Bomber gap
The bomber gap was the
One result was a massive buildup of the
Appearance
On February 15, 1954,
Adding to the concerns was an infamous event in July 1955. At the
US Air Force raises numbers of bombers
At the time, the Air Force had just introduced its own strategic jet bomber, the
The Air Force was generally critical of spending effort on defense after it had studied the results of the World War II bombing campaigns and concluded that British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's pre-war thinking on the fruitlessness of air defense was mostly correct: "The bomber will always get through." Like the British, the US Air Force concluded that money would better be spent on making the offensive arm larger to deter an attack. The result was a production series consisting of thousands of aircraft. Over 2,000 B-47s and almost 750 B-52s were built to match the imagined fleet of Soviet aircraft.
Disproval of gap
US President
The first U-2 flights started in 1956. One early mission, Mission 2020, flown by
In fact, the U-2 had actually photographed the entire Bison fleet; there were no M-4s at any of the other bases.[9] Follow-up missions over the next year showed increasing evidence that the Soviet military was actually at a very low level of activity. Further, the CIA received information from the factories that showed that production rate had slowed down.[10] A follow-up report in April 1958 by Sherman Kent of the CIA stated that the program appeared to be winding down, not speeding up, and that the estimates for the force should be decreased.[11]
The Air Force, however, remained skeptical. In May 1958, they instead suggested that production was being carried out at
By this time, after receiving a stern diplomatic note from the Soviets, Eisenhower had shut down the U-2 flights. To preserve some sense of plausible deniability, in 1957 the CIA had reached an agreement with MI6 and began training Royal Air Force pilots on the U-2. The group moved to Turkey in 1959 and began preparing for the missions. The very first flight, on 6 December 1959 with pilot Wing Commander Robert ‘Robbie’ Robinson, photographed the Kapustin Yar missile test range, the Engels-2 air base, and the Kuybyshev bomber factory. They showed no sign of the bombers nor the production capacity for them, and demonstrated that the total number of Soviet bombers was far less than the inflated estimates of the CIA and Air Force. Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, called it "a million-dollar photo".[13] At least in official circles, the gap had been disproved.[3]
As it was later discovered, the M-4 was unable to meet its original range goals and was limited to about 8,000 kilometers (5,000 mi). Unlike the US, the Soviets still lacked overseas bases in the
In popular culture
- In fallout shelters.
- In That '70s Show Season 3, Episode 11, main characters Eric and Donna argue about the existence of the gap while writing a report for school.
See also
Notes
- ^ Endless confusion has been caused by Knutson identifying this base as "Engels", which is the name of a major bomber base outside Saratov in southern Russia. Given the flight path illustrated in Whittell, he was almost certainly actually flying over either Levashovo or Gorelovo, which would have acted as "acceptance bases" for aircraft fresh from the factory in Moscow.
References
Citations
- ^ Pictures Reveal Reds' New "Sunday Punch", Aviation Week, 15 Feb. 1954, 12–13
- ^ Congress Gets Red Plane Facts, Aviation Week, 22 February 1954, pp. 13–14
- ^ a b Heppenheimer, T. A. (1998). The Space Shuttle Decision. NASA. p. 193.
- ^ "Guarding the Cold War Ramparts: The U.S. Navy's Role in Continental Air Defense". Archived from the original on 2011-09-28. Retrieved 2007-09-21.
- ^ "Bomber Gap". Archived from the original on 2007-10-12. Retrieved 2007-09-17.
- ^ Whittell 2011, p. 75.
- ^ Whittell 2011, p. 74.
- ^ Validity 1958, p. 1.
- ^ Interview with Martin Knutson
- ^ Recent Evidence on Bison Production (Top Secret), CIA-RDP79R00904A000400030035-9, Central Intelligence Agency, July 9, 1958.
- ^ Validity 1958, p. 2.
- ^ Targets 1958.
- ^ [Mission 8005 Submitted 18 December 1959] (Document title of Mission 8035 is in error, see copy), CIA-RDP78B05700A000400200005-1, Central Intelligence Agency, 21 December 1959
- ^ Myasishchev 'Bison'
Bibliography
- Whittell, Giles (2011). Bridge of Spies. Simon and Schuster. p. 75. ISBN 9780857201652.
- Validity of Heavy Bomber Estimate in NIE 11-4-57, CIA-RDP61-00549R000200010002-1 (PDF) (Technical report). Central Intelligence Agency. 11 April 1958. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 23, 2017.
- Heavy Bomber Targets, CIA-RDP61S00750A000500040115-4 (PDF) (Technical report). Central Intelligence Agency. 21 May 1958. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 22, 2017.