Item COLD WAR 27/77 - Transcript of interview with General Russell E Dougherty, US Air Force, 1996

Typescript transcript of interview with Gen Russell Eliot Dougherty, USAF, [1960]-1974, relating to the differences in nuclear strategy between the administrations of US Presidents Dwight David Eisenhower and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1960-1961; the US nuclear doctrine of massive retaliation, 1954-1960; the creation of the US 'nuclear triad', the deployment of three nuclear delivery systems, strategic bombers, Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs), [1965]; the US Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (B-MEWS), [1965]; the role of the US SAC B-52 squadrons in providing strategic deterrence in the Cold War, 1960-1970; the opinion in the USAF of Robert Strange McNamara, US Secretary of Defense, and of his 'whiz kids' defence advisors brought into the US Pentagon mostly from the RAND Corporation and the Harvard Business School, 1961-1968; Operation LINEBACKER II, the USAF conventional bombing by Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses of Hanoi and Haiphong, North Vietnam, Dec 1972; McNamara's relationship with US Gen Curtis E LeMay and Gen Thomas S Power, 1961-1968; the US nuclear doctrine of counterforce, emphasising limited nuclear strikes against an enemy's armed forces and not against civilian populations, 1962; the US strategic doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), 1967; Dougherty's opinion of the USSR, [1960-1974]; the necessity of keeping nuclear armed B-52s in the air at all times to deter a Soviet pre-emptive first strike against US SAC bases, 1960-1970; the Palomares incident, the collision of a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress and a Boeing KC-135 tanker aircraft over Spain resulting in the loss of the two aircraft and the crash landing of four thermonuclear weapons, Jan 1966; the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct 1962. 28pp