29 November 1985, p. 12.   8 Air Council, conclusions of meeting, 6 (58), 6 March 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781.   9 M.S. Navias, Nuclear weapons and British strategic planning, 1955–1958, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991, pp. 100–119, 166–172; Paul Jackson, V-Bombers, London, Ian Allen, 1981. 10 H. Wynn, ‘The RAF V-force’, Royal Air Force Yearbook 1978, Fairford, Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund, 1978, p. 28. 11 Swain (BJSM) to Slessor, 14 May 1954, UKNA, AIR 8/2025. 12 Comments by AOC-in-C Bomber Command, 27 May 1954, UKNA, AIR 8/2025. 13 Air Cdre. Hyde, Director of Operations, to ACAS (Plans), 19 May 1954, UKNA, AIR 8/2025. 14 Sandys to Prime Minister, 21 June 1954, Lord de L’Isle and Dudley to Prime Minister, 24 June 1954, Dickson to Twining, 30 June 1954, Twining to Dickson, 10 July 1954, UKNA, AIR 8/2025. 15 Air Cdre. Hyde, Director of Operations, to ACAS (Plans), 19 May 1954, UKNA, AIR 8/2025. 16 Signal, BJSM to Air Ministry, Air Cdre. Grundy to CAS, 23 June 1954, UKNA, AIR 2/13213. The items to be provided included H-frames, bomb racks, sway braces, bomb hoists, in-flight monitors, control boxes, and circuit testers, arming controls, remote selectors and special pylons. 17 Signal, BJSM to Air Ministry, Air Cdre. Grundy to DCAS, 7July 1954, UKNA, AIR 2/13213. 18 Signal, BJSM to Air Ministry, AVM Atcherley to CAS, 8 November 1954, UKNA, AIR 2/13213. 19 Signal, BJSM to Air Ministry, AVM Atcherley to CAS, 26 November 1954; AVM Hugh Satterley to DCAS, and to CAS, 30 November 1954, UKNA, AIR 2/13213. 20 De L’isle and Dudley to Prime Minister, 10 January 1955, UKNA, DEFE 13/60 (original emphasis). 21 File notes, March 1954, LoC, Twining papers, Boxes 65, 67 and 74. 22 Signal, Twining for Dickson, 5 August 1955, LoC, Twining papers, Box 100. 23 R.J. Penney (Air Ministry) to Bligh (Treasury), 19 June 1957, UKNA, T 225/645. 24 Recalled in minute by Frank Cooper, Head of S.6, 19 August 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 25 Paper to the Defence Board by Secretary of State for Air George Ward, 29 October 1958, UKNA, AIR 8/2400.

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26 Penney (Air Ministry) to Bligh (Treasury), 19 June 1957, UKNA,T 225/645. 27 ACAS comments on Coordination of USAF and RAF nuclear strike plans: note by Chief of the Air Staff, 31 December 1956, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 28 Extracts from minutes of Prime Minister’s meeting, GEN.570/2, 30 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/2400. 29 Serpell to MacPherson, 5 June 1956, UKNA, T 225/645. 30 Air Council, conclusions of meeting 7(58), 17 March 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 31 Minute by Frank Cooper, Head of S.6, 19 August 1957; Project ‘E’ for the V-force: note by VCAS and AMSO, 17 February 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 32 Penney (Air Ministry) to Bligh (Treasury), 19 June 1957, UKNA,T 225/645. 33 Meeting on Project ‘E’ 12 November 1957, Joint meeting of Air Ministry and Bomber Command staff as pre-meeting to meeting with SAC, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 34 Project ‘E’: Brief for ACAS (Operational Requirements), 21 June 1956, UKNA, AIR 2/18095. 35 Minute, private secretary to CAS to ACAS (Operations), 17 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 36 House of Commons Debates, 25 June 1964, cols. 617–618. 37 Air Council, progress reports on weapons systems not yet fully released: bomber command: Canberra, 17 July 1957, UKNA, AIR 6/115. 38 Private information on the conversion programme.On the weapons, Norris, Barrows and Fieldhouse, Nuclear weapons databook, n. 60. 39 The agreement was signed by VCAS Huddleston and Maj.-Gen. E. Moore, Commander 3rd Air Force, Project ‘E’, Canberra Force, November 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 40 Air Cdre. J.H. Searby, Director of Operations (B and R), to VCAS, 5 November 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 41 Gp. Capt. Sands, Asst. Director of Operations, 24 June 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 42 Minute by Frank Cooper, Head of S.6, 19 August 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 43 AVM L.W. Cannon to Gp. Capt. Sands, 6 September 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 44 Minute by Air Cdre. J.D. Melvin, Director of Operations, 13 August 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 45 Project E: note of meeting held on 26 August; Air Cdre. J.D. Melvin, Director of Operations, to DGO, 30 September 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 46 Project ‘E’: Brief for ACAS (OR), 21 June 1956; Notes on Project ‘E’, 3 August 1956, UKNA, AIR 2/18093. 47 Project ‘E’: Finance, minute by Gp. Capt. P.B. Wood (Deputy Director of Operational Requirements 2), 23 May 1956, UKNA, AIR 2/18093. 48 Minutes of a monthly progress meeting held at Air Ministry, 20 January 1960, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 49 Bomber aircraft, report to the Air Council, 37th meeting, 1957, UKNA, AIR 6/115.

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50 Gp. Capt S.P.A. Patmore to Director of Armament Engineering, 2 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 51 Ward to Sandys, 4 October 1958, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 52 Project ‘E’: Canberra. Minutes of monthly progress meeting at headquarters USAFE, Wiesbaden, 17 December 1959, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 53 Penney to Bligh, 19 June 1957, UKNA, T 225/645. 54 Joint meeting of Air Ministry and Bomber Command staff as pre-meeting to meeting with SAC on Project ‘E’, 12 November 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 55 McPherson to Serpell, 4 October 1956, UKNA, T 225/645. 56 Penney to Bligh, 19 June 1957, UKNA, T 225/645. 57 Serpell to McPherson 8 October 1956, UKNA, T 225/645. 58 Air Cdre. D.W.R. Wyley, Director of Armament Engineering to CAS, 11 April 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 59 Pike to Coiner, 12 April 1956, UKNA, AIR 2/18093. 60 (Draft) progress report on USAF/RAF coordination of nuclear strike plans and the provision of American weapons for the RAF, 30 April 1958, UKNA, AIR 8/2201. 61 Joint meeting of Air Ministry and Bomber Command staff as pre-meeting to meeting with SAC, 12 November 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. The joint meeting with SAC was held on 14/15 November. 62 Minutes of Project ‘E’ Phasing Conference Group ‘V’ held at Air Ministry Whitehall Gardens on 27 January 1959, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 63 Herbecq to Bligh, 11 November 1958, UKNA, T 225/645. 64 Tuttle to CAS, 22 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13780. 65 Memorandum of Understanding between the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force, May 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13780. 66 Herbecq to Bligh, 11 November, 1958, UKNA, T 225/645. 67 Strategic bomber force weapon policy: note by VCAS, Air Council, 20 October 1959, UKNA, AIR 6/117. 68 Report to Air Council, 30 October 1959, UKNA, AIR 6/117. 69 Air Council, strategic bomber force weapon policy, note by VCAS: Project “E”’, 20 October 1959, UKNA, AIR 6/117. 70 Project ‘E’ for the strategic bomber force – AC (60)31, note by VCAS, Air Council, Conclusions of meeting, 10(60), 7 July, 1960, top secret annex, UKNA, AIR 6/128. 71 Summary of discussion and decisions taken at a meeting on ‘V force Project ‘E’, held in Metropole Buildings on 12 November, 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 72 Strategic bomber force weapon policy: note by VCAS, Air Council, 20 October 1959, UKNA, AIR 6/117; ‘Project “E” Weapons for the Strategic Bomber Force’, Paper for the Air Council by the VCAS, 14 June 1960, UKNA, AIR 6/129. 73 Project ‘E’ for the V-force: note by VCAS and AMSO, 17 February 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 74 AVM R.B. Lees (ACAS (Operations)) to AVM A.F. Hutton (Director-General Engineering), 21 November 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13780.

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75 AVM A.F. Hutton, DG Engineering to AVM Lees, ACAS (Operations), 9 December 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 76 AVM Lees (ACAS (Operations)) to AOC-in-C Bomber Command, 16 April 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 77 AVM Lees (ACAS (Operations)) to AVM A.F. Hutton (DG Engineering), 8 May 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 78 AVM Lees (ACAS (Operations)) to AVM A.F. Hutton (DG Engineering), 8 May 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 79 Minutes of Project ‘E’ Phasing Conference Group ‘V’ held at Air Ministry Whitehall Gardens on 27 January 1959, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 80 Gp. Capt. A.J.M. Smyth, DD Operational Requirements 2, to DD Armament Engineering, 15 December 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 81 Alert procedures for RAF NATO atomic strike forces (Valiant/Mk5), UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 82 Minutes of monthly progress meeting held at Headquarters USAFE, Wiesbaden on 17 December 1959, UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 83 Minutes of a meeting to discuss weapon custody and security and the control of access to aircraft, 8 September, 1960, UKNA, AIR 2/13704. 84 Project ‘E’ for the V-bomber force: note by VCAS and AMSO, 17 February 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13781. 85 Action note, undated, UKNA, AIR 8/2201. 86 Meeting on Project ‘E’ 12 November 1957. Joint meeting of Air Ministry and Bomber Command staff as pre-meeting to meeting with SAC. UKNA, AIR 2/13703. 87 Air Council, strategic bomber force weapon policy, note by VCAS: Project ‘E’, 20 October 1959, UKNA, AIR 6/117.

10 Consenting to nuclear war

We can’t successfully take the position that [the British] must give us a blank check. They feel that if a strike takes off from their territory there will be one coming back the other way. Dean Acheson, August 1951

From the outset, basing the USAF atomic strike force in the UK raised questions about the circumstances under which an attack might be launched. Until 1948 it was implicitly assumed in London that some form of joint agreement would be required – implicit because of the Quebec agreement of 1943, which provided that the US, Canadian and British governments would not use atomic weapons without the consent of the other signatories. Yet that agreement did not survive the cessation of hostilities. In 1946 an attempt had been made by the British government to revive the agreement in modified form, replacing ‘consent’ with ‘prior consultation’, but even this concession went beyond what Washington could accept. The Quebec agreement’s provision that the US had to obtain UK consent before using the atomic weapon was unacceptable to US officials, and even some in Britain saw it as one of the more grandiose and unrealistic expressions of Churchill’s diplomacy.1 Key members of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy had been particularly disturbed at this provision and had urged its abrogation.2 Late in 1947 new negotiations started to supplant the Quebec agreement and formally terminate the provision concerning UK consent. The resultant Modus Vivendi of January 1948 provided that the commitment on the use of atomic weapons was to have no further effect, and the agreement on cooperation was accordingly limited to technical cooperation and raw materials.3 In effect, the right to be consulted had been surrendered in exchange for dropping the bar on UK development of nuclear energy.4 Attlee took his time before sharing his views on the benefits of this trade-off and the unenforceable nature of Quebec with

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the leader of the Opposition. Churchill was inordinately proud of his wartime negotiations, and persisted in pressing for the Quebec agreement to be published. He defied Attlee by writing direct to Truman to urge his concurrence. Attlee and Truman maintained a common front against Churchill’s ‘very extraordinary’ interventions. Truman replied politely but firmly with a personal, hand-written note before making his formal rejection.5 The wartime prime minister accepted the rebuff with the rider that he trusted Truman would ‘at least agree that the atomic weapon should not be used from British bases without our prior consent’.6 As Conservative leader, Churchill was on record as supporting the establishment of US air bases in England in the run-up to the 1951 general election. He took the first opportunity to renew his demands when, two years later and now prime minister, he met Eisenhower at Bermuda showed him a copy of the original agreement signed by himself and Roosevelt, read it to the President and asked for publication. This caused some surprise as there was no similar copy to be found in the State Department files. AEC chairman Strauss, present at the meeting, argued that the Quebec agreement had been superseded by the Modus Vivendi, negating Churchill’s advocacy for its publication.7 The ageing premier insisted on airing the agreement in Parliament, stirring up a hornet’s nest of acrimonious inter-party accusations and counter accusations to the despair of his foreign secretary and officials.8 While the United States and Britain engaged in long and wearying negotiations over the broader issues of nuclear cooperation, the question of the use of the bases had a particular urgency. The opportunity to face the question of under what circumstances an atomic attack would be flown from Britain, and with what participation by British decisionmakers, had been missed at the outset. Remedying that oversight proved remarkably difficult, even as the stakes increased dramatically with the Soviet Union’s expanding nuclear capabilities. This was indeed a ‘life or death’ issue, but agreement that British consent was required for an American attack remained elusive for another decade.

Struggling for agreement The question of consent had been raised repeatedly under the Labour government once it was agreed that the USAF would take over the four Midlands airfields, as it was clear that these would be used for a strategic air offensive. At that time the Foreign Office in London thought ‘it might be desirable to seek some assurance’ that this would not happen without

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the consent of the British government. ‘After all’, mused Sir Gladwyn Jebb, the Foreign Office’s Deputy Under-Secretary, in characteristically ironic mood We are in a much more exposed position than the Americans from the point of view of atomic warfare; and though it might be argued that, unless we were at least prepared to use the weapon in the event of war, we should be over-run and quickly Sovietised, the government … might wish to have an opportunity of stating that they would prefer such a development to disappearing into thin air.9

The Foreign Office equivocated. Instead, they agonised about how so delicate an issue could be broached: You will have to say in fact that His Majesty’s Government hope the American Air Force will not go bombing the Russians from the United Kingdom without letting us know beforehand. It is suggested that you might indicate that you are not suspecting for a moment that the United States Government would authorise such an escapade, but that there might be a danger of the United States Air Force Commander in Great Britain doing it on his own responsibility. I’m not sure how the Americans would take a suggestion of this kind. I should have thought they might be much offended.10

The Foreign Office legal adviser urged tying the US government down; junior minister Aidan Crawley declined, and senior officials were averse to doing anything that might ‘surprise’ the Americans. At the end of 1950, propelled by Parliamentary concern over the possible use of the atomic bomb in Korea, Attlee flew to Washington to meet Truman. There he raised the issue of prior consultation in private talks with the President. There followed a tortuous negotiation between officials, with the Washington embassy pursuing with great tenacity the goal of a cast iron assurance which the Americans were unwilling to give. Problems arose after the first meeting between the two leaders, when Truman disclosed to his staff that he had given Attlee a verbal assurance that the United States government would not consider using the atomic bomb without consulting the United Kingdom and Canada. There was consternation at this revelation among Truman’s staff, and Gordon Arneson, Dean Acheson’s special assistant for Atomic Energy Affairs, immediately set about drafting the final communiqué on quite different lines.11 Instead of consultation, the communiqué offered no more than a pious hope that the atomic bomb would never be used again, and an assurance that the Prime Minister would be kept informed of any developments which might ‘bring about a change in the situa-

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tion’. When talks resumed the following day, Attlee found the President to have backed away from the earlier promise to consult, ‘although of course this undertaking still held good’.12 With that elliptical and intangible promise, Attlee declared himself to be satisfied in his report to the Commons.13 Matters did not rest there, for British officials insisted on minuting Truman’s original statement. The Americans gently asked them to delete this passage and in subsequent conversations with Arneson, ‘Tim’ Marten, a First Secretary at the Washington embassy, was firmly reminded that the official US position was as set forth in the approved final version. Arneson called Marten in again on 14 December and confided that immediately after the 8 December meeting between Truman and Attlee, Acheson had instructed him to go to Capitol Hill and assure Senator McMahon that the only undertaking given to the British was what appeared in the communiqué. British officials, acutely aware that allowing the USAF atomic bombers to be based in Britain might appear to have been a Faustian pact, doggedly pursued some form of more secure assurance. They considered pressing the Americans to amend their record, but had to concede that this course might well defeat its own purpose and lead Truman to go back on his undertaking. Nor should the British understanding be set out in any formal record passed to the Americans ‘as the discrepancy was so glaring that the Americans might feel bound to take some action, which could only be to try to get the [President] to water down or withdraw his undertaking’. It was instead decided to delete the reference from the UK record of the fifth meeting before handing it over, bringing the British and American records of the meeting into line, while ‘privately and informally’ showing the State Department the text of the passage as a reminder only, for ‘We cannot hope to bind the President personally or the United States government through the records of this meeting. Indeed … any attempt to do so might defeat its purpose.’ Truman’s personal undertaking was expected to be honoured while he remained in office; ‘More than that, we cannot hope to obtain at the present time.’14 In London, Sir Roger Makins, now the official with responsibility for atomic affairs and reporting directly to the Prime Minister, reckoned this stratagem insufficient to secure British interests. He insisted on retaining some kind of official record of the President’s assurance and ‘at all events must have it in the United Kingdom records of the meeting’: We think the best course is to hand them our record without comment. If they pick up the … point and say they find it embarrassing to have a copy of our record on file (in case of possible Congressional investigations or the

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like) you can agree to give them a copy with the passage excised but at the same time making it clear that we are retaining the passage in our official records since we regard the assurance which the President gave us as of the highest importance to us.15

With some reluctance, the embassy set out to explain to the State Department that ‘we must keep a record of the President’s assurance in our official record of the meeting’.16 This did not seem at all likely to work. There was ‘the utmost consternation’ in the State Department at ‘the idea of being in any way identified as an accessory’ to this ploy, and Wayne Jackson, the official most closely concerned, refused, on being shown the draft, to accept a copy. Defeated, the Washington embassy were left with the hope that the State Department would, in the event of a crisis, ‘advise the President to honour his undertaking of which both he and they are fully aware’.17 Makins optimistically advised Attlee that ‘although the President could not say so in the communiqué, his undertaking … still held good’ for ‘we do not accept the State view that the communiqué supersedes the undertaking to consult’. On that shaky basis the Prime Minister signed, and the agreement entered the record.18 Ambiguity, obfuscation and a determination to maximise the wiggle room had brought about an agreement that meant quite different things to each side. US planners considered that an atomic air campaign might have to be conducted in the teeth of a base country’s refusal to give consent; it would fetter US sovereignty to act otherwise. Equally, while a ‘blank cheque’ would best suit American purposes, no sovereign state could ever offer it. Yet as negotiations continued with further talks in which the British sought to discover the shape of the US strategic air plan, and the Americans to conceal it, such political realism was largely absent.

Service-to-service discussions The discussions between President and Prime Minister were already being followed up by meetings between the military leaders when the issue of the communiqué was laid to rest. But Tedder, now heading the British Joint Services Mission in Washington, got little from his talks with General Omar Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose ‘intransigence’ mystified even US Ambassador-at-Large Philip C. Jessup.19 He found this a bitter disappointment. Tedder had devoted himself to the cause of Anglo-American cooperation since Operation Overlord.20 In 1946 he had settled the deal with Spaatz to commit air-

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fields in England as bases for USAF atomic attack. When he completed his term as Chief of the Air Staff, he wrote to his opposite number, Hoyt Vandenberg, expressing his hope that ‘the foundations which have thus been laid [will] be extended and remain unshaken by any of the difficulties and differences of outlook and interests that our [sic] bound to arise’.21 Nevertheless, in a speech on the occasion of his installation as Chancellor of Cambridge University in June 1951, Tedder felt the need to devote considerable time to extolling the need for ‘energy, sympathy and vigilance’ in overcoming frictions in the transatlantic relationship.22 Tedder soon found himself painfully aware of those frictions and of the one-sided nature of the Cold War planning process. Specifically, he remained in the dark on the most important issue, of what exactly the Americans proposed to do in time of war. His earlier optimism was soon replaced by anxiety: While joint Anglo-US planning talks on the subject of any future war were going on the most important factor of all – the strategic employment of the atomic bomb – was barred from discussion … we must know the numbers of bombs and how they would be used.23

In July 1950 Tedder fumed that in the light of the Korean situation the Joint Chiefs had requested, and the President authorised, the deployment of SAC bomber groups to the UK with ‘no excuse for not putting [the] proposal with such obvious political implications through proper channels and for failing to bring me in’.24 It was unlikely to be different in the future; in December he reported glumly on the prospects for regular US-British collaboration. Bradley had insisted that collaboration should be purely military and ‘the politicals should not be in and not know anything about it’. I explained that was not our way of doing things … Evident however that the Americans are scared of anything approaching regular and formal organisation for joint global work … We are no further on as regards joint consideration of the Strategic Air Plan. The American alibi is that they have not yet sorted out their own ideas (I believe there are interservice differences) but I am sure that the fact is they are literally scared of getting into trouble on the McMahon Act.25

The UK Chiefs of Staff were incensed by this message, regarding the lack of progress in finding out about the strategic air plan ‘extremely disturbing’: Any idea that the USAF should be able to conduct a private air war using UK bases and facilities for the purpose while keeping us completely in the dark as to their operational intentions is intolerable, particularly in view of

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the retaliation against this country which could be expected and its repercussions on our own defences … The alibi … is patently phoney in view of the fact that the US bombers now in this country were ordered a week ago, presumably by LeMay, without any reference to us, to be at operational readiness and at a few hours notice for operational missions. There could be no point in alerting bomber formations in this way if there was no plan for their employment at short notice in an emergency … surely the least they could have done would have been to inform us of their intentions so that we could either dissuade them or make some arrangement to keep more or less in line with them.26

