Delete comment from: Elements Of Power
I recommend _15 Minutes_ and _All Weather Warriors_ as possibly providing further insight, when Lemay took over the ability to generate a strike tasking in less than 48hrs was non existent and the mix of weapons platforms (B-29/36/47) were such that strategic strike had to be realistically done from forward deployment or from forward strike and then /recovery/ into forward bases.
Not so good if England or Libya are vaped by Bounder class airframes which get to fly a much shorter radius.
_AWW_ is more of an outline of the progression of weapons systems (I would be surprised if you don't already have it) but it makes clear through mission samples from WWII to Korea and on to the Phantom era that independent night fighters with all weather radio nav gear were basically derived from heavy escort 'Zerstorers' or light bombers of the period and the progression just never really stopped until jet bombers made the performance disparity shrink to the point where supersonic intercept was a mandate and that in turn greatly reduced mission radii (Zip Fuel not withstanding).
In this, I would further suggest some research on the Tu-121 as evidence of what we /thought/ the Soviets could do: Mach 2.8 to the Dutch Atlantic Coast, down to Spain, across Italy and back up through the Balkans, all at Mach 2.8 and 80K. _This_ performance profile was what drove the myth of the Foxbat and it began 10 years before the OKB MiG put pencil to paper on the MiG-25.
Got so bad that we were down to (thinking about) using Nike Hercules and ended up putting an article in European leftist rag that essentially requested a cease and desist before things escalated (Greece and Turkey already had Nike as close in defense for Thor).
The combination of these factors may provide some insight to what escort means as recovery delousing and BARCAP into baselanes for what was still a bomber war.
Sputnik in '57 I think it was everything and SAC took that hard as LeMay did all he could to delay the change in emphasis as reaction times and it may well be that a fast strike option was seen as a way to avoid the debilitation of the bomber R&D accounts.
Kelly Johnson is also well known to have said something like 'SRAM goes 15nm from 500ft, 25nm from 30,000ft, 50+nm from 60,000ft (which the B-52 would do) and over 100nm from 80,000ft and Mach 3. We don't give the Russians enough to think about, high-fast.' Which could mean that /at one time/ we did consider this.
A possible mission I can envision being fast breakin to blow holes with AGM-76 (as a SRAM like followon to nuclear GAR-X/GAR-9) with followup recce suppression or fast-target strike for U-2s and RB-57s in the aftermath of a major nuclear exchange. In this it is interesting to note that the YF-108 included options for -either- six conventional Falcons or 3 of the bigger nuclear variants but again, the emphasis seems to me to point directly at possibility of exploiting high-fast sanctuary to attack the principle S2A threat while leaving B-52s or B-70s to only penetrate as far as was necessary to release Hound Dog or Skybolt against Soviet ICBM fields around Plesetsk and Severomorsk (?, it's been awhile...).
If you haven't seen it, Carlo Kopp did a paper on 'Arming The Interceptors' which covers the Falcon family and it's more exotic variants.
Definitely a good read, I hope you continue this project.
Nov 30, 2013, 9:35:28 AM
Posted to An Airpower History Lesson in 3 Parts