On May 9, 1945, Germany signed the Instrument of Unconditional Surrender, ending world war II in Europe. With the defeat of Germany, the former Allies gradually began to look at each other. At 5:24 a.m. on July 16, 1945, the United States conducted the first human nuclear test on a 30-meter-high tower at the "Trinity" test site in Ala mogordo, New Mexico. The nuclear test, which had an explosive yield of 22,000 tons of TNT, produced tens of millions of degrees of high temperatures and tens of billions of atmospheres due to the explosion, causing a 30-meter-high tower to be melted into gas and form a huge crater on the ground. The smoke and dust from the nuclear explosion is like a cloud in the sky, which is extremely terrifying. Within a radius of 400 meters, the sand was melted into a yellow-green glassy substance, and within a radius of 1600 meters, all animals died.
On August 9, 1945, B-29 bombers dropped fat atomic bombs and exploded at an altitude of 300 meters over Nagasaki, and the mushroom cloud produced by the explosion rose to an altitude of 20,000 meters
With the successful detonation of the first atomic bomb, the United States became the only country with nuclear weapons, gradually beginning to provide a nuclear deterrent to its future adversary, the Soviet Union. On July 24, 1945, during the Potsdam Conference, U.S. President Harry S. Truman told Stalin that the United States had tested a new weapon, but that he had not used words like "atomic weapons" or "nuclear weapons," but to his disappointment Stalin's surprising calmness, he did not take his words seriously, and did not ask any questions. Neither Truman nor Churchill knew that Soviet intelligence had already reported to Stalin on the development of the U.S. nuclear program, and that the Soviet Union had already begun atomic bomb development. The atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Nagasaki and Hiroshima on August 8 and 9 were also a step toward the Soviet Union's nuclear deterrence.
With the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, the United States began to develop plans to use nuclear weapons against Soviet cities and targets, given its monopoly on nuclear weapons. By 1949, the U.S. war plan envisaged the dropping of 300 atomic bombs at a time. At the time, the U.S. Strategic Air Force had hundreds of nuclear-weapon-carrying B-50 Superfortress bombers that had a range of about 7,000 kilometers while carrying 1 atomic bomb. To ensure that strategic bombers covered the entire territory of the Soviet Union, the United States began building a network of air bases in Europe and Asia through agreements with allies. At the same time, the development of the B-36 bomber, which can fly intercontinentally, and the B-47 bomber with jet engines, is also being carried out at full speed.
B-50 fleet in 1950
In the face of the Threat of the United States, despite the destruction of the economy in the war and the shortage of funds, the Soviet Union made great efforts to develop the atomic bomb. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear device at the Semipalatinsk range. On September 3, the U.S. Special Meteorological Reconnaissance Service conducted an air sample in the Kamchatka region, and based on the air samples, the United States found isotopes that could prove that the Soviet Union had carried out a nuclear explosion. On September 23, Truman publicly announced that the Soviet Union had conducted a nuclear test, and on March 8, 1950, Voroshilov, then vice chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and vice chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, announced that the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons.
At that time, the Soviet nuclear weapon carrier was the Tu-4 bomber, which was the Soviet version of the American B-29 "Super Fortress" bomber, with a range of 6200 kilometers under the bomb load of 3 tons, and could only adapt to strikes against Western Europe and East Asia. Moreover, the speed is slower, with a maximum flat flight speed of 557 km / h at an altitude of 10250 meters, and the penetration ability is limited and vulnerable to attack. This can be seen in the fact that the MiG-15 fighters of the Soviet Air Force in the Korean War easily shot down dozens of B-29 bombers. It was this fact that became the main basis for the US military and political leaders at that time to oppose nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In 1950, the U.S. Air Force Strategic Aviation Command conducted exercises that simulated attacks on Soviet and Eastern European targets. The exercise showed that two-thirds of U.S. bombers would lose two-thirds of the day before the operation, while U.S. troops stationed in Europe could be hit by a nuclear strike. Of course, until the early 1950s, the U.S. military had an absolute advantage in both nuclear weapon equivalent and strategic bomber number.
Soviet Tu-4 fleet
At that time, both the United States and the Soviet Union were spending great efforts to develop new means of delivery of nuclear weapons, and bombers were still used as the main means of delivery. Naturally, the United States, with its strong technological and productive potential, unsurprisingly surpassed the Soviet Union. In 1949, the U.S. Air Force Strategic Aviation Command began to equip B-36 bombers, and by 1954 384 had been produced. The aircraft had a range of 11,000 km at a payload of 4.535 tons (1 nuclear bomb). It was then equipped with B-47 jet bombers in 1951 (2,041 were produced in 1949-1957, including reconnaissance models), which carried a nuclear bomb with a combat radius of 3,793 km at a cruising speed of 806 km/h. For soviet anti-aircraft weapons at the time, these two types of aircraft were strong opponents.
Three pilots from the U.S. Strategic Air Command in the 1950s headed for the B-47E bomber
In contrast, the Soviet Union's plan to develop intercontinental bombers (that is, bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons to North America) was significantly backward. In 1949 and 1951, the Tupolev Design Bureau developed the Tu-80 and its improved Tu-85 bomber, respectively. Both bombers used piston engines and carried a nuclear bomb for a range of more than 8,000 kilometers. However, they were unable to break through the opposing air defense, which consisted mainly of fighter jets. As a result, neither aircraft was finalized. In 1954, the Soviet Air Force had its own jet-bomber Tu-16A, but it had a combat radius of only 3,150 kilometers per hour at a cruising speed of 850 kilometers, making it unable to strike effectively against Europe and Alaska. In 1955, the Soviet jet intercontinental bomber Mia-4 began to be installed, but only 30 were produced, and the actual range was only 8100 kilometers, which was obviously not enough. Its combat capability lagged far behind the B-52 bombers in service in the United States that same year (744 were produced by 1962), even the Following Year 1956 Soviet Tu-95 bombers (30 produced in 2 years).
Thus, by the mid-1950s, the United States had an absolute superiority in nuclear weapon equivalents and nuclear strategic bombers, much to the displeasure of Soviet party and government leaders. Given the objective difficulties of using strategic bombers, the Soviet Union could only hope for land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Mia-4 bombers in a military parade on May 1, 1954
To be continued