"It’s best to understand the immediate impact of the atomic bomb in context of the use of airpower in the Korean War. Atomic weapons might have had a surprisingly small effect on the war itself. Notwithstanding the success of the MiG-15 against U.S. bomber formations, the United States largely controlled the sky over the Korean Peninsula, with B-29s delivering devastating airstrikes at the time and place of their choosing. The atomic bombs on 1950 did not yet have the power of the thermonuclear weapons developed later in the decade. When employed for tactical purposes, these bombs would have amounted to not much more than very large explosives. Employed against dispersed Chinese and North Korean forces, the limited number of bombs available to the U.S. Air Force (which had to conserve many weapons for use against the Soviets) might have had only a limited effect on the ability of China to mobilize forces and move them to the front. Moreover, the relatively primitive nature of infrastructure in North Korea and Manchuria would have worked against the effectiveness of the bombs on staging and logistics centers. What about juicier targets, such as Beijing or Shanghai? In 1950, the USAF remained committed to the idea that wars could be won through the destruction of civilian industry and infrastructure, and that such targets could be most readily found in cities. The USAF would soon demonstrate this conviction by leveling Pyongyang in a long series of conventional raids. Even this might not have had a decisive effect on the war. At the first sign of nuclear escalation, the elite of the CCP would have dispersed from the capital and the major cities. The propaganda value of the abject annihilation of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians probably would have outweighed any military advantage gained by the United States."