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Abstract
The idea of ‘clean’ bombs, nuclear weapons with a reduced amount of radioactive fallout resulting from their fission part, has met much ridicule since its public inauguration in 1956. Many scholars have regarded the bombs as a propaganda tool, stopping short of analyzing their role in the transformative phase of US nuclear strategy in the 1950s. This paper reexamines the clean bomb episode through 1958, shedding light upon the dynamic relationship between the development of nuclear weapons technology and the evolution of nuclear strategy from massive retaliation to flexible response. It also discusses the mechanism and momentum of nuclear weapons technology innovation until the US suspended nuclear testing in late 1958.
Notes
1Press release by Lewis L. Strauss, 19 July 1956, in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 12/7 (Citation1956), 263.
2Ralph E. Lapp, ‘The “Humanitarian” H-Bomb’, Ibid. 264.
3Chuck Hansen, The Swords of Armageddon: History of the US Development of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (Sunnyvale, CA: Chukelea Publications Citation1995) Vol. V, 221.
4Rejecting the technological determinism which argues that the development of technology simply follows its inner logic and reaches its ‘best model’, many scholars have examined the development of technology as a socially- and politically-constructed process. For the technology with regard to nuclear weapons, Michael H. Armacost's work, The Politics of Weapons Innovation: The Thor-Jupiter Controversy (New York: Columbia UP Citation1969) is a classic in examining the inter-service rivalry which shaped the development of American ballistic missiles in the 1950s. Donald MacKenzie, in his book Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Citation1990), advances the theme and demonstrates how a technological choice of the American ballistic missile guidance system was defined as much by politics and the culture of the military and scientists as by the technological necessity.
5Neal Rosendorf in his article sheds light upon the ‘clean’ bomb issue and Dulles' attitudes toward it. ‘John Foster Dulles's Nuclear Schizophrenia’, in John Lewis Gaddis et al., eds., Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy since 1945 (Oxford; NewYork: OUP Citation1999), 62–86.
6Robert A. Divine, Blowing on the Wind: The Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1954–1960 (New York: Oxford UP Citation1978), 81–83, 147–52, 192–93; Benjamin Patrick Greene, ‘Crucified on a Cross of Atoms: Eisenhower, Science, and the Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1945–1963’, PhD Dissertation, Stanford University, Citation2004, 147–48, 189–91, 201, 224; Richard G. Hewlett, and Jack M. Holl, Atoms For Peace and War, 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press Citation1989), 346–48, 398–402; Martha J. Smith, ‘The Nuclear Testing Policies of the Eisenhower Administration, 1953–60’, PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, Citation1997, 308–18, 351–56. Charles Appleby Jr. extends his discussion to the clean bomb and its implication on nuclear strategy. See Charles Appleby Jr., ‘Eisenhower and Arms Control, 1953–1961: A Balance of Risks’, PhD Dissertation, John Hopkins University, Citation1987, 240–43.
7Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. VI, 285.
8Ibid. Vol. IV, 320.
9David Vernard Bradley, No Place to Hide (Boston: Little Brown Citation19483); Jonathan M. Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press Citation1994).
10Hewlett and Hall, Atoms for Peace and War, 144–56; Richard L. Miller, Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing (New York: Free Press Citation1986), 156–87.
11Memo, ‘What is the Significance, insofar as Local Fallout is Concerned, of Reducing the Fission Yield to the Order of 5%?’ enclosed in Starbird to the Commissioners, 25 April 1958, Dept. of Energy, Nevada Office, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA [hereafter DOE/NV], No.0032109.
12From Churchill to Eisenhower, 8 March 1954, C (54) 151, Cabinet Record series, Public Record Office, Kew, United Kingdom.
14Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. VI, 302.
13David Alan Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960’, International Security 7/4 (Spring Citation1983), 36–37.
15Ibid. Vol. VI, 315–16.
16Ibid. Vol. VI, 329, Vol. V, 7.
17 Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS], 1952–1954, Vol. II (Washington DC: USGPO 1984), 1379–80.
18Ibid., 1428.
19Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 148.
20Herbert F. York, Making Weapons, Talking Peace: A Physicist's Odyssey from Hiroshima to Geneva (New York: Basic Books Citation1987), 75.
21Ibid., 76–77.
22Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 61.
23Ibid., 64–65.
