Early Cold War British Nuclear Targeting Planning

 

In 1948 work was underway across in the UK to develop the nation’s first atomic bomb, enabling the UK to become a nuclear weapons power. Developing the technology was not enough though; to be effective military planners needed to know the plan for the weapons would be used, and how many would be needed for this purpose.  Understanding how many bombs were needed would drive many other decisions, from the numbers of aircraft needed to deliver them, to the number of air bases, people, mission training needs, and equipment to support the nuclear mission.

To inform this work, the MOD commissioned work along with the Joint Intelligence Bureau (forerunner of the JIC) to assess what targets needed to be hit in the event of a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union to be certain of defeating them. In a top-secret study paper, planners laid out in methodical exacting detail the specific sites that the RAF would need to attack, listing dozens of cities and other locations that would need multiple nuclear strikes to be certain of success. The purpose of this article is to assess this paper and set out for the first time what how the UK planned to carry out a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and what it hoped to achieve by doing so.

Crown Copyright

The key judgements underpinning the paper included three core judgements to underpin British nuclear planning. These included:

·         Russia and her satellite states should be taken as the potential enemies.

·         the American stockpile of atomic weapons will be used in the common effort, but we cannot count on being allowed to carry American atomic weapons in British aircraft;

·         in view of the vulnerability of the United Kingdom to air attack, it would be wise to depend more on the accumulation in peace time of a stock of atomic weapons than on subsequent production in war time.

Some of this may sound obvious, but in stating that Russia was the enemy, it made clear that the nuclear deterrent would not be intended for wider use in wartime. It would not be attributed for other missions (e.g. use against a different country) and its function would be to hold Russia at risk.

The phrase ‘common effort’ is notable because it shows that even in 1948, before NATO existed, the assumption was that both the UK and USA would jointly conduct a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and that any strike plans should reflect this. Similarly, it was not assumed that the UK would get access to US weapons in their aircraft – any planning had to be done on the assumption that the RAF would need to deliver its own weapons.

Finally, the point on vulnerability was key – having a stockpile of weapons was essential to ensuring that in wartime a nuclear attack could be carried out. Much of the early Cold War thinking on how war with Russia would play out focused on the long game – with the UK assuming that after war began, it may take up to 180 days to be at fully mobilised strength. Unlike the US, which would be able to ramp up production of nuclear weapons with relative impunity and thus be able to hold small stockpiles in peacetime, the UK felt that its facilities would be quickly targeted, and therefore it required a stockpile in peacetime available on a ‘use it or lose it’ mentality.  Brought together this tells us that from the very start of the Cold War, the UK assumed that it would play a significant role in any nuclear counter offensive, launched early in the war after the Soviet Union had attacked.

The papers authors made several caveats – firstly they only based their target calculations on what limited information was known about atomic bombs at the time – essentially a Hiroshima sized bomb that the UK was trying to build. They were clear that they had no insight into newer weapon designs with improved yield that could be more destructive. The list that they developed should be seen as the starting point for UK nuclear targeting policy, one that has evolved many times over the following 78 years.

The second caveat made was on basing arrangements for the strike. To launch a massive nuclear attack on a country the size of the Soviet Union would call for a significant force of aircraft striking across the nation. The planners worked to the assumption that the UK and US aircraft likely to be used would have a maximum range of 2000nm.  To meet this range constraint, the planners worked on the assumption that: “we have assumed that fully equipped bases will be available not only in the United Kingdom and the Middle East, but also in Pakistan or India, and Japan. The importance of bases in Pakistan or India will be seen from the attached map, for it is from these bases that targets in the TOMSK, TASHKENT and MAGNITOGORSK areas can be most easily and effectively attacked. Assuming that allied bombers in service in 1957 will have a radius of action of about 2000 nautical miles, if the Pakistan/Indian bases are not available and developed, some eight major towns in the Tomsk area will be out of range, while a number of other targets will only just be within range thus increasing the difficulties of their attack.”

Conducting strikes from Pakistan / India was seen as critically important as without them, significant swathes of the southern Soviet Union would survive the attack unscathed, while other targets would be challenging to reach.