The affront to British sovereignty was one matter, but on the right to be consulted the Chiefs of Staff were clearly out of the loop. Although the bombs’ nuclear components had yet to be deployed to Britain, a new and higher state of readiness had been achieved, making agreement more urgent. The Chiefs of Staff knew little of the outcome of the Truman–Attlee talks, and thought Attlee should ask the President ‘to order the Joint Chiefs to implement the policy which we understand was agreed between them at the White House’. The Chiefs were not asking the Americans to divulge secret technical information about the atomic bomb, but only for ‘consultation on its intended operational use, and an exchange of intelligence information about targets etc’. They warned ‘the reactions in Congress if this got out would be nothing to the reactions in Parliament if it got out that we were allowing US atomic bombers to use this country as a base, without even the Chiefs of Staff, let alone the Cabinet, even knowing what they were going to do in the event of war’.27 Essentially, the Chiefs of Staff were deluding themselves about the British veto, imagining they would be in the position of setting conditions for use of the bases in war: ‘in the, we hope, unlikely event of their plan having to be put into effect at short notice, it is quite possible we should not be able to get Cabinet agreement unless and until we have been able to satisfy ourselves in consultation with them that it is a worthwhile plan’. This presumption of proper consultation with the cabinet, who would act on the prior advice of the Chiefs of Staff, illustrates the gulf between the two sides. But the Chiefs persisted in their self-deception: ‘we are getting very tired of being fobbed off’ they advised Tedder, who should ‘let Bradley and Vandenberg know that we are getting a bit tough about this’.28 At the Chiefs of Staff meeting on 28 December 1950, Jack Slessor, Tedder’s successor as Chief of the Air Staff, called for a joint study of the strategic use of the atom bomb as a means of forcing the Americans

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to disclose their plans for its use.29 Slessor was due to make his own visit to Washington, from where Tedder warned against trying to force the issue.30 So too did Sir Roger Makins, who counselled in favour of separating the two problems: the content of the strategic air plan (where they should hold off any approach to the President through the Prime Minister) and the host of political problems regarding consultation. The Chiefs fell in behind Makins’s view that Slessor’s visit to Washington was best seen as an opportunity to probe further without unduly raising the temperature.31 There were high hopes of success following from the personal diplomacy of the new CAS and Bevin took a robust line when briefing the British ambassador in Washington, Sir Oliver Franks, on what Slessor hoped to achieve: above all, candid discussion of the strategic air plan. We have agreed to the presence of United States bomber aircraft in this country … it was implicit in the many talks I had with Ambassador Douglas about this question that we should be consulted about any plans for the use of these aircraft … I feel a personal responsibility for making sure no misunderstanding exists on the use to which the United States air forces in the United Kingdom might be put … I cannot feel that I have discharged that responsibility while the British government has no information as to the strategic air plan in support of which these aircraft might be used at very short notice.32

Bevin had not thought to press for a firm and explicit agreement two years before when the SAC bombers were invited to Britain. The possibility of achieving it after the event had slipped from his grasp. The Chiefs of Staff had been confident of their relations with their American counterparts, but they did not succeed where the Foreign Office had failed.33 Sobered by the impasse, Attlee insisted that the decision to strike, or to issue an ultimatum, could not be simply ‘handed over’ to the US. Nor, on the other hand, could lengthy discussions be held within NATO. Europe could be overrun in the meantime. The answer, he proposed, must be sought in joint Anglo-US decisionmaking.34 He considered making a further overture to the President, but Franks persuaded him to adopt a gradualist plan for presenting the British position to the United States in the most effective way.35 He advised that Americans were ‘emotionally sensitive’ on these matters, and suggested informal talks between himself and Acheson to convey the importance attached to these discussions and the necessity of reaching early agreement. Formal talks would follow, to prepare the ground for a later approach by the Prime Minister.36 Meanwhile, Slessor had produced a paper for the Chiefs of Staff committee which assessed the

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circumstances under which nuclear war might be initiated in response to Soviet aggression in Europe. This paper focused on the ‘stop line’, an early version of the ‘tripwire’, crossing which would be met by a fullscale offensive against the Soviet Union. Slessor was authorised to share the paper with the Americans, less, it seems, as a settled policy statement than as a device to flush out the American position.37 He reported personally to Attlee on the US reaction on his return from Washington. The Chiefs of Staff’s ‘stop line’ paper had not really proved a successful device.38 While he had been given some limited information about the strategic air plan under conditions of the highest secrecy, the Americans would not discuss the key question – the circumstances in which the plan would be set in motion. Slessor doubted whether the US administration ‘had given thought to the political implications’ – that is, the known intention to override an ally – of ‘putting such a plan into effect’.39 A continuing effort was required, and Slessor and Franks kept up the pressure for regular discussions, arguing mildly that ‘each country might be able to arrive at sounder decisions if it were aware in advance of the tentative thinking of the other’.40 It was an odd expression. Curtis LeMay and Hoyt Vandenberg did not do ‘tentative’, and it soon became clear that so smooth a route to agreement lay far beyond the reach of the British government. The faltering and inconclusive talks that followed were bedevilled by political suspicion and competing claims as to military and civilian authority. For British officials, the position was clear. These were matters of political decision, and the service officers involved were under no illusions about their political direction. Different realities prevailed in the Washington village, with considerable sensitivities about where the State Department stood in relation to the Joint Chiefs. Acheson’s own position was that service-to-service talks were a necessary preliminary to the issues ultimately being addressed politically. Yet he knew they would not be easily resolved. He privately speculated that the US military, in particular the Air Force, would evade political control over their power to strike if they could.41 In the event, far from laying out the ground, talks at the military level proved a stumbling block. The man in the front line was to be Air Marshal Bill Elliot, who took over at the BJSM in Washington. Talking eye to eye with the US chiefs required a three-star presence, and Elliot was promoted to Air Chief Marshal ahead of turn to give him the necessary status in the discussions; the customary knighthood was soon conferred.42 Elliot duly followed Tedder and Slessor down the same route but encountered an immediate roadblock when Bradley, the

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chairman of the US Joint Chiefs, announced that his colleagues were not ready to enter discussions. A full five months later, talks had still not begun. Franks complained to Acheson of ‘delay after delay on a matter which was intrinsically far too urgent for its discussion to be continually postponed’. For his part Acheson conceded that ‘the Americans had not behaved well’ and that the Joint Chiefs could be ‘very temperamental’.43 So too could their UK opposite numbers, who produced a trenchant response to these delays: ‘not only are we not within sight of a common policy which could be discussed on the PM-President level, but we are further away than ever from any joint discussion of policy on the military level’, they fumed. Elliot was instructed to make another attempt to have the Chiefs of Staff paper discussed in Washington. Specifically, You should make it quite clear to the Joint Chiefs that, however much they may wish to, they cannot keep their hands free in this matter, which is one of life or death to this country. The United Kingdom is not an American aircraft carrier conveniently anchored off the coast of Europe. We are their only really solid Ally – in the long run as indispensable to them as they are to us – and we intend to be treated as such. And in this matter, more perhaps than in any other strategic matter, we insist on having an agreed policy thought out in advance.44

That striking image of Britain as a US aircraft carrier would recur and become part of the standard anti-American rhetoric of the Cold War years.45 But in this context the corollary – that by accepting US nuclear forces Britain thereby became the prime target for a Soviet air attack – was accepted as an inescapable, if unpalatable, fact of alliance politics.46 This was not attractive electioneering material, and Attlee urgently needed to get a defensible agreement in the event of the issue emerging in the imminent general election. Exhausted, he had governed for twelve months with a wafer-thin majority and it was clear that a new general election was not far away. In August 1951 he dispatched his new Foreign Secretary, Herbert Morrison, to Washington to get the elusive agreement on consultation. The Americans, too, wanted an agreement, but on their terms. Informed American opinion held that Labour’s days in power would soon be over, and the US government needed to pin down the British before a change of government brought a more forceful and demanding premier – the redoubtable Winston S. Churchill – into office.47 Morrison promised to be tougher with the Americans than Bevin, who he thought had allowed the UK to be ‘pushed around’, but he was to prove no more effective than his predecessor.48 His contribution came in the longer term, in continuing to sideline the anti-American far Left in the Parliamentary Labour Party throughout the 1950s.

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‘A matter of life and death’ The Joint Chiefs met in advance of the Morrison visit. Acheson, together with a team of other officials including Freeman Matthews (Deputy Under-Secretary of State), Gordon Arneson, John Ferguson (State Department) and Robert Lovett (Deputy Secretary of Defense) were in attendance to discuss the British concerns. Acheson recalled that at the time of the Truman–Attlee talks, he and Lovett had gone to see Truman to point out the disadvantages of the commitment he had so rashly offered. As the British were now reopening the question, he advised that the American side should work towards a situation in which our allies will go along with us and go along promptly. We can’t successfully take the position that they must give us a blank check. They feel that if a strike takes off from their territory there will be one coming back the other way.

Acheson urged the Joint Chiefs to recognise that ‘this was a matter of life and death for the British and they will want to know whether we are sober and responsible’. ‘They are now the tail of the kite and they are concerned where the kite is going.’ Lovett conceded that ‘we were guests and could not use [the bases] if they did not want us to’. The US chiefs were less accommodating. Bradley thought it acceptable to discuss with the British only the conditions leading to general war, matters relating to the actual use of the bomb remaining off limits, while Vandenberg was ‘suspicious’ of the British ‘for trying to get at the President’, and wanted to know ‘whether the British were prepared to deny us bases unless we made commitments’.49 When Morrison met Acheson on 11 September, he identified the principal point at issue as US willingness to consult with the UK before using the atomic bomb: ‘it would be a very bad situation if the first the British knew of the use of their bases was after a bomb had been dropped’. Expressing his hope for a reply to take back, he warned that Attlee might be questioned in the House of Commons almost any time as to whether the US had agreed to consult, and made an oblique reference to the bases agreement. Acheson attempted to deflect the pressures by referring the matter to further talks between Bradley and Elliot, but Elliot insisted on the need for a political resolution: purely military talks would not suffice. Acheson was emollient: ‘it was inconceivable that the US would get into a major war without knowing whether it had allies or not … he saw no difficulty in the question of prior consultation with the UK before the bases were used’. But his insistence on Bradley and Elliot continuing to talk could not be squared with Morrison’s need to

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take something back, until it was agreed that military-level talks should take place in parallel while the Foreign Secretary was still in America.50 There was a pre-meeting at official level on 13 September to consider the agenda for the military talks. Matthews laid out the strong US preference for keeping the discussion at the most general level. ‘Clearly’, he said, there is a deep question of sovereignty involved. We cannot make any commitment not to go to war and know what it might mean to the future of civilisation. The thing to do is to keep in close touch as to what each is contemplating. We should keep our thinking as close together as possible. Then the necessary ground work will be laid, and we would have had prior discussion as to what situations or principles were considered to be of a vital nature.

Couched in such terms, this was a proposal that Franks was quite prepared to accept. However, the abrasive Paul Nitze, who had replaced veteran George Kennan as head of the State Department’s policy planning staff, cut through the generalities with characteristic bluntness to make three points: that the Americans did not intend to make any commitment limiting US sovereignty in any way, with respect to either general war or the use of atomic weapons; that any talks were to be without commitment and amount to no more than an exchange of views; and that the American side was not actually committed to talk but ‘merely indicating our present intent to talk’. Franks’s elegant construction in response – ‘that an expression of intent is in a certain sense a commitment’ – cut little ice, and opened the door to a hardening of the US position, led by Nitze. The written record is vivid: Mr Nitze said no, and that we wanted to be absolutely clear about this. Expression of present intention should, of course, be an honest expression of such an intent, but that it could in no way be a commitment for the future. Mr Matthews agreed on the importance of this. General Bradley said that we were not prepared to obligate ourselves to consult and there should be no public announcement to the effect that we had. Mr Nitze said that he thought the thing to do was to start the talks and try to bring our viewpoints as closely as possible together and to set up procedures which would facilitate further appropriate thoughts.

Ambiguity is part of the diplomat’s repertoire, and the British had struggled to exploit it in the aftermath of the Truman–Attlee discussions. Nitze was having none of it. ‘If’, he argued, ‘the Prime Minister were to say that the United States and United Kingdom had agreed to consult on

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these matters this language might be subject to misinterpretation both in the United Kingdom and here, and that it was very important that we be clear on this point so that there be no opportunity for language being used which could confuse the situation.’51 It did not bode well for Elliot’s own discussions later that day. There were few lonelier jobs for an officer of Air Chief Marshal rank than leading the British Joint Services Mission in Washington in the early days of the Cold War, neither a commander nor diplomat but go-between for two sets of proud and belligerent Chiefs. And never more than on that day, when Paul Nitze had already told the British delegation in the morning that consultation on the use of the atomic bomb was quite distinct from consultation on the use of the bases.52 Notwithstanding British insistence on prior agreement at the political level, Washington set up a ‘military conference’ for that afternoon – though the event hardly merited that title. Sir William (as he now was) appeared as the plaintiff before an unrelenting bench, and when he entered Room 9C-923 at the Pentagon alone, he came face to face with five generals, five admirals, and their secretariat.53 Despite the fact that Acheson had assured Morrison just 48 hours earlier that there would be no difficulty in arranging for prior consultation before the British bases were used in war, the Joint Chiefs were made of sterner stuff. While they had obtained a secure agreement to use the air bases, they harboured a deep distrust of the British political system that had delivered it to them. Bradley opened with a blunt statement that they could make no commitments on the use of the A-bomb. Instead, he proposed that they discuss only the circumstances in which World War III might come about. Nitze’s distinction between ‘general war’ and more limited conflicts, insisted upon throughout the meeting, served to direct attention to the pressure of circumstances, and away from the conditions of decision. To an extent, ‘general war’ was a term of art, a device to avoid talking about atomic weapons directly. It would recur time and again as American officers and officials sought to avoid the legal pitfalls of discussing nuclear weaponry. Elliot saw through this readily. ‘All of this is revealing an attitude of mind’ he mused. ‘You intend to use the bomb [from the outset].’54 Having confirmed what many of his London colleagues already knew, Elliot’s main aim was to secure an American commitment to discuss the matter with the British government before launching a nuclear attack.55 The Americans – mindful perhaps of the very different status of their President as Commander-in-Chief – were averse to his involving ministers, their hesitation grounded in the knowledge that ‘under your system you’d have to tell your politicos’. Elliot suggested that the information

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would only be passed on to the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, yet this did not satisfy Bradley, who hoped even Prime Minister Attlee could be kept out of ‘discussions of this sort’. Elliot pleaded the constitutional reality that it was impossible for him to dissuade the Prime Minister from taking an interest, for he ‘must have some assurance that his responsibilities to the British people are being discharged’.56 Looking for chinks in the Joint Chiefs’ armour, and using the peripheral example of conflict in the Far East, Elliot asked ‘would you call me in and warn me of your thinking?’ Then, almost plaintively, ‘all I am asking is that you tell me … Calling me in doesn’t bind you. All I ask is that you would call me in as soon as possible.’ When Bradley refused to concede even this, Elliot changed tack, warning that a blank refusal to consult could have ‘unpleasant consequences’. There was, after all ‘the matter of your planes based in the United Kingdom’. Finally, having played that trump card, he gained a half-hearted commitment to consult over the use of UK bases in the event of a general war in which atomic attacks would be launched from them. Back in London, the prospect of the US Joint Chiefs calling in Sir William Elliot to announce a decision already put into effect seemed scarcely to measure up to the risks Britain was running. A report to the CoS committee continued the now customary sense of urgency: We believe that the outbreak of general war may have consequences so catastrophic to the whole future of western civilisation as to make it absolutely essential that the policy concerning it should be objectively considered and generally agreed in advance, at least between the US and ourselves who provide the principal base from which the atomic campaign must be conducted.57

Franks now set out with great urgency to firm up an agreement, and just before the October 1951 general election produced an new version of Truman’s original commitment. Slightly amended by the President, it was to prove a long-lasting formula: that ‘the use of these bases in an emergency would be a matter for joint decision’ by the two governments ‘in the light of the circumstances prevailing at the time’. Neither side thought the wording had much substance, but – or for that reason – it resolved the problem.

Consultation or consent? When Churchill returned to Downing Street after the October 1951 general election, the change of government posed the possibility of fresh

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openings.58 The new premier assured the House of Commons that US bombers would remain on UK soil for ‘as long as required’ while Eden, Foreign Secretary once more, endorsed Attlee’s expressions of satisfaction with the arrangements.59 Meanwhile, the press speculated that Churchill would seek a firmer agreement that the atomic bomb should be used only with British concurrence.60 Within Whitehall, it was accepted that Truman’s assurance was worth little. Not having been endorsed by Congress, it could be considered as binding only on that administration. Moreover, while the use of UK-based atomic weapons would be ‘a matter for joint decision in the light of the circumstances prevailing at the time’, a vaguely worded and little-noticed gloss on this apparent commitment noted that ‘the evaluation of situations made by the two governments must necessarily be tentative and subject to change in the light of new developments that may occur’.61 In opposition Churchill, while welcoming the US presence, had been concerned about the lack of a specific commitment to consult Britain. In office he found it convenient to work within the masterly ambiguities of the formula he had inherited, fending off later Labour criticism with references to his ‘intimate correspondence and conversations’ with President Eisenhower and the ‘smooth and friendly arrangements’ that existed for dealing with such matters. A speech by John Foster Dulles referring to the US ‘capacity to retaliate instantly by means and at places of our choosing’ had alarmed the Labour benches with its implied intention to bypass consultation with the allies.62 Churchill was not flustered, and easily fended off the resulting protest, as well as demands from Labour backbenchers that the storage of US hydrogen bombs on British soil should not be permitted.63 The UK chiefs had high expectations of Churchill’s visit to Washington in January 1952. At the military pre-meeting, attempts to divine the detail of the US strategic air plan brought the usual meagre results, although Bradley – perhaps rashly – promised that ‘we have no intention whatsoever of launching atomic strikes from the UK unless you say it is okay’. Field Marshal Sir William Slim, Chief of the General Staff, was bullish: ‘How can we say it’s okay when we do not actually know very much about it? … We want you to use our bases, but we want to know what effects are going to be produced from the use of this weapon.’ The Prime Minister, he warned, would want this information ‘without question’. Pressed so hard, Vandenberg offered a briefing on the existing strategic air plan.64 The UK Chiefs of Staff were piqued that no meaningful discussion with their American counterparts had taken place since the autumn of 1949. Since the 1951 joint discussions, the US Joint Chiefs had dangled

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the prospect of a series of planning meetings without real discussion ever quite materialising. When the UK revised emergency plan was shared with the Joint Chiefs, it was in the expectation that ‘it might subsequently be approved by the United States/British Chiefs of Staff as the British half of a new joint Anglo/American emergency plan’. This overture was rebuffed, Joint Chiefs Chairman, Omar Bradley, having stalled for some time in response to repeated pressures, admitting his reluctance to offer anything more than informal discussions.65 At the meeting of Prime Minister and President that took place in January, Robert Lovett, now elevated to the post of Defense Secretary, confirmed ‘that in the event of general war atomic weapons would be used sooner or later, and in all probability sooner’ but, although no commitment had been given, he put flesh on Bradley’s promise, conceding that ‘it had been fully understood that United Kingdom bases could not be used by the United States for military operation without United Kingdom consent’.66 Truman confirmed this commitment, which Churchill wanted to make public. While Truman made no objection, Lovett quashed the suggestion.67 The reluctant emergence of an agreement to consult – itself falling well short of a cast-iron guarantee – had the effect of moving the discussion back to the earlier ground of the strategic planning framework within which such a decision would be taken. The US position had relaxed slightly, possibly due to the greater confidence in a Conservative government headed by Churchill, possibly because the threat of base denial was taken seriously. Yet information was still closely guarded. Although Churchill was given a presentation on SAC during his January visit, he was unable to ‘break the secret ring of the Strategic Air Plan’. The accompanying British officers judged the presentation vague and evasive, providing nothing that enabled them to draw conclusions about plan’s likely efficacy.68 Bradley and Vandenberg conceded that more specific information – on the general outline of the plan, the objectives and anticipated effects – could be provided, so long as it was restricted to a very limited number of people. Slim suggested six: the Prime Minister; Lord Cherwell, his scientific adviser; the three Chiefs of Staff; and Sir William Elliot at BJSM, with the Foreign Secretary notably absent. It fell to Elliot to resume negotiations, arguing the moral right of the UK to have full knowledge of a plan ‘on the outcome of which we, more than anyone else, risk so much’. Yet he conceded that while the British sought the very fullest information, there was no chance of the Americans agreeing to provide it in an election year.69 The basis of the renewed negotiations was a bid to re-establish formal joint planning meetings between America and the UK, in order to develop a new

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joint emergency plan. The Joint Chiefs were opposed to resuming these meetings, which had elapsed since October 1949 when an outline shortrange emergency plan had been developed, and instead promised further unspecified discussions. Suspecting that little progress would materialise from these, the UK Chiefs of Staff instead developed their own emergency plan, which they proffered as the British component of a new Anglo-American joint plan.70 Informal exchanges of views were all the British were to be offered. The first of these exchanges took place in July 1952, with Jack Slessor representing the British chiefs, accompanied by Bill Elliot. The focus of these talks was the UK’s review of global strategy which had been sent to the Joint Chiefs for comment.71 The meeting, at which the Joint Chiefs were quite circumspect about the British paper, nonetheless raised a number of issues of difference. These included concerns about the extent of Britain’s commitment to NATO, and the wisdom of proceeding with the production of atomic weapons in the face of a deep economic crisis. Other important differences, pursued further in a political-military meeting, centred on assumptions about the likelihood of conflict with the Soviet Union (discounted by the UK chiefs, but not by their American counterparts) and the effects on Soviet strength of a massive USAF atomic assault, which the Americans thought the British over-estimated.72 A major priority for the UK chiefs was that USAF forces should be used from the start to stem a Soviet land advance, and ‘all available air forces including the strategic air forces located in the United Kingdom’ would be devoted to countering it at the outset. While initially Bradley would not countenance trading off SAC’s strategic air plan to provide deeper defence of the British Isles, when the meeting resumed the following day he proposed that SACEUR would be briefed on the availability of atomic weapons and could assume that ‘in a crisis all the strategic air forces located in the United Kingdom would be put at his disposal for the campaign on the European front’. The improbability of this happening, given the gulf between the SAC and the USAF forces in Europe on the one hand and LeMay’s SAC on the other might have been lost on the British team. As the tentative relations between the two sides developed over the coming months British tactics at the official and military level were to build confidence on the part of their more powerful ally, and the record suggests that this began to pay off in the latter part of 1952. Partial information began to be provided from which the British ‘ought to be able to deduce and get a very fair idea of what we wanted to know, namely the true value of the Plan as an operation of war’.73 Within

