I spent my entire childhood on Canadian air bases. Even as a nine year old I figured out that if the next one started we would be a target. Hasn't affected me a bit. :()1:

IIRC once the airforce bases were gone the plan was to use motorways/freeways to rearm and refuel on. There would likely have been supply trucks in hidden locations, and the pilots would have been given a designated stretch of freeway to come down on to be rearmed and refuelled. Even then it'd probably have to be done in MOPP4 conditions, so the pilot would not be getting out of his cockpit for a leak. :haha:
IIRC our Vulcans would probably have ditched somewhere in Scandinavia, those that didn't get eaten by Soviet air defences, a couple might have made it home. The little Canberras would have been suicide runs though, since they'd be dropping nukes to create pathways for the Vulcans to get through.
At home, well a lot of our airforce would be smouldering ruins in what's left of Germany (about two square foot of highly radioactive shrubland I'd wager) and the rest would also likely be using motorways for emergency landing spots and/or civil airfields.

http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co...way-trials.jpg
Here's a SEPECAT Jaguar on the M55 motorway, the aircraft landed on the motorway, was rearmed, refuelled and then took off again.

Before it all went nuclear, many aircraft would be using the autobahns in Germany for rearming and refuelling, since the main airforce bases would likely be under near constant attack by Soviet aircraft or missiles.
Here's a pic from Exercise Highway '84 in West Germany:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...T-84-09440.jpg

Finland also had a similar system, but they went one step further and installed arrestor wires to help the aircraft lose speed, obviously these were taken out during peace-time, although knowing how good the Finns are at off-road courses I'm sure that a few wires would not have slowed them down in the slightest.

If it's any comfort, a nuclear war will only last about twenty minutes.
If you ain't underground, you ain't.

In moving pictures:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAVDOBWtBuU

The thing with all that to me is when you know that your family and friends are dead and so is most of the world why bother fighting any more.I think the desire for most military members to fight would be gone after an exchange was known to have occurred on a large scale assuming they even survived.

Heck the instructions to missile silo crews after their launch and a certain time span was to walk to a prearranged meeting point through an of course highly irradiated area thanks to the many nukes that would have gone off trying to kill the silos.which of course means that most of the silo crews would be dead anyway.Telling you to walk to a meeting point through an irradiated kind gives you clue that it is all over.

It would have been the shortest war in history four or five hours give or take.

That was the thing though it was a fairly effective deterrent for a conventional war.The problem during the Cold War anyway was if had ever gone hot in the conventional manner Pandora's box would have been opened because one side or the other would loose face in the case of a defeat or even a near defeat and that would have been that.Furthermore the finger triggers would be very itchy and one side or the other might have said screw lets go all out because the other side is going to and we may as well make a per-emptive strike.

If some one ask you how many military airfield does England have.
You just say thousands of them
Well every country have thousand of them, it depends on what you classifier as an airfield

Markus

I think that's an assumption not really backed up by history. For example Japanese soldiers have hidden out in remote jungles for years, decades even, long after all sign of their army had disappeared. A soldiers sense of duty can be very strong and so can the human habit of clinging to forlorn hopes and causes.

Another comment i'd like to make is about preparing for possible eventualities. Ever hear someone try to excuse their lack of planning by saying "I never expected to live this long"?

So the choice I think comes down to this:Prepare and perhaps die anyways or not prepare and definitely find oneself short if they do happen to survive.

Like I said earlier, everyone is just assuming that in a nuclear war the destruction would be total and maybe they're right. But what if they're wrong? What if the destruction turns out to be, because of any number of scenarios, less than total? Does anyone want to look into their starving families eyes and say "I never expected to live through it so I didn't bother doing what I could have done to prepare?"

The narrator of that film sounds a lot like William Morgan Sheppard, I would have linked to that last night but the machine I was on has youtube blocked. :nope: But now that I'm on my home machine I also have these two bits of footage from Germany:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwo2QprI4R8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx7Meo7w-pY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8A_QSIucpY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aWCN08H1BQ

Many probably would have decided to take a long walk into the deep sea, am I right in thinking that they issued sidearms to bunker personnel, supposedly in case of Spetsnaz attacks or something similar, but primarily because as soon as the missiles had left the silos their lifespan was measured in minutes rather than hours?
Reminds me of the scene in 'The Day After' with the guys arguing over what to do now that the missiles have launched.
Others though, as August has mentioned, would fight on with even more fierceness, particularly as the bombers would be bringing more nukes to attack targets that might not have been nuked already, heck I wouldn't have been surprised to see ramming attacks when missiles ran low.
After that though, when the Bears stop coming, when the dust has settled, that's when it'd hit home for the survivors, and that's when you'd get the second wave of suicides most likely.

Bloody glad we never had to go through it.

Amen

That is true but only handful of Japanese hung on for decades or chose to keep fighting at all.The majority either accepted defeat or killed themselves.So even in that case where there was much indoctrination most did not carry on only handful did.I think the Japanese and how the typical solider reacted at the end of the war validates my opinion.Handfuls of guys out of over a million men in uniform at the end of the war shows that most accepted the end.

True, but in Japanese case their Empire had surrendered. Most soldiers simply followed orders. What would situation be in case there would be no such order? What if there is no clear evidence that other side has been hit as hard as you and is just as incapacicated as you are? Would you be ready to take risk of lowering your weapons and allowing them to continue attack with more conventional means (strategic bombers, with or without nuclear bombs etc.)?

Well most didn't carry on because they were ordered to surrender by their own commanders at the end of the war. The reason why I think the holdouts are so significant is because they hung on in the absence of orders, not because they didn't want to quit fighting the war. Nobody told them to quit so they didn't. I think in the event of a nuclear war there will be folks in those bunkers and missile silos that will also carry on.

Besides if there is one group of survivors then that means there could be other groups out there. Hope springs eternal.

It's just that once they leave those bunkers, they very likely won't survive the new environment...


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