‘Missile Gap’ Redux: Heroic Days of Threat Inflation Aren’t Over

The American Conservative:

July 3, 1955 was an exciting day for CIA spooks and U.S. military intelligence officers in Moscow. Eagerly scanning the skies at the annual Tushino Air Showoutside the city, at which the secretive Soviet military offered glimpses of their aerial arsenal, they watched 10 huge jet bombers of a previously unseen model roar overhead. After a short interval came another eighteen. That evening, urgent coded messages to Washington detailed the appearance of no less than 28 of these menacing craft, strategic weapons clearly capable of nuclear attacks on the continental U.S. Excited news commentators termed the display “A shock to the complacent; a spur to the alert.” Extrapolating assumptions of Soviet aircraft production rates, intelligence analysts reported that the Soviets would have a force of  no less than 800 Bisons by 1960.



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