24Lapp, ‘The “Humanitarian” H-Bomb’. By Nov. 1954, the LASL did a theoretical study about a possible ‘clean’ versions of the TX-21, indicating that ‘clean’ versions would suffer a significant yield reduction, possibly as much as 66 to 75 per cent. Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 87.
25Ibid. Vol. V, 91–92. Lynn Eden argues that there was also a conspicuous neglect of the factor of fire in the military planning of a nuclear war. See Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP Citation2004).
26Starbird to the Chairman, 22 Jan. 1957, enclosed to Note by the Secretary, 23 Jan.1957, DOE/NV, No.0074344; Hansen, Swords of Armageddon (note 3) Vol. V, 21–22, 91–92.
27Ibid., 90.
28Ibid., 103–4.
29Bradbury to Fields, 15 April, 1955, enclosed in Note by the Secretary, 18 May 1955, DOE/NV,No. 0074365.
30Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 120–22.
31Ibid. Vol. III, 304–5, 311, Vol. VI, 16.
32Ibid. Vol. V, 225.
33Gregg Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (New York: Henry Holt Citation2002), 308.
34For the information on Shot TEWA, visit the Radiochemistry Society's website at <www.radiochemistry.org/history/nuke_tests/redwing>.
35Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 215.
36For the Stevenson campaign, see Divine, Blowing in the Wind, 86–102, 106–12; Greene, ‘Crucified on a Cross of Atoms’, 137–71; Hewlett and Hall, Atoms for Peace and War, 338–40, 364–70.
37 New York Times, 29 June 1956; Hewlett and Hall, Atoms for Peace and War, 345–46. Also see Peter Goodchild, Edward Teller: The Real Dr Strangelove (London: Weidenfeld Citation2004), 266–67.
38Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 205–6. Also see Memo, ‘Comments by Dr. W.E. Bradbury on Proposed Public Statement on Development of Clean Weapons’, enclosed in McCool to the Commissioners, 7 June, 1956, DOE/NV, No.0074094.
39Teller to Starbird, 5 June 1956, enclosed in McCool to the Commissioners, 7 June 1956, DOE/NV, No.0074094.
40Transcript, meeting 1214, 11 July 1956, Lewis L. Strauss Papers [hereafter LLSP], Atomic Energy Commission series [AECS], Box 26 G, Fallout Correspondence 1956, Herbert Hoover Library, West Branch, Iowa, USA [HHL].
41Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 199.
42Ibid.
43Transcript, meeting 1214 (note 41); Draft Minutes, meeting 1215, 12 July 1956, LLSP, AECS, Box 26 G, Fallout Correspondence 1956, HHL.
44Note, informal meeting, 19 July 1956, LLSP, AECS, Box 26 G., Fallout Correspondence 1956, HHL.
45Goodchild, Edward Teller, 267.
46 Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956, Washington DC, USGPO, USA, 434–35.
47Memo, ‘Clean Weapon Effects’, undated, LLSP, AECS, Box 16, Clean Weapons 1956–57 and Updated, HHL.
48Libby to Secretary of Defense, 10 Oct. 1956, enclosed in Note by the Secretary, 17 Oct. 1956, DOE/NV, No.0074350.
49Strauss to Robertson, 27 Nov. 1956, LLSP, AECS, Box 26 G, Fallout Correspondence 1956, HHL; Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 254.
50Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 201.
51Ibid. Vol. V, 237–38.
52York, Making Weapons, 75.
53Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 232–33.
54Memo, 15 July 1957, in Declassified Documents Reference System (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group 2005) [hereafter DDRS]; FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX (Washington DC: USGPO 1990), 656–58.
55Morse to Strauss, 13 Feb. 1957, LLSP, AECS, Box 16, Clean Weapons 1956–57 and Updated, HHL.
56Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 285–86.
57Memo for Strauss, 14 Feb. 1957, enclosed in Morse to Strauss, 13 Feb. 1957, LLSP, AECS, Box 16, Clean Weapons 1956–57 and Updated, HHL.
58Ibid.
59Ibid.
60Ibid. For discussion of the ground burst and air burst, also refer to Samuel Glasstone and Philip Dolan, eds., The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd edition (Washington DC: USDOD and the Energy Research and Development Admin. Citation1977).
61Memo for Strauss, 14 Feb. 1957 (note 59). David Alan Rosenberg pioneered the scholarly inquiry into this ‘arithmetic’ problem as the origin of ‘overkill’. See Rosenberg, ‘Origins of Overkill’.
62Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 286.
