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Bomber gap
The "bomber gap" was the unfounded belief in the Cold War-era United States that the Soviet Union's Long Range Aviation had gained an advantage in deploying jet-powered strategic bombers. Widely accepted for several years, the gap was used as a political talking point in order to justify greatly increased defense spending. One result was a massive buildup of the United States Air Force bomber fleet, which peaked at over 2,500 bombers, in order to counter the perceived Soviet threat. Surveillance flights utilizing the Lockheed U-2 aircraft indicated that the bomber gap did not exist. Realizing that mere belief in the gap was an extremely effective funding source, a series of similarly nonexistent Soviet military advances were constructed in a tactic now known as "policy by press release." These included claims of a nuclear-powered bomber,〔''Soviets Flight Testing Nuclear Bomber'', Aviation Week, 1 December 1958, p. 27.〕 supersonic VTOL flying saucers,〔''Is this the real Flying Saucer?'', Look, Volume 19, 14 June 1955〕 and only a few years later, the "missile gap."
==Appearance of the Bomber gap ==
On February 15, 1954, ''Aviation Week'' published an article describing new Soviet jet bombers capable of carrying a nuclear bomb to the United States from their bases in Russia.〔''Pictures Reveal Reds' New "Sunday Punch"'', Aviation Week, 15 Feb. 1954, 12–13〕 The aircraft they referred to was the Myasishchev M-4 ''Bison''. Over the next year and a half these rumors were debated publicly in the press, and soon after in the United States Congress.〔''Congress Gets Red Plane Facts'', Aviation Week, 22 February 1954, pp. 13–14〕
Adding to the concerns was an infamous event in July 1955. At the Soviet Aviation Day demonstrations at the Tushino Airfield, ten Bison bombers were flown past the reviewing stand, then flew out of sight, quickly turned around, and flew past the stands again with eight more, presenting the illusion that there were 28 aircraft in the flyby. Western analysts extrapolated from the illusionary 28 aircraft, judging that by 1960 the Soviets would have 800.
At the time, the USAF had just introduced its own strategic jet bomber, the B-52 Stratofortress, and the shorter-range B-47 Stratojet was still suffering from a variety of technical problems that limited its availability. USAF staff started pressing for accelerated production of the B-52, but it also grudgingly accepted calls for expanded air defense.〔(Guarding the Cold War Ramparts: The U.S. Navy's Role in Continental Air Defense )〕 The Air Force was generally critical of spending effort on defense, having studied the results of the World War II bombing campaigns and concluding that Stanley Baldwin's pre-war thinking on the fruitlessness of air defense was correct: the bomber almost always did get through. Like the British, they concluded that money would better be spent on making the offensive arm larger, deterring an attack. The result was a production series consisting of thousands of aircraft. Over 2,000 B-47s and almost 750 B-52s were built to match the imagined fleet of Soviet aircraft.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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