15 Minutes General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation

by Keeney, L. Douglas

• ISBN13: 9781250002082
• ISBN10: 1250002087
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-02-14
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Summary

During the Cold War, a flight crew had 15 minutes to get their nukeladen plane in the air from the moment Soviet bombers were detected. This is the chilling true story of the incredibly risky steps our military took to protect us from that scenario, including:* Over two thousand loaded bombers that crossed American skies. They sometimes crashed and at least nine times resulted in nuclear weapons being accidentally dropped* A system that would use timers and rockets to launch missiles even after everyone was dead* Disastrous atmospheric nuclear testing including the horrific runaway bomb-that fooled scientists and put thousands of men in uniform in the center of a cloud of hot fallout* A plan to use dry lake beds to rebuild and launch a fighting force in the aftermath of nuclear warBased on formerly classified documents, military records, press accounts, interviews and over 10 years of research, this is one of the most important works on the atom bomb ever written.

Author Biography

L. Douglas Keeney is a military historian and researcher. He is the cofounder of The Military Channel and is the author of ten books of military history. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Inextinguishable	p. 1
Prologue: War	p. 5
1945 Necessities	p. 7
1945 Seeds	p. 16
1945 Understanding Hiroshima	p. 23
1946 Disorganization	p. 31
1947 Becoming a Weapon	p. 38
1948 Becoming a War Command	p. 42
1949 Transformations	p. 54
1950 The First Lost Bomb	p. 60
1950 Truman's Hedge	p. 63
1951 Atomic Cocktails	p. 74
1951 Rogue Waves	p. 82
1952 Asphyxiated	p. 85
1953 The Sword and the Shield	p. 94
1954 Tower Four	p. 102
1954 Weather Island	p. 107
1954 Blunt Force	p. 112
1954 The Rock	p. 120
1954 Runaway Bomb	p. 126
1954 Material Condition Able	p. 131
1954 Burned Out	p. 134
1954 Rescue	p. 139
1955 One Bomb Apart	p. 147
1955 Tower Four	p. 150
1956 The Two-man Rule	p. 154
1956 Grape Babies	p. 169
1957 Cocked Bombers	p. 171
1957 An Engineering Nightmare	p. 188
1958 Hot Cargo	p. 192
1958 Bombs-on-base	p. 197
1958 Irretrievably Lost	p. 211
1959 Like a Ship	p. 214
1959 A Jumpy, Alert-happy Force	p. 217
1960 Hurricane Donna	p. 226
1960 Fire Is Gravy	p. 233
1961 One-point Detonation	p. 244
1961 The Clobber Factor	p. 248
1961 Collapse	p. 261
1961 Tapping	p. 271
1962 DEFCON	p. 276
1962 Beer Cans	p. 285
1963 The Dead Hand	p. 288
1964 Killing a Society	p. 296
1965 Forever Lamed	p. 302
1966 Complete Weapons	p. 305
1966 Press Targets	p. 311
1967 Vietnam	p. 315
1968 13.8 Minutes	p. 317
Epilogue	p. 320
The Language of the Cold War	p. 323
Sources	p. 333
Index	p. 353
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