1955-03-29 — Page 4

Page

THE CHINA MAIL TUESDAY, MARCH

THEY HAVE THREE JOBS

FOR THE

DON IDDON meets the men at whose command the H-bomb planes of the Free World would strike. The second article in an important series

on

Strategic Air Command Perhaps the security police had background Headquarters, near Omaha, checked

Nebraska. and record without my knowing.

I

a

my

HAD been told it Most of the men working at S.A.C. carried carbines or side- was easier to steal gold bar from Fort am I was told that security police with machine-guns are Knox than to get into stationed here, but I haven't seen the headquarters of the any. Strategic Air Command here

I

IRON

pression on the officers and men here. And General LeMay told me later: "We try to keep up with political developments as best we can"

S.A.C. is said to be the most in Ömsha. Frankly, security-conscious military or- haven't found it so.

ganisation in the world, and it does operate behind doubi, The British Embassy and fences with electrically en- bocks and. under heavy British Information Services trolled

It was General Franels Gris- had vouched for me in guard, but, as I've said, I en-

wold, vice-commander at the telephone

calls from countered na barriers at all.

hydrogen and atom bomb base, We Offutt Air TWO TAT)

always, near who showed me around: are Washington to.

Omaha

do. It's too expensive anyway The officers and men never were very fond of Congressmen New they have a positive dislike for politicians.

Although the men et S.A.C. are the clite, the top cream of American youth, they get the same pay as my other members

FIST.

Every three and a half minutes somewhere in the. world this route is fol- lowed as a plane of Strategic Air Command is refuelled in the air.

The giant bombers rangs all across the world, carrying locks

works" in the first few hours. in the event of war, because in the first few hours it would be

at peak

strength and that strength would diminish later

Soviet os: the

hit the United States homeland with hydrogen and atam bombs-which they could do.

Almost the entire SAC. Force under the command of General LeMay would make what is called a shpultacous saturation concrete of the size and strike. Herb. is the Iran fist al weight of hydrogen and stem the Free World, and it would be bombs, in grim dress reberstis brought down with stunning in which they fight their battles force on the Soviet Union if wat with cameras instead of bombs, came.

Sometimes, it the sky is biva With the pew B-53, the latest and

would clear, you may

the glant bomber, LeMay white lines of vapour-the track strike directly from the United of the planes.

All-important

States at. Moscow or other Russion targets and fly back home. Foreign bases would not be needed.

ENERAL GRISWOLD thinks

Here is the supreme autonomy that the "bomber is all

that S.A.C. seeks And the The Important, and said to me B-52s, which can do 700 mph, Fighter Plan

become could

wil be probably on the job by obsolete. It there's another war June. They've been undergoing we won't, of course, bomb in

LeMay likes to keep his mer

Base, and when I arrived in General·LeMay himself in case.. hopped into his old Studebaker; of the United States Air Force. ases in other parts of the world close to the base and not seek-

of an assassination attempt: which be bought for £45 and I telephoned to but they were not in evidence which has done 80,000 Colonel Reade Tilley, Chief when I talked with him. of Public Relations. He said:

"Come along to headquar- Best Days

ters, we are looking forward

to seeing you."

a!

seste and training fights for formation us during the last onearly two yea Even two planes Carrying

But the B-47, with its three- hydrogen bombs close together

степу (the three-header! would be too dangerous.

The man

special thing to do is to drop the bomb menster), remains

davourite around here:

General and get the hell out of it fast.

"t. Griswold swers by It and The official plan of S.A.C. is

who first was this:

"In the event of sudden General LeMay,

of it is now a B-47 aggression S.A.C.'s medium and heavy bombers operating from enthusiast the United States and advance would

inmediately anting the fleshoots of Omaha, All They are very fit and have to undergo rigid physical

and simultaneous nuclear weapon at the men are on instant emtor- psychological tests.

against get many geney call, because S.A.C. is on Every air tacks man here kraws the balancing selecte

selected targets located over a perpetuai wer basis.

Running 5.4.C. is an expen-. and throwing technique of judo,

wide geographical area of the holding

take enemy's homeland, and it would siva business. It has 180,000

and on- officers and airma devastating down skills of wrestling, and the deliver this

5 stronger today than it over was. club and kniẞag, intricacies of slaught with sustained fury."

have been so

meny Forty percent of SAC mea police Bghting. They are, in fact, dress rehearsals that the men are between 18 and 21 years old Commandos.

know what to do. Targets have been selected long ago, and only the signal has to be given.

mitos, and we swung down the road, past the aircraft bearing the Command crest, which depicts force through a malled fist held- ing

readiness symbolic the lightning bolts of destruction and

in

3 olive branch, OLONEL Reade Tilley, a

So I hired a car and drove youngish looking Clark the eight miles on the good Gabic, greeted me cordially and...

