U.S. Strategic Command

SAC Leaders and the Development of a Reliable Plan for Nuclear War

SAC’s first commander was General George Kenney, a veteran of two World Wars. Kenney remained in command following the establishment of the U.S. Air Force in September 1947. Kenney was criticized for a lackadaisical approach to leadership of the command and the atrophy of any significant ability to conduct nuclear or mass conventional bombing operations and was replaced in the fall of 1948 by Lieutenant General Curtis E. LeMay, who the American public knew best as the man responsible for the firebombing of Japan during the Second World War.

Under LeMay, the command grew in size and ability. Through LeMay’s leadership, the command developed or implemented many of the concepts and practices that would come to define Cold War nuclear operations, aspects of which survive to the present day. Most notably, LeMay insisted on a constant state of readiness for SAC’s nuclear forces and personnel and fostered a palpable sense of urgency among his subordinates that bordered on paranoia. More tangibly, during LeMay’s tenure as commander the transfer of nuclear weapons from the Atomic Energy Commission to SAC bases took place in 1954. LeMay advocated for and ensured new jet bombers like the B-47, and the still-serving B-52 bomber and KC-135 aerial tanker were introduced into the fleet. At the same time, LeMay developed a rigid program of command and control of nuclear operations, supported by extensive planning for countless scenarios under which nuclear war might occur.

[Page 1550]Despite the rigorous efforts of LeMay and his successor, General Thomas S. Power, to prepare SAC to execute a nuclear war in myriad scenarios, confusion remained. SAC was only responsible for war planning within the command itself. The leaders of other commands and the staffs of the other armed services independently developed and prepared to execute their own war plans. By 1960, this lack of cooperation among the services and warfighting commands was apparent. Fratricide and duplicitous effort, as a result of multiple nuclear weapons being independently delivered unknowingly to the same target by separate services, topped the list of concerns. The Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff (JSTPS) was created to address these uncertainties.

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