USAF Strategic Air Command Air Force History

Depicts the constant readiness of Strategic Air Command’s people, bombers and missiles to defend the country, and portrays around-the-clock operations while SAC personnel tell how they carry out their important missions.

“KLAXON! KLAXON! KLAXON!” When public address systems
echoed these words at Strategic Air Command (SAC) bases across the
United States, red lights flashed and “SAC warriors” scrambled to their awaiting bombers.1
As pilots frantically brought their nuclear-armed
planes to life, navigators decoded cryptic emergency action messages
to determine if the alert response was an actual launch against the
Soviet Union or just another exercise. SAC warriors never executed
their preplanned missions against America’s Cold War enemy, but for
over 40 years, the possibility that the United States could and might
do so served to deter a possible Soviet attack against the American
homeland.
Operating under these strenuous conditions placed a considerable
burden on the organization. Every day, SAC aircrews studied their
planned routes into Mother Russia and conducted training missions as
regimented and scripted as the “real” thing. Additionally, SAC personnel’s regular handling of nuclear weapons required a high degree of supervision and strict observance of established procedures. For the command’s leaders, controlling this nuclear armada called for a unique
operating paradigm built on routine, control, and flawless execution.
The Air Force and the nation came to rely on SAC as the pillar of
Cold War deterrence. Therefore, the organization grew in size,
strength, and power, reaching its peak in the 1960s. By the early 1960s,
SAC’s bomber generals held more than 50 percent of the senior command positions within the Air Force.2
These leaders, largely veterans
of the World War II strategic bombing campaigns, collectively believed
that the threat of nuclear bombing—as well as, later, the additional risk
of a nuclear missile attack—was the way to deter potential adversaries.
In the mid-1960s, the Cold War shifted its focus when war erupted over
the unification of Vietnam.3
When the Cold War shifted to a periphery
strategy, airpower concentrated on tactical aviation, and SAC’s primacy in the Air Force began to wane.4
In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War ended. The Air Force
decided that the singularity of SAC’s mission—nuclear deterrence—no
longer met the nation’s interests. The command closed its operations
in 1992 and transferred its missiles to the newly formed Strategic Command. SAC’s bombers became part of Air Combat Command, serving with fighters instead of remaining separate from them. Unlike the
phoenix, SAC would not rise again. Forty years of alert posturing and
preparation for an apocalyptic war caused the command and its warriors to develop an organizational paradigm commonly labeled the
“SAC mentality,” which served the command well in the early, intense
years of the Cold War.
This is the story of how this vital organization, a part of American
history, developed its own organizational culture. SAC culture did not
form overnight; it initially grew out of the Air Force’s belief in strategic
bombardment. Although SAC’s culture was founded on the principle of
centralized, independent bombing, the external environment—
namely, the Cold War—played an important role in shaping that culture. Like any living organism, SAC evolved over time based on (1) its
internal makeup and (2) its response to the external environment. In
1948 Air Force leadership earned a central role for the organization in
the nation’s defense, but mismanagement by SAC’s leaders threatened
to unravel these gains. Beginning in late 1948, new SAC leadership put
the command on a war footing. By 1951 SAC embodied the belief that a
highly specialized strategic bombardment force was paramount to national defense.
Simulating military operations under an “at war” mentality triggered
the development of a SAC organizational culture.5
Facing a conflict
measured in hours and days rather than months and years forced the
command to implement policies and directives that daily evaluated its
preparation for an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In the
minds of SAC’s members, scripted and standardized procedures characterized the SAC mentality, setting the command apart from the other
military services. Its culture became recognizable in the symbols it
embraced. The intercontinental bomber represented the organization’s
independence from other services; the atomic bomb gave SAC its political power; and SAC’s exclusive promotion system set its personnel
apart from those in the rest of the Air Force, implying their uniqueness of mission and purpose. At the heart of SAC operations lay the strategic bomber—all operations supported the main objective to put
bombs on target.

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