Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen - Book Report #186

This was a difficult book to get through, not because it was a hard read (I experienced it as an audio book) but because the subject matter was so difficult to digest.

The author, Jacobsen, did a staggering amount of research which I was so very impressed by.

I had a vague notion of Operation Paperclip - I knew it had something to do with the assimilation of Nazi scientists, the most notable of them all was Wernher von Braun who was instrumental in the design of the Saturn V rocket that took Americans to the moon.

But what did he do during the war?  What did he see?  What was he responsible for?

The questions were repeated many times for a surprising amount of men who were moved to the United States and exploited for their knowledge.

This book brought me to wonder just how important is it to stay ahead of the "enemy?"

Some good has come from all of this but the source material is truly terrifying and made me feel that there is no real hope for humanity.  We are so consumed with gaining power and killing each other that I wonder if there is any real hope for our species.

And much of the methods of killing, poison gas for instance, was simply added to the arsenal and perfected by the West.

I highly recommend this book.

It is truly a work that will help to heal the world that is, surprisingly, still influenced by the horrors of World War Two.

But be ready for it, Jacobsen does a commendable job of staying neutral in her reporting.  She just lays it out from the records that have been recently declassified.

It is a difficult thing to learn.

Annie Jacobsen website - http://anniejacobsen.com/

Annie Jacobsen

Red November by W. Craig Reed - Book Report #180

I can't help being fascinated by the cold war.

Submarines are so cloaked in secrecy that I simply find myself drawn to them.

I've read a few books on just how close we've all come to destruction and it leaves me chilled every time I hear such a story.  So it came as no surprise when close calls from the submarine fleet were revealed in this book.

What impressed me was how small innovations could have profound impacts on the opposing force.  When the Soviets moved to burst transmissions to communicate it sent the US into a massive effort find a way to locate the subs that suddenly became invisible.

Like a Tom Clancy novel there are no small players in the American military and it takes everybody doing their jobs to the best of their abilities to keep ahead.

What was revealed about the Cuban Missile Crisis surprised me leaving me thankful that the skippers of the Soviet subs were so clever and cool-headed.

The book reveals other mission right into the mid 1980's, anything after that is still classified.  Fair enough.

In the end I would dearly love to see a day where we put all this ingenuity to use as one people instead of constantly trying to find ways to undermine each other.

That said it is this very war against ourselves that moves our society forward as technologies become available commercially and the real work of peaceful progress takes place.  Our society lags about 30 years behind the advances made by the military.  So, in a weird way, we have managed to benefit from all of it.

The book was well written and at times felt just like a fictional thriller.  I liked the personal feel of the book as it started by first following the career of his father then moved into his own career in the submarine service.

I highly recommend this book.  Publishing it helps to make the world a better place.

W. Craig Reed's website is here - http://wcraigreed.com/

W. Craig Reed.

Book Review #115 - The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

Book 39 of 52
Page count - 352

It is hard to review a book which has an iconic movie attached to it.  It is the wonderfully interesting story of the Original 7 astronauts and the race to send Americans into space.

That said the movie practically used the book as a script.  Next to nothing was left out.  What the book highlighted greatly was the attitudes of the government to the program but, more importantly, the attitudes of "career" military test pilots and this new rocket-propelled civilian agency.

What was most interesting was how the pecking order of the Original 7, and test pilots in general, was fiercely fought over.  Everything rides on being first.  It drives every decision pilots make and effects their wives and families in the process.  Climbing to the top of the pyramid and trying to stay up there is what motivates these incredible people every single day.

The competition between the astronauts was wonderfully paralleled by also following the career of the man who, arguably, started it all; Chuck Yager.  Yager was the first to break the sound barrier but kept his career on the track of fixed-winged aircraft.  He was at the very top of the pyramid and kept on fighting to stay there for as long as he could.

Chuck Yager and the Bell X-1

Ultimately the story focuses on the original Mercury astronauts but the author never forgets the larger picture.  He kept his eyes on the Russians, the president, the military, the scientists and the doctors who played large roles in this adventure.

The whole thing was wonderful.

Read it.  Watch the movie.  Be inspired and reassured that humans can do wonderful, wonderful things when we want to. 

