Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "The Time We Nuked Five Men to Prove a Point" video.

  1.  @titaniumvulpes  vacuum tube electronics are EMP resistant to a point, so it wasn't as much as a big deal as it is today
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  2. I understand the limitations of air to air missiles but aircraft use the great circles to travel from point A to point B in the interest of time and fuel economy. They'd either come over the Arctic or from air bases in the Far East regions of Russia and "curve" over Alaska. Crossing the Pacific just to come from different directions would waste time and fuel, they'd split and go for their targets afterwards. Another quirk of early semi active radar homing missiles is that an aircraft painting a formation of bombers from a long distance would cause radar reflections from multiple bombers and act as rudimentary "chaff" against the primitive missiles, possibly causing them to miss an easy shot by flying into the gap of the "large mass" of bombers causing the signal reflections. Flying in formation increased survival against early SARH missiles.
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  3. The first man-made nuclear reactor was a stack of graphite bricks in a sort of basement under the stands of a sports field in the University of Chicago. Honestly, I believe it. The core had no shielding or cooling, it was just half a watt.
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  4. Bruce Gordon I believe has his story about the use of F-106s to intercept nuclear bombers. If their missiles failed to hit the bombers, they were supposed to complete the intercept at all costs, and this meant that they would have to use their own wing to clip the tail of the bomber, forcing it to lose control, and eject. Their fear was that not only the bomber's tailgunner would hit them, clipping the tail would potentially allow the crew to arm the bomb and have it detonate by altitude sensor. So even though the textbook way of doing things suggested they'd survive, they knew that if the missiles failed their only hope was to climb to high altitude, and perform a supersonic dive into the middle of the airplane - where the bomb bay was. Triggering the explosives by supersonic impact would in theory cause a fizzle rather than a true nuclear detonation.
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