Christopher J. Bright, <i>Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War</i>. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 280 pp. $100.00

In Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War, Christopher Bright argues that the fundamental decisions about U.S. nuclear antiaircraft weapons were made during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration (1953–1961). Bright uses a multidimensional approach, tracing the development of nuclear antiaircraft weapons and recounting the related official government actions, U.S. military doctrinal decisions, public policies, and manifestations of these weapons in popular culture. Bright's central emphasis is on the “how and why atomic charges came to be fitted to antiaircraft weapons, who knew about this development, and what they thought about it” (p. 2). He seeks to balance the larger literature devoted to U.S. strategic and tactical nuclear weapons under Eisenhower, arguing that regardless of the administration's decisions and policies about those weapons, nuclear air defense efforts generally remained the same, being “commonsensical necessities” (p. 4).The book is chronologically and thematically divided. Bright first explains how the development of nuclear antiaircraft weapons derived from two main factors: U.S. military planners’ need in the 1950s to counter fast-moving, high-flying jet bombers capable of attacking the United States; and their desire for a high kill ratio to destroy enemy aircraft and the nuclear munitions they were carrying. The U.S. Army and Air Force were given the responsibility of developing antiaircraft weapons, and Bright reviews their respective projects: the Nike-Hercules surface-to-air missile (SAM); the Genie air-to-air rocket, the Bomarc supersonic SAM, and the Falcon air-to-air missile. Bright also traces the evolution of Eisenhower's U.S. continental defense policy and how the president and his senior advisers began regularly discussing nuclear defensive weapons. A key catalyst was Robert C. Sprague, a businessman and continental defense consultant to the National Security Council (NSC). Bright emphasizes Sprague's role in convincing Eisenhower and senior policymakers of the need to develop nuclear antiaircraft weapons as soon as possible, given estimates of the Soviet Union's capability to launch attacks on the United States. Sprague's various studies on continental defense, particularly as part of the Technological Capabilities Panel, are highlighted. Bright shows how the administration implemented recommendations in this panel's key report, submitted to the NSC in March 1955, which included nuclear warhead test firings and carefully crafted publicity campaigns to convince the U.S. public of the need for nuclear defensive weapons.The latter half of the book is devoted to the development and deployment of the nuclear warhead–equipped Genie, Nike-Hercules, Bomarc, and Falcon. These chapters include analyses of warhead functioning and tests, how each weapon was stored at military sites ahead of its expected use in wartime, developmental challenges, and estimates of the numbers of each weapon eventually produced. Bright's conclusion recounts the fate of each weapon over the post-Eisenhower decades and includes an insightful review of the impact of the Cuban missile crisis on them. This chapter reinforces his argument that the Eisenhower years represented the heyday of U.S. nuclear antiaircraft arms.Throughout Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era, Bright maintains the main topic of study within its broader contexts; for example, U.S. strategic nuclear thinking, and cooperation with Canada in continental air defense. As with other conventional histories of early Cold War North American continental defense, much of Bright's analysis recounts the official discussions and policy debates between the president and his civilian and military advisers. But Bright branches off in a new methodological direction in describing the cultural dimensions of U.S. nuclear antiaircraft weapons under Eisenhower. The U.S. government, its agencies, the armed services, and the companies that designed, developed, and contributed parts to these weapons generated the aforementioned publicity campaigns. One of the book's recurring themes is how this publicity consistently emphasized the defensive nature of the weapons—their capability to destroy enemy aircraft and nuclear bombs and thereby protect the U.S. way of life—and the safety precautions taken to assure the public that radiation effects would be minimized in any potential explosion of a nuclear warhead (by military use or accident). Most information was disseminated via government and military announcements of forthcoming weapons deployments, press coverage of the test firing of nuclear warheads, and public displays of inert missiles. U.S. citizens gleaned other information through creative pop culture; notably, Nike-Hercules missile trading cards in cereal boxes, a Lassie television show episode featuring a Nike-Hercules battery site, and 1958's “Miss BOMARC” (hair styled and dressed like the missile).Bright gives equal weight to this theme for all the weapons analyzed and presents the weapons’ publicity as evidence that U.S. citizens readily accepted nuclear antiaircraft weapons through their entrance into the “cultural lexicon” (p. 65). Bright is to be commended for establishing connections between official U.S. continental defense policy and public perceptions of its pertinent elements. Most important, he provides a basis for further research that will help address some questions that arise. For example, how representative were contemporary newspaper reports of attitudes toward nuclear weapons, especially those stationed near their communities? Bright includes several newspaper headlines positively characterizing the weapons’ capabilities to defend the United States, but these sources do not actually indicate what U.S. citizens specifically thought about the weapons. The recommended next step is to interview Americans who lived through this period, either to reinforce or to reshape Bright's argument.No major criticisms can be made of this study of Eisenhower's continental defense. One might quibble with minor editorial items (e.g., repeated author names for individual sources in the bibliography), but these issues do not undermine what is a well-researched book. Bright has mined the relevant U.S. primary sources, official histories, and secondary source material to produce a critical perspective on a previously neglected area of U.S. Cold War history. He convinces the reader of the importance of Eisenhower's integration of these arms into the U.S. arsenal and demonstrates the weapons’ technical functions, destructive capabilities, and U.S. cultural dimensions. Bright is also realistic in his assessment of the nuclear antiaircraft weapons, which were never used. He aptly concludes that the weapons were “an expensive, time-consuming, and fleeting exercise based on honest yet imperfect intelligence about Soviet capabilities and intentions … driven by a desire to protect the nation” (p. 160).

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