63Ibid., 291–92, 298.
64Memo, ‘Political Considerations Relation to Development of a Very Large-Yield Nuclear Weapon’, enclosed in Gerald Smith to James S. Lay, Herbert B. Loper, and Alfred D. Starbird, 9 July 1957. White House Office [hereafter WHO], Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs [SANSA], Special Assistant series [SAS], Subject subseries [SS], Box 1, AEC – Development of High Yield Thermonuclear Weapon (1952–57) (2), Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, USA [DDEL].
65Memo, 15 July 1957 in DDRS; FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, 656–58.
66Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 350–54.
67Memo of Conversation, Morning Conference on 9 Aug. 1957 in DDRS; FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, 694–95.
68Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 338–39.
69Ibid., 306.
70Ibid., 252–53.
71The congressional hearings ran from March to June. Divine, Blowing on the Wind, 129–38.
72Hirsch to Staats, 10 June 1957, WHO, National Security Council Staff Papers [hereafter NSCSP], OCB Central Files series, Box 11, OCB 000.9 (Atomic Energy) (File #7) (4) (May – June 1957), DDEL.
73Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb, 313.
74 FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, 638–42; Memo for Cutler, 26 June 1957, in DDRS; Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 317–18; Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb, 313–14.
75 FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, 649–50.
76Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol. V, 323–24.
77Ibid., 332–38. Other similar wargames in Europe also resulted in the same consequence. On 20–28 June 1955, a tactical exercise codenamed ‘Carte Blanche’ demonstrated a devastating effect of ‘tactical use of nuclear weapons’ in the Central European-theater. Over two days, 355 devices were used, most over West German territory, even without the effects of residual radiation, this would have left up to 1.7 million West German dead and 3.5 million wounded, more than five times the number of German civilian casualties in World War II. One consequence was to cast doubt on the notion that tactical nuclear weapons could be considered virtually conventional in nature. See Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin's Press Citation1981), 109–10; Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harpers Citation1957), 291–94.
78John Lewis Gaddis, ‘The Unexpected John Foster Dulles: Nuclear Weapons, Communism, and the Russians’, in Richard H. Immerman, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: UP Citation1990), 47–78; Rosendorf, ‘John Foster Dulles's Nuclear Schizophrenia’.
79Memo of meeting, 24 Feb. 1953, WHO, NSCSP, Executive Secretary's Subject File series, Box 5, #16 Special Committee Meetings, DDEL.
80For the Sputnik shock, the missile gap controversy, and the Gaither Committee which evaluated the post-Sputnik nuclear strategic situation, see David L. Snead, The Gaither Committee, Eisenhower, and the Cold War (Columbus: Ohio State UP 1999).
81Memo, untitled, 14 Nov. 1957, Record Group 59, Executive Secretariat Conference Files, 1949–63 [hereafter ESCF], Box 137, CF 931, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland, USA [NA II].
82Gerald C. Smith, Disarming Diplomat: The Memoirs of Ambassador Gerald C. Smith, Arms Control Negotiator (Lanham, MD: Madison Books Citation1996), 74–75, 79–80.
83John Foster Dulles, ‘Challenge and Response in the United States Policy’, Foreign Affairs 36 (Oct. Citation1957), 31.
84Memo, 24 Feb. 1953 (note 81).
85 FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XIX (Washington DC: USGPO 1990), 429–31.
86Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton UP Citation1959), 323. This threshold problem between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons constituted one of the disputes among the academicians. Advocators for limited use of nuclear weapons did not recognize this threshold. See Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons, 193; Robert Endicott Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Univ. of Chicago Press Citation1957), 136–37.
87Freedman, Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 118–19.
88Aurand to Culter, 14 Aug. 1957, WHO, SANSA, SAS, SS, Box 11, Limited War in the Nuclear Age, DDEL.
89Memo of conversation, 17 Jan. 1958, Record Group 59, Lot 57 D 688, Box 347, 18.12 Weapons – Testing, US Tests, 1958, part 1 of 2, NA II.
90The following quotations are all from Morse to Dearborn, 20 Jan. 1958, WHO, SANSA, OCB series [hereafter OCBS], SS, Box 4, Nuclear Energy Matters (2) (Jan 1958), DDEL. The moral, political, and military reasons were further deliberated in Morse to Dearborn, 20 Jan. 1958, WHO, SANSA, OCBS, SS, Box 4, Nuclear Energy Matters (2) (Jan. 1958), DDEL.
