Britain and the H-Bomb

Britain and the H-Bomb PDF Author: Lorna Arnold
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Britain and the H-Bomb reveals why, in the 1950s, the government wanted a British H-bomb, how the scientists and engineers developed it in only three years, and what were the historic consequences of their achievements.

Britain and the H-Bomb

Britain and the H-Bomb PDF Author: Lorna Arnold
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
Britain and the H-Bomb reveals why, in the 1950s, the government wanted a British H-bomb, how the scientists and engineers developed it in only three years, and what were the historic consequences of their achievements.

Grappling with the Bomb

Grappling with the Bomb PDF Author: Nic Maclellan
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1760461385
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Grappling with the Bomb is a history of Britain’s 1950s program to test the hydrogen bomb, code name Operation Grapple. In 1957–58, nine atmospheric nuclear tests were held at Malden Island and Christmas Island—today, part of the Pacific nation of Kiribati. Nearly 14,000 troops travelled to the central Pacific for the UK nuclear testing program—many are still living with the health and environmental consequences. Based on archival research and interviews with nuclear survivors, Grappling with the Bomb presents i-Kiribati woman Sui Kiritome, British pacifist Harold Steele, businessman James Burns, Fijian sailor Paul Ah Poy, English volunteers Mary and Billie Burgess and many other witnesses to Britain’s nuclear folly.

Churchill's Bomb

Churchill's Bomb PDF Author: Graham Farmelo
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465069894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
Perhaps no scientific development has shaped the course of modern history as much as the harnessing of nuclear energy. Yet the twentieth century might have turned out differently had greater influence over this technology been exercised by Great Britain, whose scientists were at the forefront of research into nuclear weapons at the beginning of World War II. As award-winning biographer and science writer Graham Farmelo describes in Churchill's Bomb, the British set out to investigate the possibility of building nuclear weapons before their American colleagues. But when scientists in Britain first discovered a way to build an atomic bomb, Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not make the most of his country's lead and was slow to realize the Bomb's strategic implications. This was odd -- he prided himself on recognizing the military potential of new science and, in the 1920s and 1930s, had repeatedly pointed out that nuclear weapons would likely be developed soon. In developing the Bomb, however, he marginalized some of his country's most brilliant scientists, choosing to rely mainly on the counsel of his friend Frederick Lindemann, an Oxford physicist with often wayward judgment. Churchill also failed to capitalize on Franklin Roosevelt's generous offer to work jointly on the Bomb, and ultimately ceded Britain's initiative to the Americans, whose successful development and deployment of the Bomb placed the United States in a position of supreme power at the dawn of the nuclear age. After the war, President Truman and his administration refused to acknowledge a secret cooperation agreement forged by Churchill and Roosevelt and froze Britain out of nuclear development, leaving Britain to make its own way. Dismayed, Churchill worked to restore the relationship. Churchill came to be terrified by the possibility of thermonuclear war, and emerged as a pioneer of detente in the early stages of the Cold War. Contrasting Churchill's often inattentive leadership with Franklin Roosevelt's decisiveness, Churchill's Bomb reveals the secret history of the weapon that transformed modern geopolitics.

Arms, Economics and British Strategy

Arms, Economics and British Strategy PDF Author: G. C. Peden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113946292X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
This book integrates strategy, technology and economics and presents a new way of looking at twentieth-century military history and Britain's decline as a great power. G. C. Peden explores how from the Edwardian era to the 1960s warfare was transformed by a series of innovations, including dreadnoughts, submarines, aircraft, tanks, radar, nuclear weapons and guided missiles. He shows that the cost of these new weapons tended to rise more quickly than national income and argues that strategy had to be adapted to take account of both the increased potency of new weapons and the economy's diminishing ability to sustain armed forces of a given size. Prior to the development of nuclear weapons, British strategy was based on an ability to wear down an enemy through blockade, attrition (in the First World War) and strategic bombing (in the Second), and therefore power rested as much on economic strength as on armaments.

Dark Sun

Dark Sun PDF Author: Richard Rhodes
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143912647X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 772

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Book Description
Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War. Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.