Target Map - Crown Copyright

With these caveats in place, the planners set out what their proposed target policy would be to ensure that the Soviet Union could be functionally defeated by a nuclear attack in the period 1957 onwards. This date seems to have been set as the marker for when the UK would have a credible nuclear capability and the RAF bomber force at sufficient strength to play a significant part in the mission. The initial analysis of potential target sets considered 5 different options that could be attacked to defeat the Soviets:

I.                    Target systems related to the "will to resist" e.g. Towns.

II.                   Essential services of a universal nature e.g. Power, Oil, Transportation.

III.                 Industries concerned with the manufacture of equipment and supplies for the armed forces e.g. Aircraft, aero engines, A.F.V.'s, M/T, submarines.

IV.               Target systems concerned with the delivery of finished equipment and supplies to operational areas.

V.                 Target systems directly concerned with the day to day operations of the armed forces.

The reason for striking at targets linked to the enemy’s will to resist and continue the fight for the long term. One option to do this was to eradicate food supplies and crop growth by chemical and biological warfare – although this was ruled out as being utterly impractical to deliver. Instead, it was decided to focus on the sites that would destroy the Soviet leadership’s ability to maintain political control.

The decision was taken to focus bombing effort on the towns where over 100,000 people lived – even though this was estimated to comprise just 15% of the population (drawing on the 1939 census). The reason for this was because these towns contained a high proportion of the Communist Party officials who administered the nation. As the planners noted, “the great bulk of the Russian population consists of an amorphous mass of human beings for whom no independent organisational structure is tolerated and the present generation of Russians have never known spontaneity of action”.

Moscow was seen as the heart of the will to resist – housing many different administrative functions and high-level officials, planners realised that if Moscow was destroyed, a significant amount of the national ability to plan and fight a war would collapse. By targeting all towns with a population of over 100,000, the chances of eliminating anyone with decision making powers was high, leaving the nation rudderless and without control in its most desperate hour.

The planners quickly discounted the defence industry targets as they were seen as too easy to disperse and move underground. The final two options (delivery of equipment and military operations) were assessed to only have had a temporary impact on the Soviet ability to wage war if struck. Finally analysis of the other options such as the rail network and oil refinery network indicated that nuclear strikes would have an impact – but they would be hard to target and potentially difficult to disrupt.

Power Plant Targets - Crown Copyright

Of these five options then, two main priority target groups were identified. The first was towns of over 100,000 people: “First priority - Major towns with a population of 100,000 and over; it is estimated that by 1957 there will be some 100 towns of this size. Although we cannot state firmly that the destruction of these towns would definitely render the U.S.S.R. unable to wage war, we consider that this target system offers good chances of achieving such a result.”

Overall the planners assumed this would be enough to trigger the collapse of the system – the so-called ‘breakdown’ that Lord Strath wrote about some years later when discussing how 10 x 10 Megaton bombs on the UK would have a similar impact. In this case, the view was clear – if the attacks were to succeed, they would have to be carried out in full, and in a sufficiently coordinated manner to overwhelm the Soviet system:

“In our opinion combined attacks on these two target systems will offer the best prospect of a rapid and decisive result. If this is to be achieved, however, we must emphasise that attacks must be delivered on the full scale envisaged in this report and should be as near simultaneous as possible, especially in the case of towns, in order to saturate the fire, medical, and other civil defence services in each area and so create the maximum possible degree of disorganisation.”

In many ways this approach mirrors that of the combined US/UK bomber offensive against Germany in WW2 – overloading the system by night and day and stretching the national will to respond and resist to breaking point. By overloading a system and inflicting an unacceptable level of devastation, it was likely that the Soviet Union, and in particular its command and control systems, would be eliminated.

It wasn’t clear what level of damage the atomic bomb would do to its targets. Evidence on how it would perform was limited to reports about the impact of German air raids in WW2. The lessons of Hamburg, one of the most devastating air raids of WW2 were still remembered – with planners citing Speers warning about the fact that a further 6 raids would cause Germany to capitulate.

