Book Review: A Fiery Peace in a Cold War

I've got a touch of the blues right now.  For those who have been keeping up with my wife's Facebook posts, you'll know that our dog, Sadie, is missing.  She took off out of the yard Tuesday morning (I think it was Tuesday, but since I work nights, it is hard to keep my days straight sometimes) and hasn't come back as she usually does.  She likes to wander a little bit, but knows her way home if left alone. 

Sadie, our blonde Cairn Terrier.

We suspect she might have been picked up by somebody in the neighborhood.  My wife is calling the Animal Shelter on a regular basis, and my daughter and I went out and canvassed the neighborhood (as much as her young legs would hold out) Wednesday afternoon.  Put up fliers all over the place and asked people we saw if they had seen our dog.  My wife says, and I agree, that we don't believe she has come to any harm, but she is still gone, and that is distressing.  If you pray, I'd ask your prayers for her sake, that if it is God's Will, Sadie will find her way home safe and sound... and soon.

Ok, here's that book review.

Source: Amazon.com

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon, by Neil Sheehan

From the book’s cover:

From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history–and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever’s quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust rather than to be fired in anger.



Sheehan melds biography and history, politics and science, to create a sweeping narrative that transports the reader back and forth from individual drama to world stage. The narrative takes us from Schriever’s boyhood in Texas as a six-year-old immigrant from Germany in 1917 through his apprenticeship in the open-cockpit biplanes of the Army Air Corps in the 1930s and his participation in battles against the Japanese in the South Pacific during the Second World War. On his return, he finds a new postwar bipolar universe dominated by the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Inspired by his technological vision, Schriever sets out in 1954 to create the one class of weapons that can enforce peace with the Russians–intercontinental ballistic missiles that are unstoppable and can destroy the Soviet Union in thirty minutes. In the course of his crusade, he encounters allies and enemies among some of the most intriguing figures of the century: John von Neumann, the Hungarian-born mathematician and mathematical physicist, who was second in genius only to Einstein; Colonel Edward Hall, who created the ultimate ICBM in the Minuteman missile, and his brother, Theodore Hall, who spied for the Russians at Los Alamos and hastened their acquisition of the atomic bomb; Curtis LeMay, the bomber general who tried to exile Schriever and who lost his grip on reality, amassing enough nuclear weapons in his Strategic Air Command to destroy the entire Northern Hemisphere; and Hitler’s former rocket maker, Wernher von Braun, who along with a colorful, riding-crop-wielding Army general named John Medaris tried to steal the ICBM program.

The most powerful men on earth are also put into astonishing relief: Joseph Stalin, the cruel, paranoid Soviet dictator who spurred his own scientists to build him the atomic bomb with threats of death; Dwight Eisenhower, who backed the ICBM program just in time to save it from the bureaucrats; Nikita Khrushchev, who brought the world to the edge of nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and John Kennedy, who saved it.

Schriever and his comrades endured the heartbreak of watching missiles explode on the launching pads at Cape Canaveral and savored the triumph of seeing them soar into space. In the end, they accomplished more than achieving a fiery peace in a cold war. Their missiles became the vehicles that opened space for America.

Synopsis:

A short synopsis for a long book?  I think I can do that.  After all, this puppy covers a lot of ground.  The book starts by going over biographical information on Bernard Schriever and the route taken in his youth that placed this individual as the head of the U.S. Air Force ICBM program, which would ultimately be the service that fielded the United States strategic defense of nuclear tipped missiles to counter the Soviet Union’s Strategic Rocket Forces.

The book takes a trip through the historical nature of the development of ballistic missiles, intertwining the history of the USAF in World War II and the major personalities that came out of that conflict.  These men would go on to be the commanders who were responsible for the Air Force’s role during the Cold War, which pitted the Soviets against the United States in a battle of capacity for conflict, if not actual cataclysmic conflict.  The various proxy wars and international incidents that were key parts of the early Cold War are also addressed.


Neil Sheehan / Source: CharlieRose.com


The book gives in-depth information on a plethora of individuals and organizations that took part in the Cold War as relating to ballistic missile development.  Along the way, we learn about such things as the design of the German V-2 rocket and how it influenced the design of early post-WW2 U.S. missile systems (specifically, project Red Stone, which was a U.S. copy of the V-2), and the variety of programs that sprang from the U.S.’s need to build a missile capable of keeping the Soviets off-balance and ensuring that Communist aggression could not be turned to rampant military adventurism by the leaders in the Kremlin.  The inter-service rivalry between the Air Force and the U.S. Army over who would control the future of American ballistic missiles is also discussed at length.  And the successes and failures that both services went through, leading up to the successful deployment of U.S. ICBMs came about and, as an offshoot of that program, the Space Race became more than just a science fiction fantasy.

