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One of the least well-known, and secretive (as if any nuclear alert program was ever well-known) Cold War alert programs was Operation Giant Lance. In October 1969, with the Vietnam war heating up, President Nixon aimed to pressure the Soviet Union to push North Vietnam to the negotiating table with the US to end the war. Nixon was known then as a man that would take radical measures to achieve his objectives; the so-called “madman theory”. By radical, Nixon was desperate to win the Vietnam war, to the point of an atomic attack on North Vietnam, and did something unthinkable to signal it.
President Nixon directed SAC to send 18 nuclear-armed B-52s into airborne alert over the Arctic ice cap, orbiting by the Soviet Union. Consider the fact that Airborne alert under Chrome Dome ended a year previously—no airborne alert flights for over a year, and all of the sudden 18 nuclear bombers start flying along your borders? Yep, madman. Giant Lance was intended to be visible by Soviet intelligence but secretive to the public; not even the Commander-in-Chief of SAC knew why those BUFFs were doing this. Would 18 BUFFs flying near the Soviet border be visible? Would it cause alarm in the Kremlin? One would think so! Consider also how close the two superpowers came to all-out nuclear war not 7 years earlier during the Cuban Missile Crisis; carefully-calculated rhetoric and signaling led to the crisis ending peacefully. It would not only be brash, arrogant and cocky to send 18 nuclear-armed BUFFs along the Soviet Union (Chrome Dome only had 12—the SAC Dirty Dozen), it would be suicide! After 1962, the nuclear states really tread carefully to avoid provoking or threatening the others with nukes. Nixon did the unthinkable! 1 November was the announced decision date; either North Vietnam comes to the peace talks tables, or America will take “measures of great consequence and force.”
On 13 October 1969, SAC ceased most training flights of B-52 aircraft, placed the maximum number of bombers on ground alert, increased maintenance readiness on the BUFFs, and for the first time since January 1968, received authorization to load nuclear weapons aboard the aircraft for airborne alert/show of force exercise. The amount of control the Nixon administration wanted to keep on this operation was so strong that other publicly-visible actions that may have signaled unusual military activity (recalling troops on leave, re-alerting docked submarines and surface ships and deploying to sea, dispersing alert bombers to civilian airfields) were not taken. These actions and the fact that nuclear weapons were available at Andersen AFB, Guam (much closer in striking distance to North Vietnam than bombers in the US) but not loaded probably exposed Nixon’s bluff.
On 23 October, SAC had been directed to load nuclear weapons on all available B-52s, (irrespective of the fact than many of their crews were deployed in conventional bombing campaigns in Southeast Asia) as a ground alert posture. On 26 October, the 18 Giant Lance BUFFs from the 22nd Bomb Wing (BW) at March AFB, CA and 92 BW at Fairchild AFB, WA started around the clock airborne alerts. The sorties would continue incident-free until their discontinuance on 30 October. In the middle of October, Nixon decided against nuclear use in Vietnam, and had not intended to take any actions on 1 November if the Soviets and North Vietnam didn’t begin peace talks.
The airborne alert BUFFs did avoid actions that would further provoke the Soviets, such as some reconnaissance operations. Oddly enough, the Soviets didn’t take the bait, retaliate or otherwise overreact—they may have simply called Nixon’s bluff. As a result of Moscow’s inaction and Nixon’s bluff, the Vietnam war raged on for more than two more years.
To find this cache, calculate the coordinates from the information in this listing.
N 48° 18.ABC W 101° 16.DEF
A= Day in October 1969 SAC ceased most training flights of B-52, XN October 1969, A=(N+5)
B= Quantity of SAC bombers directed by President Nixon to orbit the icecap, NN aircraft, B=(NN-14)
C= Numerical designation of Fairchild-based BW in Giant Lance missions, NX BW, C=(N+3)
D= Deadline Day in November 1969 when America will take “measures of great consequence and force” if North Vietnam does not return to peace talks, D=(Nx4)
E= Day in October 1969 when Giant Lance sorties began, XN October, E=(N-2)
F= Numerical designation of March-based BW in Giant Lance missions, XN BW, F=(N/1)
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB81/
Sagan and Suri, "The Madman Nuclear Alert: Secrecy, Signaling, and Safety in October 1969" International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Spring 2003). https://fsi-live.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/sagan_is_spr03.pdf