A Concise History of the US Air Force - Air Force Historical Studies ...

Aerial refueling. A Boeing KC-97 Stratofreighter
nourishes a Boeing B-47 Stratojet, the USAF’s first
swept-wing jet bomber. The B-47, as capable as the
B-29 and the B-36 of carrying atomic weapons, played
important roles in SAC and the Cold War. Eighteen
solid rockets mounted at the rear of its fuselage, which
was dedicated almost completely to bomb and fuel con-
tainment, maximized takeoff performance. The B-47
served with the USAF from 1947 to 1969.
later in late August, it exploded an atomic bomb of its own, causing
Americans grave national security concerns. Almost before the Truman
administration could respond, it faced a new crisis in Korea.
Limited War In Korea
When North Korean forces invaded South Korea on June 25,
1950, in a surprise attack, they awakened the United States to the dangers
of brushfire war in the nuclear age. The earlier crisis of 1948 in Berlin,
Communist successes in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and China in 1949, and
news of the Soviet explosion of an atomic device in 1949, had prompted
the National Security Council (NSC) to issue a secret directive, NSC-68,
in April 1950. It judged the Soviet Union to be bent on world domination.
NSC-68 called for a massive increase in defense spending of 20 percent
of the gross national product if necessary, the development of a hydrogen
bomb, and the containment of Communism. The sustained American-led
buildup of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe was
unmistakable evidence of containment, but Korea would be the first test
of revitalized American resolve.
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