Re: Early Lockheed Nuclear Aircraft Proposal



Vaughn Simon wrote:
I have less problem with nuclear power than most, but this was a spectacularly bad idea. One strategic advantage though, a crash would be such a terrible radiological disaster that the enemy wouldn't dare shoot it down over their own territory.

Back when they designed the nuclear-powered SLAM cruise missile for Project Pluto, the intention was that after it dropped all of its nuclear bombs on the assigned Soviet targets, it would just keep flying around over the Soviet Union at a few hundred feet altitude for a week or so, leaving fallout and lethal sonic booms in its wake: http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html

Pat
.