Read This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War Online
Authors: David F. Krugler
Tags: #aVe4EvA
This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War (3 page)
John Fondahl, director of the D.C. Office of Civil Defense (DCD), embraced this approach when he started his job in the fall of 1950. He con
fidently anticipated recruiting as many as 100,000 civil defense volunteers, but Washingtonians, like virtually all Americans, ignored the exhortations to protect themselves against atomic attack. For a time, DCD had wardens; for a few years, it had a ground observer post. As a rule, however, civil defense in Washington existed mostly in the DCD’s elaborate manuals, which culminated in 1959 with the mammoth
District of Columbia Survival Plan
. Several hundred pages in length, the plan provided, in grinding and repetitive detail, intricate organizational charts for civil defense services that had no volunteers and countless recommendations that few, if any, Washingtonians read.
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Although continuity of government planners scored more accomplish
ments than dispersal and civil defense officials, they also knew the sting of failure. The National Security Resources Board (NSRB) first tackled the challenge of preparing the federal government to function after a nuclear attack. The NSRB was a planning body, however; it couldn’t execute its own recommendations. In April 1952, it persuaded Truman to issue an order requiring executive departments and agencies to prepare plans for their operation during an emergency. The NSRB also compiled a list of possible emergency relocation sites for executive agencies, but its work was only preliminary. Under Eisenhower, continuity of government rapidly progressed. Key civilian agencies and the office of the President acquired their own underground relocation center at Mount Weather near Berryville, Va. Also known as High Point, this facility anchored the so-called Federal Relocation Arc, a string of more than 90 executive department or agency relocation sites that stretched across North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Maryland. (Only a few of these sites were underground; most were in existing public buildings or college campuses.) In 1955, Eisenhower prodded Congress to prepare for its own postattack functioning, leading to the construction of a secret underground center in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. Eisenhower and his staff also put together the Emergency Action Papers (EAPs) that outlined postattack presidential actions. Finally, Eisenhower insisted on regular testing of the Arc. Known as Operation Alerts, these annual drills often included public participation and the evacuation of thousands of federal employees to their relocation sites. After years of exer
cises, however, Eisenhower and many emergency planners wondered if the federal government could adequately function from the Arc after a nuclear attack.
Given these setbacks, is this even a history worth knowing? The dispersal that never happened, the volunteers who never signed up, the Arc that never acti
vated; above all, the nuclear war that never started—why are they important?
Let’s start with dispersal: so long as the yield and stockpiles of atomic (fission) bombs remained small, dispersal offered some degree of protection. But the arms race was underway even as dispersal advocates pressed their case. In 1948, after espionage revealed that the United States was doing pre
liminary work on fusion (the process that makes thermonuclear or hydrogen bombs possible), Joseph Stalin ordered similar research begun in the Soviet Union.
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Not long after the Soviet atomic test in 1949, Truman authorized full-scale development of a hydrogen bomb.
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Even if the federal government had dispersed the capital, a decade-long undertaking, the reconfiguration would have offered little, if any, protection against hydrogen detonations. Dispersal’s limits thus reveal a recurring Cold War problem: passive defensive measures couldn’t keep pace with the weapons they faced. Dispersal is impor
tant also because its prescriptions were so bold, in effect asking the nation’s leaders and citizenry to accept the dismembering of their capital in order to save it. This reasoning required people to believe the atomic age mandated radical homeland change, but very few Americans wanted to live along such “battle” lines. Likewise, most federal officials and employees didn’t want to work in a dispersed seat of government. It was far easier to not think about nuclear war, or to believe there were other options. Indeed, dispersal’s failure spurred development of the Federal Relocation Arc, which became disper
sal’s shadowy
Doppelgänger
. Finally, despite its overall failure, some elements of dispersal later fulfilled themselves. The so-called new towns of Reston, Va., and Columbia, Md., resembled Augur’s cluster cities, while the AEC and NBS campuses attracted research and high-tech companies to the area.