“Any comparison with the last war is likely to be unreliable since attacks on German cities were made with incendiaries and high explosives which are not comparable to the effects of atomic bombs, furthermore, these attacks were gradually built up over a long period, giving the Germans an opportunity to repair damage and to reinforce the Civil Defence Services of cities attacked from other areas. Even so, Speer found it necessary to warn Hitler after the Hamburg attacks (which are known to have caused relatively little harm to the overall economy of Germany) that six more attacks of this nature in quick succession would probably force Germany to capitulate.”

Would these attacks trigger breakdown though through a collapse of national morale? The planners were genuinely not certain – on the one hand the scale of destruction would be beyond imagination, forcing a collapse of the civil defence functions necessary to allow repair. But they were also mindful that the Soviet people were surprisingly used to suffering – as seen during WW2. In their eyes, the only way to be certain of achieving breakdown would be by wiping out all cities over 100,000 strong.

“ Although, as indicated in paragraph 9 there may be some decentralization of administrative control, the actual destruction of administrative buildings, power, water, communications and other services would create such serious problems that they might well lead to a breakdown in the morale of the population of towns. Though the population of towns of 100,000 and over in the U.S.S.R. will not amount to more than approximately 15% of the total population of the whole country, this percentage includes the more important section of the community, comprising the major portion of the administrative machine and of the more skilled industrial workers, on whom the war effort in the main depends. Nevertheless, morale being such an intangible factor, we have ignored it in our calculations and any possible breakdown should be only regarded as a bonus to the physical effects of attacks.

 It would thus seem theoretically possible to produce conditions which no country could withstand, but what this limit is, in terms of physical destruction in the U.S.S.R. it is impossible to say. It is, therefore, not possible to estimate with any accuracy the number of towns it would be necessary to destroy in the U.S.S.R. to bring about internal collapse and we have, therefore, taken the maximum number of towns which would present economic and suitable targets for atomic bombs, namely all towns of 100,000 and over.”

Would these assumptions also hold if strikes were carried out on cities within the wider Eastern Bloc? Many nations were by then under direct Soviet rule – should the UK and US attack them too in an all out nuclear strike or leave them be? There was suggestion that were the capitals of these nations to be attacked, it would “cause the defection of these countries with consequent embarrassment to the Soviet lines of communication through these countries”.

 The view of the planners was that this would not be necessary and could be counter-productive:

“In our view, however, the destruction of these cities could play little or no part in hastening the desire of the Russians to capitulate. Such attacks could only have long term economic effects and short term effects on lines of supply. Nor is it possible to conceive that the Satellites would be able or allowed to defect in the manner suggested and it is thought that such attacks would have a negative rather than a positive value in that they would destroy those towns in which underground movements are likely to thrive and would be likely to turn against us a large proportion of the people nominally sympathetic to our cause.”

The second priority was to target power stations to try and collapse the ability of the Soviet Union to support, equip and regenerate its defence economy. By taking away power, it would make it very difficult to build new tanks, guns and planes. It was anticipated that 47 power stations would be in existence that if destroyed would wipe out roughly 50% of the national power supply doing grave damage to the war effort.

“Second priority - Isolated Power Stations. In view of the uncertainty attendant on the results of attacks on towns, we have thought it prudent as an insurance to plan also to destroy the major power stations. Some 12% of the total power capacity would be destroyed incidentally in attacks on towns and it is estimated that in 1957 there will remain about 47 major power stations, whose destruction would bring the overall loss of capacity up to about 60% of the total. Such a loss might well make it impossible for the U.S.S.R. to continue to equip her armed forces, and even if this were not so it would have graver and more lasting consequences on her industrial economy than attacks on any other target system.”

The reason for the destruction of power stations was that it would have a dramatic impact on the Soviet ability to wage war. The document noted that the UK could not continue fighting if more than 50% of its own power generation capacity was destroyed, and that Speer had assessed the same for Germany and the Soviet Union during WW2. Although the specific impact could not be easily predicted, the reality of losing 50% of power would cause immense disruption to reconstruction efforts and make it vastly harder to continue the war – in turn undermining the ‘will to fight’.

Bombing Accuracy Numbers - Crown Copyright

Overall then the planners recommended that the nuclear strike plan for the Soviet Union focused on the following objectives:

(i) First priority - towns with a population of 100,000 and over. Such attacks will have incidental effects on power and transportation.

