General Power was well-known to be batshit fucking insane. Even General LeMay thought he was unstable and aggressive, and LeMay himself was the guy who oversaw the war against the Japanese Home Islands. When the guy who burned the best part of a million people alive with firebombings and then nuked the remains thinks you're a bit of a loose cannon, well...
He is often viewed as the likely inspiration for Gen. Buck Turgidson in the film Dr. Strangelove. A quote from Power, when the RAND Corporation raised the proposal of a counterforce strike instead of striking at Soviet cities:
"Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea
is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans
and one Russian left alive, we win!"
In the words of Gen. Horace Wade, a subordinate who served under Gen Powers:
I used to worry about General Power. I used to worry that General Power
was not stable. I used to worry about the fact that he had control over
so many weapons and weapon systems and could, under certain conditions,
launch the force. Back in the days before we had real positive control
[i.e., PAL locks], SAC had the power to do a lot of things, and it
was in his hands, and he knew it.
SAC pushed back very strongly against this intrusion. The first Permissive Action Links were installed in 1959 and the bulk of them in 1962, but the 8-digit security codes were set to "0000 0000" until around 1977, because SAC was afraid that they would be unable to fire the weapons if needed.
It's a goddamn miracle we didn't go over the edge, either accidentally or with those guys at the controls. In one case, a B-52 crashed in North Carolina in 1961. The bomb went through its full arming sequence, being stopped only by a single low-voltage switch. That switch later became known for being unreliable and failing to interrupt its signal properly.
I wonder how much of this was a scare tactic. In theory the USSR would be more apprehensive if they believed the man in control of the US weapons was a bit crazy.
Precisely. Comes from games theory: if the other guy is thought to be irrational, it really backs you into a bit of a corner, playing it as safe as possible.
Nixon had bombers flying to the edge of Soviet airspace, 24/7, all fully loaded, all to make the Russians think he was insanely aggressive.
The obvious problem here is of course the other side might fully believe you are so unhinged that an attack is only a matter of time (not "if" but "when") and launch a pre-emptive attack at you.
With the Soviet memory of Hitler's shenanigans, the madman tactic was incredibly destabilizing.
There's probably a touch of that. But the adult supervision (LeMay) was pretty touched himself. People were numbers, and they were more than willing, eager even to kill millions.
In the context of preparing for nuclear war you kind of had to be on some level cold and calculating about millions of deaths. Deterrence only really works if both sides know the other will retaliate, or at least remains unconvinced that the other wouldn't. The military had to plan for the worst and with nuclear war the /best/ outcome is millions dead and some swaths of land are unusable long times.
No doubt. But his attitudes reflected in more "conventional" settings as well. The firebombing of Japan, the Vietnam bombings, etc. He may have been the man we needed then, but he was a brutal sob.
You can think of them like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde if you like.
Both share an innate conviction that nuclear war can be successfully waged. Buck thinks that it'll only "muss our hair a little bit", and argues against calling the Premier because that will end their chances for a preemptive attack. Ripper said the same in his message to the War Room - that Communism can be wiped out with a pre-emptive strike and that we will prevail in our Purity of Essence. He tells Mandrake that he has faith that the generals will do the rational thing and launch.
Both Buck and Ripper display paranoia of the "Rooskies". Buck opposes letting the Russian Ambassador into the War Room, continually agitates against any trust in the Russians, and goes so far as to plant a tiny camera on the Ambassador to try and get him ejected for "taking pictures of the big board!". Ripper, of course, has devolved into outright schizophrenia over the International Communist Conspiracy and the world at large. The Redcoats are coming, Mandrake!
I realize those are very common themes that Cold War generals might exhibit. However, they are fundamentally very similar characters who really only differ in their motivations by degree and sanity. In a sense, Ripper asks us what would happen if Buck went off the deep end.
At that time, a head of the SAC (like Power) very much had the power to start World War III before anyone could even stop him, just as Ripper did.
If its any consolation, the Soviet Union was grossly outmatched in strategic weapons in 1962. An all out war wouldn't have ended civilization (or probably most of the US, realistically).Things would've been more worrisome later on in the Cold War.
He is often viewed as the likely inspiration for Gen. Buck Turgidson in the film Dr. Strangelove. A quote from Power, when the RAND Corporation raised the proposal of a counterforce strike instead of striking at Soviet cities:
In the words of Gen. Horace Wade, a subordinate who served under Gen Powers: SAC pushed back very strongly against this intrusion. The first Permissive Action Links were installed in 1959 and the bulk of them in 1962, but the 8-digit security codes were set to "0000 0000" until around 1977, because SAC was afraid that they would be unable to fire the weapons if needed.It's a goddamn miracle we didn't go over the edge, either accidentally or with those guys at the controls. In one case, a B-52 crashed in North Carolina in 1961. The bomb went through its full arming sequence, being stopped only by a single low-voltage switch. That switch later became known for being unreliable and failing to interrupt its signal properly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash
The Russians had some close calls of their own, notably when the sun glinted off the clouds and tripped their launch warnings during ABLE ARCHER 83.