Customer Reviews

Britain and the H-Bomb

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an absolutely amazing book that details design and construction features of the first British H-bombs,things which are still classified SECRET RESTRICTED DATA in the US.

There are detailed descriptions of the British-equivalent of the Sakharov "Sloika", and the various radiation implosion experimental setups, with emphasys on the design of the "secondary" bomb, the fusion package (which we call in the US the "canned sub-assembly").

The detailed descriptions of the British secondary bombs include the number of shells, the materials used, their thickness, etc., absolutely amazing...

What is amazing also is that the British started with a spherical secondary, because they felt it was more amenable to easy calculations with early computers compared with the US preference for a cylindrical secondary (which, according to E. Teller, was natural to the process in which the radiation flows...). This also happens to produce higher compressions and better efficiency per unit mass, and is also more forgiving of assymetries..It took the US until 1962 to test a spherical secondary, called Tuba, in operation Dominic, test shot Harlem, which doubled the Polaris W-47 yield from 600kT to 1200kT!

Lorna Arnold had complete access to the archives of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE), its successor, AWE, the Ministry of Defense,and other British archives, and the book was published under the auspices, and it is copyrighted by the Ministry of Defense.

As a "insider", Ms. Arnold has a biased view of who the "father" of the British H-bomb was, first, by discounting its importance, then discounting John Wards seminal re-discovery of the radiation implosion, and finally taking the bureaucratic "team-developed", "the work of many people" approach. Unfortunately, the main protagonists, John Ward and Keith Roberts have both passed away and unavailable for elucidating the point.

Otherwise, Ms. Arnold repeats verbatim many passages from other authors, such as Richard Rhodes "Dark Sun" opus on the history of the US Hydrogen bomb. Nevertheless, it is packed with technical informtion that you can't find anywhere else, an thus an absolute read for all students of nuclear weapons history.

Of course, this begets the question, why are we in the US keeping secret things that are already published openly in other countries? Is it to stifle intelligent discussions by our citizenry questioning the waste of untold billions? The proliferation excuse is thin; proliferation is an issue of materials, not know how. Certainly whoever did not wish us well had its spies at our weapons Labs "taking us to the cleaners" a long time ago...

This factual account of why Britain decided to build an H-Bomb reveals the pervasive fear that existed about the sinister threat to Great Britain's future in the 1950s. This is the reasons behind why their government not only wanted to build a British H-bomb, but the fact that they "ahd to build " it to maintain Britain in the world power sphere.. It explores how their scientists and engineers from the time ot the joint American an British Manhattan Project and the British "Tube Alloys Project" evolved to develope an H-bomb in only three years.
I have recently read an account, "albeit a fiction" of how far advanced the Nazi's were in this technology. . ."The Sky Club" by Ian Feldman, ISBN: 0974367303.
It's result could have been even more catastrophic!