The History of Nuclear Competition Lecture
1. Nuclear competition began between the US and USSR in 1945 after WWII.
2. In the 1950’s and 1960’s the US felt that nuclear weapons were the only way to maintain an edge over the Soviet’s superior conventional forces.
3. By the mid-1960’s, however, the nuclear superiority that the US once had was gone.
4. It was during the late 1930’s that prominent scientists convinced President Franklin Roosevelt that the US should develop a weapon based on splitting the atom - an atomic or nuclear weapon.
5. These prominent scientists included some Europeans that had fled to America to escape Nazi persecution. These refugees explained that Nazi Germany was already in the process of developing an atomic bomb.
6. As a result, in the 1930’s, the US began to fund research for nuclear reactions.
7. US nuclear research began modestly. However, after Germany defeated France in 1940, the US gov’t placed a high priority on developing an atomic bomb.
8. In 1941, the entire nuclear research program was placed under the jurisdiction of the Army engineers known as the Manhatten Project.
9. At 5:30 am on July 16, 1945, the first atomic weapon was tested at Alamogordo Air Force Base in New Mexico.
10. The bomb was placed on a metal tower and it exploded with a force equal to 15,000 - 20,000 tons of TNT. The tower was vaporized, and the desert floor was fused into glass from 800 yards in every direction.
11. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and Dr. Edward Teller became well known for their efforts in developing nuclear weapons. Although these two men worked together on the development of the atomic bomb, they were on opposite sides of the debate over how the US should develop nuclear weapons.
12. Oppenheimer was placed in charge of the Manhattan Project which produced the atomic bomb at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico.
13. Teller joined the Manhattan project and worked with atomic physicist Enrico Fermi to produce the first nuclear chain reaction which took place in 1942 in Chicago. Teller moved to Los Alamos in 1943 to work on the atomic bomb under Oppenheimer’s direction.
The History of Nuclear Competition Lecture
14. Some members of Teller’s family were persecuted by Fascists in Nazi Germany and he became determined that the hydrogen bomb (much more powerful than the atomic bomb) should be developed to stop the forces of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. Teller knew the Soviet Union would develop the H-bomb regardless of any US action.
15. Because he had moral reservations of the destructive nature of nuclear weapons, Oppenheimer opposed any plan to use the H-bomb for military purposes and joined the board of the Baruch Plan, in 1946, that would have established international control of atomic energy and weapons under control of the United Nations.
16. Oppenheimer was convinced that the power of nuclear weapons required a new approach to international relations and was greatly disappointed when the Soviet Union rejected the Baruch Plan.
17. The General Assembly of the Atomic Energy Commission, headed by Oppenheimer, recommended against a crash program to develop the H-bomb, but President Truman directed the weapon to be developed.
18. Teller continued to work at Los Alamos on the H-bomb and it was first tested in 1952 and produced in 1954.
19. In 1939, prominent Soviet physicist Igor Kurchatov warned his gov’t to the potential of nuclear weapons used in war.
20. By 1943, the Soviets formed the Uranium Institute in Moscow with Kurchatov as its director.
21. The US became aware of the Soviet efforts to develop an atomic bomb and the US denied Soviet requests for supplies needed to make an atomic bomb.
22. Even though the US tried to safeguard its nuclear secrets at the conclusion of WWII, technical information from US and German nuclear weapons programs was acquired by the USSR.
23. On Christmas Day, 1946, the Soviets successfully tested their first atomic chain reaction and on Aug. 23, 1949 the USSR exploded its first atomic bomb called Joe 1 (after Joseph Stalin).
24. This Soviet test shocked the US which had not expected development of a Soviet atomic weapon for at least 5 years. Nuclear competition had begun.
25. On Nov. 1, 1952, at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, the US exploded the first H-bomb. The explosion was 1,000 times stronger than the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The History of Nuclear Competition Lecture
26. The first H-bomb blast completely destroyed the small island leaving a crater more than a mile in diameter and 175’ deep. Less than 1 year later, the USSR detonated its first hydrogen bomb.
27. Throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s, nuclear weapons could only be delivered by using long- range bomber planes (the B-52 is an example).
28. Both the US and USSR were working on a new technology, ballistic missiles, to deliver warheads.
29. On Aug. 27, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik --- the world’s first satellite, on an ICBM.
30. This demonstration of Soviet technology came as a great shock to the US.
31. Over the next several years after Sputnik, the US began a crash program to produce an ICBM and in 1959 America’s first ICBM came into service.
32. The US ICBM program expanded in the 1960’s and early 1970’s and hundreds of ICBM’s were deployed in underground silos and on submarines (SLBM - submarine launched ballistic missle). The long range Polaris sub came into service in 1960.
33. By 1963, the Soviets had only 80 ICBM’s compared to the nearly 600 US ICBM’s. By 1970, the USSR had 1,360 ICBM’s compared to the US’s 1,054.
34. The Soviet’s began to develop heavy ICBM’s with incredible power. In 1967, they developed the Soviet SS-9 which carried a 25-megaton warhead.........1,250 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
35. The SALT l Agreement in 1972 froze the number of American and Soviet ICBM’s and SLBM’s.
36. SALT l did not restrict nuclear technology thus, the US developed the MIRV
(multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles)............placing numerous warheads on a single missle. SALT only limited ICBM’s, not warheads.
37. As a result, warheads had grown from 1,700 in 1970 to 7,000 in 1980.
38. SALT II was signed by Jimmy Carter and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev in 1979. However, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in Dec., 1979 sentiment against SALT II in the US grew so Carter never submitted it to the Senate for approval.