Like dispersal, continuity of government preparations were outstripped by nuclear weapons. The radioactive fallout of hydrogen detonations would have rendered useless most of the Arc, and the development of ballistic missiles made evacuation from Washington impossible—probable warning times fell from 2 hours to 15 minutes. Even if the federal government had sufficient staff in the Arc after an attack, the challenges were enormous. In addition to preserving, if only in skeletal form, constitutional government, continuity programs sought to
support the military as it waged war against America’s attackers, to administer national recovery, and to aid state and local governments. It would be easy to dwell on these preparations’ unrealistic features, but that would deflect attention from two important issues: how continuity planners grappled with the weapons improvements taking place around them, and how their own under
standings of what was possible in postattack America changed over time. The impossibility of Washington’s evacuation, for example, led to the continuous assignment of cadres of wartime essential workers at Mount Weather. In par
ticular, Eisenhower intuited the nature of nuclear devastation and prodded his planners to think realistically, to plan accordingly. Although the adminis
tration’s “New Look,” which included the strategy of massive retaliation (the threat to use nuclear weapons in order to achieve specific diplomatic or military goals) might suggest a cavalier attitude toward nuclear weapons, Eisenhower’s part in continuity planning cemented his conviction that the best way to keep the peace was to maintain overwhelming military superiority, so that the Soviets dared not attack.
Continuity preparations also merit attention because they aggregated federal power within the executive branch, especially the President. In almost every instance, plans, personnel, and facilities were devoted to executive operations. While Congress and the Supreme Court showed scant interest in preparing for an emergency, executive agencies like the NSRB and its succes
sor, the Office of Defense Mobilization, oversaw a steady build-up of the executive branch’s continuity infrastructure. In part this imbalance resulted from the sheer size and responsibilities of the executive branch, including the military, which had grown steadily during the first half of the twentieth century. It also demonstrated an expectation that in postattack America, the President would have to take extraordinary, even dictatorial, measures to enable recovery and, paradoxically, to preserve constitutional governance.
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Eisenhower made this point more than once to his emergency planners, though he always stressed the goal of restoring democratic rule as soon as possible. Yet Congress’s relocation site wasn’t ready until 1962, while the Supreme Court’s continuity plan consisted of little more than a contract to use a North Carolina inn. Continuity planners dedicated themselves to preserving constitutional government, but this fundamental imbalance undermined that goal.
The failure of civil defense in Washington becomes important upon comparison with continuity preparations. Although continuity planners responded aggressively to weapons and delivery system changes, civil defense leaders often appeared perplexed and uncertain. In particular, the FCDA vacillated between recommending shelter and evacuation, frustrating state and municipal civil defense officials. This indecision compounded Fondahl’s difficulties because the executive branch expected the DCD to support continuity programs. And when local failures threatened continuity, the federal government stepped in, undercutting its own principles of individual initia
tive and local responsibility. In 1956, for example, the FCDA began taking control of the Washington area’s warning system because of weaknesses in
the DCD, which was responsible for transmitting an attack signal. That the federal government took special precautions for the capital is neither surprising nor objectionable; however, civil defense across the nation suffered the same shortcomings as did the DCD. The intervention thus exposed the flawed premises of the national civil defense program.
Why, then, did federal and District leaders continually promote civil defense? As many scholars have written, civil defense was supposed to ease atomic age anxieties and to buttress support for peacetime militarization and the containment of communism.
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Ironically, given the vast indifference toward civil defense and consistently solid public support for Cold War policies, it seems unlikely that the dissolution of civil defense programs, in the District and across the nation, would have weakened the Cold War consensus. (After all, few Americans mourned the passing of civil defense during the 1970s.) In Washington, however, civil defense had an additional purpose: to show that the survival of the local population was just as important as continuity of government.
Finally, I believe the history of these failures and false starts offers a cautionary lesson. I know it’s easy to mock Cold War civil defense, easy to laugh at the advice the DCD offered for people caught outside when an atomic bomb detonated: “Cover yourself with anything at hand. Even a newspaper will be helpful.”
