Originally Posted by
macwood
Storey I heard and I haven't checked - was that President Nixon had this really good idea to encourage the Russians to put pressure on the Chinese to stop helping their Viet Nam chums during that war. He had the USAF nuclear armed fleet patrolling north of Russia and asked us to help by dispersing our nuclear capability to war state dispersals Unfortunately we had no method of transporting stores to dispersal units.
This is from memory so it might be all bull**** -what do I know ?!
ex crew chief Waddo 1965 -'75
I can say with complete certainty that this was not true between 1964 and 1974.
1. We certainly had the capability to move weapons to dispersal by road or air though it would not have been quick.
2. Dispersals did not have storage facilities.
3. The guard force for dispersed storage would have been much larger than we could manage.
4. Separating weapons from the delivery platform would make generation near impossible.
There is however a grain of truth as the Honington, Cottesmore, and Waddington bomber wings had from about 1963 (before the Vietnam war) a reinforcement role to support FEAF. This ceased in 1974.