Recently unearthed film, made to counter fears after release of Peter Sellers movie, claimed US power was best war deterrent

Nuclear Armageddon has always had its funny side. But the US military wasn't laughing in the early 1960s as Americans, freshly shaken by the Cuban missile crisis, lapped up Stanley Kubrick's classic satire, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

The film – which portrays a psychotic air force general who sets in chain the nuclear obliteration of the Soviet Union – was one of a spate of popular novels and films about accidental atomic war which had the US air force worried that some viewers might believe it all possible.

So in an attempt to persuade Americans that there was no chance of some rogue general or crosswired computer unleashing an atomic war, Strategic Air Command (SAC) went into the film business itself.

The result, a 17-minute propaganda film called SAC Command Post, was never shown to the public and was all but forgotten until it was unearthed at the national archive by William Burr, a researcher from George Washington University.

Burr describes the film as intended to counter early 1960s novels and Hollywood films such as Fail-Safe, about a US president forced to drop an atomic bomb on New York after America accidentally attacks Russia, and Dr Strangelove.

"The air force wanted to show they have control of these weapons, they were responsible, they would use them under presidential direction and they were ready for war," he said.

Why the film was never shown to the public has not been explained, although the answer may lie in a style that could be considered comforting only to firm believers in the cold war doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (Mad).

SAC Command Post opens with a startling assertion: "There is only world peace where there is power to preserve order among nations and the retaliatory power of the Strategic Air Command of the United States air force is the greatest deterrent to general war there is in the world today."

Cut to rows of nuclear bombers. "Half of the bombers are poised for take off within minutes," says the film. "Some are always airborne."

Just in case Americans might not be fully reassured that vast numbers of nuclear bombs make the world safer, the film shifts to operations behind the thick concrete walls of the fortified subterranean SAC headquarters in Nebraska.

"World war three can't be triggered by an unauthorised launching of a nuclear bomb," says the narrator.

The principal evidence for this is rows of men in military uniforms in front of rows of telephones. They include two special phones – one gold, the other red – that link the president and military commanders using code names such as "drop-kick" and bomber bases.

For all the SAC's efforts to reassure the public, Dr Strangelove may have been closer to the truth than the US air force was prepared to admit. SAC Command Post reinforces the popular belief that only the president could order a nuclear strike. "Positive and authenticated voice instructions originating at the presidential level are required to commit the SAC forces to their target," it says.

In truth, there were also a few generals with the authority to press the nuclear button if the US was under attack and the president incommunicado.

So would Americans have been persuaded by the film?

"It's hard to know," said Burr. "We're more wary these days. But in the early 60s there was more of a trusting attitude, before the Vietnam war. People had more confidence in the government."