91Memo of conversation, 17 Jan. 1958 (note 91). Also see Robert E. Matteson to Morse, 24 Jan. 1958, WHO, SANSA, OCBS, SS, Box 4, Nuclear Energy Matters (2) (Jan. 1958), DDEL.
92For Dearborn's concern, see Dearborn to Cutler, 9 Aug. 1957, WHO, SANSA, SAS, SS, Box 11, Limited War in the Nuclear Age, DDEL.
93Morse to Dearborn, 10 Feb. 1958, WHO, SANSA, OCBS, SS, Box 4, Nuclear Energy Matters (3) (Feb. 1958), DDEL. Also see Morse to Dearborn, 3 Feb. 1958; Dearborn to Cutler, 11 Feb. 1958, both in WHO, SANSA, OCBS, SS, Box 4, Nuclear Energy Matters (3) (Feb. 1958), DDEL.
94Memo to the President, 12 Feb. 1958, WHO, Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject series, Alphabetical subseries, Box 3, Atomic Energy Commission, Vol. 2 (1), DDEL.
95 FRUS, 1958–1960, Vol. III (Washington DC: USGPO 1996), 49–51.
96For the making of the NSTL and the SIOP, see Rosenberg, ‘Origin of Overkill’, 61–69. Its original intention notwithstanding, the SIOP failed to set forth an alternative to the massive scale of using nuclear weapons. For the latest discussion about the SIOP and nuclear strategy, see William Burr, ‘The Nixon Administration, the “Horror Strategy”, and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969–1972: Prelude to the Schlesinger Doctrine’, Journal of Cold War Studies 7/3 (Summer Citation2005), 34–78. What is less known is the fact that Cutler in his second memorandum proposed a technological solution to the problem of overkill. If the US accepted mutual deterrence as a fact and ruled out a suicidal option of massive retaliation, Cutler asked, what should it do when the enemy launched conventional aggression in a local conflict: withdraw, use conventional forces, or resort to nuclear weapons?
97Memo by Cutler, 16 March, 1958, WHO, SANSA, NSC series [hereafter NSCS], Briefing Notes subseries [BNS], Box 14, Nuclear Policy 1958, DDEL.
98Campbell Craig, Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War (New York: Columbia UP Citation1998).
99Memo by Cutler, 21 March 1958, WHO, SANSA, BNS, Box 14, Nuclear Policy 1958, DDEL.
100Morse to Cutler, 22 March 1958. WHO, SANSA, NSCS, BNS, Box 14, Nuclear Policy 1958, DDEL.
101Morse to Cutler, 17 July, 1958, WHO, SANSA, SAS, SS, Box 1, Atomic Energy Commission – General (7) 1958, DDEL.
102Memo of conversation, ‘Remarks of the Secretary – Opening Session Western European Chiefs of Mission Meeting, Paris, May 9, 10:30 am’, Record Group 59, ESCF, Box 149, CF 1015, NA II.
103Smith to Elbrick, 2 Nov. 1957, Record Group 59, ESCF, Box, 137, CF 931, NA II.
104The following quotations are from Memo of conversation, 7 April 1958, in The National Security Archive, US Nuclear History, Nuclear Arms and Politics in the Missile Age, 1955–1968 (Washington DC: The National Security Archive/Chadwyck-Healey 1998).
105For the US policy-making process up to the US statement in late August of ceasing its own nuclear testing, see Green, ‘Crucified on a Cross of Atoms’, 225–58; Smith, ‘The Nuclear Testing Policies’, 347–86.
106Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Vol.V, 338. For the detailed information on ‘Shot Cedar’, visit the website at <www.radiochemistry.org/history/nuke_tests/hardtack1/index.html>.
107‘Transcript of Meeting with the President, 6/17/58’, US President's Science Advisory Committee, Box 1, Meeting Notes June 1958, DDEL.
108Memo of conference, 14 Aug. 1958, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers as President of the United States, 1953–61 (Ann Whitman File), DDE Diary Series, Box 35, August 1958 – Staff Notes (2), DDEL; Greene, ‘Crucified on a Cross of Atoms’, 255–56.
109‘US and Allied Capabilities for Limited Military Operations to 1 July 1961’, 29 May 1958, WHO, SANSA, NSCS, Policy Papers subseries, Box 22, NSC 5724 Gaither Report (1), DDEL.