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Before we laugh, however, maybe we should take a long look at ourselves. In May 2005, Ready.gov, the Department of Homeland Security’s website, had a picture suggesting that a person
one
city block away from a nuclear detonation could escape harm by turning the corner. “Consider if you can get out of the area,” read the caption. Remarked a physicist for the Federation of American Scientists, “Ready.gov treats a nuclear weapon in this case as if it were a big truck bomb, which it’s not. There’s no information in Ready.gov that would help your chances” of surviving the blast of a nuclear bomb.
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By understanding why Washington, D.C.—as city, capital, and symbol— failed to adequately prepare for nuclear war between 1945 and 1962, we can perhaps do better for ourselves.
N
uclear weapons deliver tremendous destructive energy in three primary forms: blast, heat, and radiation. Blast yields are measured by their equiva
lency to TNT. The atomic bomb used against Nagasaki in 1945 had a yield of approximately 21,000 tons (21 kilotons) of TNT. Within a one-mile range, the blast leveled or greatly damaged all buildings save those with reinforced concrete frames. The blast of a 300-kiloton bomb detonated above the Pentagon would destroy almost every building within 1.3 miles. And these are “small” bombs, so to speak. Hydrogen (also known as fusion or thermonuclear) bombs are so powerful their yields are measured in
megatons
. The first hydrogen device tested by the United States in November 1952 was equal to 10.4 million tons of TNT; its blast vaporized an entire island. Nuclear blasts are instantly followed by ferocious heat, which takes the form of a rapidly expanding fireball. The diameter of a 300-kiloton bomb’s fireball would reach more than a mile and obtain a peak temperature of more than 200 million degrees Fahrenheit. The fireball would engulf a city in flames, which the blast would feed by scattering ignited debris and by break
ing gas lines. The 15-kiloton atomic bomb used against Hiroshima generated fires over a 4.4 square mile area; a 300-kiloton detonation above the Pentagon would likely start fires within an area measuring as much as 65 square miles.
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The effects of radiation depend on the type of bomb and its point of detonation. Airbursts, which maximize the bombs’ blast and heat, release lethal doses of neutrons and gamma rays but their range is limited. The lethal blast range of a one-megaton hydrogen bomb, for instance, would outstrip the initial radiation.
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However, surface hydrogen detonations produce another deadly form of radiation—fallout. Such detonations vaporize tens of millions of tons of solids—earth, buildings, plant and animal life—and expel them into the troposphere. (The fallout of the highest yield hydrogen bombs will reach the stratosphere.) Carried by winds, this invisible, radioactive fallout can travel hundreds of miles and take months to sift back to earth. With medical care, a healthy adult could likely survive a dose of up to 450 rads (a unit of absorption), but fallout from surface hydrogen detonations would measure in the thousands of rads. In the long term, survivors would also succumb to cancers caused by radiation exposure.
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It’s important to bear in mind that nuclear weapons are only as effective as their delivery systems. Although the United States successfully tested a hydro
gen device in 1952, it didn’t have deliverable H-bombs until 1954. Likewise,
the Soviet Union tested an atomic device in August 1949, but even by 1953 it possessed less than 12 deliverable bombs. Throughout the 1950s, long-range bombers were the primary delivery system. The Soviets lagged behind the United States in the quality and deployment of strategic bombers. The Tu-4, an inferior copy of the U.S. B-29, lacked the range to reach the northeastern U.S. even on a one-way sortie. By 1953, the United States could dispatch its fleet of 185 long-range B-36s to almost any target within the Soviet Union, and its 575 medium-range bombers could reach targets from bases in the Pacific and Europe. By contrast, the Soviet Union didn’t produce a reliable bomber with intercontinental range, the Tu-95, until 1955.