Project Mercury mission patch

Mercury 3 Alan Shepard's mission patch

Alan Shepard inside Freedom 7

Movie poster

Tom Wolfe

Book Review #114 - Red Moon Rising by Matthew Brzezinski

Book 38 of 52
Audio book - 9 discs

A previous book I reviewed called Command and Control showed just how paranoid the Americans were during the Cold War.  The story of the space race is closely tied to the creation of ICBMs and the days of nuclear proliferation.  As a matter of fact, the space race and the missions to the moon may not have happened had the Soviets not been having technical difficulties with a heat shield.

With the Americans constantly testing Soviet air pace with bombers and U2 over-flights they felt pressured to develop a capable missile.  The flight of Sputnik was a project promoted and engineered by a single man, Russia's Chief Designer, Sergei Korolev, who believed that satellites would be very valuable.  Since there had been no satellites to date, neither the Americans nor the Soviets could imagine the usefulness of one.

But Sputnik did go up and it changed the world.

Sputnik 1

 Before the race to the moon there was the race to orbit and before the race to orbit there was the race to perfect missiles.  This is the story of how missile technology almost accidentally created an industry that, it could be imagined, that has made our world a better place.

The book follows both sides of the missile race, concentrating on the Soviet side, we discover that they were not nearly so advanced as the United States declared.  Money, politics and pride were all very important factors on both sides of the race.

The story sheds light on yet another facet of the Cold War and I found it fascinating.  The book does not stop at the Sputnik 1 launch but continues well past Sputnik 2 and on to the successful launch of Explorer 1.

Explorer 1

An interesting point to know is variants of the R-7 are still in operation today transporting material and crews to the International Space Station.

Matthew Brzezinski

Book Report #85 - Command and Control by Eric Schlosser

Book 9 of 52
Page count - 17 CDs, 20 hours 40 minutes

I struggled with whether I should include this in my challenge since I did not "read" it.  However, it was far too important a book not to include.  Plus, this audiobook was unabridged and took over 20 hours of my time to consume.

I grew up during the Cold War and there were times that I was very scared my life would end in a thermonuclear flash.  According to Eric Schlosser there was more to be scared of than Geo-political tension between the super powers.  There were countless accidents, mishaps, losses, crashes, fires and human errors with atomic and thermonuclear weapons that it is a wonder we are all still alive today.

The book was chilling.  It scared me to my core.  I found the level of paranoia of the first two decades of the Cold War to be nearly incomprehensible.  How could men of power be so foolish?

The book itself followed a terrible accident that happened at one missile silo in the United States.  The author explained just how dangerous the Titan II missile system was on it's own, never mind that one of the most powerful warheads sat on top of it.  From the moment a technician accidentally drops a socket down the silo and damages the missile Schlosser takes us on a journey of just how that weapon was developed and the history behind the cold war as well.

It was an enormous subject that could have branched off into the Space Race, espionage, satellite development and submarine warfare.  I would have gladly listened to more.  But limits must be put on to the scope of a book and there was a lot of material to ponder here.

There were a couple of times in the history of the arms race that fiction played a powerful role in it's direction.  The first was the 1958 book called Red Alert by Peter George (published under the pen name Peter Bryant) which told the story of a rouge USAF general launching a first strike against the USSR.  The novel was so profoundly plausible that it was distributed among the decision makers in the US military and influenced readiness and safety policy for decades.  It was also the book that was the basis of Stanley Kubrick's movie Dr. Strangelove.

Red Alert is in the public domain and I've downloaded a copy which I will review here in the future.

The other bit of fiction was the Jason Robards TV movie The Day After, which showed how a nuclear war affected the residence of Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri.  This show had such a profound effect on President Ronald Ragan that after watching it, he began to negotiate with the USSR to stop nuclear testing and reduce the arsenal.

I once reviewed the book Seawitch by Alistair MacLean -( http://eric-the-mailman.blogspot.ca/2012/09/book-report-48-seawitch-by-alistair.html ) and blasted it for the unbelievable lack of security surrounding a military weapon storage facility.  Well, I was wrong about the security; there were many instances in Command and Control that illustrated incredibly lax measures taken to prevent the theft of atomic weapons.  Fiction may be fiction but it can be spot on.

READ THIS BOOK.

NOTE - Be ready to have the shit scared out of you at the end.  Just saying.

Eric Schlosser