The ‘bomber gap’: British intelligence and an American delusion

Abstract

ABSTRACTFor most of the 1950s, manned aircraft were the prime nuclear bomb delivery method, and were therefore a vital metric for British and American intelligence when calculating the Soviet threat. Each community reached very different conclusions from the same raw intelligence, generating the ‘bomber gap’ myth in the US but not in the UK. The information available was inconclusive, so in order to understand it estimators had to rely on their assumptions, which were different. Contrasting scopes for parochial capitalisation drew their conclusions further apart. Contrary to orthodox accounts of this episode, Soviet deception did not play a central role.