Customer Reviews

Us Nuclear Weapons the Secret History

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I coulda sworn I wrote a review for this book. Ah, well... This book was written by Chuck Hansen in 1988. It represents the sum total of all of the releasable information on the United States Nuclear Weapons Program at that period.

The volume is chock full of photographs, facts, figures, dates, places, and names. There is *NO* fluff. For many years, it has been *the* reference book on US Nuclear Weapons Systems. It explains very well the theories behind how the sytems operate, broken down into sections such as, nuclear weapons physics, arming, fuzing and firing, weapons systems types, etc. This book graces the shelves of every subject matter expert. Look at the more knowledgable articles on the subject; they all reference this book in the appendix. Unfortunately, there were only a few printings. For this reason, it has become scarce, and expensive when it does appear ( I paid ($$$) for my exc/exc HB copy).

I possess just about every tome on the subject. There is no other book that covers the same ground with the same detail as this one. It simply is the encyclopedia of Nuclear Weapons Non-Sensitive / Unclassified Information.

Mr. Hansen's book, "US Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History" has become an essential reference for this important area of national security. The diagrams, pictures and references to DOE/DoD publications is invaluable. Throughout the text, there are minor areas that cover the gray area of being unclassified to sensitive - This kind of intrigue makes it worth the read.

One of the best features of the book is the tabulated lists of specific weapons design to individual weapon systems. From this I can easily know that a Mark III was the "Fat Man" and the Mk 12 fits on the top of a Minuteman ICBM. This alone makes the book valuable.

One confusing aspect is the history of nuclear tests. There are very few clear tables showing test NAME, PLACE, YIELD; the info has to be gleaned from the [small-print] text. The photo spread has awesome color photos of random test shots. One photo shows the crater made by an underground shot - like USAF missileers say, "Its not the blast that kills you; its the fall to the bottom of the crater..."

The ONLY drawback to this book is its OUTRAGEOUS price. I happened to obtain a good copy for $30. I can't say if you should spend hundreds of dollars to purchase - but if you to obtain it, you will definitely appreciate it.

While Mr Hansen did a good job in most aspects of the book, he made a number of glaring mistakes that should have caught. For example, the information on the B28FI bomb and the B28RI bombs was reversed, and a lot of information on the MK 7 fuzing and firing systems was totally wrong. I know because i worked on both of these weapons for a number of years. When you see errors like that, it casts doubt on the rest of the book.

I work on nuclear weapons in the USAF. When I came across this book I had to have it! It has everything unclassified you could think of. Many weapons engineers I Know in the nuclear community have this book on their desk as a reference. Outstanding work Mr. Hansen!

Summary: A good book, but everything in it is easily available on the internet, and nothing secret is disclosed within it. Don't spend a lot of money on this book. More information is available on the internet.

Based on the high price demanded for used copies of this book, I expected it would be something really special or that it would contain information that you can't get anywhere else. Back when this book was written, there was no internet so if you wanted any good information on nuclear weapons, you would have to physically go find it yourself. Not an easy task during the cold war era. When this book came out, it was probably seen as taboo or even "secret" knowledge and thus all the hype about this book started. In today's world, there is so much information about nuclear weapons on line that you don't need this book at all.

Fortunately, I was able to get a copy at the library to see it before I paid $150 or more. I'm glad I did that because I saved myself the frustration of paying that amount of money for information I can get online for free.

From the reviews and descriptions of this book I have seen, I was expecting it to have very detailed drawings of what these weapons look like inside and other information like that. It has next to nothing in that regard. The internet has far more. It does have some photographs of mushroom clouds, aircraft and empty weapons casings from museums but that's about it. All of this stuff can easily be found by searching on Goolge. On the internet you can get pictures of actual weapons, not empty casings from museums.

I rated this book low because the hype and ridiculous price it sells for are totally unjustified. By itself, it is a good book and if it was $30 or so, I would buy it because I like the look and feel of books. However, the entire contents and more is available easily on the internet. Don't be fooled by the high price-it's not worth it.

While this book has quite a cult following and demands outrageous prices as a collectors item, it is only fair as a resource. The feeling is that the book circumvents classification (it doesn't) and gives the reader the feeling that he is being told how these things work (it doesn't do that either). The physics and history is much better done in Rhodes's books at a much better price. (...) I suggest you check it out at the library before you pay these prices. I think you will see it's a nice picture book.

I study nuclear weapons, and this book was an enormous part of my learning! This book has every declassified fact about all the nuclear weapons employed by the United States. Sometimes I think it has things that aren't declassified! This is a MUST-HAVE for all nuclear weapons enthusiasts.

I am surprised that this book is even legal. I forget what I paid for it but the fact that it now costs over $400 shows what a classic it is. I'm surprised they don't do a second printing.

This contains easy to understand descriptions of both fission and fusion physics and gets into details that are almost design specifications. It also gives us a detailed look at the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal.

I get the feeling from this book, and the book "The Secret that Exploded" by Howard Morland, who is associated politically with Hansen (they are both anti nuke "Progressives"), that Chuck thinks that explaining how they work will somehow cause the reader to become anti-nuclear. That we will consider it scandalous that some H-bombs use Lithium 6 deuteride, rather than Lithium 7 deuteride. (I protest, how dare they do that!!) Maybe he just hates secrecy and tried his best to publicize all of this to spit in the face of the secret keepers.

In any case, this is one of the most interesting books on this subject I have ever read. I just hope Osama doesn't own a copy!

You want to know about the detonation sequence of a multi-stage thermonuclear weapon? Here it is, together with a comprehensive, well illustrated, and detailed history of United States nuclear weapon development: Weapon history, weapon physics, weapon delivery, weapon accuracies, weapon accidents.

Make no mistake, this is a scholarly work and not written for a popular audience. Mr. Hansen relied only on official sources often obtained for the first time through the freedom of information act. The book includes numerous precise citations and exhaustive footnotes in which Mr. Hansen discusses disparities in knowledge and suggests directions for further research. Mr. Hansen faced a unique and difficult challenge, official secrecy, so there are gaps in the story.

The book was first published in 1988 and is now dated. I expect many of the gaps in knowledge that bedeviled Mr. Hansen have been filled only because of the material first revealed in this book, which I believe remains a superior starting point for studying nuclear weapons history. The book has been criticized for inaccuracies, but I believe any that exist are incidental. The citations and references that I have chased have proven out. I believe Mr. Hansen was thorough and conscientious in his scholarship as do others.

No one in the U.S. military today--no one--has ever witnessed an above ground nuclear detonation. Only the chilling images in this book remain.

You can read other comments but Tom Clancy uses this his reference and I find it equally valuable. I recommend you disregard the sour apples of those who don't understand it's contents.