(ii) Second priority - isolated power stations to supplement the incidental effects on power at (i).

How though would such an attack be staged and launched? The assumption was that any attack would be carried out alongside the US and that in doing so bases would be available in the UK, Middle East (Cyprus) and India / Pakistan. It was also likely that the US would mount operations from Japan as well. At this stage, no missions were anticipated from the continental USA. The likely range of the bombers available in 1957 was assessed to be between 1500-2000nm (this was based on the abortive Shorts Sperrin design and what became the Vulcan and Valiant bombers), as well as the US B36 bomber fleet.

Timing was essential – were war to break out, if would require an urgent nuclear attack as quickly as possible to overwhelm Soviet defences and break their will to fight before it began: “For attacks on towns to have the best chance of achieving the aim, they should be launched immediately after the outbreak of war and to be completed with the minimum of delay so that they are as near simultaneous as is operationally possible. This assumes that it will be practicable to carry out successful attacks on a large number of targets with small forces within a short space of time.”

In other words, had the Soviets started an invasion of Europe, within hours they would have been subjected to a devastating nuclear counterattack hopefully ending the war before it even began.

Accuracy was a real challenge though -the RAF goal was for 400yards error – an incredible level of precision given that a few years previously massed bomber raids would routinely miss their targets by miles. At best an error of 2000 yards could be tolerated against towns, but each miss would reduce the damage and increase likelihood of the strike failing.

When the bombs were released, what was the anticipated level of destruction that they would have? The UK felt that it was unrealistic to aim for more than 80% destruction of a town of over 100,000 people from a single bomb. It set a detailed damage criteria based on the assumption that the weapon would be delivered as a 1500ft airburst to reduce fallout contamination. The intended effect on each city would be as follows:

(a) To cause destruction or serious damage to dwellings. — 1½ miles. The type of structure will vary from wood to brick and stone and a mean assessment can only be made.

(b) To cause destruction or serious damage to the more strongly constructed municipal buildings — 1 mile.

(c) To cause temporary dislocation by the destruction or damage of transport facilities, and the blockage of railway lines — 1 mile.

(d) To cause serious damage to power stations involving prolonged stoppage. — ½ mile.

The overall plan selected called for the targeting of 90 different Soviet cities, each with 100,000 plus population. The impact if the entire attack was delivered would be the destruction of 80% of each city, the loss of 12% of Soviet power generation capability and widespread disruption to the rail networks, impacting their ability to fight. A further 47 power stations would need to be destroyed to meet the goal of taking out 60% of the Soviet power supply, taking the nation beyond the point where it could sustain a war.

The planning assumption also recognised that not all targets would be hit first time, and that some sites would need repeat attack due to either weapons missing their target, or aircraft being shot down. Factors that would impact on the success of the strike included the effectiveness of Soviet air defences as well as navigation problems, the challenge of all-weather strikes and the potential risk that the bomb itself may fail.

Navigation and selecting the target was particularly difficult due to the paucity of intelligence. It was recognised that the last reliable information on population centres was the 1939 census, which would be utterly out of date by 1957 (when war was seen as possible). There was also a lack of photographic reconnaissance data of the Soviet Union – the RAF was utterly reliant on Luftwaffe imagery from WW2 to carry out its assessment of the impact of a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.

“Photographic mosaics exist for only 30 of these towns, and although these mosaics are of German origin, and generally dated between 1942 and 1944 they represent the best data available. These 30 towns are generally representative and include approximately 60% of the total population in towns of 100,000 and over. They have, therefore, been used as the basis for calculating the number of bombs required for the remaining towns not covered.”

Overall, it was estimated that these factors would lead to a failure rate of about 30% - e.g. one in three bombers would return early, suffer mechanical problems, fail to find its target, the weapon itself would fail to detonate as planned or the aircraft would be shot down. This figure could be mitigated through better trained crews, improved navigation and aircraft defence measures, but it was sobering to realise how only 2/3rds of the strike was likely to be delivered.

