Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The test of this inhuman weapon (called “Bravo”) was announced to the world by the AEC as the test of an H-bomb (it was really a U-bomb, or a “fission-fusion-fission bomb”), and for almost a year (until February 15, 1955) its real nature was concealed by the AEC, apparently at the insistence of the new Republican chairman, Lewis L. Strauss. Secrecy from Strauss left the world with two mistaken ideas: (1) that the successful thermonuclear bomb was simply an H-bomb and (2) that it was, accordingly, made on the lines Teller had been following in 1945-1951. From these errors partisan inference could conclude that our delay in achieving an H-bomb resulted from the restraints placed on Teller’s work during the Truman Administration. This, of course, was not believed by the atomic scientists, but seemed convincing to many well-informed persons from the strange fact that William L. Laurence, science editor of The New York Times , spread these two mistaken ideas.

As the best-known scientific journalist in America, Laurence’s stories were accepted as true by the ordinary well-informed public (though not by scientists). Laurence, the only newspaper reporter allowed to see the test at Alamagordo or the nuclear explosion on Japan, wrote a book on the H-bomb, which he called The Hell Bomb , in 1950. It was full of misleading ideas, forgivable at that date, but totally erroneous in following years, when the book continued to be read. It stated that the H-bomb would be exploded by direct fusion of deuterium and tritium, a method which it attributed to Teller. Years later, in The New York Times , Laurence still insisted that the test of March, 1954, was not a fission-fusion-fission (F-F-F-bomb) but was simply a fission-fusion H-bomb and not a U-bomb. This version of “Bravo” apparently originated with Strauss, who denied that “Bravo” was a U-bomb, and explained the surprisingly large noxious fallout as a consequence of irradiation of the coral reef on which the bomb exploded. This story entrenched in the public mind that Teller was the “Father of the H-bomb,” that he had been held back to the injury of American security by Soviet sympathizers during the Truman Administration, and that there was some basis for the AEC condemnation of Oppenheimer as a security risk in June 1954. Behind much of this was the air force, allied to Teller, Laurence, and Strauss, and very opposed to Oppenheimer. This opposition arose because of Oppenheimer’s work for diversification of weapons (which was regarded by the air force as a treasonable diversion of both money and nuclear materials from it to the other services) and for his efforts to get smaller nuclear warheads. These latter paved the way for long-range missiles, for tactical nuclear weapons, and for the Polaris nuclear submarine which supplanted the air force manned bombers and, by the middle 1960’s, threatened to shift America’s primary deterrence of Soviet aggression from SAC to the navy.

It should be recorded that Teller had little to do with the actual making of the successful thermonuclear bomb. As usual, he was very restless and felt hampered at Los Alamos in 1951 and spent most of his time lobbying with the air force and the Radiation Laboratory trying to get a new second-weapons laboratory of his own. To free himself for this activity, he left Los Alamos in November 1951. When the AEC refused to establish a second laboratory, Teller went to the air force and obtained its support for a second-weapons laboratory, the so-called Livermore Laboratory attached to E. O. Lawrence’s Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, California. This was established in July 1952. All the thermonuclear tests and the final H-bomb which we have mentioned were achievements of Los Alamos, whose operations, under Norris Bradbury, Teller disapproved. Teller himself was present at none of the tests of the lithium bomb, and his Livermore Laboratory did not participate in the tests.

None of this was in fact as it was built up in public opinion in the period 1951-1955. The public record on these matters was rectified in 1955 by Teller, by Laurence, and by the AEC, but by that time Oppenheimer had been condemned, the Republicans were in office, and the story of subversion in the American government had become an established American myth, along with the thermonuclear bomb as a hydrogen bomb and Teller as its father.

These myths were, of course, not believed by the nuclear scientists, a fact that helped to intensify the suspicion the radical Right held for them and for all educated people. The truth about “Bravo” had been revealed to the nuclear scientists of the world, including the Russians, almost immediately after the test and in a most dramatic fashion.

Shortly after the “Bravo” blast at Bikini, a small Japanese fishing boat, The Lucky Dragon, was caught in the edge of the lethal radiations from the test. It was, indeed a lucky Dragon for only one of the crew subsequently died, although the rest were sick for months. The vessel was ninety miles east of the blast, but, had it been only ten miles farther south, all the crew would have died horrible deaths. Two weeks after the blast, when the doomed vessel reached Japan, Professor Kenjiro Kimura, the first discoverer of Uranium-237, found this rare isotope in the fallout ash all over The Lucky Dragon . The U-237 could have come only from fission of U-239. This discovery, published in Japanese in August 1954, revealed that “Bravo” had been a gigantic U-bomb whose deadly nature resided more in its radioactive fallout than in its heat and blast.

Under the tight blanket of the secrecy of Strauss, the scientists who knew asked themselves: Why did the AEC make such a “dirty” bomb? Why was it all kept such a secret? The answer now seems clear: the Soviet H-bomb explosion of August 1953 showed that the Russians were ahead of us in the H-bomb race. This the AEC could not publicly admit. This disadvantage had to be overcome as rapidly as possible, and the best way to do so was to shift from blast warfare to radioactivity warfare. The movement in this direction, which was fortunately only temporary (1953-1956), was intensified by the early, and very secret, stages of the missile race. Late in 1952, immediately following the test of “Mike,” John von Neumann headed a committee which recommended an intensified effort to develop a long-range missile (ICBM). At that time the American effort in missiles was restricted very largely to variations of the German V-2 weapon and to lesser rockets such as Aerobee and Wac Corporal. The new effort soon showed that longer range would be easier to achieve than greater accuracy and that it would be very difficult to build a missile which could be depended upon to hit within ten miles of target. At such a distance, blast, even at ten megatons, would do little damage, and if such targets were to be knocked out, this would have to be done by a spreading cloud of radioactive fallout and not by the blast. Hence the U-bomb.

The U-bomb, concealed from public view by secrecy and by misleading statements from AEC, usually from Strauss, remained the weapon of last resort in the American arsenal throughout the Dulles era. The launching of the first “Polaris” submarine in January 1954, six weeks before “Bravo,” did not change this situation. The first American test of an airdrop lithium bomb in May 1956 was a delayed fall from a B-52 jet bomber at 55,000 feet; it exploded at 15,000 feet in a four-mile-wide fireball, but was almost an equal distance off its target.

To prepare public opinion to accept use of the U-bomb, if it became necessary, Strauss sponsored a study of radioactive fallout whose conclusion was prejudged by calling it “Project Sunshine.” By selective release of some evidence and strict secrecy of other information, the Strauss group tried to establish in public opinion that there was no real danger to anyone from nuclear fallout even in all-out nuclear war. This gave rise to a controversy between the scientists of the BAS group, led by Ralph E. Lapp, and the Eisenhower Administration, led by Strauss, on the nature and danger of fallout and of nuclear warfare in general.