BOOKS: 'A Fiery Peace in a Cold War'

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By Joseph C. Goulden

A FIERY PEACE IN A COLD WAR: BERNARD SCHRIEVER AND THE ULTIMATE WEAPON
By Neil Sheehan
Random House, $32, 534 pages
REVIEWED BY JOSEPH C. GOULDEN

In July 1947, President Harry S. Truman lamented to the National Security Council, "I am of the opinion we'll never obtain international controls [of nuclear weapons]. Since we can't … we must be stronger in atomic weapons."

The increase was both in power and numbers. Through warhead design changes, the yield of the 20-kiloton Mark 3 bomb was multiplied 25 times between 1948 and 1952; the number of nuclear warheads jumped from around 100 to 720.

But how could this weaponry be deployed against the distant Soviet Union, the presumed foe in any confrontation? In the late 1940s, the public found solace in the belief that the same bomber force that pounded Germany and Japan could obliterate the USSR with atomic bombs.

In fact, the wartime bombers were now ill-maintained and manned by relatively inexperienced pilots. The scope of their inadequacy was demonstrated in a 1948 exercise in which the Strategic Air Command's entire armada — more than 400 aircraft — simulated a raid on Wright Field in Ohio. Half the planes never got airborne; of those that transmitted the simulated "bombs away" signal, Mr. Sheehan writes, "not a single crew hit the target." The results were hurriedly classified "secret" in a bid to "to try to hide from the Soviets that they faced a sawdust bogeyman."

Fortunately, using a ring of foreign bases, Gen. Curtis LeMay rapidly transformed SAC into a force that put the entire USSR within range of U.S. bombers. But President Eisenhower wanted an even faster and more reliable means of responding to any Soviet attack.

According to CIA reports, the Soviets had snatched up German rocket scientists by the carload at war's end — as had the United States — and the race was under way to see who could be first to militarize space.

The story of how the United States achieved superiority with the most important weapon — the intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM — is grippingly described by Washington writer Neil Sheehan in a book that was 15 years in the making.

Much of this time was spent interviewing Schriever, who lived six blocks from Mr. Sheehan's Washington home. (Schriever died in 2005.) His research produced a highly readable work that is rich in both personal and technical detail.

Schriever was an unlikely hero. Born in Germany in 1910, he was brought to the United States in 1917, and his family settled in Texas. His father died in an accident when the boy was 8, and his impoverished mother had to park him and a brother in an orphanage for months while she worked as a housekeeper. Golf proved to be the salvation of "Bennie" Schriever. Playing on public courses in San Antonio, he won a number of tournaments — and a scholarship to Texas A&M.