Nuclear Arms Race - Early Cold War

Early Cold War

In the years immediately after the Second World War, the United States had a monopoly on specific knowledge of and raw materials for nuclear weaponry. Initially, it was thought that uranium was rare in the world but this turned out to be wrong. American leaders hoped that their exclusive ownership of nuclear weapons would be enough to draw concessions from the Soviet Union but this proved ineffective.

Just six months after the U.N. General Assembly, the United States conducted its first post-war nuclear tests. This was called Operation Crossroads. The purpose of this operation was to test the effectiveness of nuclear explosions on ships. These tests were performed at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific on 95 Second World War Japanese ships that were captured. One bomb was detonated over the fleet, while the other one was detonated underwater.

Behind the scenes, the Soviet government was working on building its own atomic weapons. During the war, Soviet efforts had been limited by a lack of uranium but new supplies in Eastern Europe were found and provided a steady supply while the Soviets developed a domestic source. While American experts had predicted that the Soviet Union would not have nuclear weapons until the mid-1950s, the first Soviet bomb was detonated on August 29, 1949, shocking the entire world. The bomb, named "Joe One" by the West, was more or less a copy of "Fat Man", one of the bombs the United States had dropped on Japan in 1945.

Both governments spent massive amounts to increase the quality and quantity of their nuclear arsenals. Both nations quickly began the development of a hydrogen bomb and the United States detonated the first of these on November 1, 1952, code-named "Mike" . The project was led by Edward Teller, a Hungarian-American nuclear physicist. It created a cloud 100 miles wide and 25 miles high, killing all life on the surrounding islands. Again, the Soviets surprised the world by exploding a deployable thermonuclear device in August 1953 although it was not a true multi-stage hydrogen bomb. However, it was small enough to be dropped from an airplane, making it ready for use. The development of these two Soviet bombs was greatly aided by the Russian spies Harry Gold and Klaus Fuchs.

On March 1, 1954, the U.S. conducted the BRAVO Test, which tested another hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. Scientists significantly underestimated the size of the bomb, thinking it would yield 5 megatons. However, it yielded 14.8 megatons, which is the largest nuclear explosion tested by the U.S. The explosion was so large the nuclear fallout exposed residents up to 300 miles away to significant amounts of radiation. They were eventually evacuated, but most of them experienced radiation poisoning and resulted in one death from a crew member of a fishing boat 90 miles from the explosion.

The Soviet Union detonated its first “true” hydrogen bomb on November 22, 1955, which had a yield of 1.6 megatons. On October 23, 1961, the Soviets detonated a hydrogen bomb with a yield of approximately 58 megatons.

The most important development in terms of delivery in the 1950s was the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs. Missiles had long been regarded the ideal platform for nuclear weapons, and were potentially a more effective delivery system than strategic bombers, which was the primary delivery method at the beginning of the Cold War. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union showed the world that they had missiles able to reach any part of the world when they launched the Sputnik satellite into Earth orbit. The United States launched its own satellite on the 31 October 1959. The Space Race showcased technology critical to the delivery of nuclear weapons, the ICBM boosters, while maintaining the appearance of being for science and exploration.

This period also saw some of the first attempts to defend against nuclear weapons. Both superpowers built large radar arrays to detect incoming bombers and missiles. Fighters to use against bombers and anti-ballistic missiles to use against ICBMs were also developed. Large underground bunkers were constructed to save the leaders, and citizens were told to build fallout shelters and taught how to react to a nuclear attack. These measures were called civil defense.