The Strategic Air Command

All eight aviators aboard B-52F 70173 the night of 28 February 1968 were assigned to the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command (SAC).

SAC was originally formed within the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) on 21 March 1946 with the mission of providing air defense of the continental United States. Combining the strategic AAF assets created during World War II into a single organizational entity, the new command started out with 37,000 personnel stationed at 32 different airfields and installations.

On 26 Sep 1947, SAC transferred from the USAAF to the newly created United States Air Force under the command of General George Kenny. Later that same year, General Curtis LeMay assumed command of SAC and proceeded to build the behemoth bomber force that peaked in 1955 with more than 2,000 B-47s and nearly 750 B-52s. This massive strike force, later augmented by SAC's land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and supplemented with the US Navy's submarine launched ballistic missiles, was required to support our Nation's Cold War nuclear war-deterrent concept known as "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) which, in turn, generated the command's motto "Peace Is Our Profession." 

SAC was built on the Cold War fears that had school children practicing survival skills by hiding under their desks and suburbanites building and stocking bomb shelters in their backyards.

With the official end of the Cold War on 3 December 1989, the immense SAC war-fighting machine built over four decades to deter a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, suddenly ceased to be an important element of our Nation's defense. And, when President George H.W. Bush took all SAC bomber, tanker and Minuteman II missile assets off continuous ground alert on 27 September 1991, the future of the Strategic Air Command as the Air Force's premier combat organization became clear. Sure to form, on 31 May 1992, the US Air Force completely reorganized its war-fighting organizational machinery and disbanded SAC to prepare for the future challenges that would begin coming into focus on 11 September 2001.