Super Bomb

Super Bomb PDF Author: Ken Young
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501745174
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Super Bomb unveils the story of the events leading up to President Harry S. Truman's 1950 decision to develop a "super," or hydrogen, bomb. That fateful decision and its immediate consequences are detailed in a diverse and complete account built on newly released archives and previously hidden contemporaneous interviews with more than sixty political, military, and scientific figures who were involved in the decision. Ken Young and Warner R. Schilling present the expectations, hopes, and fears of the key individuals who lobbied for and against developing the H-bomb. They portray the conflicts that arose over the H-bomb as rooted in the distinct interests of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Los Alamos laboratory, the Pentagon and State Department, the Congress, and the White House. But as they clearly show, once Truman made his decision in 1950, resistance to the H-bomb opportunistically shifted to new debates about the development of tactical nuclear weapons, continental air defense, and other aspects of nuclear weapons policy. What Super Bomb reveals is that in many ways the H-bomb struggle was a proxy battle over the morality and effectiveness of strategic bombardment and the role and doctrine of the US Strategic Air Command.

Bomb (Graphic Novel)

Bomb (Graphic Novel) PDF Author: Steve Sheinkin
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
ISBN: 1250291038
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
A riveting graphic novel adaptation of the award-winning nonfiction book, Bomb—the fascinating and frightening true story of the creation behind the most destructive force that birthed the arms race and the Cold War. In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned three continents. In Great Britain and the United States, Soviet spies worked their way into the scientific community; in Norway, a commando force slipped behind enemy lines to attack German heavy-water manufacturing; and deep in the desert, one brilliant group of scientists, led by "father of the atomic bomb" J. Robert Oppenheimer, was hidden away at a remote site at Los Alamos. This is the story of the plotting, the risk-taking, the deceit, and genius that created the world's most formidable weapon. This is the story of the atomic bomb. New York Times bestselling author Steve Sheinkin's award-winning nonfiction book is now available reimagined in the graphic novel format. Full color illustrations from Nick Bertozzi are detailed and enriched with the nonfiction expertise Nick brings to the story as a beloved artist, comic book writer, and commercial illustrator who has written a couple of his own historical graphic novels, including Shackleton and Lewis & Clark. Accessible, gripping, and educational, this new edition of Bomb is perfect for young readers and adults alike. Praise for Bomb (2012): “This superb and exciting work of nonfiction would be a fine tonic for any jaded adolescent who thinks history is 'boring.' It's also an excellent primer for adult readers who may have forgotten, or never learned, the remarkable story of how nuclear weaponry was first imagined, invented and deployed—and of how an international arms race began well before there was such a thing as an atomic bomb.” —The Wall Street Journal “This is edge-of-the seat material that will resonate with YAs who clamor for true spy stories, and it will undoubtedly engross a cross-market audience of adults who dozed through the World War II unit in high school.” —The Bulletin (starred review) Also by Steve Sheinkin: Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War Born to Fly: The First Women's Air Race Across America The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery Which Way to the Wild West?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About Westward Expansion King George: What Was His Problem?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the American Revolution Two Miserable Presidents: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the Civil War

Nuclear Rivals

Nuclear Rivals PDF Author: Septimus H. Paul
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 9780814208526
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Capitalizing on the availability of physicists and chemists who had fled Hitler's Germany, U.S. and British scientists were able to repeat within a few weeks the test of nuclear fission first performed by two German chemists and strive toward cooperative development of the bomb during World War II. But the death of Roosevelt and Truman's succession in 1945, coupled with Churchill's loss of the prime ministership to Clement Attlee, marked a definite change in Anglo-American atomic policy.".

Britain and the H-Bomb

Britain and the H-Bomb PDF Author: L. Arnold
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023059977X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This book, written with unique access to official archives, tells the secret story of Britain's H-bomb - the scientific and strategic background, the government's policy decision, the work of the remarkable men who created the bomb, the four weapon trials at a remote Pacific atoll in 1957-58, and the historic consequences.

Stalin and the Bomb

Stalin and the Bomb PDF Author: David Holloway
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300164459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 507

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Book Description
The classic and “utterly engrossing” study of Stalin’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb during the Cold War by the renowned political scientist and historian (Foreign Affairs). For forty years the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Then, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, David Holloway pulled back the Iron Curtain with his “marvelous, groundbreaking study” Stalin and the Bomb (The New Yorker). How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign policy? What was the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders? David Holloway answers these questions by tracing the dramatic story of Soviet nuclear policy from developments in physics in the 1920s to the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the emergence of nuclear deterrence in the mid-1950s. This magisterial history throws light on Soviet policy at the height of the Cold War, illuminates a central element of the Stalinist system, and puts into perspective the tragic legacy of this program―environmental damage, a vast network of institutes and factories, and a huge stockpile of unwanted weapons.