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months, however, 3rd Air Force commander John Paul McConnell had almost casually broken the embargo with a series of unauthorised presentations on SAC plans and capabilities to the Prime Minister and members of the Army staff.74 In this indirect fashion, Churchill finally received the briefing that had so long been sought. Around this time, changes in US deployments brought to the surface once again the question of the conditions on which bases in the UK could be used. The decision in 1952 to deploy to the UK the 49th Air Division’s fighter bombers, equipped with the 2,000 lb Mark 7 atomic bombs and tasked to attack the Soviet airfields, added a new dimension, and met to some extent the British desire to have assurance that the USAF would deal first with the airfields from which an attack might be launched at the UK.75 The need for permission to do this gave Britain new leverage over the use of the bases.76 With a hint of quid pro quo in the air, representations by British officials became more pressing and the basis of discussion now seemed more equal than before. In February 1952 Franks and Elliot met State Department officials together with General Bradley. Franks took the consultation issue as settled and moved discussion on to how atomic war might work out – a matter on which it was impossible for the UK Chiefs of Staff to advise their government in the absence of realistic scenarios.77 The first priority for the British was to establish the likely efficacy of the US war plan, inching all the while towards a better and fuller picture of its features. To this end, Elliot arranged for Air Marshal Ralph Cochrane, the officer heading Britain’s atomic bomb programme for the RAF, to meet Vandenberg, in the hope that information might be forthcoming on the US force capabilities, the damage that a strike by SAC might produce, and the degree to which the UK would remain under threat thereafter. This would depend on a number of factors, including the number and effects of the atomic bombs dropped by American aircraft. Elliot warned his colleague that he should be careful not to frame his questions in such a manner as might expose him to the suspicion of attempting to discover by deduction the size of the US stockpile. ‘Ask the question direct if you must’, he advised, ‘and you will almost certainly get a flat refusal; but don’t seek, or appear to be seeking, to get the answer by subtlety.’78 It was not a satisfactory spirit in which to conduct an alliance. Both sides were handicapped by uncertainty. In the autumn of 1955, USAF Chief of Staff General Nathan Twining invited CAS Sir William Dickson to Washington for discussions on ‘matters of common interest’. For the British, the promise of collaboration, if it led to joint operations, represented the best chance of finding out about US intentions – and so

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exercising some influence over them. It was another two years before those talks advanced sufficiently for collaboration between SAC and RAF Bomber Command to become real, but by the time of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 operational relations between the two had advanced so far as to be fairly described as ‘integration’. At a diplomatic level, the line formulated by the US government for dealing with Attlee was continued throughout the subsequent administrations, and with similar resistance to making an open-ended commitment. When Anthony Eden, Churchill’s successor as prime minister in 1955, visited Washington in March 1953, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, repeated the formula that consultation should be on the general question of whether to go to war or not, rather than on use of atomic weapons as such. Eden asked for a reaffirmation of the understandings embodied in the Truman–Churchill communiqué in the form of a private personal assurance that the President would not use atomic weapons without consultation with the UK. He recognised that any assurance given by Eisenhower, like Truman’s own, could not be binding on his successors, but Britain ‘considered itself in a very exposed position in the event of war and had a vital concern about possible use of atomic weapons’.79 Dulles strongly advised against giving such a commitment, holding then (and later) the view that the implied veto over the actions of another sovereign state could not be legal. Eisenhower closely followed the Dulles brief when he received Eden, promising only that he would ‘in the event of increased tension or the threat of war, take every possible step to consult with Britain and our other allies’.80 While there would be no more blank cheques, neither would there actually be a British veto. In April 1954 Dulles advised a meeting of the North Atlantic Council that ‘We must make sure that the methods of consultation do not themselves stand in the way of our security. Under certain contingencies, time would not permit consultation without itself endangering the very security we seek to protect.’81 Foreign Secretary Eden protested, demanding consultation before any decision on the use of atomic weapons was taken. Dulles continued to reject anything approaching a veto, setting out the logic of the US position in full at a press conference in December 1954: If your deterrent measures are so restricted that the potential enemy could feel reasonably confident that you would be subject to political delays and inhibitions, you lose your deterrent power and make more likely a deterrent to be ineffective. It must be something that the potential aggressor thinks will work and work quickly. If you so enmesh it with political machinery and requirements to action which many times cannot work or

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work only after long delay, then you lose the main purpose of it which is not to fight a war but prevent a war.82

‘Consultation’ had been by no means ruled out, despite this intransigent statement of the position as it would be in a time of crisis. In reality, the internal procedures of the US government were not intended to wait upon ‘last minute developments which may require immediate decision in the midst of inevitable confusion and uncertainty’. Rather, the circumstances leading to the use of nuclear weapons being considered would arise from a period of increasing tension in which the President would be able to obtain the views first of the Joint Chiefs as to military necessity, then of the Secretaries of Defense and State and the chairman of the AEC. It was envisaged that these last, sitting as the Special Committee on Atomic Energy of the NSC, would consider the Joint Chiefs’ recommendation. Then, if time permitted, congressional leaders would be consulted, along with the cabinet, other federal bodies and other governments from whose bases attacks would be flown. The decision, on this sequence, would precede consultation with the UK.83 When the McMahon Act was amended in Britain’s favour in July 1958, it opened the door to nuclear cooperation on a broader front, through the Anglo-American Mutual Defence agreement, a bilateral treaty renewed at ten-year intervals.84 The US Joint Chiefs reported that ‘in order to assure the greatest possible exchange of classified defense information’ between the two countries, they had completed a full assessment, ‘conducted with the view toward carrying out the spirit as well as the letter of the President’s agreement’.85 The concordat that followed covered the position of US strategic bombers stationed on British soil, the Thor force, and the operation of those Bomber Command aircraft equipped with US weapons, as well as those tactical bombers flown by both parties that were committed to SACEUR. By the time coordinated air operations became feasible following the joint USAF–RAF meetings and, later, the deployment of Thor missiles to the UK, controversies over the use of the bases were largely a thing of the past.

Notes   1 In particular by Sir Roger Makins, whose account of the negotiations and their outcome was both sceptical and self-effacing. S. Kelly, ‘No ordinary Foreign Office official: Sir Roger Makins and Anglo-American atomic relations, 1945– 55’, Contemporary British History, 14 (4), 2000, pp. 107–124.   2 Kelly, ‘Sir Roger Makins and Anglo-American Atomic Relations’.

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  3 R. Makins, Note on the history of United States’ assurances about the use of the atomic weapon, 23 November 1951, UKNA, PREM 11/1053.   4 Kelly, ‘Sir Roger Makins and Anglo-American Atomic relations’, p. 114.   5 Franks to Makins, 23 February 1951, UKNA, FO 800/438.   6 Churchill to Attlee, 12 February 1951, UKNA, FO 800/438.   7 Notes prepared by Admiral Strauss, Bermuda, 5 December 1953, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954. Volume 5, Part 2, Western European Security, Document 343.   8 E. Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez: Diaries 1951–6, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986, pp. 158–161.   9 Draft briefing note by Jebb, Oxfordshire airfields and the atomic bomb, 14 March 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90016. Jebb’s laconic wit was edited out of the final version. 10 Shuckburgh to Dixon, 2 June 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90017. 11 Memorandum for the Record by Special Assistant to the Secretary of State R. Gordon Arneson, Truman-Attlee Conversations of December 1950: Use of Atomic Weapons, 16 January 1953, Department of State Records, NARA, Record Group 59. Some of the US documents referenced here can be accessed through the National Security Archive website at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ NSAEBB/NSAEBB159/index.htm 12 R. Makins, Note on the history of United States’ assurances about the use of the atomic weapon, 23 November 1951, UKNA, PREM 11/1053. An account of Ambassador Sir Oliver Franks’s own contribution during this period is given in M.F. Hopkins, Oliver Franks and the Truman administration: Anglo-American relations, 1948–1952, London, Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 185–188. 13 House of Commons Debates, 5th series, vol. 482, 14 December 1950, col. 1357. 14 Telegram, Washington to Foreign Office, Personal, Steel from Makins, 16 December 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1560. 15 Telegram, Foreign Office to Washington, Personal for Steel from Makins, 22 December 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1560. 16 Foreign Office (Permanent Under-Secretary?) to Ricketts, 21 December 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1560. 17 Telegram, Washington (Steel) to Foreign Office (Makins), 28 December 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1560. 18 Makins to Ricketts, Downing St., 9 January 1951, Ricketts to Attlee, 9 January 1951, UKNA, PREM 8/1560. 19 United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950. Western Europe Volume 3, pp. 1,654–1,666. 20 A. Andrews, The Air Marshals, London, Macdonald, 1970, p. 284. 21 Tedder to Vandenberg, 31 December 1949, LoC, Vandenberg papers, Box 4, Britain (2). 22 Papers of MRAF Lord Tedder, RAF Museum Hendon, DC76/74/1036. 23 Chiefs of Staff Committee, 27 January 1949, confidential annex, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 24 Telegram, Tedder to CoS, 9 July 1950, UKNA, FO 371/90017. It is unclear

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whether Tedder was aware that it was at this point that presidential authority was also given to stockpile the Mark 4 atomic bomb, less their nuclear components, at the British air bases. 25 Telegram, Tedder to MoD, 19 December 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1383. 26 Telegram, MoD for Tedder, 22 December 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1383. 27 Telegram, MoD for Tedder, 22 December 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1383. 28 Telegram, MoD for Tedder, 22 December 1950, UKNA, PREM 8/1383. 29 Chiefs of Staff Committee, 28 December 1950, UKNA, DEFE 32/1. 30 Telegram, BJSM (Tedder) to MoD, 8 January 1951, UKNA, PREM 8/1383. 31 Chiefs of Staff Committee, 9 January 1951, UKNA, DEFE 32/2. 32 Telegram, Foreign Office (Bevin) to Washington, 13 January 1951, UKNA, PREM 8/1383. 33 Ambassador Douglas was reported as ‘horrified’ to learn that the British government had been kept in the dark about US strategic air plans and offered to take the matter up. Instead, the request for information was handled on an interservice basis, though with scant success. Recollected in Chiefs of Staff to Elliot, 24 August 1951, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 34 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Staff Conference held at 10 Downing Street, 8 March 1951, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 35 Pressed by demands for his intervention, Attlee accepted this as a way forward but warned ‘I can’t wait very long for these reports.’ Makins to Attlee 14 February 1951, with annotations by the Prime Minister, UKNA, PREM 8/1383. 36 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Staff Conference held at 10 Downing Street, resumed 20 March 1951, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 37 The paper was CoS (51) 106. Some confusion has arisen from this paper being subsequently withdrawn. However, this occurred for administrative rather than policy reasons, and it was recirculated on a more restricted basis though with different reference numbers. Bill Elliot at the BJSM was advised early in 1952 that its content was still current. Telegram, Air Ministry (CAS) to Elliot, 17 January 1952, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 38 Johnston, ‘Mr Slessor goes to Washington’, pp. 361–398. 39 Makins to Franks, 23 March 1951, UKNA, PREM 8/1383. 40 Quoted in Hopkins, Oliver Franks, p. 190. 41 Franks to Makins, 20 July 1951, DEFE 20/1. Makins was frankly sceptical of the value of service-to-service talks even as a preliminary, but withdrew his objections after prime ministerial approval was given. Makins to Franks, 31 July 1951, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 42 Barnes to Crombie, 16 February 1951, UKNA, AIR 19/1734. 43 Franks to Sir William Strang, 28 August 1951, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 44 Chiefs of Staff to Elliot, 24 August 1951, UKNA, DEFE 20/1 (author’s emphasis). 45 D. Campbell, The unsinkable aircraft carrier: American military power in Britain, London, Michael Joseph, 1984. The image has been variously attributed to Mussolini and to Churchill, and was employed in Soviet propaganda: Duke, ‘US basing in Britain’, p. 120; A.J. Pierre, Nuclear politics: the British experience

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with an independent strategic force, 1939–1970, London, Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 79. 46 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Reducing the Enemy Threat, Report by the Air Defence Committee, 31 August 1951, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 47 Hopkins, Oliver Franks, p. 219. 48 M.F. Hopkins, ‘Herbert Morrison, the cold war and Anglo-American Relations, 1945–1951’, in M.F. Hopkins, M.D. Kandiah and G. Staerk (eds.), Cold war Britain, 1945–1964: new perspectives, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2002, p. 26. 49 Memorandum of Conversation (Memcon) by John Ferguson, State Department Policy Planning Staff, Discussions with British on use of nuclear weapons, 6 August 1951, Records of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Politico-Military Affairs, Subject File Special Assistant for Atomic Energy Affairs, 1950–66, Box 11, Nuclear Sharing-UK Consultation Discussions 1950–51, NARA, RG 59. 50 Memcon, US-UK Consultations on Atomic Warfare, 11 September 1951, Records of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Politico-Military Affairs, Subject File Special Assistant for Atomic Energy Affairs, 1950–66, Box 11, Nuclear Sharing-UK Consultation Discussions 1950–51, NARA, RG 59. 51 ‘Nature of Consultations’, Excerpt from Memorandum of Conversation re: US-UK Political Military Meeting, September 13, 1951, Records of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Politico-Military Affairs, Subject File Special Assistant for Atomic Energy Affairs, 1950–66, Box 11, Nuclear Sharing-UK Consultation Discussions 1950–51, NARA, RG 59. 52 Hopkins, Oliver Franks, p. 190. 53 Summary of notes recorded … at the United States-United Kingdom military conference, 13 September 1951, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 54 Summary of notes recorded … at the United States–United Kingdom military conference, 13 September 1951, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 55 At a series of joint meetings between officers of the two air forces three years earlier, the RAF side had entirely accepted that the atomic bomb would be used against the Soviet Union from the outset of a conflict. Notes of informal meetings … 10–12 May 1948, Records of US Army Plans and Operations Division, NARA, RG 319, Box 106. 56 Summary of notes recorded … at the United States–United Kingdom military conference, 13 September 1951, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. Similarly, talks between Tim Marten, First Secretary at the British embassy, and Gordon Arneson centred on the US need to obtain consent for an attack in a matter of hours, the Pentagon strongly preferring to do this through military channels. Marten insisted that this was a matter for the Prime Minister – the channel by which he was reached being a secondary matter. Marten file note, 23 January 1952, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 57 Chiefs of Staff Committee, Atomic Warfare, revised report by the Directors of Plans, 30 November 1951, para. 3, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 58 Charmley wrote caustically that Churchill was keen to see Britain’s former influence and initiative among the allied powers revived, and went to Washington ‘determined to rekindle the glory days’. J. Charmley, Churchill’s grand alli-

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ance: the Anglo-American special relationship 1940–57, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1995, p. 253. 59 In the autumn of 1948 Churchill had written warmly of the growing atomic capabilities of the USAF and their ability to use the East Anglian air bases: Churchill to Eden, 12 September 1948, quoted in M. Gilbert, Churchill and America, London, Free Press, 2005, p. 388. 60 Manchester Guardian, 22 November 1951. 61 R. Makins, Note on the history of United States’ assurances about the use of the atomic weapon, 23 November 1951; Colville to Churchill, 22, 23 November 1951, Makins to Colville, 23 November 1951, UKNA, PREM 11/1053. 62 House of Commons Debates, 1953–54, vol. 525, 23 March 1954, cols. 1052– 1054. 63 House of Commons Debates, 1953–54, vol. 525, 1 April 1954, cols. 2230– 2232. 64 Summary of notes recorded … at the US–UK Chiefs of Staff Meeting, 6 January 1952, Records of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman’s file, General Bradley, 1949–53, NARA, RG 218, Box 7. 65 The series of attempts made by the British to secure such discussions are chronicled in Sir William Elliot to Bradley, 24 January 1952, Records of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman’s file, General Bradley, 1949–1953, NARA, RG 218, Box 5. 66 Summary of notes recorded … at the US–UK Chiefs of Staff Meeting, 6 January 1952, Records of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman’s file, General Bradley, 1949–53, NARA, RG 218, Box 7. 67 Memorandum of Conversation, Truman–Churchill Talks, Meeting on Agenda Items A: The Strategic Air Plans and the Use of Nuclear Weapons (TCT D-2/7) and B: Technical Cooperation in Atomic Energy (TCT D-2/8), 7 January 1952, Conference Files, Box 15, CF 100 Truman–Churchill Talks Washington, January 1952, NARA, RG 59. 68 Elliot to Ministry of Defence, 23 January 1952, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 69 Elliot to Ministry of Defence, 24 January 1952, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 70 Elliot to General Omar N. Bradley, 24 January 1952, Records of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman’s file, General Bradley, 1949–53, NARA, RG 218, Box 5. 71 Defence Policy and Global Strategy: Report by the UK Chiefs of Staff, 9 July 1952, Records of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman’s file, General Bradley, 1949–53, NARA, RG 218, Box 5. 72 Record of Meetings between the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff (representing the British Chiefs of Staff), 29 and 30 July 1952, Records of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman’s file, General Bradley, 1949–53, NARA, RG 218, Box 7; Summary of notes recorded … at the Political–Military Meeting of representatives from the United States and the United Kingdom, 31 July 1952, NARA, RG 218, Box 7. 73 Elliot to Ministry of Defence, 23 January 1952, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 74 Cherwell to Churchill, 20 June 1952; AM Ralph Cochrane (VCAS) to Churchill

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22 August 1952; private office to Churchill 20 October 1952, UKNA, PREM 11/308. 75 The F-84G Thunderjet, deployed to the UK that year, was the first fighter aircraft to have a tactical nuclear capability. 76 F.W. Marten file note, 23 January 1952, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 77 United Kingdom record of meeting held … on 5th February 1952, in Mr H. Freeman Matthews’ room in the US Department of State. Responding to Franks, Bradley commented that while ‘a very few enthusiasts’ in the USAF foresaw a quick war, he did not. UKNA, DEFE 20/2. 78 Elliot to Cochrane, 7 February 1952, UKNA, DEFE 20/1. 79 Memorandum of Conversation, Use of United Kingdom Bases and Consultation with the United Kingdom on the Use of Atomic Weapons, 6 March 1953, Department of State Records, Decimal Files 1950–54, 711.5611, NARA, RG 59. 80 Memorandum for the President from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, The Eden Visit: Use of Atomic Weapons, 7 March 1953; Memorandum for Mr Gordon Arneson from Under-Secretary of State Walter B. Smith, 12 March 1953, Department of State Records, NARA, RG 59. 81 United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952– 1954. Western European Security, Volume 5, Part 1, US Government Printing Office, 1952,. p. 512. 82 Dulles press conference, 16 December 1954, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954. Western European Security, Volume 5, Part 1, pp. 544–547. 83 National Security Council, memorandum for the President on procedures for obtaining advice on the use of atomic weapons, 23 October 1952. 84 Baylis, ‘The 1958 Anglo-American Mutual Defence Agreement’. 85 LoC, Twining papers, Box 106 (Joint Chiefs’ files).

11 Strike hard, strike sure … and strike together?

[Coordination of nuclear strike plans] the most important development in recent years in planning for the UK strategic bomber force … further evidence that the United States regards this country, both military and economically, as a good investment. Air Vice-Marshal John Stephenson, December 1956

Anglo-American atomic collaboration developed on an increasingly broad front from the mid-1950s. This was no longer just a basing agreement, but rather a growing partnership. It developed from providing a platform for a USAF atomic strike to the RAF playing a part in planned strikes alongside the USAF. That much Tedder appeared to have in mind when he instigated the movement to cooperation between the two air forces in the immediate post-war period. Slessor, his successor as Chief of the Air Staff, pushed the concept further. In 1949 he had argued for a virtual merger of air forces, putting it to Air Force Secretary Thomas Finletter that the USAF and the Commonwealth Air Forces should be regarded ‘as components of one whole (which to my mind is the only sensible way of looking at them)’. What might this mean? Slessor did not go so far as to support a then-current proposal that the RAF should concentrate on fighter defence and maritime patrols, leaving strategic bombing to the Americans. But he vigorously maintained that the economic and efficient organisation of two air forces required them to be treated as ‘components of a single great Anglo-American – still more, American-West European – Force’.1 Although Slessor could not have foreseen it, the provision of US nuclear weapons under Project ‘E’ paved the way to the achievement of something close to his ideal when agreements were forged between Strategic Air Command and the RAF to jointly deliver nuclear weaponry against the Soviet Union and its allies. For the British, this was a massively significant development in the relationship with the United States. ‘Strike Hard, Strike Sure’ was inscribed on Bomber Command’s badge.

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Notwithstanding the pretence to nuclear independence, from 1957, ‘Strike Together’ became the implicit, unwritten, third component of their mission. Slessor’s arguments for virtual integration of the two air forces had little resonance either side of the Atlantic at that time. The essential features of atomic matters militated against such closeness, the more so in the years following the passage of the McMahon Act. Atomic bombs were, in the code of the time, ‘special’ weapons, and their status as such precluded for more than a decade the development of a ‘special’ nuclear relationship. Nevertheless, from 1948 Britain’s service chiefs and their planning staffs, together with those serving at the British Joint Services Mission, Washington, edged towards cooperation, initially less for operational reasons than as a tactic to gain information about, and influence over, the atomic war plans of the notoriously independent SAC. LeMay’s operational plans were to be coordinated with SACEUR (not ‘coordinated by!’ protested LeMay) but ‘in view of the need to include consideration of restricted data in plans and operations dealing with atomic retardation matters, these plans and operational arrangements will be kept primarily on a “US eyes only” basis’.2 British leaders had become acutely aware of the vulnerability acquired by basing US bombers in the British Isles. While staff of the British embassy and the BJSM made Herculean efforts to discover the nature of US war plans, neither they, nor Attlee, Bevin, Morrison, nor indeed Churchill himself, were able to learn anything of value. Throughout the 1950s, continuing uncertainty as to US intentions, and the effect they would have on UK interests, impelled the RAF to seek a closer liaison. These efforts eventually paid off in the form of an American initiative to coordinate the two nuclear strike forces, an object inseparable from Project ‘E’. American-led ‘coordination’ proved to be a highly ambiguous concept and its pursuit could hardly avoid giving affront to the amour propre of the Air Staff. Yet such was the dependence on American technology and American trust that it proved but a small step from there to joint targeting, and thus to true operational integration.