What I liked about it:

Let me see...  I liked the fact that the book was chock full of interesting historical accounts from both the Second World War and also the Cold War.  I find that period fascinating, so that is to be expected.  And the material covered is well written, for the most part.  The author did extensive research on his subject matter.  The biographical information and the data on the overall conflict that both WWII and the Cold War represents was well documented.

The recounting of the history of the American ICBM program (which was originally named the IBMS program, but was renamed to keep it from being confused with the International Business Machine company - IBM) was also thorough and very well covered.  In the book Red November, the political climate that was present during the period of ICBM development was given in detail, as well as the Russian perspective on the issue.  A Fiery Peace in a Cold War spent more time on the key players who made the ICBM program happen.  There is still much politics, but it is more from the operational, rather than the executive, position.  

Schriever’s role is given attention, but the book is certainly not solely a biographical sketch of the man.  Such events as the creation process of the company that would come to be known as TRW, a major player in the manufacture of ICBMs whose name I recall from my days spent hanging out in the offices of Logicon when I was a kid  (a subcontractor on ICBM development, but that place and my childhood involvement in it is a whole other story), are covered in one of the many tangents that the author takes while recounting the process that led to ICBM deployment.  TRW is only one of a wide group of companies and academic institutions whose role in the ICBM’s birth and teenage years are covered.

In fact, as I’ll mention in What I didn’t like about it:, the book covers so much information that it is sometimes difficult to keep it all straight.  It has a tendency to go off on a subject in a tangent-like manner, which can be viewed as either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you feel about it.  Those tangents are full of fascinating stories about various parts of the growth of the industry that built the missiles, as well as (as I’ve mentioned) the reasons they came into existence in the first place.

What I learned, if anything:

I learned a lot.  In fact, every night I learned something new as I covered the virtual pages of this book through my headphones.  Where to start?  I can’t possibly give any justice to all the stuff this book has between its covers.

The Nedelin catastrophe, named for Soviet Marshall Mitrofan Nedelin, who was responsible for the deaths of at least 150 people, including himself, when he ordered technicians to skip a critical safety step of de-fueling a rocket on the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on October 24, 1960.  Those things in the bottom right corner are people on fire who are trying to escape from the inferno that the accident caused.  According to Sheehan's book, this disaster was the worst in the history of ICBM development programs on either side of the Iron Curtain. / Source: Aerospaceweb.org

There was a lot of information on the people who were crucial components of the Cold War in both the United States, and to a much lesser extent, the Soviet Union.  I hadn’t realized that in the book 11/22/63, by Stephen King, that the supposed Vice Presidency of General Curtis LeMay, the head of the Strategic Air Command and the inspiration for General Jack D. Ripper in Kubrick’s 1964 classic Dr. Strangelove, was actually on the ticket with Governor Wallace for the presidency of the United States.  In that book, when the hero saves JFK’s life, it sets in motion a string of alternations to our known history that includes Wallace and LeMay being in the highest offices in the land, so to speak.  Crazy!  It was based on reality, though thankfully Wallace/LeMay didn’t get elected.

What else?  There is a lot of information on the nature of the United States strategic readiness in the early years of the Cold War.  For one thing, the U.S. Strategic Air Command was actually a paper tiger at one point early in the conflict.  In the mid 50s, the air force was given a test mission to do a mock nighttime bombing run on Wright Patterson air base in Ohio.  The test indicated that all the bombers that took part in the mission missed their targets.  Every single one.  And many of the aircraft tasked to be part of the simulated attack had to abort due to mechanical issues and never even reached the target.  If we’d have had to go to war against the Soviets at the time, it appears we’d have been as bad off as we now know they were.  The mission was immediately classified Top Secret, so as to keep the Soviets from finding out that it was a disaster.  

These two little snippets I just covered are just from a chapter or two of the book’s content.  As I said, there is a great deal of useful information here, and I learned quite a bit from reading this book.  Here’s another quick fact I hadn’t really appreciated before, though I was vaguely aware of it.  There is much historical documentation on the fallacy of the “Bomber Gap” that the U.S. Defense and Intelligence Communities perpetuated during the Cold War.  This Bomber Gap was a way in which to promote the continued growth of American high-tech aircraft, and resulted in billions upon billions of dollars being lavished on the United States Air Force in an attempt to keep us current with a perceived threat that really didn’t exist.  Until the 1980s and the deployment of the Tu-160 bomber, the Soviets never had a significant number of jet-powered bomber aircraft to do an aerial nuclear strike upon the U.S.  The Tu-95 Bear was (and still is) formidable, but it would have been susceptible to U.S. interceptors to an extent that a mass bombing mission would have not given the results that a similar bomber strike by the United States would have achieved.

