Bomber Gap

The perceived Soviet advantage in military air power that alarmed the United States at the start of the Cold War. In 1954, the Soviet Union displayed its newest long-range bombers at a military celebration in Moscow. The Soviets allowed Western diplomats and military officials to attend the celebration. To deceive these visitors, the Soviets repeatedly flew the same aircraft overhead. Their tactic worked; the visitors left Moscow concerned that the Soviets had grabbed a decisive advantage in the Cold War struggle for air power. This supposed advantage became known as the bomber gap.

To overcome this gap, the highest-ranking officers in the U.S. Air Force urged President Dwight Eisenhower to devote a huge portion of the nation's defense budget to the production of military aircraft. However, Eisenhower did not believe that the bomber gap existed. Based on his estimates of Soviet production capabilities, Eisenhower doubted that the Soviets could have developed such a large fleet. He also distrusted the more covert intelligence that exaggerated Soviet air power. In addition, Eisenhower blamed the emerging “military-industrial complex” for the incessant drive to build more aircraft and other military hardware.

To appease the Air Force command, however, Eisenhower authorized the development of the U-2 spy plane. The U-2 was manufactured of aluminum and was extremely light, which allowed it to reach heights of 70,000 feet. It was equipped with enough fuel to travel 30,000 miles. Most importantly, it carried the most advanced spy cameras and over a mile of film. The Air Force began using the U-2 on spying missions against the Soviet Union on July 4, 1956.

The U-2 was nearly impervious to Soviet attacks because the Soviets did not possess any military aircraft capable of reaching the same altitude. Therefore, the plane could fly directly over the Soviet Union and closely monitor all Soviet air tests. Consequently, this advanced surveillance both stunted the Soviet Union's air program and demonstrated that the bomber gap did not exist. But more importantly, the U-2 lacked any offensive capabilities. Its use frustrated the Soviets, but it did not threaten them or push them into actions that were more aggressive.

Eisenhower's support for the U-2 both alleviated fears over the bomber gap and allowed him to concentrate on the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Eisenhower correctly assumed that the development of ICBMs was also a Soviet priority. He therefore ordered each branch of the military to develop its own design for a long-range missile, hoping that the competition among the branches would both spur a better design and also stifle the debate over which branch of the military would control the nation's expanding nuclear arsenal.

By discounting fears of the bomber gap, Eisenhower successfully kept pace with the Soviet Union in the Cold War's most important arena, the development of nuclear weapons. Because Eisenhower shifted the military's emphasis from the development of aircraft to the development of ICBMs, he prevented the Soviets from achieving an advantage in nuclear capability that they could have used against the United States to win the Cold War.

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