Counterforce and deterrence Following the bomber campaigns of the Second World War, the USAF and the RAF maintained divergent approaches to strategic bombing. Although the wartime claim to precision bombing made less sense in the atomic age, a 1954 USAF manual on strategic air operations stressed the vulnerability of the enemy’s industrial fabric, the destruction of parts of

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which would ‘cause collapse of the national structure’, to be achieved through SAC’s massive bomber assault.3 But the RAF’s thinking in this same period was left to the Americans to decipher, as best they could: their plans were seen as ‘counter air operations designed to reduce the risk of air attack on the British Isles – not on disruption or neutralization of strategic target systems in a broad sense’.4 Accordingly, the USAF had deployed the 49th Air Division to England, under the 3rd Air Force from 1952 to 1956, specifically to provide an atomic force to counter those Soviet air operations that threatened the British Isles. The units allocated to the 49th would fly the B-45 bomber aircraft from Sculthorpe, and the F-84G tactical fighter-bomber, equipped to carry the 2,000 lb atomic bomb, from nearby Wethersfield, to neutralise the airfields that threatened the UK.5 The British air operations strategy was soon to change. When Air Chief Marshal Sir George Mills took over from Sir Hugh Lloyd as AOCin-C Bomber Command in 1955, he brought to the role a sharp awareness of the realities of atomic warfare. As Director of Plans in 1948, Mills had been centrally involved in the preparations of the English air bases for USAF atomic bombers.6 Now, as Bomber Command chief, he found himself instructed to target the Soviet long-range Air Force bases from which attacks on the UK would be launched. Mills argued against this, urging ACAS (Operations) Laurie Sinclair that: On the deterrent point I am sure for the enemy’s edification as well as our own we must be specific in saying that our aim in retaliation is to hurt him where it really hurts; if we don’t keep this firmly in our mind we are going to be ridden off on all sorts of defensive ideas which will ruin or seriously diminish our deterrent value. Whoever would be afraid of launching a sudden attack if he thought the greater part of our retaliation would come back to his airfields? I do pray that we keep our minds absolutely crystal clear on this issue.7

Mills’s campaign for a shift of target priority from airfields to ‘morale targets’, to centres of population and administration – in short, to the Soviet cities – was partially successful, in the sense that the Air Ministry gave way to what had long been known to be his personal view, though not without much internal debate and some reluctance.8 As Mills’s appointment was being finalised, CAS Sir William Dickson was continuing to justify the size of the RAF V-bomber force primarily in terms of the need to hit ‘some 150 airfields from which Russian H-bomb carriers could operate’.9 His was an essentially political argument; once it was accepted that Soviet thermonuclear weapons could inflict utter devastation on the UK, counterforce operations would no longer suffice,

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and policy shifted towards nuclear deterrence.10 The main aim of the RAF now became to threaten Soviet cities with annihilation. The Command Directive issued to Mills embodied the shift he had requested away from targeting airfields, and he was instead directed to use the nascent V-bomber force as ‘the principal British deterrent to global war by providing the means of meeting aggression with immediate nuclear retaliation’. This would be directed against ‘those targets that will hurt the aggressor most’, destroying the enemy’s will and ability to fight by attacks on ‘centres of administration and population and upon his communication system’.11 The Command Directive envisaged that Mills’s forces – which consisted mainly of Canberras and a few Valiants at that stage – would be directed at the discretion of the Chiefs of Staff to the support of either British or NATO forces and would remain under national control. Yet while it was inconceivable that Britain could become embroiled in a nuclear conflict without America, that ally’s intentions remained obscure. All that had been established through inter-service discussion was that nuclear weapons would be used from the outset of a conflict, and from bases in the UK. It was an insufficient basis for the combined operations that war, or the threat of war, would demand. On joint operations, though, USAF planners were ambivalent. They recognised the duplication and expense of un-coordinated strategic air forces, and that the inclusion of the RAF Bomber Command in coordinated global offensive air plans will materially contribute to economy of effort, minimise duplication, and aid in formulating over-all diversionary plans. The psychological advantage of the only two Western strategic air forces carrying out a coordinated offensive air plan is significant.

The danger foreseen, however, was that combined atomic planning ‘could result in a distortion of the US planned strategic air offensive to favour the British’.12 The RAF tactic of keeping close to the Americans in the hope of gaining both information and influence was pursued consistently throughout this period. In 1953 the first atomic bomb was delivered to the RAF for training purposes, and with the Valiants, the first of a new generation of high-speed, high-altitude medium jet bombers, coming into service, the British would have cards to play. In January that year, Air Marshal Harry Broadhurst, then ACAS (Operations), but later to succeed Mills as AOC-in-C Bomber Command, invited representatives of SAC and USAF headquarters to an informal meeting at the Air Ministry. Confessing that a coordinated strategic plan of attack would have to wait upon the RAF gaining atomic capability, he nonetheless urged that certain aspects

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of strategic operations could be planned in advance ‘so as to preserve an economy of effort in war and, in particular, to avoid the confusion and mutual interference which would otherwise result’. That meeting ended with agreement on a combined RAF–USAF strategic operational planning group to recommend methods for coordinating strategic bombing, reconnaissance and countermeasures.13 There was no immediate followup; but the agenda was set for future discussions which would acquire greater urgency as British nuclear forces built up. When Air Chief Marshal Sir William Dickson took over as Chief of the Air Staff in 1955, it fell to him to open a direct line of communication with the Americans about their nuclear strike plans. Bill Dickson, after Tedder the CAS most sympathetic to cooperation with the USAF, had prepared the ground prior to his appointment with a visit to SAC headquarters at Offutt AFB.14 Once in post he held further informal meetings with his USAF counterpart, General Nathan Twining.15 A major factor limiting Dickson’s discussions with the Americans was the – at that time – severely limited capability of Bomber Command. Parity with Strategic Air Command could never be approached, but the RAF would in time acquire a powerful strike force. Yet full service strength for the V-force was some way off, and there would be a lengthy interval before an arsenal of British atomic bombs was built up for them. To fill the gap Bomber Command was brought to nuclear effectiveness sooner by US weapons provided under Project ‘E’. That arrangement provided a platform for discussions that soon moved on to broader issues of how these US weapons would be deployed, under whose direction, against which targets. In February 1955 Dickson wrote to advise Churchill that ‘in a matter so vital to our survival we cannot be certain that in the event the Americans would use their resources exactly as we had planned or would wish; or that they would do so in the first few days which are now of such critical importance’. Target priorities were at issue here, for just where SAC chose to strike had huge implications for the defence of the UK. A large number of targets would have to be hit, including some 150 airfields from which the Soviet bomber forces operated, as well as administrative and industrial targets, naval bases and nuclear facilities. ‘We must try to hit them all at the outset’, he urged, somewhat unrealistically. The vast number and range of Soviet counterforce targets required SAC to take the leading role and Bomber Command, with its limited resources, would have to be highly selective. Agreement on targeting would be needed to avoid ‘wasteful overlapping and dangerous omissions’, and it should be ‘clearly to the American advantage to ensure there is no duplication between their plans and our own’.16

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The coordination talks By the autumn of 1955 some new factors promised real advances in what, up until then, had been an inconclusive discussion. First, once the V-bomber force began to build up, the UK had serious military weight to bring to the partnership. Secondly, there had been some tentative indications that the USAF would welcome an RAF commitment to attack 20 agreed targets as part of a joint operation. The third development, though it would take time to materialise, was the progress made on modifying RAF aircraft to fly US nuclear weapons under Project ‘E’, which would itself provide an opportunity to start coordinating operations and logistic plans. When Churchill retired in April 1955, Minister of Defence Selwyn Lloyd sought the approval of Eden, now in his first week as Prime Minister, for coordination talks to be opened. Lloyd held out the prospect that such a relationship would enable the British to discover more about SAC’s war plans.17 Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan was lukewarm, foreseeing that while progress on the V-force and on the planned British H-bomb provided some leverage, the Americans would not be prepared to reveal their strategic air plan in full.18 Meanwhile, the Air Staff had become even more emphatic that the most effective deployment for Britain’s limited nuclear forces would be in joint operations with SAC. VCAS Air Marshal Sir Thomas Pike, on returning from a visit to SAC headquarters at Omaha, urged joint staff meetings as a follow-up to the Dickson-Twining discussions. Back came a USAF suggestion for a conference, under the code-name ‘Encircle’, to be held in London on 15–17 August 1956.19 Twining wrote to the new CAS, Sir Dermot Boyle, of his hope that ‘a firm integration of effort will result from this meeting which will not only improve our offensive and defensive postures but will immeasurably strengthen the firm bond now existing between our two air forces’.20 DCAS Air Marshal Geoffrey Tuttle who, after some reluctance, took the lead in the talks, was initially less enthusiastic than Dickson and Pike about Anglo-US cooperation. When the British contingent held their pre-meeting a week before ‘Encircle’, he warned that while the Americans should be allowed to make the running in developing the concept of joint operations, the RAF should be careful not to show their hand.21 This did not prove difficult. Indeed, when they reviewed the proposed agenda at their pre-meeting the RAF side had nothing to say on some issues. Not only did the British officers find themselves simply responding to the US overtures, they were bemused by some of the concepts they were asked to deal with. SAC had added an agenda item on

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‘the economic worth of the programme’, apparently for an assessment of the comparative capabilities and operational value of the two nations’ strike forces in terms of their ability to inflict damage. Tuttle thought this referred to ‘the cost of the programme in terms of £.s.d.’, while Air Vice-Marshal Ronnie Lees, the ACAS (Ops), thought it meant the USAF would find it ‘cheaper’ to allow the RAF to drop their bombs than do so themselves. The Air Staff seemed unaware that the economic effectiveness of a nuclear force was a matter subjected to periodic professional analysis. A paper by Bomber Command’s Operations Research Branch showed the effects of a range of factors, including yield, accuracy, the number of weapons allocated to a target and the disposition of aiming points within an urban area, making the entirely intuitive point that ‘economic use of the damage potential of the stockpile and good coverage or high assurances on individual targets are incompatible’.22 Such technical papers may not have been familiar at Air Staff level, and this item was dropped from the final agenda for the main ‘Encircle’ meeting, avoiding what might have been an embarrassing discussion. The main concern of the British side was to resist anything that impinged upon their jealously guarded independence. In particular, this should ‘on no account’ be permitted in respect of the V-bomber force, while Tuttle insisted that even the Canberras stationed in Germany remained a national force until allocated to SACEUR in an actual emergency. The RAF, he instructed, ‘must not be cornered into a position where “V” aircraft were tied to SACEUR because they carried US atomic weapons … the “V” force had a national commitment and was directly responsible only to the Chiefs of Staff’.23 So far as the US weapons themselves were concerned, there would obviously be strings attached to their use and ‘we must accept them’. Yet it would be most disagreeable to have SACEUR ‘just hand out the targets to the RAF’.24 Tuttle’s position was untenable. The Canberras remained under national control up to the point when actually loaded and armed with US weapons, at which point SACEUR assumed control. Yet with this mixture of suspicion, bafflement, obstinacy and resignation, one of the most important negotiations in the history of the Atlantic alliance got under way. In the event, the Air Staff’s trepidation was misplaced. The tentative and conciliatory tone of the opening statement by Major-General Richard C. Lindsay, USAF Director of Plans, at the ‘Encircle’ meeting the following week indicated that the American delegates had only limited expectations of making progress with their would-be partners. The USAF representatives presented a paper that answered their British colleagues’ fears, paid elaborate homage to the RAF’s sensitivities on the

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national character of the V-force, and set out a detailed account of the principles governing the proposed collaboration. Those principles went a long way to reassure the British side. As the meeting worked through the agenda in their heavily guarded meeting room in the Ministry of Defence building, the RAF staff registered their full agreement with the totality of what the Americans proposed. The initial impetus for the meeting may have come from Pike, but the groundwork was exclusively American, with a series of wellprepared background papers from Omaha. To these, in the absence of any strategic thinking on the issues in Whitehall, the RAF stance could only be reactive. The Americans’ preparatory work had so overwhelmed the British contingent that the minutes prepared by the Squadron Leader who clerked the meeting consisted of no more than verbatim passages from the SAC document, with an added line registering the RAF side’s agreement. The conclusions recorded the unreserved agreement of both parties.25 Back in the Air Ministry a self-congratulatory tone prevailed: ‘the Americans are very anxious to keep us in the game with them’, reported BJSM Washington.26 The arrangements for coordination of strategic and tactical nuclear operations were hailed as ‘the most important development in recent years in planning for the UK strategic bomber force’, representing ‘further evidence that the United States regards this country, both military and economically, as a good investment’.27 This was all despite Suez. As the new CAS in succession to Dickson, Sir Dermot Boyle cancelled a trip to meet Twining in November due to the situation in the Middle East, but he nevertheless took personal charge of the follow-up to ‘Encircle’.28 Boyle reminded his fellow Chiefs that the Air Staff had for years been urging joint planning for the British and American strategic air forces. Now, with the V-force coming on stream, coordination of the two nuclear strike plans could at last be taken forward, with an agreed concept of allied nuclear operations and an outline plan of action for conducting them.29 It was an appropriately upbeat message for the suspicious Army and Navy chiefs, but in reality the supposed concordance had already begun to unravel. The detailed terms of the agreement submitted by the Pentagon confirmed the worst fears of the sceptics among the Air Staff officers.30 The Air Ministry resounded with rhetorical questions. What would ‘coordination’ mean in practice? Was British countervalue targeting doctrine really enshrined in the joint strike proposals or was it effectively ruled out? Was the RAF expected to play no more than a subordinate role in US decision-making? And who had authority to launch a nuclear attack? Progress had to be made on all these issues before an

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agreement could be finalised, and the first steps towards the integration of US and UK nuclear forces taken.

The ambiguities of ‘coordination’ When the Chiefs of Staff met in December, Boyle had reported that some points in the US proposal would need further discussion, but need not hold up CoS approval of the broad arrangements. His colleagues were prepared to go ahead on that basis, but with an important proviso: there should be no implied commitment to any specific size for the V-force or to the production of a given number of weapons. This restriction was highly inconvenient, as talking up the need for the largest possible V-bomber force was part of the RAF’s game plan in going along with the USAF. Agreement with the Americans strengthened the Air Staff’s hand against the rival services in the battle for resources and helped shore up support for the airborne deterrent within Whitehall, for any Treasury attack on the strength of that force would from then on be presented as inconsistent with allied operational plans.31 ‘Encircle’ was to be welcomed for providing ‘powerful arguments at our disposal that … the American willingness to play ball with us is largely dependent on the efforts we have made and are making to build up a nuclear strike potential of our own’. The new Prime Minister – never one to privilege strategic interests over economy – had been showing an unwelcome interest in the proposed size of the V-bomber force, and favoured reducing and cancelling production orders.32 While SAC needed to know the size of the force they were planning to coordinate, Boyle could do no more than assure Twining that the UK would ‘provide as big a force as is practicable in the light of all the circumstances’. The RAF could not be bound in advance to providing ‘any specific number of aircraft or weapons’.33 When Duncan Sandys became Macmillan’s Minister of Defence in January 1957 he threw his weight behind the RAF interest. One of his first acts was to write to his opposite number, US Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson, confirming the broad terms of the agreement that came out of the ‘Encircle’ discussions in December 1956 and assuring him the British government considered the proposals ‘a most significant development in the cooperation between our two countries’.34 Eisenhower and Macmillan reconfirmed this agreement in Bermuda in March.35 When Sandys saw Air Force Secretary Douglas in June 1957 he expressed ‘appreciation of the satisfactory way in which joint planning between Bomber Command and SAC was going ahead and stressed the vital importance of this to full efficiency of the United Kingdom

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defence effort’.36 At home, Sandys supported the Air Staff, playing up the adverse effects of the uncertainty about V-bomber numbers, and warning Macmillan that failure to be specific about the strength of that force would create difficulties for nuclear strike coordination plans ‘which have been agreed in principle at Bermuda’.37 For his part, Boyle was keen to see progress made on the big picture, and less concerned with the niceties of the proposed relationship. He urged the establishment of new links between the two Commands to ensure that, in the event of war, the necessary political authority to launch a nuclear strike could be obtained in time. He suggested a standing liaison body ‘to initiate and maintain a continuous contact between our two air forces on these important matters’. But before long it became necessary to address the matter on which the Air Staff were most uncomfortable: whether Bomber Command’s forces were to coordinate with, as they would wish, or be coordinated by, their American colleagues. The essential truth of the emerging relationship lay, as ever, in the nuance. The wording of the crucial annex to the US proposal implied that strike plans, and the RAF place in them, would be coordinated by the Chief of Staff, USAF, possibly by delegation to the Commander-inChief, Strategic Air Command.38 This statement was in sharp contrast to a letter from General Twining and to an earlier passage of the same annex, which referred to coordination of strike plans with the Royal Air Force, a wording which had been accepted – or so thought the British officers present – at the ‘Encircle’ meeting in August.39 ‘As I understand the proposal’, Boyle wrote to Twining, ‘it is that this should be a joint matter and that neither of us, nor the representatives of either of us, should have any over-riding authority. I am sure this is your intention.’40 The USAF reaction to these British reservations was frosty, although Twining was anxious to reassure the CAS that he did not claim to have unilateral over-riding authority – as if there were some other kind.41 It seems the Americans approached the issue exclusively as one of coordinating a US-armed strike, and were primarily concerned that coordination should be established in advance of the UK deploying US atomic weapons in the Victor force.42 In reality, the Victors were some way from coming into service and were never to carry US weapons. Boyle gently advised Twining that the Valiants already had an atomic capability with British weapons, in the light of which there should be no delay in making a start on coordinating the respective strike plans.43 ‘We can only assume’, mused Air Vice-Marshal Alfred Earle, the ACAS (Policy), ‘that Twining does not realise how far we have got with the development of the V Bomber force.’44 It certainly seemed so. Only

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when Tuttle briefed his opposite number on Britain’s atomic capability did a sense of urgency develop on the American side.45 Detailed planning now began for the next joint meeting in Washington. In May 1957 Major-General ‘Bim’ Wilson, 3rd Air Force commander, wrote rather daringly to ‘Dear Dermot’ – the intimacy he had enjoyed with Sir William Dickson did not extend to Boyle – about what the USAF referred to informally as ‘the pact of cooperation with the British in atomic area’.46 While the forces of Strategic Air Command and Bomber Command ‘are to remain under national control … they will operate in global war according to a coordinated plan’. A Joint Planning Group would select and prioritise targets, allocating them between the forces, coordinate tactics, timing, routeing and counter-measures and ‘determin[e] the allocation of US nuclear weapons to Bomber Command to meet any British deficiency as may exist for the time being’. The troubling issue of authority to launch would be tackled, and the Joint Planning Group would be asked to recommend a channel and system of control to ‘ensure that, in the event of war, the two forces will in fact be able to act in concert without delay’.47 This last was a long-recognised need, it being ‘rather obvious’ to Air Vice-Marshal Mark Selway at the BJSM, Washington, ‘that the existing bumbling linkage between State Department and Foreign Office will have to be replaced by a more lively arrangement if we are to hope for concerted action at the right time’.48 While political concert would be vital, moves to realise joint action would need to focus on the SAC forces flying from Wilson’s English airfields and those flying from Bomber Command’s own airfields, for they would be sharing a flight time to target and would indeed have the capability to ‘strike together’. Target allocation to avoid fratricide would be especially important.

