"How the Korean War Almost Went Nuclear" Topic

"On the final night of World War II, hundreds of U.S. Army Air Forces B-29s swarmed over Japan, severing the frayed threads of Japanese resistance. Coming at the end of a long war, those mid-August 1945 missions should have been a curtain call for the world's preeminent heavy bomber.

The following year, most of the thousands of Boeing Superfortresses that had served in the Pacific were stored at the vast Davis-Monthan airfield near Tucson, Arizona, to be mothballed or scrapped. The airplane that had demonstrated that one bomber could destroy a city with one bomb would, it was assumed, hand the baton to a rising generation of bombers powered by jet engines. As it turned out, the B-29's retirement didn't last. Although underpowered and inclined to engine fires, the Superfortress remained America's indispensable airplane—the only one in the world configured to deliver the enormous plutonium bombs of the day…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I had heard Mac wanted to drop nukes along the China/Nork border … That may have worked !? But use of any Nukes certainly could have made a big wider war/mess.

Fortunately we didn't have to find out either way … and hopefully is will stay that way.

Today the biggest threat of Nukes is any getting into the hands of religious fanatics, fundamentalists, radical, jihadi, terrorists types, e.g. ISIS or the IRGC. I had heard that UBL was looking to buy/get some Nukes too.

The last thing the world needs in a terrorist group or rogue nation getting deployable WMDS/Nukes … As chances are they would be more apt to use them than any other group, movement or states.

North Korea?….

Amicalement
Armand

North Korea has Nukes … Un just may not be able to deploy them the distance he would like. Or enough not to get shot down by our Anti-missile tech.

For the moment…. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Only a matter of time really … maybe …

MacArthur wanted to drop enough bombs to damage and contaminate the supply lines across the Yalu. A good thing he wasn't allowed to do that.

FEAF did, OTOH, do some "scare" missions over North Korea to send political messages--such as having single B-29s dropping one bomb on Pyongyang, for example.

They did get the message.