So we came to the men's bar- Nebraska Highway to the big told me that he had been in the racks start, green, wide- base. Outside the entrance a Eagle Squadron of the R.A.F. windowed buildings that look amart-booking guard saluted and at the beginning of the war like a modern block of fats. suid: "The Colonel is expecting the best days of my life in Eng. They are modern steel units

and with the RA.F. I never which have two-man rooms. had such fun. I'll never forge:

you,"

"

I had my passport, my New York, Press. Card, my driving licence, and a stack of other He told me that Sir Winston identification papers; but 1 Churchill's speech on the hydro-

asked

anything. gen bomb had made a great im-

wasn'

19T

Miniature

Masterpieces for Milady..

No more are to be built, how-“ ever. Some Congrexamen came

*Wng. down here and said: these men are being pampered, Soldiers must suffer. This won't

ROLEX

Superbly elegant-Precisely

Rolex offer a miniature watch of superb elegance, yet with a movement large enough to be a marvel accuracy-truly the best obtainable!

and

General LeMay insisted upon an expert team of instructors and sent to Japan- for jujitsu specialists.

There are very detailed and precise plans for the instant Issuing of orders for launching bombing action. -Even if the President were incapacitated.or out off by a sudden attack, the order

would go through to LeMay and he would begin the ILYING in the . modern offensive. Finger and sigm bonders

Griswold demon-

Gruelling Task

is grueling and exacting on the strated to me the instant com- body and mind. Some crews are munication

between

head

in the air more than 40 hours quarters here and other S.A.C.

at a time, and the toll can be, bases. considerable.

It I fly with a S.A.C. bomber group within the next week or two, which might happen, "I will have to pass the medical basis and then take part

sea or

He picked up a telephone and said "March Field." He was once and said: through st "Hallo, Bulch Just testing and demonstrating."

The Mission THE

in a 30-hour mission far out to H Great Deterrent has a

over the Arctic wastės 1 threefold mission. before the "bombing" of an First, wipe out SUSAC (which American city, which would be is the jargon here for S.A.C.'s a simulated Russian target.

opposite "number in Russia) on the ground. The commanders her don't think much of combat in the air as a means of modern warfare.

The big bombers never rest. Every three and a half minutes one of S.A.C.'s airesaft is being refuelled in the air somewhere in the world.

41.

General Griswold told me: "There's nothing to refuelling in the air. You could do it." (I doubt that.) "It won't be long." he added, "before commercial airliners adopt refuelling instead of taking off with a heavy load of gasoline as they do now."

In A

The second job of S.A.C. is to assist ground and sea theatre commands against the Russian war machine; and the third is to annihilate the industrial bases of that machine.

Intelligence

has 'supplied S.A.C. with a detailed blueprint for action.

I get the impression strongly that S.A.C. would "shoot the

L

Ready To Strike

NEVENTY percent are on their

Arst four-year hitch. Combat pilots average 32 years of age, and have had nine years in ser- vice. One man told me: "I we

ever hit Russia there won't be

Russia reft. He was any and a bit voallow, and this isn

the sort of stuff the officers tulit. Although General Grig wod suld you can't estimate hydrogen and atom-bome force in dellars and cents, the fixed assets of S.AC. are $3,000,000.000 more than the biggest American industry, which is Standard On of New Jersey.

S.A.C. employs about a third Generál as many people as Motors.. It represents a direct fixed capital investment of $8,500,000,000.

1 am not including, of course, the cost of the hydrogen and atam bombs themselves,

Here at S.A.C., if the war signal came each air base would be alerted within half an hour, and within less than two or three hours the B-475, the B-60s and, soon, the B-52s, all of which can carry the H-bomb, would quickly be ready to strike.

(World Copyright Reserved.]

TOMORROW:

Don Iddon sums up on the Great Deterrent

Palace, In A

Madrid.

HAVE just spent an

afternoon at El Pardo,

CUMMINGS offers his tribute to the Cartoonist's "Friend In his hour of trouble

STILL

"HIS "HAIR

as good as Lloyd Georges

THOSE EYEBROWS

as expressive as Gladstone's

whiskers

as

HIS EYES

fiery as

•Baldwin's pipe

THE NOSE — more eloquent than 'Mossadeg's

·THAT CHIN-better than -Mussolini's

HIS. NECK

-----more

monumental than all Farouk

THE CHARM. -- that charms - birds":

trát, and he tree as well.

