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Author: Randall C. Maydew
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780897452144
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
Author: Randall C. Maydew
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780897452144
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
Author: Barbara Moran
Publisher: Presidio Press
ISBN: 9780891419044
Category : Aircraft accidents
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
From the Publisher: In The Day We Lost the H-Bomb, science writer Barbara Moran marshals a wealth of new information and recently declassified material to give the definitive account of the Cold War's biggest nuclear weapons disaster. On January 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the sleepy Spanish farming village of Palomares during a routine airborne refueling. The explosion killed seven airmen and scattered the bomber's payload-four unarmed thermonuclear bombs-across miles of coastline. Three of the rogue H-bombs were recovered quickly. Tracking down the fourth required the largest search-and-salvage operation in U.S. military history. Moran traces the roots of the Palomares incident, giving a brief yet in-depth history of the Strategic Air Command and its eccentric, larger-than-life commander, General Curtis LeMay, whose massive deterrence strategy kept armed U.S. bombers aloft at all times. Back on the ground, Moran recounts the myriad social and environmental effects of an accident that spread radioactive debris over hundreds of acres of Spanish farmland, alarmed America's strategic allies, and damaged Spanish-American diplomatic relations. As the American military floundered in its attempt to keep the story secret, the events in Spain sometimes took on farcical overtones. Constant global media hype was fueled by the hit James Bond movie Thunderball, with its plot about an atomic weapon lost at sea. In addition, there were the unwanted attentions of a rusty-hulled Soviet surveillance ship and even awkward public relations stunts, complete with American diplomats in swim trunks.
Author: Flora Lewis
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 9780553264838
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
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.
Author: Kenneth W Ford
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814618810
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
In this engaging scientific memoir, Kenneth Ford recounts the time when, in his mid-twenties, he was a member of the team that designed and built the first hydrogen bomb. He worked with — and relaxed with — scientific giants of that time such as Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Stan Ulam, John von Neumann, and John Wheeler, and here offers illuminating insights into the personalities, the strengths, and the quirks of these men. Well known for his ability to explain physics to nonspecialists, Ford also brings to life the physics of fission and fusion and provides a brief history of nuclear science from the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 to the ten-megaton explosion of “Mike” that obliterated a Pacific Island in 1952.Ford worked at both Los Alamos and Princeton's Project Matterhorn, and brings out Matterhorn's major, but previously unheralded contribution to the development of the H bomb. Outside the lab, he drove a battered Chevrolet around New Mexico, a bantam motorcycle across the country, and a British roadster around New Jersey. Part of the charm of Ford's book is the way in which he leavens his well-researched descriptions of the scientific work with brief tales of his life away from weapons.
Author: Tom Lewis
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 161200945X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
A thought-provoking analysis of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and what might have happened if conventional weapons were used instead. It has always been a difficult concept to stomach—that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, causing such horrific suffering and destruction, also brought about peace. Attitudes toward the event have changed through the years, from grateful relief that World War II was ended to widespread condemnation of the United States. Atomic Salvation investigates the full situation—examining documents from both Japanese and Allied sources, but also using in-depth analysis to extend beyond the mere recounting of statistics. It charts the full extent of the possible casualties on both sides had a conventional assault akin to D-Day gone ahead against Japan. The work is not concerned solely with the military necessity to use the bombs; it also investigates why that necessity has been increasingly challenged over the successive decades. Controversially, the book demonstrates that Japan would have suffered far greater casualties—likely around 28 million—if the nation had been attacked in the manner by which Germany was defeated: by amphibious assault, artillery and air attacks preceding infantry insertion, and finally by subduing the last of the defenders of the enemy capital. It also investigates the enormous political pressure placed on America as a result of their military situation. The Truman administration had little choice but to use the new weapon given the more than a million deaths that Allied forces would undoubtedly have suffered through conventional assault. By chartingreaction to the bombings over time, Atomic Salvation shows that there has been relentless pressure on the world to condemn what at the time was seen as the best, and only, military solution to end the conflict. Never has such an exhaustive analysis been made of the necessity behind bringing World War II to a halt.
