Given that it is tempting to be seduced by purely statistical methods of accounting, the numbers need to be qualified. Not so much because the raw numbers fail to convey the crushing superiority of US Forces — because they do — but because, they tend to significantly under estimate the totality of the strategic overkill represented by those forces.
US weapon systems were more technologically advanced, accomplished and reliable than their Soviet counterparts, and the day to day combat readiness of the same was much higher on the US side. Likewise, US delivery systems were more numerous, more varied and stationed all around the Soviet Union. US command and control systems were also inherently superior and more effective than their Soviet counterparts.
There was only one area in which Soviet preparations for nuclear war were markedly superior to those in the United States, or any of its allies; and that was in the sphere of civil defence. However, since a full scale civil defence mobilisation in the middle of a crisis would have been a clear signal to the Kennedy Administration that the Soviets were contemplating a first strike, no such mobilisation actually took place and therefore, Soviet planning in this area was never tested.
By October 1962 the US had a stockpile of over 26,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviets some 3,300. Of these weapons the US had around 3500 weapons on quick alert status, or ready for immediate activation which could be targeted on the Soviet Union, whereas the Soviets had less than 250 which could, theoretically, be targeted on the continental USA.
On Saturday 27th October 1962 the Soviets had no more than 42 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICMBs), of which less than two-thirds were operational. The remainder of the Soviet Union’s strategic nuclear strike capability was comprised of a force of some 160 long-range Bear and Bison heavy bombers each capable of carrying one or two free fall bombs.
According to the Official History of the Strategic Air Command, Volume II, 1962 to 1964 published in 1987, SAC had 2,907 ‘fully generated’ nuclear weapons to hand. Of these, 1,528 were on ‘quick alert’ status (that is, ready for immediate deployment). These weapons were distributed between 160 silo based operational ICBMs, and a long-range strategic bomber force equipped with B-47s and B-52s. On that day, as on every day in that period, at least sixteen ‘bombed up’ B-52s were in the air at any one time flying missions to fail safe points short of Soviet territory, or loitering out of range of enemy radar over the Arctic, the North Pacific, or the Indian Oceans. In those days when the first Polaris submarines were only recently entering service, the 600 B-52s of SAC were like loaded guns permanently held at the head of the Soviet leadership.
The Trueman and Eisenhower Administrations had poured untold treasure into the creation of SAC, bequeathing to their successor, John Fitzgerald Kennedy the instrument of Armageddon. In comparison the Soviet bomber force had been designed to frighten the West, and little else. Its most advanced component, the Myasishchev M-4 Molot (NATO codename Bison) was a four-engine jet bomber significantly less capable and advanced than any of its American of British counterparts. The Tupolev Tu-95 (NATO codename Bear) was a four engine turboprop bomber. Both aircraft had first flown in the early fifties and neither had been produced in large numbers. It is unlikely that more than a hundred — perhaps fifty of each type — were combat ready on 27th October 1962. Unlike SAC, the Soviets lacked the resources, or the confidence to maintain a round the clock airborne strike force.
Both the Americans and the Soviets had been progressively building up their local and continental air defence systems. The North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), jointly set up by the USA and Canada had already turned the air space between Alaska in the west and Newfoundland in the east into a vast aerial killing ground. There was as yet no NORAD defence against ICBM strikes, but any unauthorised aircraft straying into Canadian or North America airspace would almost certainly be destroyed long before reaching the major cities of either nation. Soviet air defences were less sophisticated but increasingly potent, comprising layered radar and missile belts and large numbers of interceptors. However, the Soviet air defence system was strongest opposite Europe, whereas the biggest threat came from SAC bombers attacking over the Arctic or from the fastnesses of the North Pacific, or from the south over the Himalayas.
It is estimated that perhaps as many as forty Bears and Bisons attempted to attack North American targets. None of them breached NORAD’s kill zone. All fourteen nuclear strikes on Canadian and United States territory were by ICBMs (three launched from Cuba in the first phase of the exchange, and eleven launched from the Soviet Union in the minutes before, or during the US’s so-called ‘retaliatory strike’).
Before the October War the CIA had believed the US had a strategic nuclear advantage of at least six to one. The Soviets believed that they had a disadvantage of at least seventeen to one. In terms of the actual weight of the attack US forces (and their allies) delivered on targets in the Soviet Union, in practice, the US and its allies, demonstrated a first strike advantage of approximately 100 to 150 to one.
In addition to SAC, the US had other strategic nuclear strike assets located around the world. The United States Navy’s Atlantic Command had seven Polaris-armed ballistic missile submarines based at Holy Loch in Scotland. Notwithstanding that the early models of their submarine launched missiles were as unreliable as the Soviets’ land-based ICBMs these seven boats carried 112 SLBMs with sufficient range to hit Moscow from a firing position one hundred feet beneath the surface of the Norwegian Sea. Pacific Command had eight SSM-N-8A Regulus and 16 MACE cruise missiles capable of striking targets deep inside Asiatic Russia. There were also three fleet aircraft carriers, each carrying up to forty nuclear weapons, and another fifty free fall weapons available to shore based bombers.
It was only in the European theatre of operations that Soviet forces had any kind of parity. There were between four and five thousand US nuclear weapons in Europe but the majority were designated for battlefield use, 155 and 203 mm artillery shells, land mines, or air space denial short range surface-to-air missiles. In terms of weapons which could hit targets in the Soviet Union, European Command had 105 Thor and Jupiter missiles based in the UK and Turkey, 48 Mace cruise missiles, two Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean with a combined throw of around eighty weapons, and elsewhere in Europe around fifty free fall bombs deliverable by American aircraft.
This calculation took no regard for the RAF V-Bomber force of about 150 sophisticated long-range four-engine bombers based on the East Coast of England. While the RAF didn’t routinely fly failsafe missions along SAC lines, a proportion of its Vulcans, Valiants and Victors was constantly on QRA (quick reaction alert) at the end of their runways, fuelled and bombed up and ready to go at four minutes notice.
If the Soviets lacked a viable strategic first strike capability against the United States, the scales of the European balance of terror were rather more closely aligned. In October 1962 the Soviets had some five hundred SS-4s and SS-5s, medium range ballistic missiles with approximate ranges of 1,300 and 2,000 miles respectively. It is not known how many of these assets were based in Europe and how many were based in the east, threatening targets in the Pacific. Notwithstanding that a similar number of Soviet missiles struck targets in both east (in China) and west (in Europe), it is postulated that the split was probably 75–25 (with a much larger number of missiles being destroyed on the ground in Europe than in Asia due to the more concentrated, carpet bombing tactics applied in the west.