Operation Chrome Dome

Type: Event

As of November 2026, Operation Chrome Dome has been mentioned in one podcast episode on The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered (Jan 2026).

Operation Chrome Dome was a United States Air Force Cold War-era mission from 1961 to 1968 in which B-52 strategic bomber aircraft armed with thermonuclear weapons remained on continuous airborne alert, flying routes that put them in positions to attack targets in the Soviet Union if they were ordered to do so. The exact routes varied by year, but in general there were routes that went to positions over the Canadian arctic, Alaska, Greenland, and the Mediterranean Sea. Many American Air Force ba