You know it's hard to believe that it was 30 years ago when I was flying this airplane in Korea. The memories are still pretty vivid for 30 years ago. Here's where they used to hang nuclear bombs when we were training with those about 25 years ago.

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This is a Navy Skyraider. About 35 years ago it was the number one attack airplane in the Navy and was the best propeller airplane ever built. After using it in Korea, we turned it into a nuclear bomber, we used to hang big nuclear bombs underneath here that filled up the whole underside of the airplane and then we had to put a lot of fuel on the airplane and we used to just stick great big fuel tanks on and then we could fly for 10 hours.

[BACKGROUND DISCUSSION]

We used to hang—

[BACKGROUND COMMENT].

We used to hand big nuclear bombs under here, ten times the power of the Hiroshima bomb and then in order to get the range we needed for the nuclear missions, we used to handle--hang big fuel tanks here, that gave us the range.

[BACKGROUND COMMENT].

We used to hang huge nuclear weapons under here, ten times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and it filled up this whole area underneath the airplane. Then in order to get the range we needed for the nuclear mission we used to hang huge fuel tanks on the wing pile-ons and we could fly for 10 hours.

[BACKGROUND COMMENT].

In order to get the range we needed for the nuclear missions, we used to hang huge fuel tanks on these wing pile-ons and then we could fly the airplanes for 10 hours at a time. I trained for hours and hours and weeks and months on this nuclear weapons delivery mission. It was very complicate' and very precise for several reasons. One, you had to get the bomb on the target. Two, you had to get away from the bomb after you dropped it. You didn't really want to stick around and be part of the fireball. And the--the maneuver you had to go through to deliver the weapon accurately and then escape the affects was very, very demanding. We used to fly along the ground about 50 feet off the ground as fast as this old hog would go, 265 knots flat out and then we would pull the airplane up sharply in a 4-G pull-up, squish yourself down in the cockpit, your eyes going closed and about the time you got into a position like this there was a big bang, a big thump and the cockpit filled up with smoke, the bomb flew off and then you rolled the airplane over into a sharp maneuver pulled it sharply down, aimed for the ground and went just as fast as you could go to get away from the--blast. Now in order to give us a better chance of survival the plane was painted pure white, instead of this camouflage job. I wore all white flight clothing. White helmet, white gloves, white suit. We had the planes as I say, painted white so they reflect more light, more heat and we wouldn't melt the wings off, which you know would have ruined your whole day. This is kind of foolish for a group of grown men to be doing this day and night because we did it at night too. But we really seriously were planning to fight a nuclear war with this airplane, and--and a lot of airplanes just like it. I stood watch on carrier decks at night in the morning ready to go in a matter of just a few moments in case the war started with an assigned target and a bomb on the airplane ready to destroy that target. I really began to think awfully hard about the nuclear proposition when I was standing those watches. The bomb I had on this airplane, on this Skyraider would have destroyed one target-one supply depot, as a matter of fact for a specific target, and in the same blast, would have killed 600,000 people in the city around that depot. Well, you can't fight that way, you--you just can't fight a war for any purpose when you're going to kill 600,000 people in one explosion and you can deliver thousands of these bombs. So by 1957, '58 when I got back into the real world and began to think about this and matter of fact at the Naval War College, study about it, I wrote a treatise, theme paper in which I argued for the Navy to get out of the nuclear; war business, that we couldn't fight it, we couldn't win it, we couldn't control it, and we probably couldn't even survive it. The Navy should be preparing to defend the United States, not--not blow up part of the world. That was considered a very impressive, independent academic exercise but it never obviously had any influence on Navy policy, because today 80 percent of all of our ships still carry nuclear weapons in one form or another. I have exactly the same feeling however, that there's no way we can fight, no way the Soviets can fight, no way anybody can fight with nuclear weapons. All you can do it destroy each other, you both end up dead and there's no point in such a--a transaction. War is--is absolutely overtaken by the destructive power we have today.

HOW DID THE COSTS COMPARE... THESE WEAPONS WERE BROUGHT IN BECAUSE THEY WERE GOING TO BE CHEAPER THAN CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS. WHAT WAS YOUR FEELING AT THE TIME?

Obviously you could deliver a tremendous amount more destructive power--kill 600,000 people with one airplane, one bomb, that's pretty efficient destruction but the fact is you didn't gain anything with it. You destroyed everything you were fighting over and--and so it's very hard to say it's economical to blow up the world. Now, there's another problem of course, the Navy was supposed to help defend the United States, we're spending our time training as nuclear weapons pilots, and nuclear weapons handlers and--and we spent tremendous sums of money to make these planes so-called nuclear capable. We're wasting 20 percent of the Navy's budget in my estimation on weapons we could never use without committing suicide, so it wasn't a cheap form of military power and it isn't a cheap form today, when we're talking about building a missile system for example where one missile may cost a hundred million dollars.

WERE YOU AS GOOD A PILOT FOR CONVENTIONAL BOMBS AS YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN IF YOU'D BEEN TRAINING ALL THE TIME? DID THAT MAKE IT?

That's an interesting thought. In Korea, well, we didn't have a nuclear mission and the planes were configured for maximum efficiency with conventional weapons. We were very, very precise, we would dive-bombers, we could put that bomb on the target, we had canon in the airplane, we could shoot. When we got the nuclear weapons and had to train with those, that took a third of all of our time to prepare for the nuclear mission so obviously we lost a little bit off of our--our precision with the conventional weapons.

