The Air Force versus Hollywood

To refute early 1960s novels and Hollywood films like Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove which raised questions about U.S. control over nuclear weapons, the Air Force produced a documentary film--"SAC [Strategic Air Command] Command Post"--to demonstrate its  responsiveness to presidential command and its tight control over nuclear weapons.

During the crisis years of the early 1960s, when U.S.-Soviet relations were especially tense, novels and motion pictures raised questions about the Air Force's control over nuclear weapons and the dangers of an accidentally or deliberately-triggered nuclear war. Foremost were Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's novel Fail-Safe (1962) (later turned into a motion picture) about an accidental war and the film Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a brilliant satire about a nuclear conflict deliberately sparked by a psychotic Air Force general. Both Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe may have created enough worries in the Air Force about its image to lead the service to produce a film--"SAC [Strategic Air Command] Command Post"--designed to confirm presidential control over the "expenditure" of nuclear weapons and the difficulty of initiating an 'unauthorized launch" of nuclear bombers.

Never used publicly by the Air Force for reasons that remain puzzling, "SAC Command Post" is premiered online today on the National Security Archive Web site. Produced during 1963-1964, this unclassified film tried to undercut Dr. Strangelove's image of a psychotic general ordering nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union by showing that nuclear war could not be "triggered by unauthorized launch." To reinforce an image of responsible control, "SAC Command Post" presents a detailed picture of the communications systems that the Strategic Air Command used to centralize direction of bomber bases and missile silos. With the film's emphasis on SAC's readiness for nuclear war, higher authorities may have finally decided that it was off-message in light of the Johnson administration's search for stable relations with Moscow.

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