Weapons and targets The vexed issue of targeting had been dormant since the first ‘Encircle’ meeting. Now concrete proposals were put forward, and the sensitivities of the RAF– equally dormant – flared up again, causing the British side to backtrack in the face of ‘alarming’ proposals that could hardly have been more highly charged in their implications for sovereignty. The terms of reference for the embryonic Joint Planning Group took no account of the need to reach agreement at UK Chiefs of Staff level on broad target policy before Bomber Command and SAC plans could be coordinated.49 And, as it happened, the Chiefs of Staff had yet to consider a Joint Planning Staff paper on ‘Allied Strategic Attack in Global

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War in 1957’, the cover note to which specifically raised the issues of higher direction and target selection. Meanwhile, proposals on target selection, accepted by the RAF side at the ‘Encircle’ meeting, had been rewritten to an unacceptable degree, although Boyle urged his colleagues not to contest the American proposals.50 The draft Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) prepared by SAC officers for the Washington meeting showed little awareness of how deeply entrenched was British commitment to the independent nuclear deterrent. As a result, the phrasing of the US draft re-ignited Air Ministry hostility to the apparent American dominance of the proposed partnership. An internal meeting to plan a response to the SAC proposals posed the question ‘Does the Memorandum of Understanding give us what we want?’ – to which the reply was largely negative. Planning tactics for their response, the officers present were emphatic that ‘this is not an “agreed” US/UK document yet. It is up to the USAF and RAF to confirm it.’51 The one-sidedness of the proposed agreement was particularly difficult to swallow within the Air Ministry. Air Vice-Marshal John Stephenson, the new ACAS (Policy) and the most trenchant of the internal critics, complained that the MoU ‘over-stresses our dependence on US weapons and makes no reference to use of our own’. It could not be accepted as definitive, ignoring as it did ‘perhaps from ignorance; perhaps by intent’ the fact of Britain’s own nuclear capability. The US proposal as drafted ‘smacks too much of incorporation into, and too little of coordination with’.52 Suspicions flourished. The discussions coincided with the visit to London by Harold Stassen, the US emissary who came to urge the possibilities of a moratorium on nuclear testing. His visit was coldly received in Whitehall, where it was seen as a ploy to block Britain’s development of a thermonuclear capability, something on which inter-service rivalries could undermine RAF ambitions.53 Just as the SAC proposals on coordination had evoked a large measure of disagreement within the Air Ministry, target policy and targeting divided the British services, with Earl Mountbatten, Chief of the Naval Staff, persistently opposing RAF bombing doctrine.54 Prime Minister Macmillan wondered whether the Stassen visit was ‘America’s reply to our becoming a nuclear power – to sell us down the river before we have a stockpile sufficient for our needs? Some of my colleagues suspect this.’55 The irrepressible Stephenson drew together this larger issue of nonproliferation policy with his opposition to the SAC proposals: The memorandum … is not, for example, a Memorandum of Understanding on the coordination of UK/US nuclear offensives, which must surely be

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between equal partners. At the worst it might seem to be capable of extension, or even acceptable as it stands, as a substitute for our own plans for developing an independent deterrent. The dangers of extension in this direction are increased if the memorandum is read in conjunction with Mr Stassen’s recent disarmament proposals which embody among other measures proposals that production of new fissile material for the manufacture of nuclear weapons should cease by April 1959. At this time of course, UK stocks of nuclear weapons would be small and the implication that we might as well decide now to rely solely on American weapons would not be lost on those who are still not reconciled to our decision to be independent [anonymous annotation: CIGS, CNS, Chancellor] … I do not want to see dangers where none exist but I suggest that before any further action is taken on this paper it would be wise to decide among ourselves its precise status and what action we should take upon it, and at what level.56

Mindful of the seething dissent among his staff, Boyle wrote a carefully non-committal letter to Twining. At the same time, he warned Tuttle, who was to lead the British delegation at the next round of talks, not to disclose his hand too soon but ‘leave the initiative with the Americans in the early stages of the meeting’. As ever, getting a clearer understanding of American intentions was paramount: ‘knowledge of the views and ideas of the Americans will be of great importance and we must hope that when you and your team come back from the States you will be able to fill in some of the blanks on this’.57 The Washington meeting took place on 21 May 1957. Tuttle opened by describing the talks as ‘one of the biggest steps in international military cooperation ever taken’, while reminding his listeners that he ‘was not a plenipotentiary’, and that higher direction might be needed on any points of disagreement. He insisted the V-bombers would remain under national control and would go only to targets approved by his government.58 The meeting drew up Terms of Reference for the Joint Planning Group, whose tasks would be to select and prioritise targets, allocate them to SAC and Bomber Command and coordinate tactics, timing, routeing and counter-measures. It was left to the JPG to establish what nuclear weapons should be allocated to the RAF to meet the temporary shortfall and to define the mechanisms of command and control that would enable the two forces ‘to act in concert without delay’.59 The meeting, it seemed, went very much to the British advantage. SAC’s planners needed only to know how many British weapons would be issued to Bomber Command for the first strike, and how many American weapons would be required as a top-up. Then issues of control and storage of the American weapons could be addressed.60 It was not, in fact, quite that straightforward. The Americans saw a

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direct link between the supply of US nuclear weapons to the British and the development of arrangements – including targeting – under which they would be used. The RAF sought to break this link and separate the coordination of plans from the supply of weapons, so that the provision of the atomic bombs, welcome as they were, did not determine the plans for using them, for this would signify a subordinate role for the RAF. As formal agreement neared, Boyle’s first thought was to try dividing the memorandum into two parts, dealing with the strike plan and the supply of bombs, negotiating on them separately. Tuttle disagreed, arguing that this ‘may give rise to suspicions by the Americans that we are trying to out-smart them’.61 So, walking this narrow path between candour and misrepresentation, Boyle explained to Twining that it would help from the ‘presentational, constitutional and security aspects’ if the issues could be separated in a revision of the agreement. Moreover, while the V-bombers already had ‘a growing nuclear capability with United Kingdom weapons, on which planning coordination between our two air forces could now go ahead’, it would be some time before any V-bombers were modified to take US weapons.62 The ‘presentational’ considerations were matters of bureaucratic politics. Neither then nor later did Boyle consider himself obliged to report to his fellow Chiefs on that part of the agreement which dealt with the supply of US weapons for carriage by the RAF.63 Separating the issues would enable him to keep it out of the COS committee. By mid-1957 the basic framework had been largely accepted, the generous supply of US nuclear weapons to the RAF providing the essential lubricant to agreement. The asymmetry in the relationship had to be acknowledged by the British, ‘bearing in mind the small contribution to be made by Bomber Command compared with that of the SAC’.64 Air Vice-Marshal Stephenson, persistent critic of the SAC plans, was nevertheless reconciled to the UK’s ‘poor relation role’, advising that ‘We are certainly the junior partner and will always be so.’65 Discussions on detail still remained in disarray. There were at least four different versions of the agreement in circulation, their proliferation a testimony to the lack of agreement on what kind of alliance should be established. The first version was the SAC proposal received from General Twining. The second incorporated minor changes and improvements on the SAC proposal that the RAF wished to see as a minimum, but which enjoyed little support within the Air Staff. The third was prepared, despite his own ‘grave doubts’, by Air Vice-Marshal Ronnie Lees, the ACAS (Ops), to Boyle’s specifications. The fourth was a masterly redraft by Frank Cooper, civilian Head of S.6 section, who successfully reconciled the differences among the Air Staff and provided the basis of what was then sent back to Washington for approval.

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General Thomas D. White had meanwhile succeeded Twining as USAF Chief of Staff, and in August 1957 accepted the Cooper revisions to the agreement, passing them on to LeMay as a basis for detailed negotiations between SAC and Bomber Command.66 Later that autumn Air Chief Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst, AOC-in-C Bomber Command, met with Lieutenant-General Tom Power, LeMay’s successor. Broadhurst reported back that a coordinated nuclear strike plan had been prepared, which would apply to the twelve months to 30 June 1959, using British and, from October 1958, US nuclear weapons.67 Sir Richard Powell, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, wanted the Chiefs of Staff to endorse these arrangements ‘without demur’.68 In the event, the Army and Navy chiefs saw the scheme only in outline, as Tuttle and Boyle still had no intention of presenting them with the detail. This ploy, strongly supported by the civilian officials, helped avoid the issue of the front-line strength of the V-force being raised. Whitehall battles over how many V-bombers to order were best concealed from the Americans, for they would do little to inspire confidence in the robustness of the alliance. What then was the status of the Anglo-American agreement? The Whitehall view was that the exchange of notes between Sandys and Wilson could be taken as the ‘governing memorandum’ without further reference to ministers.69 Sandys accordingly approved the Chiefs of Staff paper on his own authority as the basis for strike planning, choosing not to report it to his cabinet colleagues.70 But there were real differences of operational doctrine between the American and British sides with regard to targets. For the RAF, this had been supposedly settled with the directive given to Air Chief Marshal Sir George Mills, the AOC-in-C Bomber Command, in 1955. British policy would be first and foremost one of ‘city-busting’, a policy shunned by the USAF, who aimed instead to cripple the ability of the Soviet Union to prosecute a war, with cities as incidental, rather than primary, targets. The report of the Joint Planning Staff helped Boyle square the doctrinal circle. The JPS had argued that UK policy should be clarified before signing up to coordination with the United States.71 But Boyle was able to suppress the similar concerns of the Air Staff by drawing a distinction between target policy (to be decided by ministers on advice from the COS) and target selection (a matter for the Air Ministry).72 Although ministers were expected to endorse target policy at cabinet level as a basis for further negotiations with the USAF, leaving target selection to the professionals, Sandys chose also to hold back the target policy document from the Defence Committee, arguing it was better to wait until more was known of the American plans from the joint talks,

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after which it would become the basis for operational discussions at command level between the RAF and USAF.73 The Chief of the Defence Staff was empowered at that stage to authorise the implementation of the target plans approved by the Chiefs of Staff. In this way, the line between target policy and target selection was supposedly drawn.74 So while the niceties of political authority assumed that target policy would be settled at ministerial level, and handed down to be translated into specifics, in reality policy appears to have passed upward in the form of a distillation of target selections (‘targeting’) made by officers of the two air forces. Under US war plans from 1948 onward, a westward push by Soviet ground forces would have been met by an immediate nuclear strike from the English forward bases. Despite the acceptance of a countervalue role for the RAF, it was initially proposed to employ RAF bombers against the Russians’ long-range bomber bases, in the hope of neutralising or at least reducing the Russian potential for launching a nuclear attack.75 By late 1958, though, more acceptable target allocation had been agreed. With an anticipated Bomber Command strength of be around 100 aircraft in 1958–59, 106 targets were allocated under the SAC-RAF agreement to the UK, comprising 69 cities, 17 long-range Air Force airfields and 20 air defence sites.76 For their part, SAC would give initial emphasis to defence suppression, taking out the hardened air defence targets to allow subsequent waves of bombers to follow through. US strategic doctrine attached great importance to direct attacks on the air defence system in the first strike to open the way for follow-up strikes proceeding to deeper penetration targets.77 Joint operations made the earlier Mills directive redundant, as working together SAC and Bomber Command had the resources to hit all the relevant targets, their combined strength being sufficient to permit simultaneous attacks against the majority of the airfields, administrative centres and transportation targets. The only proviso made by London was that those airfield targets whose destruction was vital to Britain’s survival be included in the first strike by US aircraft.78

From coordination to integration The devastating weight of a combined attack eased many of the possible conflicts of priority between the two air forces. Indeed, every Bomber Command target was also on SAC’s list and both Commands sought to double up strikes on their own selected targets to ensure success.79 Doubled-up targeting by two strike forces raised questions of redun-

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dancy and ‘fratricide’. During the summer of 1958, unnecessary target duplication was rationalised to produce a single integrated targeting plan. Follow-up meetings optimised routes and coordinated Electronic Counter Measures (ECM), with a fully coordinated plan coming into operation by 1 October 1958. The Chiefs of Staff were ‘well satisfied’ with progress.80 Boyle reported that coordination between the two forces was now ‘entirely satisfactory with no real differences of view’, although, significantly, the RAF still lacked full knowledge of the overall USAF strike plan.81 Put plainly, this meant that despite the elaborate claims made to the Chiefs of Staff, the Air Staff did not actually know what the Americans planned to do. This remained the case as late as the closing months of 1959. Neither Command was prepared to release to the other details of their strike plan, with the result that ‘coordination’ remained an aspiration rather than an achievement. In June the US Joint Chiefs instructed LeMay to release to SACEUR information about SAC’s planned strikes against the satellites and ‘on a case by case basis, about attacks scheduled for targets in Soviet Russia’, and a similar request was made from SACEUR to Bomber Command. In general, SACEUR wanted to know what targets the V-force expected to hit and on what timescale. Bomber Command headquarters, not to be outdone on security posturing, was extremely reluctant to release such information, but agreed a formula in which a target schedule for the Kola Peninsula and the Ukraine would be released to regional commanders, while in metropolitan and southern Russia SACEUR could identify targets of special interest and enquire whether the RAF intended to attack them.82 As regards counterforce and countervalue, the balance in the joint strike plan shifted dramatically over the next few years. Up to that point, UK nuclear targeting policy had been distinguished by its focus on civilian targets, in contrast to the US concern with counterforce and with inflicting damage upon the infrastructure. Both forces aimed to destroy the enemy’s capacity to fight, the American dealing with physical, the British with ‘moral’ capacities, in an echo of the strategic priorities pursued by the two air forces during the Second World War. By 1962 the target list for the RAF covered 48 cities, 6 air defence targets and 3 long-range air force bases. The following year, the joint plan was dramatically adjusted to assign to Britain 16 cities, 44 ‘offensive capability’ targets such as airfields, 10 air defence sites and 28 IRBM launch sites.83 The emphasis had apparently shifted abruptly from urban centres to military targets in accord with the ‘population avoidance’ doctrine of US Defense Secretary McNamara’s Ann Arbor speech, but at the same time reflected the long-standing opinion within Bomber Command on

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the need to neutralise the sites from which attacks on the UK would be launched.84 Now at last the independent British plan – insofar as it existed – resembled, so far as the number and types of targets were concerned, the British component of the joint plan. This coincidence has been interpreted as signifying a new operational harmonisation.85 There was indeed concern in the Air Ministry that joint targeting could be interpreted as a significant change in the direction of counterforce strategy. Nevertheless, the Air Staff were assured by Bomber Command that selection of the targets had been by mutual agreement to provide the best operational tactical plan, and any suggestion of the US authorities ‘arbitrarily imposing targets on the UK strike force’ was denied.86 UK independent targeting remained as a paper commitment, and not just in the event of unilateral action, for should there be disagreement between ourselves and the Americans in the event, it would still be possible to direct the Medium Bomber Force to concentrate on centres of administration and population, as in the case of unilateral action, at the same time as the Americans attacked alternative target systems … the coordinated plan for all-out retaliation covers the targets previously allotted to Bomber Command. This plan is therefore fully compatible with the Strategic Target Policy which was formulated against the background of the use of massive retaliation [against the Russian cities].87

On that reading of the US–UK relationship, the operational significance of coordination would depend entirely on the circumstances prevailing at the time. But the prospect of a unilateral nuclear strike by the RAF required a considerable suspension of disbelief. The independent targeting plan was a sop to political amour propre, and something for which there was not, in practice, any active training. As early as 1959, SAC Commander-in-Chief Lieutenant-General Thomas Power could claim that the RAF V-force was ‘fully integrated’ into joint planning with SAC.88 Sir Kenneth Cross, Harry Broadhurst’s successor as AOC-in-C Bomber Command, reported in November 1962 that the introduction of Quick Reaction Alert earlier that year ‘has led to an integration with SAC rather than mere coordination’.89 To the well-informed Richard Neustadt, the RAF bomber force ‘had already been integrated, not in theory but in practice. The two strategic air forces were thoroughly coordinated’.90 Thereafter, and despite the great disparities in size and striking power, the relationship between the two commands became close and comradely, cemented by joint participation in the regular bombing competitions, and vividly described by former Vulcan captain Andrew Brookes as ‘a very intimate and closely-knit

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partnership’. One RAF officer recalled that ‘Whenever we went to the SAC HQ at Offutt, we would be greeted by Curt LeMay or his successor, Tommy Power, and treated just like Americans. We went all through their briefings, computers, top secret rooms and so forth – it was a very happy and very good working relationship.’91 While the British forfeited something of their notional nuclear independence – again, in practice rather than in theory – they gained shelter under the massive US nuclear umbrella, and some influence over the targeting of US attacks. Yet even in the midst of the negotiations over the SAC-Bomber Command agreement, some Air Ministry staff were far from sanguine about US support coming forth in an emergency: ‘we must be prepared’, urged one, ‘to go it alone’ in defence of purely British interests with ‘a large enough independent deterrent force to show our Allies that we are not entirely dependent upon them so that we can, if necessary, take a relatively independent line’.92 There was, then, this larger political agenda, laid out by the Prime Minister when he adumbrated the need for Britain to retain our special relation with the United States and, through it, our influence in world affairs, and, especially, our right to have a voice in the final issue of peace or war [and] to enable us, by threatening to use our independent power, to secure United States cooperation in a situation in which their interests were less immediately threatened than our own.93

Joint strike planning was a vitally important means of achieving these aims and ensuring that, in a nuclear war, ‘sufficient attention is given to certain Soviet targets which are of greater importance to us than to the United States’.94 All of this was very nearly put to the test in October 1962.

On the brink: Cuba When on 22 October 1962 the United States major commands were alerted by the Joint Chiefs to the gathering crisis occasioned by the discovery of Soviet IRBMs on the island of Cuba, SAC was placed on a higher readiness state to DEFCON 3, and missile crews were ordered to maximum alert. The 183 aircraft of the B-47 force in the Zone of the Interior were dispersed to military and civilian airports throughout the United States, in accordance with the emergency plans made in 1957; and one-eighth of the B-52 force was ordered into the air in the biggest airborne alert in SAC’s history.95 Two days later the alert was increased to DEFCON 2, with more than 1,400 bombers, 145 ICBMs and 916

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tankers at readiness. On 31 October the B-47 Reflex force, much of which was deployed on the English air bases, was reinforced, and additional KC-97s deployed to the overseas bases. The build-up of tactical forces in the south-eastern United States in preparation for swift and disabling airstrikes on Cuba was massive.96 In Europe and Turkey, 37 USAF tactical aircraft were prepared, with nuclear weapons loaded in readiness.97 These preparations were, however, balanced by an acute concern to keep the temperature down in Europe, where President Kennedy feared a Soviet move on West Berlin, and accordingly sought to limit the geographical spread of the possible conflict.98 The three U-2 aircraft of the 4080th Strategic Wing that had been deployed to Upper Heyford in August 1962 to fly daily missions of high-altitude sampling for radioactivity were stood down on 27 October due to the increased alert posture of SAC.99 At USAFE HQ at Wiesbaden, commanding general Ted Landon moved to enhance the readiness of his tactical strike forces, but was instructed by USAF headquarters to take ‘no measures which might be considered provocative or which might disclose operational plans’. In response, Landon ordered a ‘discreet increase in the overall capability of his forces in a gradual and unobtrusive manner to avoid exacerbating tensions in Europe’. Ninety-four of his aircraft training in Libya were recalled; maintenance was accelerated to bring the maximum number of aircraft to operational readiness; an F-104 squadron was relocated from Spain to Germany; and nuclear strike targets were reallocated from two squadrons in Germany to the units in the UK ‘thus freeing the European squadrons for conventional operations in the event of a Berlin contingency’. Landon later complained that the readiness of his forces had been restricted by the prohibition of a formal alert and the direction that all USAFE’s actions should be ‘quiet, unobtrusive and non-automatic’. Norstad, now Supreme Allied Commander, refused to allow Landon to disperse his strike aircraft.100 What did all this mean for the USAF forces in Britain? The contrast between frantic build-up in Florida and the measured preparations in England could hardly have been greater. At Upper Heyford, the DEFCON 2 posture was retained through to 15 November, when it was slackened somewhat while still remaining in force, relaxing back to DEFCON 3 on 21 November. Upper Heyford accommodated 23 B-47s of the 98th and 398th bomb wings. The alert status of the base was high, even before DEFCON 3 was announced on 22 October. The previous week the alert force had been exercised, with 18 of the normal complement of 19 aircraft airborne within eight minutes and the Emergency War Operations (EWO) battle staff at their stations within

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eighteen minutes of the klaxon alert. During the period of the Cuba crisis the maximum number of aircraft at EWO status was achieved by the postponement of non-essential maintenance, and by work only being undertaken when it could be completed in the ‘launchable’ window. The period of maximum alert was modified to enable any work, including flying, to continue so long as it did not interfere with the EWO, while it also gave aircrews some respite from the stringent conditions imposed as to rest and recuperation under strict DEFCON 2, and relaxed the conditions under which personnel could be absent from base. On 21 November the SAC force reverted to DEFCON 3 and terminated the one-eighth airborne alert.101 Three days later SAC returned to its normal posture of DEFCON 4 and recalled the dispersed B-47s. Parties, formerly banned, were now permitted ‘in moderation’. On 27 November weapons were downloaded and the aircraft pulled off the line.102 If unobtrusiveness was the keynote of the USAF posture in Europe, this was exactly matched by the response of the RAF nuclear strike force. When, on 27 October, Chief of the Air Staff Sir Thomas Pike met the Prime Minister the two discussed the alert posture of Bomber Command. Pike went on to report to his fellow Chiefs of Staff that Macmillan was adamant that he did not consider the time as appropriate for any overt preparatory steps to be taken such as mobilisation. Moreover, he did not wish Bomber Command to be alerted, although he wished a force to be ready to take the appropriate steps should this become necessary … matters should be played as low-key as possible.103

At this point the RAF’s medium bomber force amounted to some 17 squadrons with a further three Valiant squadrons at RAF Marham equipped with US nuclear weapons and assigned to the operational control of SACEUR. In addition there were 20 strategic missile squadrons operating a total of 60 Thor IRBMs under the dual key arrangement. From 1958 RAF Bomber Command had worked with a set of preparedness categories that mapped fairly closely on to those used by the SAC forces with which they were now coordinated. Thus, Alert Condition 4 was the normal peacetime status, roughly corresponding with SAC’s DEFCON 4. Thereafter the graduated series of statuses could place the command an Alert Condition 3 or ‘precautionary alert’. In Alert Condition 2 the command would prepare the maximum number of aircraft to combat serviceability and place them on 15 minutes standby. For Alert Condition 1 those aircraft due to be launched from dispersal airfields would fly to them and be prepared for takeoff. These alert conditions were also subject to a series of readiness states ranging from

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the normal 15 minutes, to 5 minutes, in which aircraft were expected to be airborne within that time; and 2 minutes, in which aircraft would start up and taxi to the takeoff position. In addition, Bomber Command maintained a number of aircraft on 15-minute Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) at all times, corresponding with SAC’s Reflex posture. On 27 October Bomber Command moved to Alert Condition 3, although RAF Coningsby had apparently moved to 15-minutes readiness the previous day and Scampton followed, all in advance of the CAS meeting with the Prime Minister. At that meeting the CAS was instructed that any preparatory measures taken were to be ‘unobtrusive’. The number of aircraft on QRA was increased and the eight Vulcans on detachment to Malta were recalled, a move that had been earlier ruled out on the grounds that it might be taken as too explicit a warning signal to the Soviets. But while at no time during the Cuba crisis was the alert status of the aircraft increased beyond Alert Condition 3, aircrew and other personnel involved at the time recollect a shift, on the afternoon of Saturday 27 October, to 5-minute readiness, with all available crews locked in their aircraft and ready to take off.104 Dispersal was not, however, implemented, as this would have been an unmistakeable signal of the force’s readiness. The Thor missile force was subject to different procedures under which between 45 and 50 missiles were permanently maintained at 15-minutes’ readiness. It does not seem that the missiles were ordered to be brought to anything other than their standard 15-minute readiness, although there are accounts of some of the missiles on the Thor complexes having been brought to a holding status short of Alert Condition 2 in which they could have been fired in less than 15 minutes.105 While the Alert Condition was not altered, the number of missiles at readiness was increased beyond the normal quota, to the point where 59 of the 60 missiles could have been fired if necessary. This condition was not unprecedented, having been achieved during exercise ‘Mick’ the previous month. The world might indeed have been on the brink, but little happened on the UK bases of either of the air forces that could be construed by an attentive adversary as brinkmanship. At SAC headquarters, Commanderin-Chief Tom Power implemented DEFCON 2 and mounted the huge airborne alert, but allegedly did so in a public manner – reporting to the Pentagon enclair, deliberately communicating to the Soviets his command’s alert state.106 The SAC forces in Britain moved to DEFCON 2 and were thereby in a state of readiness comparable to that of the RAF aircraft on their airfields. There was apparently no direct communication between the two headquarters; Sir Kenneth Cross, AOC-in-C

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Bomber Command, who normally talked frequently on the telephone to the SAC Commander-in-Chief, found during the crisis that there was no one on the other end of the telephone.107 His immediate link was through the nearby 7th Air Division headquarters, where changes in SAC’s alert status were communicated to Bomber Command under a procedure agreed in 1960. Apart from the dual key coordination on the Thor bases where the mismatch of alert status may have led to tensions between USAF and RAF personnel, there was no further need to coordinate action. The joint strike plan was in place, having been updated just two months earlier. The response of the RAF ‘would have been intimately linked to the actions of the USAF’.108 Units and aircrews had their targets. Had the crisis worked out differently, they would indeed have struck in concert.