On the other hand, the U.S. had what could be called a “Missile Gap” with the Soviet Union.  At one point the U.S. was behind in the number of effective nuclear tipped ballistic missiles, and the Soviets had, for the most part, decided to invest their nuclear forces in their Strategic Rocket Forces (ICBMs).  The Soviets had more medium range missiles, technically called Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs).  These could be considered more dangerous than the big continent-spanning missiles.  They were more likely to be used to attack regional targets, and were less under the direct supervision of the nation’s leadership.  A nervous or overly aggresive general could potentially find a way to use them, thus causing a nuclear hollocaust (the warheads on IRBMs were five or six times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb).  The fact that the U.S. could only stop Soviet aggression in Europe by using nuclear weapons to cripple Soviet ground forces was the catalyst for this development, and is the framework that led to the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) which made the Cold War so scary for those who lived through it.

One other thing, an anecdote that came later in the book, was also fascinating to me.  I never thought about how complex a missile is, but these two simple screw-ups really put the thing into an appropriate frame of reference.  The first USAF ballistic missile, Thor-101, blew up on the launch pad after only lifting a scant distant off the ground.  The scientists responsible for the launch went over the accident meticulously, and after hundreds of hours of work, they finally discovered what went wrong.  The hoses used to fuel the missile with its volatile liquid oxygen catalyst were dragged, connection port down, through sand.  A movie reel of the preparation for launch showed two technicians dragging the hoses to their connection point.  After doing an experiment to see what would happen if sand got into the valve that mixed the liquid O2 with the alcohol fuel, they conclusively proved that even a few grains of sand would cause the missile to blow up as it had.

The other anecdote that was interesting to me was another human error that led to another test missile, Thor-103 I believe it was, blowing up.  The range safety officer, who was in charge of hitting the self destruct button if the missile veered off course and looked like it would go toward populated parts of Florida (this was all done at Cape Canaveral), read an instrument wrong and failed to double check his other instruments and then actually look (with his eyes) to see what the missile was physically doing before hitting the abort button and blowing the rocket up.  The problem?  The guy who had installed the wiring for the gauge that the man was taking his readings from had plugged it in backwards.  It showed the missile going toward populated regions, instead of off over the ocean as it was supposed to.  Another extremely expensive and easily avoided mistake.

Anyway, like I said, the book is full of interesting stories and fascinating facts from the early Cold War.  I could fill up quite a bit more of this post with gleaned from my reading, but I’ll say instead that if these few tidbits I’ve passed on interested you, you’d probably enjoy the book.  On the other hand (see below)...

What I didn’t like about it:

A complaint I could make would be that the book begins as a biography of Schriever, and then goes off from that and delves deeply into the historical context behind Schriever’s mission as the man who would be father of the American ICBM.  This diversion was not a bad thing, in my opinion, but it could be argued that the section on the history of both the inter-war years and WW2 was drawn out more than necessary.  

For myself, I enjoyed the author’s input on the period, but when the book cover says it is about “Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon,” you tend to think it will focus more on those two things and not go into so much back-story.  However, as I said, I did enjoy this section well enough, and so my complaint would be minimal.  

Also, and this is also a two-sided gripe, the author has a habit of covering all the ins and outs and the details of every little thing in the book.  This can be a problem, as sometimes it feels like the book is off track.  I guess the best way to put it is that it is “thorough.”  And this makes the book kind of long in its read time.  I think that Sheehan could have been a bit more brief and still got the point across just as well.  But that’s my take on it.  Other than that, I can’t think of anything in particular that I didn’t like about this book.


A variety of ICBMs in scale with a person to the far left.  Makes you feel kinda small, doesn't it? / Source: Wikipedia.com

Recommendation:

As someone who is primarily a historian of the Soviet Union, I am also by necessity someone who studies the twentieth century.  This book covers a lot of the important topics relating to the Cold War, which was a major part of the twentieth century.  Besides that, it’s a good book; well written and full of fascinating details about people who played key roles in the Cold War.  I’d recommend it, with the understanding that it is a sort of hybrid of a biography and a history book, and thus can be a bit dry if you’re not into the subject material presented.  And further, it is a long read, or seems that way, since it goes off on so many tangents related to the overall topic.  For me, I liked and would recommend it.


 Maybe tomorrow when I'm home, I'll add a video clip here from Youtube of one of the Thor missile accidents.  For now, I just need to add the Parting Comment and get back to work.
 


Source: NationalParksTraverler.com

A bit of gallows humor.  Some enterprising ICBM crew with nothing better to do went and painted this on the bunker door to their (now decommissioned) underground launch facility.  The book did talk about the revolution that the solid fueled Minuteman missile was, and how it could go at a moments notice.  Even Dominos couldn't beat that.

P.S. I was unable to find a clip of a Thor missile accident, but here is some newsreel footage of an Atlas being launched, which was the ICBM project that Schriever and his crew worked on.