The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes, and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History

13 LeMay attended the Japanese surrender ceremonies: Ibid., p. 390.

13 the atomic bombs had been impressive but anticlimactic: Curtis LeMay, U.S. Air Force Oral History, January 1965 (AFHRA). See also Coffey, Iron Eagle, p. 179; Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, p. 25; Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun, pp. 17–24.

13 In the months after VJ Day: Background on the AAF drive for independence comes from Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, pp. 27–34; “LeMay Discusses Air War of Future,” The New York Times, November 20, 1945, p. 3; John Stuart, “Army Air Leaders Want U.S. on Guard for Sudden Attack,” The New York Times, October 2, 1945, p. 1; and author's interview with Jerome Martin, August 26, 2005.

13 The famed pilot Jimmy Doolittle: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals

, pp. 30–31.

14 “Being peace-loving and weak”: Stuart, “Army Air Leaders Want U.S. on Guard for Sudden Attack.”

14 With the Army's blessing: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, p. 31.

14 The Air Force started life: E-mail, Jerome Martin to author, March 10, 2008.

14 they saw SAC as the key: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, pp. 30–33.

14 Not that there was much to grab: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, pp. 27–29; author's interview with Jerome Martin, August 26, 2005; Kohn and Harahan, Strategic Air Warfare, pp. 73–

75, 82.

14 “We just walked away”:

Kohn and Harahan, Strategic Air Warfare, p. 74.

14 “We started from nothing”: Ibid., p. 82.

14 SAC floundered: Ibid., pp. 73–78; and Jerome Martin interview, August 26, 2005. For a deeper discussion of SAC's postwar troubles, see Harry R. Borowski, A Hollow Threat: Strategic Air Power and Containment before Korea (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982).

14 But by 1948: A good introduction to the Berlin Crisis and the early Cold War can be found in John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), chap. 3.

15 On October 19, 1948: Lloyd, A Cold War Legacy, p. 666.

15 The situation shocked him: Curtis LeMay, U.S. Air Force Oral History Interview, March 9, 1971 (AFHRA); Kohn and Harahan, Strategic Air Warfare

, pp. 78–84; Coffey, Iron Eagle, pp. 271–

276; LeMay, Mission with LeMay, pp. 429–447; Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, pp. 58–63.

15 “We had to be ready”: Curtis LeMay, U.S. Air Force Oral History Interview, March 9, 1971, p.

29 (AFHRA).

15 LeMay sprang into action: LeMay's transformation of SAC is discussed in Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, pp. 59–63; Kohn and Harahan, Strategic Air Warfare, pp. 78–84; Karen Salisbury,

“Defense: Bombers at the Ready,” Newsweek, April 18, 1949, pp. 24–26.

15 Power was not well liked: Coffey, Iron Eagle

, p. 276; Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, pp.

81–82.

16 “My goal”: Kohn and Harahan, Strategic Air Warfare, p. 84.

16 he had created a religion: LeMay explains his theories on deterrence in his autobiography, Mission with LeMay, as well the oral histories he recorded for the Air Force. In Strategic Air Warfare, p. 97, Kohn and Harahan recorded a telling exchange between LeMay and Kohn: KOHN: Was it difficult because it was peacetime, or was there no sense of peacetime in SAC… LEMAY: It was wartime.

17 The year 1952 began the golden age: A detailed discussion of SAC's rise to power can be found in Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, chaps. 3 and 4. For Eisenhower's views on nuclear war, see Gaddis, The Cold War, pp. 66–68. For an overview of Americans' attitudes toward nuclear weapons in the 1950s, see Allan M. Winkler, Life under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), chap. 3.