Notes 1 Slessor to Finletter, 14 February 1949, UKNA, AIR 75/70. 2 Vandenberg to Eisenhower, draft by Norstad, 11 August 51, LoC, LeMay papers, Box 198. 3 T.D. Biddle, Rhetoric and reality in air warfare: the evolution of British and American ideas about strategic bombing, 1914–1945, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 296–297. 4 Participation of the RAF Bomber Command in Strategic Operations, 10 June 1952, NARA, RG 341, Box 746. 5 P.B. Gunn, Sculthorpe secrecy and stealth: a Norfolk airfield in the cold war, Stroud, The History Press, 2014. 6 Notes on an informal meeting … (between USAF and RAF officers), 10 May 1948, Records of US Army Plans and Operations Division, NARA, RG 319, Box 106. 7 Mills to AVM Sinclair, ACAS (Ops), 13 April 55, UKNA, AIR 2/15917. 8 Air Cdr N.C. Hyde, Director of Ops (B & R) to AVM Sinclair, ACAS (Ops), 20 April 1955, UKNA, AIR 2/15917. 9 ACM Sir William Dickson to Prime Minister, 14 February 1955, UKNA, PREM 11/1191. 10 Defence: Outline of Future Policy, HMSO, Cmd. 124, 1957. 11 Command Directive to AM Sir George H. Mills, KCB, DFC, 31 May 1955, UKNA, AIR 2/15917. 12 Participation of the RAF Bomber Command in Strategic Operations, 10 June 1952, NARA, RG 341, Box 746. 13 Signal, McConnell for LeMay, 22 January 1953, LoC, LeMay papers, B-23345, Box 203. 14 File notes, March 1954, LoC, Twining papers, Boxes 65, 67 and 74. 15 Signal, Twining for Dickson, 5 August 1955, LoC, Twining papers, Box 100.

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16 Dickson to Prime Minister, 14 February 1955, UKNA, PREM 11/1191. 17 Selwyn Lloyd to Eden, 12 April 1955; P. de Zueleta to W.N. Hanna (MoD), 16 August 1955, UKNA, PREM 11/846. 18 Macmillan to Eden, 22 August 1955, UKNA, PREM 11/846. 19 Pike to General Coiner, USAF, 12 April 1956, UKNA, AIR 2/18093. 20 Twining to Boyle, 6 August 1956, LoC, Twining papers, Box 83. 21 Summary of discussion and tactics to be adopted at ‘Encircle’ as a result of a meeting held in Air Ministry on 8 August 1956, UKNA, AIR 2/18093. 22 ‘The effect of delivery accuracy and target allocation on the effectiveness of a nuclear stockpile’, memorandum No. 199, OR Branch, RAF Bomber Command, August 1959, UKNA, AIR 14/4287. Also to the point was a paper by the Scientific Adviser to the Air Ministry, ‘Target coverage by a number of nuclear weapons’, Science 2 Memorandum No. 270, October 1957, UKNA, AIR 77/78. 23 Summary of discussion and tactics to be adopted at ‘Encircle’ as a result of a meeting held in Air Ministry on 8 August 1956, UKNA, AIR 2/18093. 24 Summary of discussion and tactics to be adopted at ‘Encircle’ as a result of a meeting held in Air Ministry on 8 August 1956, UKNA, AIR 2/18093. 25 SAC paper on ‘The Coordination of Atomic Weapon Delivery Capability of the RAF with US Atomic Weapons’, summary of discussion at meeting … on 15/16 August 1956, UKNA, AIR 2/18093. 26 AVM Selway (BJSM) to AVM Earle, ACAS (Policy), 18 February 1956, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 27 Comments by the ACAS (Policy), AVM J.N.T. Stephenson on coordination of USAF and RAF nuclear strike plans: note by Chief of the Air Staff, 31 December 1956, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 28 Boyle to Twining, 1 November 1956, LoC, Twining papers, Box 101. 29 Coordination of USAF and RAF nuclear strike plans: note by the Chief of the Air Staff, 31 December 1956; Paper by Boyle with appendices, to be discussed 8 January 1956 [actually January 1957] meeting of the Chiefs of Staff, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 30 Comments by the ACAS (Policy), AVM J.N.T. Stephenson on coordination of USAF and RAF nuclear strike plans: note by Chief of the Air Staff, 31 December 1956, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 31 Paper to the Defence Board by Secretary of State for Air George Ward, 29 October 1958, UKNA, AIR 8/2400. 32 ACAS comments on coordination of USAF and RAF nuclear strike plans: note by Chief of the Air Staff, 31 December 1956, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 33 Boyle to Twining, 11 February 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 34 Sandys to Wilson, 30 January 1957, Wilson to Sandys, 1 February 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 35 C. James, ‘The role of missiles’, in R.G. Miller (ed.), Seeing off the bear: Anglo-American air power cooperation during the Cold War, Washington, DC, Air Force History and Museums Program, United States Air Force, 1995, p. 33.

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36 Action note (undated), UKNA, AIR 8/2201. 37 Extracts from minutes of Prime Minister’s meeting, GEN.570/2, 30 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/2400. 38 Twining to Boyle,? December 1956, UKNA, AIR 20/11338 (author’s emphasis). 39 Stephenson to CAS re. briefing paper 31 December 1956, Loose minute, Air Cdre. B.K. Burnett, Director of Ops (B & R), UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 40 Boyle to Twining, 11 February 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 41 Twining to Boyle, 21 February 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 42 Twining to Boyle, 21 February 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 43 Boyle to Twining, 26 February 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 44 Earle to Selway, 27 February 1957 UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 45 Tuttle (DCAS) to CAS, 18 March 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 46 Wilson to Boyle, 7 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 47 Coordination of SAC and Bomber Command Global War Nuclear Strike Plans, USAF/RAF Conference Washington, May 1957. Suggested Terms of Reference for Joint Planning Group for the Coordination of SAC and Bomber Command Global War Strike Plans (Draft), UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 48 Selway to Earle, 18 February 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 49 AVM J.N.T. Stephenson (ACAS (Policy) to CAS, 15 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 50 Undated loose minute, Air Cdre. B.K. Burnett, Director of Operations (B & R); Stephenson to Boyle re. briefing paper 31 December 1956; Coordination of USAF and RAF nuclear strike plans: note by Chief of the Air Staff, 31 December 1956; Paper by Boyle with appendices, to be discussed 8 January 1956 [actually January 1957] meeting of the Chiefs of Staff, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 51 [Unsigned] Notes for meeting [13 June 1957] with DCAS on coordination of USAF/RAF bomber plans, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 52 Unsigned minute on the memorandum (n.d.), UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 53 Unsigned minute on the memorandum (n.d.), UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 54 P.J. Hudson to private secretary to Tuttle, 6 September 1957, R. Butler to PS to Tuttle, 6 September 1957, Lees to Tuttle, 21 June, 9 September 1957, Tuttle to Boyle, 9 September 1957, AIR 2/13780. 55 Macmillan Diaries, 2 June 1957. 56 AVM J.N.T. Stephenson (ACAS (Planning)) to ACAS (Ops), 11 June 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. The annotations referred to the scepticism of the Army and Navy Chiefs of Staff and that of the Treasury. 57 Boyle to Tuttle, 16 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 58 Tuttle’s handwritten notes for opening remarks for meeting at the Pentagon, 21 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13780. 59 Suggested terms of reference for the coordination of SAC and Bomber Command Global War Nuclear Strike Plans, May 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13780. 60 Tuttle to Boyle, 22 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 2/13780. 61 Tuttle to Boyle, 11 July 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338.

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62 Minute, private secretary to CAS for ACAS (Policy) and others, 26 June 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 63 Private secretary to CAS (R.F. Butler) to ACAS (Ops) (Lees), 13 May 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13780. 64 [Unsigned] draft minute to chairman CoS committee (undated), UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 65 Stephenson to Director of Plans, 14 June 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 66 White to Boyle, 20 September 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 67 Jackson, United States Air Force in Britain, p. 73 68 Discussion between Ministry of Defense and US Defence Secretary in Paris, note by Sir Richard Powell, 28 December 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 69 R.F. Butler, private secretary to CAS, to private secretary to DCAS; P.J. Hudson (PS to CAS) reply, 6 September 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 70 Note to CoS committee, 20 November 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 71 Allied Strategic Attack in Global War in 1957 and its Consequences, JP (57) 10 (extract), April 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 72 Allied Strategic Attack in Global War in 1957 and its Consequences, JP (57) 10 (extract), April 1957, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 73 Tuttle to ACM Sir Harry Broadhurst, AOC-in-C Bomber Command, 21 October 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/2201. 74 Tuttle to Boyle, 7 November 1957; Chief of the Defence Staff to First Sea Lord, CIGS and CAS, 20 November 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/2201. 75 Strategic Target Policy for Bomber Command: Note by Chief of Air Staff, 19 September 1957, CoS (57) 208; cover paper for annex, and Soviet Target Systems and the Ability of the Western Powers to Attack Them: Annex to CoS (57) 208, UKNA, AIR 20/11338; Chiefs of Staff Committee, Strategic Target Policy for Bomber Command, 16 October 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/2201. 76 (Draft) progress report on USAF/RAF coordination of nuclear strike plans and the provision of American weapons for the RAF, 30 April 1958, UKNA, AIR 8/2201. 77 AVM R.B. Lees (ACAS (Ops)), Strategic Target Policy for Bomber Command, 30 April 1958, UKNA, AIR 8/2201. 78 Undated memo, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 79 CoS Committee, Progress report on USAF/RAF coordination of nuclear strike plans: memorandum by CAS, 20 May 1958, UKNA, AIR 2/13780. 80 CoS Committee, Coordination of Anglo/American Nuclear Strike Plans, 5 June 1958, UKNA, AIR 8/2201. A Nuclear Strike Coordination Committee was established at around this time. 81 CoS Committee, 30 May 1958 confidential annex, UKNA, AIR 20/11338. 82 AVM T.B. Parselle, for AOC-in-C Bomber Command, to Under-Secretary of State, Air Ministry: Coordination between Bomber Command and Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe, 4 June 1959, UKNA, AIR 2/13383. 83 ACAS (Ops) to CAS, 5 October 1962, UKNA, AIR 8/2201. 84 J. Richelson, ‘Population targeting and US strategic doctrine’ Journal of Strategic Studies, 8 (1), March 1985, pp. 5–21.

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85 J. Baylis, Ambiguity and deterrence: British nuclear strategies, 1945–1964, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 304–306. 86 Strategic Strike Planning by Bomber Command, 5 October 1962, UKNA, AIR 8/2201. 87 Strategic Strike Planning by Bomber Command, 5 October 1962, UKNA, AIR 8/2201 (author’s emphasis). 88 A. Brookes, V-force: the history of Britain’s airborne deterrent, London, Jane’s, 1982, p. 81. 89 Commander-in-Chief’s Conference, 14 November 1962, UKNA, AIR 24/2689, quoted in S. Twigge, ‘Anglo-American Air Force collaboration and the Cuban missile crisis: a British perspective’, in Miller, Seeing off the bear, p. 209. 90 R.E. Neustadt, Report to JFK: the Skybolt crisis in perspective, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1999, p. 46. 91 Brookes, V-Force, p. 101. 92 Arguments in support of minimal size of V-Bomber force, 24 May 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/2400. 93 Defence Committee, extract from D(57) 6th meeting held on 31 July 1957, UKNA, AIR 8/2400 (author’s emphasis). 94 Quoted in memorandum by Secretary of State for Air to Defence Board, 29 October 1958, UKNA, AIR 8/2400. 95 Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis of 1962, Historical Study No. 90, Volume 1, Strategic Air Command, n.d. 96 Airpower Deployments in Support of National Policy, 1958–1963, USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, July 1963. 97 The Air Force Role in Five Crises, 1958–1985, USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, 1968, p. 40. 98 G.D. Rawnsley, ‘How special is special? The Anglo-American alliance during the Cuban missile crisis’, Contemporary Record, 9 (3), 1995, p. 593. 99 History of the 3918th Combat Support Group, SAC, 1 to 31 October 1962, AFHRA. 100 The Air Force Response to the Cuban Crisis, USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, n.d., declassified 2011,Table D-1. 101 The Air Force Response to the Cuban Crisis, Table A-1. 102 Report of 3918th Combat Support Group (SAC), 1–30 November 1962, USAF, n.d. 103 C. Richards, ‘RAF Bomber Command and the Cuban missile crisis, October 1962’, Journal of the Royal Air Force Historical Society, 42, 2008, pp. 26–28. 104 This is a matter where the archival sources are so inexplicit and general as to give little sense of what transpired. The recollections of individual veterans give a fuller and, in some respects, very different view of RAF Bomber Command’s actions during the crisis. R. Woolven, ‘Reflections on memory and archives: RAF Bomber Command during the Cuban missile crisis’, Britain and the World, 5 (1), 2012, pp. 116–126. 105 J. Wilson, Launch pad UK: Britain and the Cuban missile crisis, Barnsley, Pen

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and Sword Books, 2008, pp. 145–146; Jackson, United States Air Force in Britain, p. 87. 106 S.D. Sagan, ‘Nuclear alerts and crisis management’, International Security, 9 (4), 1985, p. 168. 107 Gp. Capt. I. Madelin, ‘Some additional comments on command and control of nuclear forces during the Cuban missile crisis’, in Miller, Seeing off the bear, p. 224. 108 Twigge, ‘Anglo-American air force collaboration and the Cuban missile crisis, p. 212.

12 The asymmetrical alliance

We can build and maintain, for decades if necessary, an atomic air offensive as a deterrent to the USSR … It must have world-wide deployment and its bases, particularly those in the UK which are most vulnerable and most effective for both political and military reasons, must have the fullest possible protection without stint of expense. W. Barton Leach to Secretary Thomas K. Finletter, October 1950.1

In the opening chapter of this book I asserted that while the United States demonstrated unambiguous resolve and clear values in building up its strategic presence in Britain, the British, accepting their part in this global role, were nonetheless equivocal and ambivalent in expressing it. The chapters which followed showed British ambiguities, British evasions and British muddle to be in marked contrast with American assessments of their national security interests. British officials and military commanders in the early Cold War were reactive rather than forceful in the assertion of national interest. They accepted – sometimes with disgruntlement – a subordinate role in the Western alliance, at best that of consultee rather than partner in decision. These are bold assertions, but they are sustained by the evidence advanced in the body of this book. At this juncture, I give them added point with the following propositions: • British decision-makers lacked foresight in consenting to the acquisition of bases in 1946. • Throughout the first decade of the Cold war, they were reluctant to grasp the geo-strategic realities of the British Isles, the nature of an atomic air campaign, and Britain’s role in it. • Due to this reluctance, and to a determination to limit defence expenditure, the British contribution to this aspect of the AngloAmerican alliance fell far short of reasonable expectation.

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The first of these propositions surely is incontestable. The others may cause a reaction. The British are sensitive about the decline of their ‘hard’ power in the post-war world, as Dean Acheson discovered in 1962 when he provoked outrage with his moderate observation that Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role. The attempt to play a separate power role – that is, a role apart from Europe, a role based on a ‘special relationship’ with the United States … is about played out. Great Britain … has seemed to conduct policy as weak as its military power.2

The second and third propositions invite rebuttals, which I hope will be more than expressions of injured pride. Before examining them, it is first necessary to address the risk of over-generalisation. Some generalisations are inadvertent and follow from the shorthand terms we use. In particular, the expression ‘British decision-makers’, is no more than a term of convenience. No regime is a monolith. While ministers, diplomats and other officials take actions in the name of their country, those actions flow from political processes within different parts of the governmental apparatus, from an ongoing contest between people with different responsibilities and different preoccupations. The position taken by one minister, or by officials acting on his or her behalf, may be opposed, circumvented or subverted by others. In a maxim made famous by Harvard’s Graham Allison, ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’. But the American view of policy-making as a matter of competitive ‘pulling and hauling’ by distinct bureaucratic interests may not quite fit Britain, where the actions of a ministry, if seen as wrongheaded, may evoke elsewhere in Whitehall no more than the wry smile and raised eyebrow, the gaze averted, at most the disconsolate wringing of hands over something that is not their business. A former civil servant put it to me more expressively. The image of inter-department relations operating through parallel silos, he remarked, is mistaken. Rather they are more akin to the rules observed in gentlemen’s urinals: ‘You do not acknowledge the other’s presence. You do not exchange information. And you never, ever, reach out to one another.’ Three examples illustrate this observation. First, despite the cabinet accepting that the USAF would build up its forces in England after 1947, the Ministry of Civil Aviation continued to thwart the attempts of the Air Ministry to facilitate the necessary relationships. The MCA’s concerns were essentially trivial – the smooth operation of civil passenger traffic at Northolt. The US authorities were bewildered and furious to find obstacles put in their way, unworkable alternatives offered and punitive charges levied. Air Ministry officials despaired, but could do

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little. The significance of this minor episode was that it exemplified the ways in which civil servants (the only variety of ‘officials’ in British parlance) work to the instructions and preferences of their several ministers. If those ministerial preferences were not openly expressed, there were nevertheless cues to be taken, inferences to be drawn and institutionalised departmental perspectives to be honoured. The urgencies of American deployment would not take precedence over matters of established procedure. Trivial in themselves, such concerns indicate just how restricted was the appreciation of the strategic interest that the UK had in the USAF presence. Take a more serious illustration. The East Anglian airfields, close to the North Sea and lying outside the coverage of Britain’s south-east oriented air defence screen, were vulnerable to pre-emptive strikes by the Soviet Air Force. In order to create an effective force-in-being on the English airfields, expensive improvements were required to bring them up to modern heavy bomber standards, with secure storage for nuclear weapons. Additional locations were required, and through the early 1950s the US sought to develop and improve a number of centrally located air bases in the south Midlands on the understanding that the UK government would meet their share of the cost and derive a longterm benefit. In their reluctance to squeeze money for this purpose from shrinking budgets, British civil servants, and Treasury civil servants in particular, took their cues from ministerial statements that HM government had not accepted a permanent US presence. They therefore had no reason to be helpful over the airfields, responded cautiously, even grudgingly, to USAF commanders’ demands for better facilities and continuously whittled down the promised UK financial contribution. Of even greater import would be a third example: the Whitehall battle over the supply of jet engines and aircraft to the Soviet bloc. Not only was the build-up of the Soviet Air Force being thereby supported, but the RAF was deprived of the best equipment, undertakings given to the USAF that fighter defences would be materially improved notwithstanding. Here the rifts were at ministerial level, with the Board of Trade exploiting the over-riding priority to export at all costs in the face of Foreign Office protests, Air Ministry confusion and, in America, anger, bordering on disbelief, about Britain’s self-harming stance. The Air Staff were caught in the middle of these Whitehall conflicts. But they too were not a monolithic group, and it is important to differentiate the positions of successive Chiefs. Jack Slessor was passionate about the alliance and, as a strategic thinker and writer, urged greater closeness and operational cooperation. Bill Dickson did much to urge forward the cause of joint operation. They both enjoyed cabinet

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support. But subsequent occupants of the post were more cautious, notably Dermot Boyle, who on the deployment of Thor challenged the cabinet view, arguing that Britain was being railroaded into a commitment that served American ends rather than British. Neither then, nor later, was the British position in relation to the USAF presence one of unanimity at Air Staff level. What then of the three charges I made at the beginning of this chapter? First, I argue that British acceptance of the USAF presence lacked foresight. Secondly, I argue that at least in the initial years, many of those involved failed to fully grasp the geo-strategic realities. Thirdly, I maintain Britain was unwilling to shoulder its share of the burden. In sum, the British authorities willed the end of American protection but failed to will the means of partnership in securing it.

