Released documents published by The Archive, a non governmental research institute located at George Washington University have shown that the US Air Force had planned to drop nuclear bombs on China in 1958 following confrontations over Taiwan. According to AFP reports when President Dwight Eisenhower came to know of the plans he asked the army to change it. The report released on Wednesday April 30, 2008, was prepared in June 1968 by Bernard Nalty, an Air Force historian.

 

The report said that the American air force planned to drop 10 to 15 kilotons of nuclear bombs on the then Chinese airfields in Amoy(now Xiamen) if the China blocked Taiwan's Offshore Islands. The reports say that Eisenhower had ordered the air force and the navy to get ready for a formulaic strike. However if the problems grew then nuclear strikes could have followed.

 

Nalty wrote in his report that the nuclear strikes were withdrawn because it would have caused massive causalities in both China and Taiwan. The Archive publishes declassified documents obtained through US Freedom of Information Act.