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Both nations embarked on missile programs while they improved their bombers. In 1957, the United States brought into service the N-69 Snark cruise missile, which could travel 10,200 kilometers at an altitude of approx
imately 12,000 meters. Five-megaton hydrogen warheads were installed inside the Snarks’ nosecones. Although the Snark took 11 hours to travel its full range, the United States could now launch unmanned warheads. The Atlas, the first American intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), was oper
ational in 1960. The first Soviet ICBM, the SS-6, was finished in August 1957, but only two were in service by 1960. Within two years, however, the Soviets had produced 50 SS-7s, much-improved ICBMs. In addition to land-based missiles, the United States and the Soviet Union armed submarines with nuclear-tipped missiles. The United States had an operational submarine-launched cruise missile by 1954, but it was phased out for the Polaris A-1 and A-2 missiles, which carried 500- and 800-kiloton warheads, respectively, and were operational by 1960 and 1961. The Soviets’ troubled submarine missile program produced the inferior SS-N-4 missile, which wasn’t put into service until October 1961.
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ICBMS and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) brought drastically reduced warning times. The travel time for an ICBM was about 30 minutes; by the time detection and warning transmis
sion occurred, U.S. leaders would have had precious few minutes to act.
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SLBMs also greatly increased the challenge of detection. To spot a Soviet bomber attack, the United States and Canada built the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line inside the inhospitable Arctic Circle, stretching from western Alaska to northeastern Canada. Ready by late 1957, the DEW line was a remarkable engineering accomplishment, yet it couldn’t detect SLBMs launched from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
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Rapidly evolving weapons and delivery methods continually confounded Washington’s civil defense, dispersal, and continuity of government planners. In many ways, they found themselves thrown into a race in which they couldn’t even place, let alone win.
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By the Bomb’s Imaginary Light
O
n June 11, 1940, several thousand workers gathered at points along the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers in or across from Washington, D.C.: the Washington Navy Yard, Anacostia Naval Air Station, Washington National Airport. Their job was to fortify the defenses of sites vital to national security.
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The laborers were neither soldiers nor sailors—they drew modest paychecks from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal agency that hired the unemployed to work on public projects. In 1940, the Great Depression lingered still, and most Americans were preoccupied with jobs and bills, not national defense, even though war raged in Europe. Nazi forces were about to march into Paris, and the
Luftwaffe
prepared to terror
ize Britain. Americans weren’t ignorant of these events, but on the other side of the Atlantic, the war seemed remote, unreal, contained. To the WPA workers at National Airport, then under construction, the military defenses they were building surely seemed misplaced. Hugging the shore of the Potomac on the Virginia side, the airport’s landing strips were bounded by marshes, willows, and a lagoon called Roaches Run. Pintails wintered there; in the spring, ducks bobbed on its dark waters.
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It was difficult to imagine war in such a tranquil setting, but cracks in the nation’s insularity were already widening. President Franklin Roosevelt promised to keep the United States out of war at the same time he bolstered the country’s preparedness. In September, he successfully urged Congress to authorize the first peacetime draft in American history, and defense spending rose dramatically.
National readiness had profound, yet mixed, effects on Washington’s economy and racially divided population. The military build-up and the federal government’s expanding tasks swiftly cut into the city’s unemployment rate. In February 1941, a family services agency reported full employment for all semiskilled workers. The federal government established job-training programs, though most perpetuated entrenched racial divisions. At two Washington high schools, night classes for young black men taught metal work and carpentry; separate classes trained whites. Black women hired as typists and stenographers often worked in segregated pools within federal offices. In June 1941, the threat of A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to march as many as 100,000 African Americans in the capital resulted in an executive order banning racial
discrimination by the federal government and defense contractors, but many unions and private employers throughout Washington ignored the mandate.
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Meanwhile the city swelled. Between April 1940 and the fall of 1941, the District’s population grew from 663,000 to an estimated 750,000 or more; each month, 5,000 newcomers arrived.
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U.S. entry into the war further intensified the growth as the government demanded more and more work
ers. Union Station became a domestic Ellis Island, receiving migrants from across the nation. Young women came to Washington to work as typists, stenographers, clerks; harried workers at a makeshift placement office near Union Station handed out work assignments before many had even found apartments. With housing at a premium, new arrivals took up residence in the city’s boarding houses or clubs, where rooms could be acquired for $35 a month. Usually occupants had to share rooms, even sleep in shifts. One estimate placed the number of such boarding institutions between 1,600 and 2,000.
