Photos The Cold War

B-1 wearing SAC European One camouflage in the 1980s
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Operation Tumbler-Snapper consisted of eight nuclear shots in two phases. The Tumbler phase was of primary concern to the Department of Defense, which called for airdropped nuclear weapons tests. The Snapper second phase was a set of experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission and the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory to help improve effects of nuclear weapons. Able, an airdrop event on April 1, 1952, produced a yield of one kiloton. One of the experiments involved an analysis of the shock waves produced by the detonation. The Baker blast on April 15, 1952, with a one kiloton yield, also produced weapons effects data. The news media was invited to view the Charlie nuclear detonation, a first at the Nevada Proving Ground. They watched from "News Nob," about seven miles away. Also, approximately 2,000 Army personnel, including paratroopers, conducted maneuvers beneath the mushroom cloud. The 31-kiloton explosion on April 22, 1952, was one of the largest ever conducted in Nevada to that date. With the 19-kiloton Dog shot on May 1, 1952, the Marines got their turn at a nuclear exercise. They loaded into their trucks and drove toward ground zero until intolerable radiation levels forced them to abort the mission. The Easy shot of 12 kilotons on May 7, 1952, provided scientists the opportunity to record photographically the birth of the blast measured in milliseconds. That is all the time scientists had before entire top of the tower was consumed by the fireball. The sixth shot, Fox, was an 11-kiloton weapons development related test watched on May 25, 1952, by about 1,000 military observers from a distance of 7,000 yards. The soldiers were conducting radiation monitor training. A military display area filled by jeeps, tanks, machine guns, and artillery pieces was established almost under the shot tower, and all of the hardware was demolished. The last two shots in Tumbler-Snapper, both weapons development related, were George, 15 kilotons on June 1, 1952; and How, 14 kilotons, on June 5, 1952
 
In mid-September 1954, nuclear bombing tests were performed at the Totskoye proving ground during the training exercise Snezhok (Russian: Снежок, Snowball or Light Snow) with some 45,000 people, all Soviet soldiers and officers, who explored the explosion site of a bomb twice as powerful as the one dropped on Hiroshima nine years earlier. After the first nuclear explosion, two additional non-nuclear bombs were exploded shortly after the main blast in order to imitate a second-wave nuclear strike.

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US Air Force Security Policeman during the deactivation of a Titan II Missile, 1984
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Awesome photo, thank you BZ!!

This Air Policeman (and a Buck Sergeant) was obviously one of the best at his Missile Wing, as denoted by the subdued OLYMPIC ARENA (1983) patch on his right breast. OA was Strategic Air Command's (SAC) annual competition for the best operators/maintainers/security personnel in the ICBM community. Good on him.

On a side note, I was a crew member on the Peacekeeper ICBM in the late-80s. My unit, the 400 MS, was populated by a good number of former Titan II crew members when I arrived as a brand new 2Lt in '88, as part of the first all-2Lt Peacekeeper class. I looked upon the Captains and Majors from Titan with no small amount of admiration and awe, and the majority of them deserved it. They were outstanding instructors and mentors, not just on the weapon system, but on surviving SAC and the nuclear business, in general. They also knew how to work hard and play hard, and had a million stories that normally started, "Back at The Rock" (referring to crew duty at Little Rock AFB), or "Back when missiles were made of steel, and so were the men that operated them . . . ". Great memories, to be sure . . .

Cheers!
RL
 
Awesome photo, thank you BZ!!

This Air Policeman (and a Buck Sergeant) was obviously one of the best at his Missile Wing, as denoted by the subdued OLYMPIC ARENA (1983) patch on his right breast. OA was Strategic Air Command's (SAC) annual competition for the best operators/maintainers/security personnel in the ICBM community. Good on him.

On a side note, I was a crew member on the Peacekeeper ICBM in the late-80s. My unit, the 400 MS, was populated by a good number of former Titan II crew members when I arrived as a brand new 2Lt in '88, as part of the first all-2Lt Peacekeeper class. I looked upon the Captains and Majors from Titan with no small amount of admiration and awe, and the majority of them deserved it. They were outstanding instructors and mentors, not just on the weapon system, but on surviving SAC and the nuclear business, in general. They also knew how to work hard and play hard, and had a million stories that normally started, "Back at The Rock" (referring to crew duty at Little Rock AFB), or "Back when missiles were made of steel, and so were the men that operated them . . . ". Great memories, to be sure . . .

Cheers!
RL
Great memories there @RL64RL and thanks for the info regarding the patch, it had me wondering ;)(Y)
 
A suspected Securitate secret police officer is apprehended by anti-communist fighters and military defectors as urban warfare raged around them during the Romanian Revolution. December, 1989.
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A Romanian anti-regime fighter takes a break in an underpass during the fighting in downtown Bucharest during the Romanian Revolution that saw Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife violently ousted from power and executed. December, 1989.
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Revolutionaries and military defectors sitting in Ceaușescu's palace during the Romanian Revolution, December, 1989.
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A fascinating picture of Soviet observers wearing U.S. Woodland rain gear in 1990. A Soviet officer and General Michail Moiseev speak to a U.S. soldier under the supervision of U.S. General Colin Powell in the era of Perestroika.
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The crew...seated in tandem...of a US Air Force RB-47, the reconnaissance version of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet, circa 1955.
They are surrounded by then state-of-the-art analogue equipment.
They wear P-series helmets with M22001 oxygen masks ( see secondary image below)
(USAF Official)

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