I knew how the Soviets did it, and I had talked with the Chinese Communist pilot who had tossed a live one - an H-bomb. But after meeting a U.S. Marine who flew the A-4 Skyhawk on nuclear missions, I realized I knew nothing about how the Americans used “toss” or “loft bombing.” I came to Amazon to find out – and Dan Ford had the answers.
“Carrying a Nuke to Sevastopol" is Ford’s study of what the U.S. military called “LABS” or “Low Altitude Bombing System.” He tells how it was done in 1957 by the pilots who flew the venerable, single-engine, propeller-driven Douglas AD-6 Skyraider, also known as the AD or Able Dog. The AD would later earn its reputation in Vietnam as “the finest close support aircraft ever built.” There it was called the “Spad” after a World War I wood-and-fabric biplane. And that tells you something.
Using a WWII era airplane for a nuclear mission seems crazy now, but that was the nature of the Cold War and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the sure annihilation of both sides if nuclear weapons were put to use. Had World War III started suddenly, the AD was ready, sitting on a carrier deck in the Mediterranean. It would take off – not catapult - and fly the many miles to the Soviet Union – at 140 knots and fifty feet above the water. A few miles from its target, the AD would perform the LABS maneuver or “idiot loop” to fling the bomb toward its still distant target and allow the AD to get out of the way before the bomb exploded. If the AD and its pilot survived the blast, there was really no place to go. Their carrier was probably already sunk. And the “bright suns…rising all over Russia” that morning would also be rising over America as the Russians struck back. “We really didn’t worry too much about the mission,” one AD pilot told Ford. “Sort of figured it would be the end of the world anyway.”
The book includes email Ford received from pilots who flew the Skyraider as a nuclear bomber. The messages give insight into the real life things the pilots had to deal with as they trained for their nuclear mission - and accepted the reality of their role. This is a book for airplane buffs, many of whom probably haven’t come across the AD’s nuclear mission before – it was kept secret for a long time. But this is also a book for anyone with interest in the Cold War and what mankind faced in the most dangerous time for the survival of what we call civilization. But maybe the MAD doctrine was not so crazy. We are all still here.
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Top reviews from other countries
AK
Two part booklet on the Skyraider as an unlikely nuclear delivery platform - informative but short
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 18, 2013