Reflection
Johns, Bryan
REFLECTIONS Bryan Johns Sixty Seconds Over Moscow Ifinished calculating the sun line and plotted it. Japan, here we come. As I put away the sextant, I glanced at the instrument panel and...
...Japan surrendered...
...Effective action at its source would normally require us to 'strike first.' " Echoing the "strike first" theme, the authors of JIC 329 wrote, "The advantage now held by the Western Powers is primarily due to the vast productive resources possessed by the United States and the stimulus provided by the war emergency...
...And you...
...He was a Brigadier General, a decorated veteran of European combat who had led the Ploesti raid and denied a lot of gasoline and oil to Hitler's Wehrmacht...
...The B-29 would fly pretty well on three engines...
...They got a little bitty bomb range over there...
...Oily black smoke streamed behind us like a long, ragged ribbon across the Kentucky sky...
...The General's self-assured smile disappeared and a trace of anguish crossed his face...
...That summer of 1945, all B-29 officers were required to declare whether they wanted to be discharged or would serve "for the duration of the war plus six months...
...Why, sir...
...It was a difficult time for professional soldiers...
...We finished our dinner in silence...
...Back to my job, sir...
...It would be foolish to believe that they will not devote a considerable part of their national effort to research and technical development or that they may not meet with success...
...By December, we rarely heard the roar of the 2,200-horsepower engines...
...JIC 329 was the intelligence committee's response to a "priority request" from the JWPC...
...In August, nobody would have asked that question...
...It was time to go home, and we began to have second thoughts about our promise to serve for "the duration plus...
...We didn't need them in Alaska during the war, so why after the war...
...The slip of paper was a mere bureaucratic redundancy, we thought, and besides, Tojo had not yet met the fate of Hitler and Mussolini...
...Had the plan been carried out, a twenty-two-year-old aerial navigator and his friends would have been tapped to inflict unimaginable horror on a nation already debilitated by war...
...The point is that a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union was an option seriously considered by the leaders of this country at the end of World War II...
...The General turned to me, subdued...
...You men have a real good future," he said...
...In August, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Kwantung Army was captured in Manchuria by Soviet forces...
...Indeed, it was weighed throughout the next decade—in 1954, a Joint Chiefs of Staff study group proposed that the United States consider "deliberately precipitating war with the U.S.S.R...
...Senior officers provided no answers...
...The order didn't make much sense-though I had some suspicions that were confirmed only recently, when I obtained a previously top-secret Government document, JIC 329...
...I want no part of it, just as I would have wanted no part of such plans in the 1940s, had I known they existed...
...An atomic attack today would be an act of suicide as well as a crime against humanity...
...Dated November 3,1945, and entitled Strategic Vulnerability of the U.S.S.R...
...It was apparently the second postwar study of a nuclear war scenario involving the Soviet Union...
...The General liked to join his officers at dinner, and one evening in November it was my turn, with a couple of buddies, to be favored with his company...
...Our new commanding officer at Grand Island was a step up from the one who had guided us through six months of training in Kansas and Cuba...
...The first, in October 1945, stated, "There is no known defense against the principle of the atomic bomb...
...More laughter...
...The Air Force was his life, and conversation quickly turned to the service...
...I thought it was just turbulence," I said...
...Fires and failures—that was how we came to know the Wright Cyclones that powered our so-called Very Heavy Bombers...
...As I put away the sextant, I glanced at the instrument panel and immediately got on the interphone...
...Come on up here...
...But a month earlier we had lost two on the same side over the Caribbean...
...The engineer watched temperature gauges like pieces of toast...
...in tnose days, before intercontinental missiles, the bombs would have been transported by bombers with extraordinary range—B-29s...
...the duration plus," since that was what we had pledged to do when we enlisted...
...You're here at the right time...
...To this end, JIC 329 listed the twenty "most profitable objectives for attack by atomic bombs," a selection of "mixed industrial areas containing the highest proportion of research and development centers, specialized production facilities, and key government and administrative personnel...
...Just feather the prop, and if that doesn't kill the fire, bail out— if you can...
...Carroll Grafa, in the right-hand seat, shouted back, "Where you been, buddy...
...One month after the report was secretly distributed to top military officials (thirty-five copies were made), the JIC produced a revised version in which it noted that "some twenty to thirty atomic bombs would be available for use against the U.S.S.R...
...in the near future"—and it is contemplated today...
