The Air Force versus Hollywood: Documentary on "SAC Command Post" Tried to Rebut "Dr. Strangelove" and "Fail Safe"

WASHINGTON, January 15, 2010 - To refute early 1960s novels and Hollywood films like Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove which raised questions about U.S. control over nuclear weapons, the Air Force produced a documentary film--"SAC [Strategic Air Command] Command Post"--to demonstrate its  responsiveness to presidential command and its tight control over nuclear weapons.

During the crisis years of the early 1960s, when U.S.-Soviet relations were especially tense, novels and motion pictures raised questions about the Air Force's control over nuclear weapons and the dangers of an accidentally or deliberately-triggered nuclear war. Foremost were Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's novel Fail-Safe (1962) (later turned into a motion picture) about an accidental war and the film Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a brilliant satire about a nuclear conflict deliberately sparked by a psychotic Air Force general. Both Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe may have created enough worries in the Air Force about its image to lead the service to produce a film--"SAC [Strategic Air Command] Command Post"--designed to confirm presidential control over the "expenditure" of nuclear weapons and the difficulty of initiating an 'unauthorized launch" of nuclear bombers.

Never used publicly by the Air Force for reasons that remain puzzling, "SAC Command Post" is premiered online today on the National Security Archive Web site. Produced during 1963-1964, this unclassified film tried to undercut Dr. Strangelove's image of a psychotic general ordering nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union by showing that nuclear war could not be "triggered by unauthorized launch." To reinforce an image of responsible control, "SAC Command Post" presents a detailed picture of the communications systems that the Strategic Air Command used to centralize direction of bomber bases and missile silos. With the film's emphasis on SAC's readiness for nuclear war, higher authorities may have finally decided that it was off-message in light of the Johnson administration's search for stable relations with Moscow. 

"SAC Command Post" is one example of the Air Force's sizable documentary film output, which includes a number of documentaries on that service's role in researching, developing, deploying, and operating nuclear weapons systems, as well as in tracking the nuclear activities of adversaries. The films inevitably embody some of the Air Force's spin, promoting views, policies, and programs that were then on its agenda. In this special collection for the "Nuclear Vault," the National Security Archive presents two other documentaries highlighting Air Force nuclear-related activities during the crisis years of the Cold War. They are:

• "Project Headstart" (1959), original classification status unknown, which depicts SAC's first airborne alert test by bombers operating out of Loring Air Force Base (Maine) in the fall of 1959.  Designed to keep nuclear-armed bombers in the air so they could head towards Soviet targets at a moment's notice, airborne alert was an accident waiting to happen.  In 1966 and 1968 crashes of nuclear-armed B-52s in Spain and Greenland caused international incidents.

• "Development of the Soviet Ballistic Missile Threat" (1960), originally classified "secret," illustrates the role of Air Force intelligence in the "missile gap" debates in the years before the 1960 presidential election. Like other government intelligence organizations, the Air Force hyped up the Soviet ICBM threat, not recognizing how far ahead of the Soviet Union the United States already was.

These films are from DVD reproductions of the original footage stored in the collections maintained by the National Archives' Motion Pictures Unit, College Park, MD. A number of Air Force films from the 1960s, including secret Strategic Air Command reports, remain classified. The National Security Archive's Nuclear Documentation Project has requested them for declassification release.

The Air Force's film production units routinely created documentaries for public relations purposes, for internal education and training, and to update and inform top officials on current programs. The Air Force produced films in several categories, including Training Films (TF), Film Reports (FRs) and Special Film Projects (SFPs). (1) Film Reports on military operations, exercises, or new technologies were often produced at the request of Air Force Headquarters or the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During the 1950s and 1960s FRs covered a wide variety of topics, including the latest developments in military technology by the Air Research Development Command (ARDC), progress on the ICBM and IRBM programs, reports by the Strategic Air Command, exercises in the Panama Canal Zone and Alaska, and monthly reports on "Air Strikes, Southeast Asia" during the Vietnam War.  Many Film Reports were classified at the time, but have since been declassified (except SAC reports).

Generalizations are difficult about Special Film Projects (SFPs), but apparently many were for more general audiences and designed to have a wider appeal.  As with the FRs, the Motion Picture Unit at the National Archives has boxes of index cards that provide a detailed description of each film.  SFPs included films on moral and ethical issues, holiday celebration films, and also on particular USAF needs, such as safety. Some SFPs were designed to inculcate positive views of major policies and government organizations, such as "The Miracle of Progress," a film on the NATO alliance or "Eagle's Talons," on the role of the Defense Department in "safeguarding our freedoms." Some were produced to assist friendly foreign governments, such as "The Imperial Ethiopian Air Force", a recruiting film produced for the Ethiopian military.

Note 1: The visual quality of these films--reproduced on DVDs prepared by the National Archives motion pictures unit--varies, even from reel to reel within the same movie. Unfortunately, the Air Force's preservation of the original films did not meet archival standards, so the quality reflects their condition when they arrived at the National Archives. Some films that would have been useful for presentation here are virtually unusable because the sound tracks did not survive.