Explaining the Unexplainable

This past weekend my son's Cub Scout Pack took a trip to the National Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. My son, who was celebrating his eighth birthday that day, had been looking forward to this trip. I had told him that we would see all kinds of airplanes and even some space capsules.

The Air Force Museum is, as far as I am concerned, the best air museum in the United States. I have visited the museum several times over the last several years. The aircraft displayed span the entire history of manned flight. The museum is laid out chronologically. You start your visit by seeing an airplane that the Wright Brothers prepared for the US Army. You then move into galleries that display aircraft from the First World War, the 1930's, the Second World War period, the Korean War, etc. The museum does an excellent job of presenting the history of military aviation.

My son was fascinated by all that he saw. It was a thrill for me to tell him about the various airplanes. Aviation has always been a passion of mine. My son was particularly interested in the B-29, the imposing Superfortress. My father-in-law, his grandfather, served as a navigator on a B-29 and flew combat missions over Japan in the Second World War.

The particular B-29 that is on display in the museum is named "Bockscar". This aircraft dropped the so-called "Fat Man" atom bomb on Nagasaki, Japan in August of 1945. Displayed next to the B-29 is mock-up of the "Fat Man" bomb. I tried to explain to my son the awesome and terrible power of that bomb.

As we continued our visit of the museum we saw other airplanes that were capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Mock-ups of these weapons were displayed in front of the airplanes. Some of these bombs were truly immense. Some were the size of small cars. I wondered how the airplanes could possibly get off the ground carrying such weapons.

My son asked me about these bigger bombs. He wanted to know how powerful they were. I told him that the nukes developed after the bombs dropped on Japan cold destroy a whole city the size of Chicago.

He then wanted to know if these bombs had ever been dropped. I told him that thankfully only the two smaller bombs had ever been used.

He then said, "Well, Daddy, if they were never used why were they ever built?"

I said, "Well, you see the Russians started building nuclear weapons also. We never wanted them to use their bombs against us or our friends so we build these bombs."

He looked at me.

I went on, "You see we thought that if we built these bombs the Russians would know that if they ever tried to destroy us, we'd destroy them right back."

His blue eyes got wider.

"We built bombs because they build bombs and the more bombs we built the more they built. But, we kept building them so they would never use theirs and they kept building theirs so we'd never use ours."

Have you ever attempted to explain the military doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction", the MAD doctrine to an eight year?

My son said, "That's pretty weird Daddy." And he gave me a look.

I said, "Yeah, pretty crazy isn't it?"

We wandered over to look at the Apollo 15 command ship.

Come to think of it, it was pretty weird wasn't it?