Inside the Cold War

EPILOGUE
War had a dramatic impact on the Cold War and on US policy.
It created an economic and military drain on the United
States, and it presented the challenge of fighting on the other
side of the world as Soviet military strength was building in
Europe. And, although atomic weapons were deployed with SAC
bombers, US policy was to employ them only as a last resort.
Containment of communism remained the US policy objective.
The Korean War became a disaster in every way—
politically, economically, and militarily, causing a tragic loss of
war fighters’ lives. An estimated 54,000 American fighting
men were killed in action and 300,000 were wounded.
Paradoxically, the Soviet Union, which had orchestrated the
invasion to foster its own objectives, recorded no official
casualties. SAC’s B-29 bombers and RB-29 reconnaissance
aircraft participated heavily in the war.
SAC operations accounted for 21,328 sorties, including almost
2,000 “recce” missions. Sixteen B-29s were lost to Soviet-built
MiGs, four to antiaircraft fire. B-29 gunners accounted for 33
enemy aircraft kills, including 16 MiGs. When the cease-fire
truce was finally negotiated, SAC combat crews returned to
their “regular” Cold War mission responsibilities.
A scant twelve years later, in 1965, the United States once
again found itself falling victim to another communist incursion,
this time in Vietnam. And SAC combat crews were
again taken from their nuclear deterrence mission and sent to
fight a conventional war. This time, bomber, tanker, and
reconnaissance crews retrained in a variety of fighter and
support aircraft to support the effort. In the latter years of the
ten-year conflict, B-52s, including the later B-52G model, were
reconfigured to deliver conventional bombs. Sent to operate out of
Guam and Thailand, they were heavily employed in the war effort.
The United States saw five presidents preside over the worst
political, military, and image-defeating debacle in our history.
“How did the United States get into the war and why did it
stay so long?” “How could a nation with the technology and
superior might to destroy the world permit itself to be fought
to a virtual draw by a small and untrained ragtag army of
peasants?” These questions may never be satisfactorily
answered, but Americans fought and died in Vietnam. That is
what they were asked to do and that is what they did. The
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