The planners called for a 20% contingency factor in the stockpile to allow a reserve for a ‘second strike’ to follow up on the initial attacks. This thinking on follow up attacks seems to have last well into the 1960s – the initial war role of the SR71 Blackbird in wartime was to carry out post strike reconnaissance missions of the Soviet Union to find where missiles had missed their targets, and in turn generate follow up strikes on surviving priority targets.

“The two main operational factors affecting the strategical requirement are bombing accuracy and the loss of bombs from all causes prior to attacking the target. It is at this time exceedingly difficult to forecast what conditions will be in 1957, for instance whether the Air Staff requirement of a 400 yard mean bombing error will have been achieved, how our bombers will compare in performance with enemy fighters, and whether the complex navigational problems will have been solved.”

Given all of this, how many bombs would actually need to be delivered to complete this mission? There was no simple answer to this – the figure depended on the accuracy of the bombing and how many bombs actually got through to their target. The image below shows how complex it was, but gives a figure of between 151 bombs (ideal accuracy and zero mission attrition) to 570 (2000 yard accuracy and 50% mission attrition) to target all known Soviet cities. When the same criteria was applied to the 47 power station targets, it shows that between 47 and 752 bombs would be required – giving a potential need for up to 1300 atomic bombs for the offensive.

Strike Damage - Crown Copyright

Using operational analysis, the RAF advised that by 1957 it expected 3 different scenarios to occur. These were the minimum requirement (, the unfavourable requirement and the most probable and set out the likely number of warheads needed to meet the mission requirements:

36. We estimate that:—

• (i) the minimum requirement for atomic bombs is 200.
• (ii) if operating conditions are unfavourable, the requirement may rise to 800.
• (iii) the most probable requirement is 400-500.

This was vital information as for the first time it allowed the UK to begin work on much more detailed analysis of how many nuclear weapons it needed in the stockpile at any one time, and how many V Force squadrons would be required to carry out the mission. It also helped open the door to engagement with the US – by sharing our assessment of the likely targets, it helped begin joint planning for what in turn became the SIOP and ensured the UK and US deconflicted their target planning.

This document is a critical part of the story of British nuclear targeting policy. It sets out the earliest stages of thinking, based on the lessons of WW2 about how the UK could hope to functionally defeat the Soviet Union – it reflects a time when only the US was a nuclear power, and the UK aspired to be one. It also reflected a time before the stage when the USSR could inflict similar damage on the UK, and before ICBMs were a credible means of delivering a nuclear strike. It is both very dated, of practically no relevance today and utterly invaluable.

When compared to later UK targeting philosophy, two key trends emerge. The first is an absolute assumption that the nuclear offensive begins at the start of the war, and that it will be an Anglo-US joint effort. There is no consideration of a purely national retaliatory war plan, which became far more important in the 1960s and 70s as the SSBN force stood up.

Secondly there is a far greater aspiration to inflict an unacceptable level of widespread damage than the so-called ‘Moscow Criterion’ of the 1970s, when planners sought to hold Moscow, Leningrad and maybe one or two other cities at risk. By then the view was that deterrence meant inflicting an unacceptable level of damage on Soviet leadership, not the Soviet people and the so-called ‘will to fight’. In 30 years, the targeting philosophy evolved from WW2 era mass raids to obliterate cities, to a far more nuanced sense of removal of specific capabilities and power from the elites. This is arguably one of the most important documents in early UK nuclear planning precisely because it shows the genesis of the nuclear targeting philosophy that has carried on to this day, albeit in very different ways.

Finally it is worth reflecting on the scale of devastation that would occur because of this plan -nearly 100 cities, dozens of power stations would be destroyed in a short space of time. Intelligence indicated that over 21 million people lived in the cities being targeted (out of a population approaching 175 million) leaving tens of millions without food, power or the means to survive. It would have inflicted catastrophic damage, but there is no certainty that it would have been able to force a surrender. It would also have done nothing to stop the Soviet forces invading Western Europe, leaving the situation where Russian forces would be fighting for a nation that no longer existed and potentially without a chain of command in place able to order them to stop. Whether this plan would have ended the war almost before it started, or simply added more deaths remains open to debate to this day.

Target List - Crown Copyright