Thomas S . Power General Thomas Sarsfield Power ( June 18 , 1905 – December 6 , 1970 ) was commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command and an active military flier for more than 30 years . Early career . Thomas S Power was born in New York City in 1905 , the eldest child of Irish immigrants , Thomas & Mary Rice Power . He had 2 sisters one of whom , Dorothy , married three times . After the death of the first husband , Dorothy went on to marry two British aristocrats . First was David Beatty , 2nd Earl Beatty in 1937 : they were divorced after World War 2 , whereupon she married Peregrine Cust , 6th Baron Brownlow . They are both buried at the now National Trust owned stately home of Belton House in England . General Power attended Barnard Preparatory School in New York and entered the U . S . Army Air Corps flying school February 17 , 1928 . He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps in February 1929 . His early service included assignments at most of the famed Air Corps fields of the day - Chanute Field , Illinois , as a student officer ; Langley Field , Virginia , as commanding officer of the 2d Wing Headquarters Detachment ; Bolling Field , Washington , D . C . , for duty as an Army air mail operations pilot ; Randolph Field , Texas , as a flying instructor ; Maxwell Field , Alabama , to attend the Air Corps Tactical School , and completing his early career as engineering and armament officer at Nichols Field , Philippines . World War II . During World War II , General Power first saw combat flying B - 24 missions with the 304th Bomb Wing in North Africa and Italy . After returning to the United States in August 1944 , he was named commander of the 314th Bomb Wing ( Very Heavy ) and moved his B - 29 s to Guam as part of the 21st Bomber Command . From Guam , General Power directed the first large - scale fire bomb raid on Tokyo , Japan , on March 9 , 1945 . On August 1 , 1945 , General Carl Spaatz , then commanding general of the U . S . Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific , moved General Power up on his staff as deputy chief of operations . He served in this capacity during the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . Cold War . During the Operation Crossroads , the 1946 atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll , General Power was assigned as assistant deputy task force commander for air on Admiral William H . P . Blandy ' s staff . Then came assignments as deputy assistant chief of air staff for operations in Washington and a period of air attaché duty in London , prior to his transfer to the Strategic Air Command as vice commander in 1948 . During the next six years , General Power assisted General Curtis E . LeMay , then commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command , in building up SAC . Power was then appointed commander of the Air Research and Development Command in 1954 , a position he held for three years . When General LeMay was named vice chief of staff of the Air Force in 1957 , General Power became commander in chief of SAC and was promoted to four - star rank . Power was the architect of the Operation Chrome Dome airborne alert program of SAC that ensured that a proportion of the nuclear - armed strategic bombers were always aloft so - as to survive a first strike . When RAND proposed a counterforce strategy , which would require SAC to restrain itself from striking Soviet cities in the beginning of a war , Power countered with : On October 24 , 1962 , during the Cuban Missile Crisis , SAC was ordered to " Defcon 2 , " one step short of nuclear war . Although authorized to increase his alert level , Power took the unprecedented – and unauthorized – action of broadcasting that message to global Strategic Air Command ( SAC ) nuclear forces in " the clear " ( on non - scrambled , open radio channels ) , presumably in an attempt to scare the Soviets into complying with American demands . Raymond Garthoff , who was a participant in the crisis , noted that : Garthoff gives as his source : The question becomes a bit murkier when new material uncovered by Stanford ' s Prof . Scott Sagan led him to write : However , evidence to the contrary ( i . e . , that Power was trying to do an end run as stated by Garthoff and , earlier , by Sagan ) is contained in SAC ' s history of the Cuban crisis . Pages 94 – 95 of that document state The above indicates that Power ’ s broadcast in the clear of DEFCON 2 was not likely to have met with McNamara ' s approval , and adds weight to the hypothesis that it been done as was originally indicated by Garthoff and Sagan ( but later retracted by Sagan ) as a way to get his way without specifically disobeying orders . Also , Sagan ' s newer statement does not indicate why General Power would have been aware that civilian agencies were told of the DEFCON 2 status in the clear . It should be noted that some accounts incorrectly state that General Power went to DEFCON 2 without authorization . As noted by Michael Dobbs in " One Minute to Midnight " ( page 96 ) : Like his mentor General LeMay , Power believed that the only effective form of war strategy against enemy nations run by dictators in possession of nuclear weapons was Mutually Assured Destruction . Power continued supervision of this strategy , both in the development and deployment of the necessary weaponry , and the willingness to use these weapons in case of impending threat . Like LeMay , Power emphasized the value of bomber aircraft , which ( unlike missiles ) can be recalled in the event of an error in technical threat detection , and offer a strategic recourse short of total war . Power retired from the Air Force on November 30 , 1964 and died of a heart attack December 6 , 1970 . He was a rated command pilot and aircraft observer , and was America ' s last general officer with no post - secondary education . Awards and recognitions . General Power was awarded the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal , Silver Star , Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster , Distinguished Flying Cross , Bronze Star , Air Medal with oak leaf cluster , Air Force Commendation Medal with oak leaf cluster , and the French Croix de Guerre with Palm . In popular culture . Power , a confirmed and unapologetic proponent of the LeMay school of staunch and successful militaristic anti - communism , was caricatured to create the " General Ripper " character in the film .