Nuclear war seems almost fantasy today. But during several decades of nuclear confrontation between the USSR and the United States, it was a very real threat.
Uranium program
The Soviet Union was prompted to develop a nuclear program by the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities. On August 20, 1945, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution on the creation, under its leadership, of a Special Committee to manage work on atomic energy. Lavrenty Beria became the chairman, the committee included G. Malenkov, I. Kurchatov, P. Kapitsa and others. The First Main Directorate (PGU) was also established under the USSR Council of People's Commissars, headed by B. Vannikov and A. Zvenyagin. PSU was engaged in the design and manufacture of the necessary equipment. The appropriations for the development of science were significantly increased. Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of the program. Financing was carried out through the State Bank, and the State Planning Commission provided the facilities with all the necessary materials, equipment and instruments.
The results were not long in coming. In 1946, the first experimental nuclear reactor was launched, and on August 29, 1949, the first Soviet atomic bomb was successfully tested.
Date of attack
According to the Dropshot plan, a plan for a full-scale war with the USSR, which was developed in the United States in 1949, the chiefs of military staff with the direct participation of President Harry Truman determined the preliminary date of the attack on the USSR - January 1, 1950. The question is: why was this plan not implemented? It's simple: the United States was simply frightened. The cancellation of their decision was significantly influenced by the successful Soviet nuclear tests, which shattered the American belief that there would be no retaliation.
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Objectives
In the event of an attack by the USSR on the United States, it was supposed to strike at Washington, San Francisco, New York and Seattle. The following Soviet cities were selected as targets for the US attack: Moscow, Leningrad, Gorky, Kuibyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov, Kazan, Baku, Tashkent, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Perm, Tbilisi, Novokuznetsk, Grozny, Irkutsk, Yaroslavl.
Air force
At the beginning of the 1950s, the United States had an absolute superiority over the USSR in the naval forces, in the number of nuclear warheads and strategic bombers, which served as the basis of the strategic offensive potential. Strategic bombers B36 Peacemaker B47Stratojet could, having taken off from a base in Great Britain or Japan, safely fly to the central regions of the USSR, and the lighter AJ-2, A-3 and A-4 bombers could hypothetically bomb the peripheral regions of the Soviet Union. Under the blows of carrier-based aircraft fell: Murmansk, Tallinn, Kaliningrad, Sevastopol, Odessa. The USSR was armed with Tu-4 and Tu-16, but they did not have a sufficient flight range, and, provided they were based within the USSR, they were not able to reach the main part of the United States. More advanced 3Ms - four-engine bombers - had the necessary range, but were built slowly. As for strategic missiles, in terms of range, they were not up to par. However, it should be noted that military secrets were well guarded in the USSR, and US military analysts had to be content with very fragmentary data and inaccurate information.
Heavenly Shield - "Berkut" and SAGE
Berkut is a strategic air defense system around Moscow, designed to repel massive B-36 and B-47 raids. The system depended on the B-200 radar stations, it also included the Kama all-round radar, B-300 missiles and S-25 anti-aircraft systems. The B-300 rocket itself was not self-guided, but completely radio-controlled. For its time, this system was very expensive and perfect. But, unfortunately, it provided protection against nuclear attacks only for Moscow and the Moscow region.
SAGE, the American air defense system, worked on a different principle. It was based on the idea to cover the entire US territory with an impenetrable radar and air defense shield. The data obtained in the course of continuous monitoring were collected in information centers, where they were processed using electronic means - the prototypes of today's computer systems.
Moving target
The Cuban missile crisis showed that, despite all its superiority, the United States was very afraid of Soviet ballistic missiles. These "moving targets" - P-5, P-12 and P-14 - were capable of sweeping at a speed of 3 km per second and could easily penetrate the SAGE shield. However, they also lacked range. Only the R-7, created by Sergei Korolyov, was able to overcome this line, significantly complicating the defensive task for the United States.
Nunn-Lugar Initiative
On December 2, 1991, at the initiative of Senators Nunn and Lugar, the United States adopted the Law on Reducing the Soviet Nuclear Threat. This law provided for the provision of large-scale assistance to the USSR. Its adoption was significantly influenced by the severe economic crisis that broke out in the USSR, which could significantly weaken the authorities' control over the nuclear potential. The nuclear briefcase could end up in precarious hands. The Americans breathed a sigh of freedom only on January 26, 1992, when Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia was removing "sights" from American cities.