Brooding monster of the apocalypse. Boeing B-52H. Photo by: Felipe Dutra

http://www.flickr.com/photos/haydutraduke/

JFK - October 1962- Cuban Missle Crisis

1960- Interior of Boeing 707 -first jet powered Presidential aircraft- call sign- Air Force One. In the Jetage in the Nuclear Age this sleek 707 with it's white, blue and silver livery came to symbolize the potency of the position of the

President of the United States of America. In our imaginations it was here, high in the stratosphere, that the fateful decisions of a "full retaliatory strike" would be made.

Mk- 17 Hydrogen bomb 1954- 1957

ooooooo very big bomb! First "practical" weaponized hydrogen device in US stockpile. About 305 built. First deployed under "emergency" status ; no parachute to retard the fall and allow the delivery aircraft to escape the blast zone. WHAT! SAC soon fixed the problem of vaporizing it's bomber crews by attaching a 64 ft. parachute to the MK-17. The B-36 was the only aircraft big enough to carry this 21 ton 28 foot long monster. One was accidentally dropped right thru the bomb bay doors. Ooops! Wasn't armed so it didn't go off. Albuquerque lived on. Very big bomb- 15 megatons. That is roughly one thousand times the size of the weapon dropped on Hiroshima. Fallout would kill every unsheltered creature in 5,000 square miles. The test of a version of this device caused a lot of big thinkers on both sides to start thinking of nuclear war as "unwinnable" ----------------------------- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb
I think Silhouette Man looks a little nervous.