NATIONAL TRUST

THE BEVAN

OPEN 1,9-0 A-M. CLOSE: 6·09.M.

-If they cast him out I can always draw him as an ancient monument

Gondon Express Bervice

Village, In A Valley

By John Culmer

the small village in a an eight-foot white wall at valley where General Franco the farther side.

has set up his official resi- dence,

Beyond, through the open This was the Street

of

gate, I looked along the Cervantes, and here, at another

second Civil Guard was

Middle Ages, the present build- ing, nearly two centuries old, was the work of Charles III, who used it for the hunting trips which, apart from building, were the sole passion of his life,

·A

I was a little startled to gravel drive in front of gate to the palace grounds, a

two storeyed rectangular find that this was the wall mental

the palace to the orna duty. Stil further along the building with a small, roofed gardens, where, street I came to the white lower at each corner. the palace As I live near the north of the palace grounds, and worked in tiny, close-clipped square building, trimmed with has three patios and a handsome end of Madrid, the trip to that the palace itself was hedges a few inches high, green and gold thes, which is inside staircase but from the El Pardo, nine miles from virtually a part of the the Spanish coat-of-arms the barracks of the Moorish outside, with its mode shoute the capital, is even shorter village." than it would be from the

further.

Sole Passion

Guard. A sentry on duty at hung with grey wooden spread across a grassy slope. che entrance told me I could go ters, it suggests no sort of

magnificence. centre of the city, and the Since at least one well- From a short flagstaff set at car I used made the journey known Spanish guide-book an angle above the main door

The palace does, however, describes it as "a vast of the palace the red-and-gold

contain # in exactly ten minutes.

valuable collection of edifice," I was surprised to Spanish ng moved lazily in the

tapestries from the royal Santa Barbara factory, many of them We drove past the big see that the palace is, in light breeze. triumphal arch, now hearing fact, a modest building no

Returning to the plaza I from designs by Goya, as well completion it marks the bigger than hundreds of the distance I could see, crossed the bridge over the as notably fine frescoes and

on duty in front of the palace; Manzanares, stopping to look paintings. spo at which Franco's English country houses. member of the Moorish down at groups of women Here Franco presides each troops entered Madrid at the There is no grand, imposing Gurd, which...... fuldig - et E washing clothes and scrubbling end of the Spanish Civil gateway, and the side gate, Pardo the same action as pots and pans as they knelt on week at meetings of his Cabinet, War-swept down the broad, which is the only front en- that performed at Buckingham, the river bank A duck wage receives in civil or military audience highs officials of state, aimlessly in the shallows, died

and occasion- tree-lined boulevard that trance, stood open,

Palace and Windsor by the and children threw pebbles into church, or s alices through University

regiments of the Household

ally receives visits from dis the stream Brigade. As he moved timbed the hill to E. Cristo

tinguished foreigner City, skirted the Puerta de

Jong closk :* disclosed white fil

Here Franco spends most Hierro, the tall, orna-

riding breeches above his del Pardo, a Capuchin triary mental iron gate marking a

black, calf-length boots, and ire whose brown bearded brown his time, seldom coming to Madrid except for a quick visit road junction, and drove on

wore the dangerous looking babited brethren have an to the enormous Royal Palace The palace chapel, which regulation through experimental gar-

spikedaheimer presive view: across the Man- one wing of the swathed at f's lower edge by s“ zanarts:

fals un- dens and nurseries lining

can be reached white cloth. the banks of the Manzanares

from the street through 2-ény walking down of this drinkg m2 ceives with elaborate ceremon!! River to a broad fork in the road. We turned left and, low-walled courtyard, but traing the corner and walking green onics, in park land belong or

or én international football before we could realise it when I entered the court up the street on the other side, and to the palace of a Pardo, or were driving down the main yard and walked towards found I was behind and even: It still abounds in wild boar and match.

closer to the palace, the garden dees apart from the thousa the door a Civil Guard on wall flanked by flower-bed, of partridges which General pendo was unharmed the village

Althoug the palace street of El Pardo

duty at the gate clothe thickly planted with 1000- Franco sild to enjoy both

was virtually destroyed We drew up at a cafe, palace grounds, which is on bushes and bougainvilles and shooting and eating a long, low building facing the other side of the courted by a too-bigh

coloured tiles tiny, oblong plaza, with yard, told me it was closed.

forras

Civil Guard

of

unoccupied since Alfonso XIII

Corked by the left Spain in 1981, where fe re-

My newly-appointed" ambassado

Although El Pardo has been

ting the civil war and has

at governmnca

the site of a palace" "gines & the" expens