****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I thought this was an amazing description of the Soviet nuclear testing program back in the 1950s – early 1960s. It describes the modifications to the Tu-4, Tu-16, Tu-95, and Mya-4 bombers to accommodate the weapons, a brief development history of the nuclear and thermonuclear bombs, and descriptions of the tests carried out with their locations. The text is accompanied by many black and white photos of the bombs, aircraft, and the ensuing fireballs and mushroom clouds. There are also some color renderings of the aircraft and cruise missiles used to drop or carry the bombs in the tests, and of the bomb models themselves. There are also a couple of maps of the testing sites.Pages 28 – 34 describe the specific testing of the 58-megaton “Tsar Bomba” and also of some later 20 - 25 megaton bomb tests. Over a period of several years, several dozen tests in the range of 1 to 3 or more megatons were conducted.The book was published in the UK. The quality of the English is excellent, although there are a couple of misspellings: “breaking” for “braking” in describing the bomb parachutes and “hoping” for “hopping” in describing bomber bases.According to the bibliography, most of the information in the book was obtained from primary Soviet / Russian sources and a few citations from US and British intelligence reports.Several other very good books on related subjects are:• “Stalin and the Bomb” (1994) by Holloway. This is an excellent book on the Soviet nuclear weapons program after WW II and the development of the associated Soviet atomic industry. As the author points out, you can’t create an atomic or hydrogen bomb out of thin air – one must have an atomic industry in order to manufacture all the equipment required to produce the bombs. I thought that Chapters 9 “The Atomic Industry” and 10 “The Atomic Bomb” were the most interesting. They describe in detail how the Soviets created the necessary atomic infrastructure.The book describes the enormous industrial and scientific effort the Soviets put into the project. Nuclear scientists and engineers were given (by Soviet standards of the 1940s – 1950s) privileged lives and standards of living. Chapters 6 and 7 describe the Soviet bureaucracy that was established to create the atomic bomb. At the top was the Special Committee on the Atomic Bomb, chaired by Lavrenti Beria who was also head of the infamous NKVD, and which eventually evolved into the Ministry of Medium Machine Building in the 1950s. This was not just an exercise in applied terror. Beria had overseen Soviet military industry during WW II and was experienced at providing the necessary push and overcoming bureaucratic and industrial impediments to success.• “Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces” by Podvig (2001). I thought the most interesting chapters were as follows:Chapter 3: “The Nuclear Weapons Production Complex.” This chapter discusses the development of the various nuclear weapons laboratories and production facilities at Arzamas, Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Penza, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and others. There is also discussion of the various government ministries, State Committees, Scientific Research Institutes (NIIs), and Design Bureaus (KBs) associated with the nuclear weapons industry.Chapter 4: “Strategic Rocket Forces.” This chapter discusses the development of the various government ministries, State Committees, Scientific Research Institutes (NIIs), and Design Bureaus (KBs) associated with the ballistic missile, rocket engine, guidance system, and space launching rocket industry. There are also extensive discussions of the development of the numerous Soviet ballistic missiles and tabulations of the missile dimensions, weights, and performance characteristics.Chapter 6 “Strategic Aviation” which discusses the development of the key long-range bombers and the associated design bureaus and manufacturing plants.• “Tupolev Tu-4: The First Soviet Strategic Bomber” (2014) by Gordon, Kommissarov, and Rigmant. The book describes everything you would ever want to know about the Russian / Soviet Tu-4 bomber developed from the American B-29 from about 1945 to 1947. I found Chapter 2 on the reverse engineering effort and Chapter 3 on the production effort the most interesting.• “Tupolev Tu-95 and Tu-142” (2017) by Gordon and Kommissarov.• “Soviet Strategic Aviation in the Cold War” (2009) by Gordon.