The lack of foresight In 1946, Arthur Tedder, swept away by the recent triumphs of the Anglo-American alliance in the European theatre, was instrumental in securing a secret agreement to continue it. After stepping down as CAS, he began to express concerns about the way the post-war alliance was going. Yet with his atomic handshake of 1946 shrouded in secrecy, even twenty years later he declined to discuss how it had come about. While the United States forged alliances on a global scale during the Cold War, the most remarkably ‘special’ aspect of the arrangements described in this book is that while base rights were sought worldwide, in no other country were they acquired on the basis of an informal, unwritten agreement. Post-war American base acquisition was generally predicated upon the expectation of ‘purchase, lease, or any other intergovernmental arrangement’.3 The nature of the arrangements that were made in the case of Britain marked that country out as an exception to what has been, contentiously, described as a ‘leasehold Empire’. In stark contrast to the basing arrangements made elsewhere, a formal statement of the relationship between the United States and the UK was made only in 1952, to be carried through the Holy Loch Polaris agreement of 1960 and the deployment of cruise missiles in the 1980s and the support given to the air attack on Libya in 1986.4 Given the sweeping coverage of the ‘understanding’ between the two countries and its versatility over time, that statement was indeed breathtaking in its brevity and inexplicitness.5 Predictably, while informality and the avoidance of treaty relationships suited the political and military leaderships of both countries, it

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had adverse consequences for Britain further down the road. The right to base aircraft and the atomic munitions was one matter. Control – or even influence – over their use turned out to be an altogether different affair in circumstances where nothing tangible had been agreed. As the world situation deteriorated in 1950, British military leaders, and Tedder himself, began to press for greater formalisation of AngloAmerican strike planning. These problems should surely have been foreseen in the summer of 1946, when with his atomic handshake and the steps that gesture set in motion, Tedder sealed the nature of the future relationship between the United States and Britain in a potential nuclear conflict. If key office-holders lacked foresight, intelligence should have provided it. But throughout the early post-war years, American and British officials – civil, military and political – read the signs of Soviet threat very differently. The British insisted surprise attack was unlikely, as intelligence would provide adequate warning: The RAF and USAF views on the subject of intelligence warning are quite different: While the USAF people in the UK hold that a Soviet attack is quite possible with very little warning, the Air Ministry believes that an advance intelligence warning of an impending Soviet attack will be obtained far enough in advance to enable the preparation of the British defenses to be completed. The British further insist that it is unrealistic as well as impractical to set up and maintain an adequate defense against a surprise attack.6

This last point was a financial, not an intelligence judgement, but there was a constant temptation to allow the first to shape the second. That such an attack did not come was hardly a vindication. British intelligence did not have a good record on prediction. Although by the early 1950s intelligence exchange was running at a high level, with considerable mutual influence on estimates and position papers, in the early Cold War years British intelligence consistently underestimated the Soviet threat, notably the Berlin and Korea crises.

The failure to grasp geo-strategic realities The full importance of overseas bases in terms of US national security policy was captured in a 1960 report with a succinctness that had not hitherto been apparent: one of the prime strategic advantages enjoyed by the United States over the USSR is the possibility of surrounding the Communist bloc with combat

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forces – land, sea, and air – or of strategically positioning or shifting these forces wherever needed. An adequate US overseas base system is an essential means of exploiting this benefit of geography and of promoting the continued collective defense effort among free world nations.7

If the British were partners in this American project of encircling, containing and, if necessary, confronting the Soviet Union, they were nonetheless uneasy about the corollary – being the bull’s eye, in Churchill’s words, for Soviet attack. The two decades dealt with in this book saw dramatic and continuing changes in what Soviet strategists termed ‘the correlation of forces’. Britain was caught up in these changes, and could not wish away the facts of geo-political location even if realism about those facts was less apparent than wishful thinking about them. The ‘benefits of geography’ were double-edged. When in March 1950 Aidan Crawley set out the case for and against accepting the American nuclear presence, only his final reservation had real substance: that using the English bases for American atomic bombing increased the likelihood that the UK would itself become a primary target for Soviet atomic attack. Against this he set the real point, that an arrangement with the USAF would enhance the strategic capability of the West by providing the needed forward bases. That was the geo-strategic reality, but it was periodically lost to sight. Apart from the failure to grasp these larger realities, British officers – and most especially ministers – were often blinded to the asymmetries of power that characterised the Anglo-American relationship between 1946 and 1964. In many of the discussions within the Air Ministry two misperceptions commonly appear. The first was that British nuclear forces would have, if not broad parity with the American, then a degree of functional equivalence; the second, that there could or should exist a freedom to operate independently in pursuit of a definable and distinct British national interest in the matter of atomic war. Realistic officers recognised that for the United States, British nuclear forces could be accepted only as a secondary contribution to the wider Western alliance. British strike power was viewed sceptically in Washington. Respect was paid there to British technology, and the factors that impelled a once-great power to preserve a modicum of independence were acknowledged, sometimes graciously. Britain would be given generous assistance with the development of new weapon systems. But their deployment would be managed within the context of a US-led plan in which Britain was a minor partner. In the case of joint operations with SAC, the British force was judged ‘too small to contribute much to

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the overall US force’.8 By the mid-1960s SAC had 639 B-52s, 76 supersonic B-58s and 880 B-47s deployed, with 547 Hound Dog stand-off missiles available for B-52 carriage, and 224 ground-launched ballistic missiles.9 Small wonder, then, that US planners were rarely more than lukewarm about the British contribution to the nuclear deterrent. The RAF’s V-force had political, rather than military, value to the United States. The second misperception, the illusion of nuclear independence, was rooted in the British determination to become a nuclear power, largely for reasons of national prestige and the desire to punch above the country’s diminished weight. It has been said, and said of this very issue, that nations, like men, will often choose flattering their passions over pursuing their interests.10 When the proposal to integrate the RAF nuclear strike force into the US operational plans came it caught the Air Staff by surprise, and they greeted Project Encircle with a mixture of pride and bewilderment. Reading the records of those meetings, it is impossible to avoid the impression that while they were gratified to be taken seriously at last, they had only a shaky grasp of the matters that their American colleagues wanted to discuss. A minor theme that ran through those discussions, and the parallel discussion of Project ‘E’, was the insistence on freedom of operation, even when US weapons were being carried. Freedom to select ‘targets of national importance’ was one concern. The illusion of such freedom traces back to the original offer of the atomic bomb in the late 1940s, when the Chiefs of Staff imagined they would be able to use American nuclear weapons at will in pursuit of UK interests, in advance of – and possibly without? – American participation in such a conflict. If that was pure fantasy, it left a residue in the discussions of US assistance to Britain. The mechanics of support, including weapons provision and preparation, were accepted grudgingly, with reservations expressed privately and confined to Air Staff circles, rather than shared with the USAF officers. There was resentment that both Project ‘E’ and integrated targeting were biased towards American interests and a suspicion – ­perfectly well founded of course – that American overtures were less acts of transatlantic generosity than moves to gain a degree of control and predictability over their proud old ally. ‘Cooperation with’ was indeed ‘incorporation into’ the US war plans, and credit is due to those Air Staff officers who recognised that reality and reconciled themselves to accepting it. If realism was not entirely absent, it had to accommodate itself to sometimes blustering national sensitivities. Rejecting the offer of 60 B-47s as an interim nuclear strike force was a case in point. Only Sir

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Hugh Lloyd, AOC-in-C Bomber Command, grasped the potential of the offer. Whether it would have been wiser to accept the aircraft is not the point. With the exception of Lloyd’s own, the points made in the brief and superficial discussion at the Air Ministry turned on the operational superiority of the British Canberra (pure fiction), problems of training for the B-47s (solvable in the US), the unhappy experience of operating the B-29s earlier loaned to the RAF (not strictly pertinent) and the risk of disrupting Valiant introduction (valid, but a choice to be made). The fear that Bomber Command would be required to fly US weapons under US control if the B-47s were accepted foreshadowed the issues that would arise under Project ‘E’, but would have ensured their earlier and easier resolution. What is striking is not the outcome, but the casual nature – the triviality even – of the assessment that underpinned it. More generally, the sense of strategic imperative scarcely entered the bloodstream of British administration. Delays, indifference, a professed inability to assist, or even scarcely veiled hostility continually frustrated the USAF build-up, with often minor procedural objections being made to American requests. There was disdain for the value SAC placed on ‘aggression’, although the term denoted not warmongering but a common American military synonym for their characteristic forceful, ‘can-do’ approach to solving problems. It provided a vivid contrast with Britain’s languid and unenthusiastic tolerance of the ‘friendly invasion’. Yet pride could be set aside under financial pressure, as when control of the air bases was handed over the to the 3rd Air Force and RAF command withdrawn simply to save a modest sum in staff costs. Confronted with this sad gesture of abnegation, Leon Johnson was moved to propose that the RAF ensign should fly at the guardhouses alongside the stars and stripes. The difference between American and British responses to Cold War realities was more than a matter of style. It went to the heart of the assessment of strategic vulnerability and judgements about how best to safeguard the military assets of both nations. Some of those officials advising on the conditions of the initial USAF presence had scant grasp of the realities of the conduct of an atomic air campaign or the nature of nuclear weapons. Thus, they could counsel against elaborate preparation of the air bases while accepting that Britain would want the American presence ‘in time of war’. They were doubtless prisoners of the then current, but soon to be jettisoned, notion of a ‘long war’, fought on terms not dissimilar to those of the Second World War, with US forces flying in to help, and building up their munitions and matériel. This was totally out of accord with SAC views of how their short-lived

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but uniquely destructive air campaign would be fought. That required a level of readiness and pre-positioning that British officials failed to grasp. Following the Soviet nuclear explosion of August 1949, British and American perspectives on the Soviet bloc began to diverge. A hardening of US attitudes was expressed in the confrontational prose of the milestone document NSC-68, while in contrast Britain, conscious of its strategic vulnerability, sought to avoid any actions that the Soviets might consider provocative.11 Joint Chiefs chairman Omar Bradley thought this smacked of appeasement.12 Theirs was a harsh judgement, and one that would strike home in London, but the legacy of doubt and suspicion left by the sale of jet engines to the Soviet Union was not easily erased, nor its consequences readily forgiven. The Korean War, and the startling success of the MIG-15 in the air battles there, would drive home the message. As the post-war Anglo-American relationship moved into its second decade, the gulf widened. In autumn 1955 the American embassy in London reported that relaxation of relations between the UK and the Soviet Union, coupled with the government’s ‘unremitting search’ for coexistence with the Soviets, led to an ‘idyllic’ atmosphere in which the existing defence effort would not be sustained.13 Yet, despite the shock of the  Sandys defence cuts, by 1958 bridges had been rebuilt between London and Washington and a much closer relationship had been forged. New agreements ensured that from now on until the end of the Cold War, US and British operations would be close-coupled. Macmillan’s contortions of ‘interdependence with independence’ carried conviction neither at Foggy Bottom nor in the Pentagon. But they served to square the circle, reconciling junior partnership with national pride and privileging prestige weapons over more realistic needs.

Falling short of expectation Once the United States had remobilised under Harry S. Truman, once its atomic capabilities had achieved operational status (more gradually than was supposed) and once Strategic Air Command had reached full strength and efficiency, there existed a force-in-being of unprecedented power. The UK, impoverished by war, could scarcely mount even a token air defence in support of it. While the advantage for the British of sheltering behind the American shield is understandable, their haphazard, opportunistic and ambivalent approach to realising a genuine alliance was less creditable. The Nash report of 1957 distinguished

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c­arefully between the stance of the Chiefs of Staff and that typically adopted – throughout this period – by their political masters: While the British military are under no illusion as to Britain’s dependence for security on the United States, the British government, in making its own policy decisions, has shown a tendency to rely on the US military strength without giving full consideration to US views … While the British have been eager to affect close military collaboration and interchange of information and have promised full participation in this effort, experience showed that their desires and commitment have often exceeded their practical capabilities.14

This was a generous judgement. ‘Practical capabilities’ are a matter of willingness. The area in which the Nash criticism had most obvious force was in relation to ADUK – the Air Defence of the United Kingdom. British air defences, radar and fighters, fell far short of the most basic need in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Even as the introduction of sweptwing aircraft into the front line was celebrated, their performance was inadequate to meet the threat. The capabilities improved slowly over the coming decade, but not as fast as the threat developed. At no point in these early post-war years would defences be deemed adequate to hold the line. The UK would succumb to a Soviet air attack and be rendered unusable as a base in a matter of days. USAF Chief of Staff NathanTwining held out against urgings to deploy American personnel and equipment, insisting that air defence was primarily a British responsibility. Yet it was not a responsibility that would be taken seriously enough, despite warnings from Fighter Command. The air defences would have to rely on American aircraft, flown by Americans and Canadians, under the control of the RAF, and on the loan of American aircraft to the RAF. In the view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, American fighters, once received, did not need to be operated to the full: the mere fact that the Americans are paying for the machines does not mean that we must man them all or keep them continually in the air. To be given an aeroplane is rather like being given a yacht. It is a nice gift, but you have to keep it going. It is paying for the crews and the oil which costs so much.15

Such instrumentalism did not prevent the Air Ministry declining a later offer of gift of a wing of these aircraft in order to angle instead for the advanced supersonic F-102 as a substitute. The deficiencies of air defence that resulted from this half-serious

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approach ensured that British capability remained seriously weakened. Indeed, so parlous was its state that Defense Secretary McElroy suppressed an American assessment as too damning and too damaging for circulation.16 For the Joint Chiefs, the Sandys policies of running down air defence in favour of the absolutism of nuclear deterrence had resulted by 1958 in ‘a significant decrease in the current overall military capabilities of the United Kingdom’. Fighter Command was still equipped with obsolescent aircraft and the combat effectiveness of the Fighter Command was‘almost negligible’. British air defences could provide ‘little or no real defence against Bloc air attack’.17 Financial stringency is the constant factor in the two decades covered by this book. Even when the defence need was recognised, the willingness to meet the costs was absent. With the exception of the development of nuclear weapons, the British government sought to economise, and did so even on the V-bombers built to deliver them. The expectation that the United States would help – and could be persuaded to pick up an increasing proportion of the bill – was constantly in the background. Would it be unkind to see this as free-riding? It was the case during this first phase of the Cold War, and perhaps remains the case today, that Britain’s aspirations continue to exceed her means, that the reach of British purpose exceeds its grasp, and that the United States can be counted upon to shoulder an additional burden. If that is a fair judgement, then the pattern of dependence that established it was created in the immediate post-war years, when the concrete airstrips of East Anglia were brought back to life and the protection of the American nuclear umbrella accepted with gratitude, if rarely with grace.

Notes  1 W. Barton Leach to Air Force Secretary Thomas K. Finletter, 4 October 1950, Historical and Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library, folder 52-16.  2 D. Brinkley, ‘Dean Acheson and the “Special Relationship”: the West Point speech of December 1962’, Historical Journal, 33 (3), 1990, p. 601.  3 C.Sandars, America’s overseas garrisons: the leasehold empire, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 79–99; Converse, Circling the Earth; K.W. Schake, ‘Strategic frontier: American bomber bases overseas, 1950–1960’, Department of History, Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology, January 1998.  4 Baylis, ‘The 1958 Anglo-American Mutual Defence Agreement, pp. 425–466.  5 Sandars, America’s overseas garrisons, pp. 79–99.  6 The Defense of Strategic Air Command Bases in the United Kingdom, Operations Analysis Special Report No. 6, 15 February 1951, NARA, RG 341, Box 746, p. 33.

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 7 Report to the President, Review of United States Overseas Military Bases, (emphasis added).  8 Second Defense Policy Conference 30 November 1962: Skybolt (An OASD (ISA) Staff Paper), US Nuclear History: Nuclear Arms and Politics in the Missile Age, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nsa/publications/nh/  9 Development of Strategic Air Command, p. 106. 10 Sir H. Beach and N. Gurr, Flattering the passions: or, the bomb and Britain’s bid for a world role, London, Academic Press, 1968. 11 K. Young ‘Revisiting NSC-68’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 15 (1), 2013, pp. 3–33. 12 Aldrich, ‘British Intelligence and the Anglo-American ‘Special Relationship’, p. 339. 13 Possible reduction in UK military establishment, dispatch from London to State Department, 14 September 1955, NARA, RG 59, box 3194. 14 Report to the President by Frank C. Nash on US Overseas Military Bases, [1957]. 15 Macmillan to Prime Minister, 10 June 1956, UKNA, PREM 11/1191. 16 Memorandum by the Counsellor of the Department of State (Reinhardt), 11 September 1958, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960. Western Europe,Volume 7, Part 2, pp. 821–822. 17 JCS estimate of the current the near-term overall military capabilities of the United Kingdom, 8 September 1958, NARA, RG 59, Box 3195.

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At the US National Archives and Records Administration The following record groups were used: RG 18, RG 29, RG 59, RG 84, RG 165, RG 218, RG 319, RG 326, RG 330, RG 340, RG 341.

At the UK National Archives The following files were used: ADM 1/23022; ADM 326/1314. AIR 2/10858; AIR 2/13703; AIR 2/13780; AIR 2/13213; AIR 2/13383; AIR 2/13703; AIR 2/13704; AIR 2/13780; AIR 2/13781; AIR 2/15917; AIR 2/18093; AIR 2/18095; AIR 6/113; AIR 6/115; AIR 6/117; AIR 6/128; AIR 6/129; AIR 8/1804; AIR 8/1938; AIR 8/2201; AIR 8/2025; AIR 8/2394; AIR 8/2400; AIR 14/4287; AIR 16/1187; AIR 16/1189; AIR 19/942; AIR 19/1734; AIR 19/942; AIR 20/952; AIR 20/6555; AIR 20/7604; AIR 20/7073; AIR 20/11312; AIR 20/11338; AIR 20/12425; AIR 24/2689, AIR 28/1065; AIR 28/1110; AIR 28/1105; AIR 28/1110; AIR 28/1076; AIR 28/1877; AIR 64/167; AIR 75/70; AIR 75/107; AIR 75/113; AIR 75/117; AIR 77/78. CAB 4; CAB 21/4054; CAB 134/940; CAB 195/8; CAB 195/15. DEFE 6/5; DEFE 7/22237; DEFE 13/60; DEFE 13/194; DEFE 20/1; DEFE 20/2; DEFE 25/65; DEFE 32/1; DEFE 32/2. FO 371/90015; FO 371/90016; FO 371/90017; FO 371/116058; FO 800/438; FO 800/454; FO 800/456; FO 800/501; FO 800/517; FO 953/1850. HO 322/785. KV 4/472. PREM 8/411; PREM 8/926; PREM 8/1100; PREM 8/1383; PREM 8/1552; PREM 8/1560; PREM 8/1566; PREM 11/308; PREM 11/846; PREM 11/1053; PREM 11/1191; T 225/645; T 225/705. WO 82; WO 83/100.

288Bibliography Unpublished papers

Air Attack Vulnerabilities of SAC-United Kingdom Bases, 7th Air Division Special Intelligence Brief, Strategic Air Command, September 1952, NARA. The Air Force Response to the Cuban Crisis, USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, n.d. The Air Force Role in Five Crises, 1958–1985, USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, 1968. Airpower Deployments in Support of National Policy, 1958–1963, USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, July 1963. Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force 1945–1960, Office of Air Force History, USAF, Washington, DC, 1989. The Defense of Strategic Air Command Bases in the United Kingdom, Operations Analysis Special Report No. 6, 15 February 1951, NARA. Development of Strategic Air Command, 1946–1976, Office of the Historian, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, 1976. Documents of the National Security Council, 1st supplement, Policies of the Government of the United States of America Relating to National Security, volume 1, 1947–1948.Early History of the Special Weapons Organisation, Headquarters 8460th Special Weapons Group, September 1949 (obtained from the US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA). ‘Essential considerations in the conduct of strategic air operations’, Curtis E. LeMay lecture at the Air War College, 9 January 1952, LoC. Headquarters Third Air Division, The Inspector General, Office of Special Investigations, Quarterly Historical Reports 1951, AFHRA. History of the 97th Bombardment Group (Advanced Echelon) for July 1950, AFHRA. History of the 3918th Combat Support Group, SAC, 1–31 October 1962, AFHRA. History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons (U), July 1945 through September 1977, Office of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy) February 1978. History of the Third Air Force History, January–June 1952, AFHRA. History of the Third Air Force, July–December 1952, AFHRA. History of Seventh Air Division, 20 March–31 December 1951, AFHRA. History of Strategic Air Command, Historical Study 73A, SAC Targeting Concepts, Historical Division, Office of Information, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, n.d. Narrative Summaries of Accidents Involving US Nuclear Weapons, 1950–1980, Department of Defense, April 1981. National Security Council, ‘Airfield construction in the United Kingdom and in the Cairo-Suez area: a report to the President by the National Security Council’, 15 April 1949.

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NIE-30: Soviet Capabilities to Interfere with US Delivery of Atomic Weapons to Targets in the USSR, 9 March 1951, NARA, CIA Papers. The Operational Side of Air Offense: Remarks by General Curtis E. Lemay to the USAF Scientific Advisory Board at Patrick AFB, Florida, 21 May 1957. Organisation: Air Bases and Air Units: Fighter Interceptor Wing, Historical Division, Office of Information, Headquarters 3rd Air Force, September 1951. Report of 3918th Combat Support Group (SAC), 1–30 November 1962, USAF, n.d. Report to Commanders’ Conference on Critical Relations with the British, 14 November 1952, AFHRA. Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, 14 April 1950, NARA, CIA Papers. Report to the President by Frank C. Nash – US Overseas Military Bases [1957] (1) (2) (Ann Whitman File), Administration Series, Box 27, Eisenhower Presidential Library. Report to the President, Review of United States Overseas Military Bases, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, Records, 1952–61, Eisenhower Presidential Library. Report on Project Gabriel, US Atomic Energy Commission, Division of Biology and Medicine, Washington, DC, July 1954. Schake, K.W., ‘Strategic frontier: American bomber bases overseas, 1950–1960’, Department of History, Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology, January 1998. Select B-47 Operational Exercises (January–July 1953), Historical Branch, Strategic Air Command, 1953. Short History and Chronology of the USAF in the United Kingdom, Historical Division, Office of Information, Third Air Force, May 1967. Strategic Air Command and the Alert Program: A Brief History, Office of the Historian, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, 1988. Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis of 1962, Historical Study No. 90, Volume 1, Strategic Air Command, n.d. The Strength and Capabilities of Soviet Bloc Forces to Conduct Military Operations against NATO, SE-16, Central Intelligence Agency, 12 October 1951, NARA, CIA papers. Ullrich, R., ‘Tech Area 11: a history’, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, July 1998. USAF Contribution to NIE-64 (Part I), Soviet Bloc Capabilities through Mid1953, 28 April 1952, NARA, CIA papers. Wainstein, L., Cremeans, C.D., Moriarty, J.K. and Ponturo, J., ‘The evolution of US Strategic Command and Control and Warning, 1945–1972’, Institute of Defense Analyses, Study S-467, June 1975.