Author: W.G. Van Dorn
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1453551565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
PREFACE On Saturday, 1 November 1952, at 0715 hours local time, and three days before General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected President, the United States detonated the world’s first “Super Bomb” at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands. This is an accurate historical account of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s participation in that test, an unpublicized event that changed for all time the lives of every person on earth. The first half of the book treats the conception and design of the Super at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, during which Scripps’s assistance is sought when a late development indicates that the Mike’s energy release might substantially exceed design expectations, thus mandating a drastic expansion of the Test Operation. The latter half describes the frantic efforts of 12,000 military and scientific personnel, living on a small Pacific atoll, to prepare for and conduct a test of Mike, the first thermonuclear device, to measure its effects, and to escape radioactive fallout from a mushroom cloud three times as large as the Atoll. The account is narrated by a fictitious participant who was in a position to know everything. But from this and future events, I came to know all of the players in this drama and the details of their experiences. I have preserved the names and titles of principal Task Force officers and scientists, and employed fictitious names for other participants. The entrapment of Jack Clark in the firing bunker actually occurred two years later during the BRAVO shot of Operation CASTLE. W. G. Van Dorn La Jolla, California Book Review “IVY-MIKE is a remarkable book. William Van Dorn has managed to combine a comprehensive description of the major historical activities associated with the Mike test with enough fictional narrative to make it appealing to the non-scientist:” -----Harold M. Agnew, Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1970-1979. Ivy-Mike offers a scientific slice of history and glimpse into the post World War-II philosophy regarding nuclear arms. The 1952 test at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands was not only a feat of science but also a feat of logistics. While an army of scientists and military scurried to secure the area prior to the test, late calculations suggested that the bomb’s power was significantly larger than expected. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography was asked to advise the team on alerting vulnerable areas without exposing the top-secret project. Author William Van Dorn, an oceanographer and tsunami expert who worked for the institution during this time, narrates the story as a fictional protagonist named Bob Ward. The author’s conversational writing style makes his complicated subject accessible, even to non-scientists. The account is thorough and historically significant, even as to day-to-day details. Threaded through the history lesson is a romance between Bob and his new love, “Suzy.” The relationship warms the story and, given the setting, this stylistic choice has the ring of verisimilitude. Altogether, Ivy-Mike is an illuminating historical tale. ---Kirkus Discoveries
Author: Joel Dobson
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 9781257769148
Category : Aircraft accidents
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
In 1961, a Strategic Air Command bomber, a B-52, disintegrated in mid-air near Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina. Two H-bombs, each hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, were thrown out, and started the arming process. This is the true story of that mission and the aftermath that could have been the worst man-made disaster in history. Eye-witnesses to the crash have unique stories to tell, as well as the last surviving crew member who made a miraculous escape, without an ejection seat. Also included is the story of the man who deactivated both 3.8 megaton bombs. And part of one of the bombs is still buried there, in a field near Faro, North Carolina.
Author: Alex Wellerstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022602038X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 558
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Book Description
"Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--
Author: Lynn Eden
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801435782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
Whole World on Fire focuses on a technical riddle wrapped in an organizational mystery: How and why, for more than half a century, did the U.S. government fail to predict nuclear fire damage as it drew up plans to fight strategic nuclear war?U.S. bombing in World War II caused massive fire damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but later war plans took account only of damage from blast; they completely ignored damage from atomic firestorms. Recently a small group of researchers has shown that for modern nuclear weapons the destructiveness and lethality of nuclear mass fire often--and predictably--greatly exceeds that of nuclear blast. This has major implications for defense policy: the U.S. government has underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons, Lynn Eden finds, and built far more warheads, and far more destructive warheads, than it needed for the Pentagon's war-planning purposes. How could this have happened? The answer lies in how organizations frame the problems they try to solve. In a narrative grounded in organization theory, science and technology studies, and primary historical sources (including declassified documents and interviews), Eden explains how the U.S. Air Force's doctrine of precision bombing led to the development of very good predictions of nuclear blast--a significant achievement--but for many years to no development of organizational knowledge about nuclear fire. Expert communities outside the military reinforced this disparity in organizational capability to predict blast damage but not fire damage. Yet some innovation occurred, and predictions of fire damage were nearly incorporated into nuclear war planning in the early 1990s. The author explains how such a dramatic change almost happened, and why it did not. Whole World on Fire shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't do well, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences. In a sweeping conclusion, Eden shows the implications of the analysis for understanding such things as the sinking of the Titanic, the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and the poor fireproofing in the World Trade Center.
