Command and Control

The machine was called MANIAC: The effort to create a hydrogen bomb not only depended on the use of electronic computers for high-speed calculations, it also helped to bring those machines into existence. For the inextricable link between thermonuclear weapon design and postwar computer science in the United States, see “Nuclear Weapons Laboratories and the Development of Supercomputing,” in Donald MacKenzie, Knowing Machines: Essays on Technical Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), pp. 99–129; “Why Build Computers?: The Military Role in Computer Research,” in Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 43–73; Francis H. Harlow and N. Metropolis, “Computing and Computers: Weapons Simulation Leads to the Computer Era,” Los Alamos Science, Winter/Spring 1983, pp. 132–41. Herbert L. Anderson, “Metropolis, Monte Carlo, and the MANIAC,” Los Alamos Science, Fall 1986, pp. 96–107; N. Metropolis, “The Age of Computing: A Personal Memoir,” Daedalus, A New Era in Computation, vol. 121, no. 1, (1992), pp. 119–30; and Fitzpatrick, “Igniting the Elements,” pp. 99–173.

a mushroom cloud that rose about twenty-seven miles: See “Progress Report to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Part III: Weapons,” United States Atomic Energy Commission, June Through November, 1952 (TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 5.

The fireball… was three and a half miles wide: Cited in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume 3, p. 67.

more than a mile in diameter and fifteen stories deep: See Appendix A, Summary of Available Crater Data, in “Operation Castle, Project 3.2: Crater Survey, Headquarters Field Command, Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, June 1955 (SECRET/FORMERLY RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 60.

yield of the device was 10.4 megatons: Cited in “Operation Ivy 1952,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA 6036F, December 1, 1982, p. 17.

“The war of the future would be one”: For Truman’s remarks, see “Text of President’s Last State of the Union Message to Congress, Citing New Bomb Tests,” New York Times, January 8, 1953.

Project Vista, a top secret study: For a good account of the study, see David C. Elliott, “Project Vista and Nuclear Weapons in Europe,” International Security, vol. 11, no. 1 (Summer 1986), pp. 163–83.

an allied army with 54 divisions: Cited in May et al., “History of Strategic Arms Competition,” Pt 1, p. 140.

thought to have 175 divisions: Cited in ibid., p. 139.

a “trip wire,” a “plate glass wall”: Ibid., p. 172.

bring the “battle back to the battlefield”: Quoted in Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Vintage 2006), p. 445.

“preventing attacks on friendly cities”: Quoted in Elliott, “Project Vista,” p. 172.

“Successful offense brings victory”: “Remarks: General Curtis E. LeMay at Commander’s Conference,” Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, January 1956 (TOP SECRET/Declassified), NSA, p. 17.

the “counterforce” strategy: For the thinking behind counterforce, see T. F. Walkowicz, “Strategic Concepts for the Nuclear Age,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 299, Air Power and National Security, May 1955, pp. 118–27, and Alfred Goldberg, “A Brief Survey of the Evolution of Ideas About Counterforce,” prepared for U.S. Air Force Project RAND, Memorandum RM-5431-PR, October 1967 (revised March 1981), NSA.

“Offensive air power must now be aimed”: Quoted in Futrell, Ideas, Volume 1, p. 441.

“for us to build enough destructive power”: Quoted in Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 3.

“In the event of hostilities”: “A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary on Basic National Security Policy,” NSC 162/2, October 30, 1953 (TOP SECRET/declassified), p. 22.

“maintain a massive capability to strike back”: “Text of President Eisenhower’s State of the Union,” Washington Post, January 8, 1954.

“a great capacity to retaliate, instantly”: “Text of Dulles’ Statement on Foreign Policy of Eisenhower Administration,” New York Times, January 13, 1954.

“massive retaliation”: The name of the new strategy obscured the fact that General LeMay and the Strategic Air Command had no intention of allowing the United States to be hit first. For Eisenhower’s views about nuclear weapons and the threat that the Soviet Union seemed to pose, see Samuel F. Wells, Jr., “The Origins of Massive Retaliation,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 96, no. 1 (Spring 1981), pp. 31–52; and Richard K. Betts, “A Nuclear Golden Age? The Balance Before Parity,” International Security, vol. 11, no. 3 (Winter 1986), pp. 3–32.