290Bibliography Personal papers

Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, AL: Karsteter correspondence. Bodleian Library, Oxford: Harold Macmillan Diaries. Harvard Law Library, Cambridge, MA: Papers of Professor W. Barton Leach. Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, IA: Papers of Lewis L. Strauss. Library of Congress, Washington, DC: Papers of General Curtis E. LeMay, of General Carl A. Spaatz, of General Nathan F. Twining, of General Hoyt S. Vandenberg and of General Thomas D. White. RAF Museum Hendon: Papers of MRAF Lord Tedder. Truman Presidential Library, Independence, MO: Papers of Harry S. Truman, President’s Secretary’s Files and Presidential Papers, appointments file; Papers of Clark M. Clifford. University of Southampton, Hartley Library, Slater papers. Col. Gilbert M.Dorland, ‘Engineer Memories’, unpublished memoir, 1987, in private hands. Halse, R.C., ‘Forty Years On’, unpublished memoir of the Army Legal Services, c. 1968. Diary of Lt.-Gen. Leon W. Johnson, in private hands. Maj. Curtis L. Mirgon, unpublished memoir, in private hands. Interviews and oral histories

R. Gordon Arneson, 21 June 1989, Oral History Interview by Niel M. Johnson, Truman Presidential Library.Gen. R.H. Ellis, interviewed by Lt.-Col. Maurice Maryanow, 17–21 August 1987, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA. Col. Edward Hall, 11 July 1989, AFHRA. Chief Master Sergeant Glen Hendrix, 27 September 1988, AFHRA. Lt.-Gen. C.S. Irvine, interviewed by Robert M Kipp, 17 December 1971, March AFB, CA, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA. Lt.-Gen. Leon W. Johnson, August 1975, AFHRA. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, interviewed by John T. Bolen, 9 March 1971, March AFB, CA, USAF Oral History Program, , AFHRA. Gen. J.P. McConnell, interviewed by Dr Edgar F. Puryear Jnr., 1975, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA. Lt.-Gen. Archie J. Old, Jnr., interviewed by Hugh N. Ahmann, 26 October – 2 November 1982, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA. Lt.-Gen. Roscoe C. Wilson, interviewed by Lt.-Col. Dennis A. Smith, 1–2 December 1983, USAF Oral History Program, AFHRA.

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http://b-47.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Memories.pdf http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/atomic-energy-act-prevents-declass​ ification-of-site-of-1958–broken-arrow-nuclear-weapons-accident/ www.cpeo.org/lists/military/1996/msg00205.html www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00424697.pdf www.florencemuseum.org/artifacts/mars-bluff-bomb/ www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2008/R251.pdf www.secretsdeclassified.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100617–106.pdf www.whistlestop.org Some of the US documents referenced in this book can be accessed through the National Security Archive website at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB159/index.htm and at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nsa/publications/nh/

Index

Index

Acheson, Dean 186–192, 197, 222, 225, 229–234, 276 air defence 151–173 deficiencies in 152–153, 284–285 Air Defence of the United Kingdom (ADUK) 284 ‘aircraft carrier’ image of the UK 231 Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Research Establishment 89 Aldrich, Winthrop 70, 169 alert status 93–94, 265–269 see also quick reaction alert Alexander, A.V. 184–185, 188 Allen, Dennis 25 Allison, Graham 276 Alsop, Joseph and Stewart 125 Anderson, Sam 67, 74, 81, 107, 109, 162 Anglo-American Mutual Defence agreement 241, 261 anti-Americanism 87, 122–126, 231 ‘Ardent’ exercise (1952) 162 Armstrong, Frank 78–79 Arneson, Gordon 182, 186–188, 192, 224–225, 232 Arnold, ‘Hap’ 10 Atcherley, Richard 204 Atkinson, ‘Hamp’ 48, 118–119, 133 Atlanticism 122, 126 Atomic Energy Act (US, 1946) 193–195, 200, 204, 215, 227 amendments to (1954 and 1958) 180, 194–195, 241 atomic energy, civil uses of 194 ‘atomic handshake’ (1946) 22–23, 278–279

atomic warfare, preparations made for 13–28, 36–38, 42, 61–65, 80–83, 107, 120–124, 132–134, 151, 159 atomic weapons consequences of using see nuclear onslaught custody of 195, 200, 205–209, 214–257 operational procedures for use of 189 production of 179–180, 186–192, 238 sharing of 179, 195, 200, 203, 260 Attlee, Clement 34, 42, 46, 63, 66, 87, 122, 153, 160, 164, 180–182, 191–192, 222–226, 229–236, 248 B-29 aircraft 11–13, 19–27, 35, 37–39, 42–47, 58–62, 67, 79–80, 122, 130, 159–162, 167, 202, 282 B-36 aircraft 35, 67, 86 B-47 aircraft 67, 70–72, 78, 82, 85–91, 134, 138, 201–203, 265–266, 281–282 problems with 87–88 B-50 aircraft 18, 35, 42–45, 62, 67, 79, 81, 137, 160, 162 B-52 aircraft 71, 93–94, 265 Ballard, J.G. 1 Barnes, Sir James 64 Barnes, Joseph (Phil) 28 Barton Leach, W. 34, 81, 135, 275 bases American need for 13, 15, 18–22, 25–28, 35, 38, 43, 45, 60–72, 78–79, 95–99, 107–110, 115, 131–138, 147, 280 benefits to the British economy of US presence 94

300Index bases (cont.) British leverage over use of 239 control handed over to the 3rd Air Force 116, 121, 282 defence of 139–140, 159, 162–164, 171 see also air defence degrees of co-operation between SAC and RAF commanders 119–122 nature of the arrangements for US acquisition of 278 poor standard of ground facilities 72–75 Berlin 266 airlift (1948) 28, 35–39, 58–60, 72, 130, 153, 279 Bevan, Aneurin (and Bevanism) 122–125 Bevin, Ernest 24–25, 36, 42, 58–60, 66, 164, 170, 172, 191, 229, 231, 248 Bissell, Clayton 23–24, 27 Blue Streak 96–97 Board of Trade 166, 277 Bomber Command 26, 84, 119, 157, 205–216, 240–241, 247–264, 267–269, 282
 Boyle, Sir Dermot 96, 98, 167, 209, 252–263, 278 Bradley, Omar 226–239, 283 British Empire 188 British European Airways (BEA) 117–118 British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) 118–119 Broadhurst, Sir Harry 156, 250–251, 261, 264 Brook, Sir Norman 42 Brookes, Andrew 264–265 Brundrett, Sir Frederick 193–194 Bulganin, Nikolai Aleksandrovich 83 Bunker, Howard G. 203 Bush, Vannevar 180 Byrnes, James 24–25, 164, 180 Cabell, Charles P. 131–132 Caccia, Harold 98 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) 89, 126 Canada 180, 187–189, 224 Canberra aircraft 207–211, 253, 282 Carey, Michael 47–48 Caulfield, Charles 49

Cherwell, Lord 113 Chiefs of Staff, UK 34, 78, 82, 98, 108, 118, 147, 151, 158, 165–167, 185–187, 190–194, 200, 227–230, 236–239, 250, 253, 257, 263, 281–284 see also Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Chilver, Richard 97 Churchill, Winston 34, 63, 87, 113, 132, 144, 180, 182, 192, 200–205, 222–223, 231, 235–240, 248, 251–252, 280 Clay, Lucius D. 39 Cochrane, Sir Ralph 46, 239 Coiner, Richard T. 204, 207 Cold War 179, 191–192, 227, 234, 275, 278–279, 282–285 Committee of 100 126 Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) 53, 123–124 Connolly, James 49–52 consent to nuclear war 222–226, 237 Conservative Pary 153 Cook, Sir William 97 Cooper, Duff 3 Cooper, Frank 84, 260–261 co-ordination ambiguities of 255–257 moving to integration 262–265 of operations and logistic plans 252, 254 costs of American deployment in Britain 58–60, 63–70, 99, 108–109, 118, 277 of modernising the RAF 168, 206–207 crashes of SAC aircraft 86 Crawley, Aidan 65, 123, 224, 280 Cripps, Sir Stafford 64, 164, 166 Cross, Kenneth 264, 268–269 cruise missiles 278 Cuban missile crisis (1962) 240, 265–268 Cullen, Paul T. 109 Daily Telegraph 207 Daily Worker 123 Davidson, A.P. 118 de l’Isle and Dudley, Lord 70, 202, 205 decision-makers 276 deniability 24–25

301

Index dependency in matters of defence 122, 179, 285 deterrence strategy 97, 132, 146–147, 169–170, 179, 201, 203, 207, 215, 240, 249–250, 255, 265, 275, 281, 285 Dewey, Thomas E. 190 Dickson, Sir William 69–70, 90, 121, 155–156, 202, 205, 209, 211, 239, 249, 251, 254, 257, 277 diplomatic ambiguity 233 Doolittle, Jimmy 2 Douglas, James H. 138, 255 Douglas, Lewis (‘Lew’) 58, 60, 64–66, 164, 229 dual-key systems 101, 267, 269 Dulles, John Foster 93, 236, 240 Eaker, Ira C. 14 Earle, Alfred 256 early warning of impending attack 139–141, 153–157, 279 Eden, Anthony 97, 236, 240, 252 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 72, 83–84, 92, 97–99, 186–187, 193, 195, 200, 203, 223, 236, 240, 255 Elliot, Sir William 108, 189–191, 230–235, 238–239 Elliott, Arthur 49 Ellis, Richard 85–86, 109–110 Ellwood, Sir Aubrey 119 Embry, Basil 154 ‘Encircle’ conference (1956) 252–258 encirclement of the Soviet Union 280–281 evacuation planning 145 Everest, Frank F. 10, 17–18 fallout, effects of 143–145 Featherstone, J. 49 Ferguson, John 232 Fighter Command 159–164, 167–173, 284–285 fighter defence 158–263, 167 Finletter, Thomas 45, 66–69, 237 Flickinger, Don 74–75, 151 Forrestal, James 25–26, 64, 184–186 France 11–12 Franks, Sir Oliver 229–235, 239 ‘free-riding’ by the UK 285 Fuchs, Klaus 190–192 Fulling, Roger W. 71–72

Gaitskell, Hugh 64, 125 ‘general war’, use of the term 234–237 geo-strategic reality 280 Germany 13 Goddard, Victor 166 Greece 10 Greenham Common 64, 67, 88–90 Griswold, Francis (‘Butch’) 83–6, 113–115, 125, 155–156 Groves, Leslie R. 180–183 Hagler, Tom 27 Hall, Edward 99 Hall, Robert (and Hall Report, 1953) 141–143 Hall, Viscount 46 Halse, Dick 49 Henderson, Arthur 90 Herter, Christian A. 98 Hickenlooper, Bourke B. 189 Hiroshima attack (1945) 142 Hollinghurst, Sir Leslie 23, 27 Holloway, Sir Ernest 26 Holmes, Julius 42, 47 Holy Loch Polaris agreement (1960) 278 ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ bombs 137 hydrogen bomb 84, 236 IFF (identification friend or foe) equipment 154 intelligence communities, British and American 153, 279 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) 71–72, 94–95 interdepartmental relations in UK government 265 intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) 95–96 Iran 10 Irvine, Sam 79–80 Italy 11–13 Jack Pot investigation 134–135 Jackson, Wayne 226 Jebb, Sir Gladwyn 224 Jessup, Philip C. 226–227 Johnson, Leon W. 34, 40–48, 51–53, 58–70, 73–74, 82, 90, 106–119, 132, 136, 139, 152–153, 159, 162, 169, 282

302Index Johnson, Louis A. 64, 187–188 Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), US 11–12, 25–26, 40–41, 107–108, 132, 172–173, 181, 191, 205, 207, 213, 228–238, 241, 263, 285 Joint Congressional Commitee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), US 189, 194–195, 222 ‘joint decision’ on the use of bases 235–236 Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and Joint Planning Staff (JPS), UK 131, 139, 141, 147, 204, 261 joint operations, moving towards 252, 255–257 joint strike planning 212, 263–265 Karsteter, William R. 25, 124 Kennan, George 186–187, 233 Kennedy, John F. 266 Killian, James 95 Kirkpatrick, Elmer F. Jr 23, 26 Kissner, ‘Augie’ 112, 164–165 Knerr, Hugh J. 16 Korean conflict (1950–53) 40, 43–44, 82, 132, 152–153, 161–162, 165–166, 192, 224, 227, 279, 283 Labour Party 122–126, 193, 231, 236 Lakenheath base aircraft damaged at (July 1950) 47–52 Lampe, David 124 Landon, Ted 266 Lang, William E. 72 Lees, Ronnie 253, 260 LeMay, Curtis E. 14, 38–45, 51, 58, 67–75, 78–81, 88, 93–94, 107–115, 119–120, 125, 131–134, 137, 139, 154–155, 159, 228, 230, 238, 248, 261–265 leukaemia 89 Libya, air attack on (1986) 278 Liddell, Guy 167 Lilienthal, David 183, 186 Lindsay, Richard 253 Lloyd, Sir Hugh 48, 61, 202, 249, 281–282 Lloyd, Selwyn 252 Lovett, Robert 232, 237

Low Altitude Bombing System (LABS) 209 Low Separation Diffusion (LSD) technology 186 McConnell, John Paul 68–69, 112–114, 136–137, 154–155, 238–239 McElroy, Neil H. 95, 172, 285 McGill, ‘Mac’ 87 Mackenzie, Norman 124 McMahon, Brien 180, 186, 225 McMahon Act see Atomic Energy Act Macmillan, Harold 83–84, 92–93, 98–99, 169–172, 194–195, 206, 252, 255–258, 265–268, 283–284 McNamara, Robert 94, 263 McNaughton, K.P. 73–74, 106 Makins, Sir Roger 225–226, 229 Marshall, George 25–26, 166 Marshall Plan 63 Marten, Tim 192, 225 Matthews, Freeman 232–233 Memorandum of Understanding (1957) 258–260 MI5 46, 53 167 Mills, Sir George 249–250, 261–262 Ministry of Civil Aviation 116–118, 276 Mirgon, Curtis L. 81 missile defence 71–72, 94–96, 171–172, 278 Modus Vivendi on US/UK co-operation (1948) 182–184, 187–191, 222–223 Montgomery, Viscount 113 Morrison, Herbert 231–234, 248 Mountbatten, Earl 258 Mussolini, Benito 34 Mutual Defence Assistance Programme (MDAP) 162, 169 Nagasaki attack (1945) 142 Nash, Frank C. 72 Nash Report (1957) 283–284 National Security Council (NSC), US 59, 63–64, 72, 135 Neustadt, Richard 264 neutralisation of the UK, possibility of 130, 162 neutralism 123, 125 New York Times 207

Index Nichols, Kenneth 15–16, 25–26, 183–189 Nitze, Paul 233–234 Norstad, Lauris 25, 41, 43, 60, 91, 99, 108–114, 205, 266 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 99, 168, 208–211, 238 Northolt airfield 116–118, 276 nuclear accident risk 84–93, 126, 216 nuclear co-operation 223, 241, 247–248 nuclear development in Britain 180–186, 201, 205–206, 214, 222, 238, 255–257 nuclear onslaught 141–147, 169–170, 193 nuclear technology, sharing of 186–187, 190–191, 194–195 see also Quebec agreement Oak Ridge 186 Old, Archie J. 74–75, 106, 109–114 oral histories 3 Padrone war game (1948) 139 Pakenham, Lord 118 Parkes, George B. 86–87 Patterson, Robert 11 peace-time defence 62–63, 159 Pelly, Sir Claude 172 Perrin, Michael 188–189 personal relations, importance of 22–23 Pike, Sumner T. 186 Pike, Sir Thomas 252, 254, 267 Pirie, Sir George 115–116 plutonium manufacture 183, 185, 192 ‘population avoidance’ doctrine 263 Portanova, Peter 98 Powell, Sir Richard 90, 261 Power, Thomas S. 83, 91–95, 107, 117, 261, 264–265, 268 pre-emptive strikes, possibility of 132–133, 147, 152, 217, 277 Project ‘E’ 203–217, 247–248, 251–252, 281–282 strategic aspect of 211–215 ‘Project Gabiel’ 143 ‘Project Sunshine’ 143 Quarles, Donald A. 96, 99 Quebec agreement (1943) 180–2, 222–3 quick reaction alert (QRA) 207, 268

303 radar cover 152–158 Radar Research Establishment 172 Red Beard bomb 208–214 Reflex plan 93–94, 134, 138 Regional Commissioners 142 Richey, Paul 48–49 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 181–182, 223 runway length 67, 202 Ryan, John B. 119 safety procedures 215–217 St Clement Danes church, the Strand 121–152 Sandys, Duncan 97–98, 169–172, 194–195, 202–206, 217, 255–256, 261, 283 Saunders, Sir Hugh 45–6 Schlatter, David 122 Sculthorpe base lack of cooperation at (1949) 120–121 Second World War 10, 263 secrecy 25, 43, 181–182, 189, 207 Selway, Mark 257 Shapcott, H.S. 49 Shell-Mex (company) 39 Shinwell, Emmanuel 66, 160 Shlaim, Avi 37 Sidi Slimane incident (1958) 89 Sinclair, Laurie 249 Slessor, Sir John (Jack) 40–41, 45, 67–68, 108, 113, 125, 132–133, 161, 166–167, 193, 228–230, 238, 247–248, 277 Slim, Sir William 113, 236–237 Smith, Eric 49–50 Soviet Union advances in military technology 130, 133–136, 183, 189, 223, 283 aircraft available to 135–137 seen as a potential adversary 10–15, 25, 34–35, 44–45, 130–137, 151, 158, 162, 169, 183, 238 targeting the cities of 212, 249–250, 261–264 Spaatz, Carl A. 11, 15–18, 22–5, 35, 165, 226–7 ‘special relationship’, Anglo-American 1, 3, 9, 265, 276 Spofford, Charles 70 Sputnik launch (1957) 195 Stalin, Joseph 10, 37

304Index Stassen, Harold 258–259 State Department, US 25 Steed, Thomas W. 48 Stephenson, John 247, 258–260 Stevens, ‘Lex’ 26–27 Stevenson, John D. 83, 85 Stirling, C.L. 49–50 Strachey, John 51, 191–192 Strang, Sir William 47 Strategic Air Command (film) 86 strategic bombing 11, 17–18, 71–72, 247–251 as distinct from tactical bombing 2 divergent approaches to 248–249 Strath, William 144–147 Strauss, Lewis L. 143–144, 179, 183, 190–195, 223 surprise attacks, possibility of 44–45, 139–140, 160, 170, 279 survivability 6, 140, 147 Swingler, Stephen 93 Symington, Stuart 72–73, 118 targeting 203, 212, 228, 249–250, 253–254, 257–265, 281 duplcation in 262–263 setting of policy on 261–263 technology transfer 165–167, 181–182 Tedder, Arthur (Lord) 22–25, 35, 41, 60, 64, 66, 106, 118, 131, 165, 185–186, 205, 226–229, 247, 278–279 Templer, Sir Gerald 190 Terrill, Robert H. 48 thermonuclear weapons 146–147 Thor missile force 95–101, 241, 267–269, 278 Thorneycroft, Peter 172 ‘toss bombing’ technique 209 trade in aircraft and jet engines 164–166, 277, 283 trade union movement 126 training in readiness for war 79–84 Truman, Harry S. 10, 23, 36, 40, 42, 63–64, 82, 99, 113, 180–181, 186–190, 193, 223–229, 232, 235–237, 283 Truman Doctrine 10 Tunner, Bill 73, 114–115, 157 Turkey 10 Tuttle, Geoffrey 212–213, 252–253, 256–261

Twining, Nathan F. 90–93, 154–155, 202, 205, 211, 239, 251, 254–256, 259–261, 284 unilateral nuclear disarmament 125–126 V-bomber force 201, 205–206, 211–213, 217, 249–256, 259–264, 285 Vandenberg, Hoyt 16, 25, 27, 41, 61, 66, 70, 106–115, 120, 139, 152–153, 156–157, 227–232, 237, 239 Visiting Forces Act (1952) 63 vulnerability 140–141, 248 Wallis, Barnes 24 war plans 4–8, 15–17, 23–24, 34–35, 38, 53, 59, 62–63, 68, 74, 78–79, 99, 107, 110, 114, 130–134, 138–139, 147, 192, 227–230, 236–239, 248, 252, 262–263, 281 Ward, George 93, 170–171, 210 Watkinson, Harold 93 weapons of mass destruction, authorising the use of 131 Webster, William 185–187 Western alliance, British policy towards 275–285 Wheless, ‘Shorty’ 68, 112 White, Thomas D. 138, 201–204, 261 Whiteley, Sir John 169 Whitworth-Jones, F. 26–27 Williams, Sir Herbert 51 Wilson, Charles E. 95–98, 195, 205–206, 217, 255, 261 Wilson, Roscoe C. (‘Bim’) 83, 91, 115, 121, 207, 257 Wohlstetter, Albert 138 Woodward, F.N. 185 Wray, Stanley 119–120 Wylie, D.W.R. 212 xenophobia 124 Younger, Kenneth 42 Zimmerman, Don Z. 23 Zone of the Interior (ZI) 2, 79, 125, 134, 138, 265