YOU TELL ME THAT PAPER WAS RECEIVED BY A CERTAIN SENIOR OFFICER AND WHAT HE SAID TO YOU, CAN YOU JUST DESCRIBE THAT?

Yes...Because that thought I had in the paper that said the Navy ought to get rid of nuclear weapons it went up for review, it was a different way of thinking about the Navy and ultimately I got to talk to the number two man in the U.S. Navy. And he listened patiently for about 15 minutes and then he said, "Young man" and you know you're in trouble when they say 'young man', "A lot of people in the Navy smarter than you who if we give up the nuclear mission, the Air Force will get every dollar in the budget and we won't even have a Navy." It was inner service rivalry that made a nuclear bomber out of this airplane. No other logical explanation, the Navy needed a nuclear mission and they tried to make a nuclear bomber out of the Skyraider. And the same situation is still going on today. The services compete now the Air Force can destroy the Soviet Union x times, the Navy y times, the army is getting the Pershing Two to get their licks in and we go on spending in the 1986 budget of the United States government 46 billion dollars just for nuclear war fighting systems.

SO DID YOU EVER DISCUSS AMONGST YOURSELVES OR WERE YOU EVER OFFICIALLY TOLD WHAT KIND OF CIRCUMSTANCES... NUCLEAR WEAPONS WOULD BE USED?

Oh, of course. We had full-blown plans, detailed plans by which all operations would be coordinated with the U.S. Air Force operations and we would jointly destroy the Soviet Union. The '50s r--during the decade of the 1950s, the Navy was really part of the US strategic forces and that continued on up into the early '60s. But by that time we were beginning to get enough missiles that you really didn't need planes like this, relatively short range planes to add to the--to the bomber load. So, we began then to have closer in targets, tactical targets to support say, the forces in Europe fighting the -the Warsaw Pact. But there were plans and we planned individual targets depending on where the carrier was, your target list shifted, you had a different set of targets, now that was plans covered us 24 hours a day and we knew exactly when--what we would do when the whistle blew.

BUT WHEN YOU SAY WHEN THE WHISTLE BLEW, WAS THERE ANY PLAN IN THOSE DAYS TO START WITH CONVENTIONAL WAR AND GRADUALLY WORK UP TO NUCLEAR ATTACK OR--OR WAS MASSIVE RETALIATION SOMETHING THAT REALLY MEANT SOMETHING...?

Yeah, massive retaliation really died very quickly in the '50s when the Soviets were inconvenient enough to develop their own nuclear weapons. Massive retaliation made a lot of sense when we were the only ones with nuclear weapons, but it never really was our doctrine. The thought was the we would fight with conventional weapons where we could get the job done with conventional weapons and then, if we needed them, if we needed them for defense against submarine or defense against airplanes, or to attack the sub bases, something like that of the enemy, we would use nuclear weapons as part of the overall war fighting scheme. The army has exactly the same plans. They'll use artillery and short-range missiles on the battlefield. The Air Force has tactical nuclear weapons for their bombers in Europe. So in a sense, nuclear weapons have almost become conventional weapons, they're integrated right into the war plans so that--

WAS WHAT YOU WERE SAYING THEN, TRUE OF THE '50s?

Very true of the '50s. Once we got away from the idea that massive retaliation made sense, and it makes very little sense when massive retaliation goes both ways. We then have the doctrine of employing these weapons in various tactical situations, particularly in defensive operations against submarines and aircrafts. Most people will conclude that if you start using them against their aircraft, their aircraft will start using them against your ship. So that we could readily see how this would evolve into a general nuclear war.

BUT YOU WERE A TARGET WHEN YOU WERE ON THE CARRIERS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WOULD NOW BE CALLED STRATEGIC TARGETS.

Part of the strategic strike plan of the United States government...

IT'S A PART OF MASSIVE RETALIATION IN OTHER WORDS?

No that wasn't massive retaliation, that was part of a plan to win over by hitting them harder than they could hit us. And of course in the '50s we still had quite a pronounced advantage and total destructive capability. You were measuring the weapons in the U.S., I'd--well down in the several hundreds of—I'm sorry. You were measuring the weapons on the U.S. side down in the several thousands and on the Soviet side in the hundreds. So that a few weapons made a difference. Now when we're talking about 50,000 nuclear weapons split between the two sides, what's the difference? You both have too many, you can't use them without losing the war.

DID YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS IN THE '50s...DID YOU HAVE ANY CONVERSATIONS WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES ABOUT THIS KIND OF THING, WAS IT SOMETHING THAT YOU ALL TALKED ABOUT OR WAS IT SOMETHING TO TAKE FOR GRANTED?

It was taken for granted. It was part of the mission of the squadron. We trained, we kept our airplanes ready, kept our equipment ready, we kept ourselves trained and I think we would have carried out our orders without any question. It wasn't something you sat around and had deep thoughts about while you were actually in the unit prepared for the mission. I must say sitting on a carrier deck or -- or the darkness of four o'clock in the morning, you do have some deeper thoughts but, you're strapped into the airplane and ready to go. The fact is it isn't until you've gotten to a higher level in the planning process and you understand the factors that are at work, that you really come to grips with the issues of nuclear destruction. And then you begin to realize it doesn't make sense for us, it doesn't make sense for the Soviets, they don't want a nuclear war anymore than we do and never did. And we're going to have to figure out some way to have fewer nuclear weapons instead of just piling them up.

THANKS.