...In the spring of 1943, the Joint Chiefs of Staff created two committees of senior military officers: the Joint War Plans Committee (JWPC), to develop broad strategic plans, and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), to translate those plans into specific military action...
...We were celebrating the peace and simultaneously oiling the wheels of war...
...Her people, scientists, and industrialists are controlled by a small group of realistic leaders...
...We would have basked in the prestige of his command during the war-but we were thinking of home...
...The Soviet Union has been relieved of the terrific drain imposed by war...
...But in the fall of 1945 demonstrations were occurring among U.S...
...Part of the cowling was gone and the propeller was feathered...
...As long as nothing else went wrong we could laugh at the danger...
...In fact, specific plans were being laid to wage nuclear war on the Soviet Union—and we figured in those plans...
...someone asked softly...
...There we would be reorganized and, our commanders told us, moved to bases being modified for us in Alaska...
...He did not answer...
...Not long after Japan surrendered, a B-29 flew nonstop from the Mariana Islands to Cairo, a distance of more than 8,000 nautical miles...
...Never before had B-29s been based in Alaska...
...Lookit number three," said Grafa, the co-pilot, pointing to the engine...
...Didn't you feel the big bang...
...More and more were released from military service...
...In September, we were reassigned to be the combat element of the 449th Bomb Group at Grand Island, Nebraska...
...The targeted cities included Moscow (population 4,000,000), Leningrad (1,250,000), Tashkent (850,000), Baku (809,000), Gorki (644,000), Tbilisi (519,000), Yaroslavl (298,000), Irkutsk (243,000), and more—an archipelago of planned infernos inhabited by more than thirteen million people...
...For most members of the 383rd Bombardment Group, based at Victoria, Kansas, the answer was automatic: We would serve for Bryan Johns, a Portland real estate agent, chairs the Oregon Council of American-Soviet Friendship...
...In time, Washington retreated...
...In Washington, D.C., though we didn't know it at the time, the war machine had never stopped turning...
...At our stateside base, we ran flight tests, calibrated compasses, and checked equipment...
...And the country needs you," he added...
...We're making only 180...
...Gimme a heading to Fort Knox," pilot Paul Couch instructed...
...See what you miss when you keep your nose in the books and maps...
...The authors provided maps and three pages of postwar population and production statistics...
...That was grim...
...That is approximately the round-trip distance from Fairbanks to Moscow...
...And in January, everyone who asked for a release received one...
...He saw the third man was embarrassed and turned his gaze toward the table...
...to a Limited Air Attack, JIC 329 proposed a list of "twenty of the most important targets suitable for strategic atomic bombing in the U.S.S.R...
...What's wrong...
...Hitler had killed himself in a Berlin bunker two months before, but the war against Japan continued...
...Today, however, instead of twenty to thirty bombs, the superpowers' nuclear arsenal contains some 16,600 strategic warheads...
...We salvoed the bombs into the ocean, and I pointed out landmarks on the Cuban coast to save time getting down at Batista Field...
...Americans at home were also protesting the slow pace of demobilization, and the press was increasingly critical...
...and Soviet-dominated territory...
...What are your plans, Lieutenant...
...We regarded him pleasantly, but no one spoke...
...We're seeing great progress in military airplanes...
...A future war with Soviet Russia is as certain as anything in this world can be certain," wrote Under Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew in a memorandum that year...
...To go back to the university, sir...
...That advantage is not likely to be maintained...
...It is considered that the use of strategic air power should be given the highest priority in any quantity for limiting or delaying this type of progress...
...Some turbulence...
...We can drop the load and go up to Patterson for another engine...
...Though the normal combat range of a B-29 was only 1,500 miles, it could be extended by removing armor, guns, and ammunition—essentially converting the airplane into a carrier for atomic bombs...
...The pilots learned special procedures: Don't use the C02 extinguishers because they react with magnesium engine parts to produce an explosion...
...ground forces based in Europe and the Philippines...
...The war contemplated in JIC 329, it seems, was put on hold...
...The only active defense lies in preventing the employment of the bomb by effective action against its source or by destroying its carrier in flight...
...One of those newspaper columnists gets hold of you and twists everything up," he said...
...The flight deck erupted in laughter...
...I unhooked my table, squeezed past the gun turret, and crouched between the pilots...
...He grinned at me...
Vol. 47 • August 1983 • No. 8