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Entry into the war created another problem for Washington—its defense. The project at the airport now seemed prudent foresight rather than New Deal busy work. Complacency about continental security had burned in the black smoke rolling over Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Washington, as the nation’s capital, suddenly appeared to be an enticing, vulnerable target.
Civil Defense under the Roosevelts
A civil defense program for Washington and the nation already existed, part of Franklin Roosevelt’s national preparedness campaign. In May 1940, the President resuscitated a World War I–era agency called the Council of National Defense (CND). When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson worried that millions of recent immigrants wouldn’t support the war. The CND, along with the Committee on Public Information, thus sought to disseminate ideals and aims that might bind Americans together regardless of ethnicity or religion. Both agencies embarked on campaigns to assimilate immigrants, promote patriot
ism, and teach democratic principles and the prevailing shibboleths of American history. This initiative wasn’t civil defense per se, but as an effort to protect a confected identity and ideology, it mobilized civilians for defen
sive purposes: German bombs didn’t menace the United States, but diversity and dissent did. Chaired by Secretary of War Newton Baker, the CND worked through a layered, cumbersome structure. One section coordinated state action, another oversaw women’s activity. There were county as well as community or local councils. By the war’s end, 120,000 local councils were in place throughout the United States, along with women’s units in 80 percent of counties. Through a publication entitled the
National School Service
, the CND issued guidelines on the conservation of food; at the local level, neighborhood discussion groups and speakers discouraged doubts about the war.
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Using the World War I authorization, Roosevelt urged state governors to establish state and community defense councils. The new CND helped cities with defense industries cope with housing shortages and overburdened municipal services. It formed a national committee to study the effects of incendiary bombs, its first civil defense initiative. Working with the War Department’s Chemical Warfare Service, the CND also showed fire depart
ments how to contain fires caused by bombings.
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On May 20, 1941, however, Roosevelt created the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD), and the new agency took over the CND’s defensive work. Roosevelt put New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in charge of the OCD, a choice that reflected the President’s aim of keeping civil defense activity at the local level, with the federal government serving in an advisory capacity. (To entice La Guardia to accept the appointment, the President invited him to Cabinet meetings.)
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Under La Guardia, the OCD concentrated on providing councils with information and training on shelters, air raid sirens, and firefighting. His codirector had other interests. Eleanor Roosevelt, who joined the OCD in September 1941, believed civil defense could be used not only to promote health and fitness, but also to raise the standard of living for deprived civil
ians. What good were fire trucks when so many Americans lived in homes hardly worth saving; why stock first aid kits in shelters without also providing regular medical care? In this sense, she was adapting the original purpose of the CND—use war mobilization to deliver social reform. As she put it, civil defense had to meet “human needs.” However, public gaffes in Washington ruined her hopes.
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The OCD’s national headquarters were in the Dupont Circle Building, a 12-story brick and limestone structure set between Connecticut Avenue and 19th Street NW. Its roof was the site of lunchtime dancing for OCD staff, organized by the First Lady, who also hired her friend Mayris Chaney to lead a youth recreation program. Meanwhile another of Eleanor’s friends, screen actor and prominent liberal Melvyn Douglas, had joined the OCD to oversee a volunteer talent program. When news of these programs reached Capitol Hill in early 1942, the OCD was in trouble. Visions of New Dealers and Roosevelt cronies prancing on a rooftop infuriated conservatives in Congress. Rep. Clare Hoffman, a pugnacious Republican from Michigan, suggested that a “Bundles for Eleanor” movement be launched, a sarcastic reference to the OCD’s employment of her friends. Though prickly, the criticism wasn’t partisan: “From both the Republican and Democratic sides of the House came assertions, bitter, sarcastic, acrimonious, that the country needed fewer entertainers and more bombers.”
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