Command and Control

General Curtis LeMay, the second in command at the Air Force, had little use for McNamara and his whiz kids. Few of them had served in the armed forces, let alone seen combat — yet they acted like military experts. They seemed arrogant and clueless. General Thomas D. White, the Air Force chief of staff, had similar misgivings, later criticizing the “pipe-smoking, tree-full-of-owls type of so-called professional ‘defense intellectuals’ who have been brought into this nation’s capital.” LeMay was convinced that long-range bombers were still the best weapons for strategic warfare. The Pentagon had never allowed SAC to test-launch a ballistic missile with a live nuclear warhead, despite many requests. Such a launch, with a flight path over the United States, was considered too risky. Dummy warheads were successfully tested instead, on missiles fired from Vandenberg — and the same fuzing and firing mechanisms would presumably detonate a real one. But LeMay didn’t want the survival of the United States to depend on a weapon that had never been fully tested. And the idea of a “limited war” still seemed ridiculous to him. The phrase was an oxymoron. If you won’t fight to win, LeMay argued, then you damn well shouldn’t fight. His protégé at SAC, General Power, felt the same way and continued to push for a counterforce strategy, aiming at military targets. For that task, Polaris missiles — relatively inaccurate and impossible to launch simultaneously, as one massive salvo — were useless.

To placate the Air Force and gain additional security against a surprise attack, McNamara raised the proportion of SAC bombers on ground alert from one third to one half. The number of bombers on airborne alert was increased, as well. Twelve B-52s were soon in the air at all times, loaded with thermonuclear weapons, as part of Operation Chrome Dome. Every day, six of the bombers would head north and circumnavigate the perimeter of Canada. Four would cross the Atlantic and circle the Mediterranean. And two would fly to the ballistic missile early-warning facility in Thule, Greenland, and orbit it for hours, maintaining visual or radio contact with the base — just to make sure that it was still there. Thule would probably be hit by Soviet missiles during the initial stage of a surprise attack. Known as the “Thule monitor,” the B-52 assured SAC, more reliably than any bomb alarm system, that the United States was not yet at war.

Feuds between the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force continued, despite McNamara’s vow that the Pentagon would have “one defense policy, not three conflicting defense policies.” Interservice rivalries once again complicated the effort to develop a rational nuclear strategy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had been instructed to alter the SIOP, so that President Kennedy would have a number of options during a nuclear war. Studies were under way to make that possible. But the nuclear ambitions of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force still seemed incompatible — and, at times, incomprehensible.

General Maxwell Taylor had contended in his bestselling book that the Army needed more money to fight conventional wars, an argument that helped to make him the principal military adviser to President Kennedy. Nevertheless, with Taylor’s support, the Army was now seeking thirty-two thousand nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield. Even the little Davy Crockett was portrayed as an indispensable weapon, despite the risk of theft. The handheld atomic rifles were as urgently needed, the Army claimed, as intercontinental ballistic missiles. McNamara still couldn’t understand the rationale for battlefield nuclear weapons and challenged the Army to answer a series of questions about them: Is the purpose of our tactical weapons to prevent the Soviets from using their tactical weapons? Can the Army defend Europe with them, without destroying Europe? And how will our own troops survive the fallout? The maximum range of the Davy Crockett was so short — about a mile and a half — that the soldiers who fired it stood a good chance of being killed by it.

In response to McNamara’s questions, the Army admitted that its request for thirty-two thousand nuclear weapons might “appear to be unreasonably high.” But General Taylor insisted that tactical weapons would serve as a valuable first step on the ladder of nuclear escalation. They would demonstrate American resolve — and the United States obviously needed to have them “if the enemy does.”