Target Hiroshima: Deak Parsons and the Creation of the Atomic Bomb, and: Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America's Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Target Hiroshima: Deak Parsons and the Creation of the Atomic Bomb *, and: Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America’s Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons M. Joshua Silverman (bio) Target Hiroshima: Deak Parsons and the Creation of the Atomic Bomb. By Al Christman. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1998. Pp. xii+305; illustrations, notes/references, bibliography, index. $32.95. Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America’s Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons. By Paul Boyer. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998. Pp. xix+280; index. $39.95 (cloth); $17.95 (paper). In Science, the Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush pointed to four major scientific and technological developments—the atomic bomb, radar, the proximity fuse, and penicillin—that had contributed mightily to the Allied victory in World War II. Admiral William S. “Deak” Parsons never worked on penicillin, but we learn from Al Christman’s admiring biography, Target Hiroshima, that he played an important role in the development and deployment of the other three devices. Parsons built a stellar naval career from humble beginnings. Gaining admission to Annapolis at the age of sixteen, he showed excellent character and capabilities even as a young cadet. Christman observes that Parsons’s record compares favorably with another Class of 1922 member, the future nuclear submariner Hyman Rickover. The author, a retired naval historian, tracks Parsons’s career from the U.S. Naval Academy through various duties at sea, the Naval Postgraduate School, assignments to the Naval Proving Grounds at Dahlgren and the Naval Research Laboratory at Bellevue. Christman suggests that the young officer learned valuable lessons from each assignment, acquiring an [End Page 158] increased appreciation for the new threats facing the modern navy, especially from aircraft and submarines. Parsons also developed expertise in both physics and engineering through his studies and his service positions, allowing him to work constructively with civilian scientists, ordnance developers, and military planners. His ability to move between these groups proved pivotal in the development of the proximity fuse, which required the blending of sophisticated mathematics with hard-edged ordnance practice. Parsons was able to keep both higher-level supporters and civilian researchers committed to the project through its difficult early years. This ability as a “translator” landed Parsons in the Manhattan Project, where he was head of the Los Alamos ordnance group known as Z Division, the team responsible for “weaponizing” the gadget. Parsons, charged with transforming a scientific invention into a militarily useful device, was later appointed associate director of Los Alamos. He remained operations-oriented despite this increased bureaucratic responsibility, traveling to Tinian to oversee mission planning and completing final assembly of the “Little Boy” weapon in the bomb bay of the Enola Gay en route to Hiroshima. While generally well researched and written, Target Hiroshima suffers from overadmiration of its primary subject. Parsons is always described as exceptionally committed, able, and proper, never seeming to take the wrong side in a technical or bureaucratic dispute. This kid-glove approach is most troubling when the author describes Operation Crossroads, the postwar nuclear test series at Bikini where Parsons served as technical director. Crossroads was the most dangerous and poorly executed series in American nuclear history (Jonathan Weisgall calls it “America’s Chernobyl” in Operation Crossroads [Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994]), but Christman glosses over any role Parsons may have played in its numerous failings. Earlier in the book Christman contrasts the flawless execution of the Hiroshima bombing (directed by Parsons) with the error-plagued mission to Nagasaki (not directed by Parsons); the softer treatment of the Crossroads tests allows the author to avoid staining the Parsons legacy, but at the price of credibility. Despite that, Christman’s biography of Parsons is a useful addition to the history of the development and deployment of the proximity fuse and the atomic bomb. Christman does a fine job of illustrating naval power structures and decision-making processes, showing how Parsons displayed deft political and administrative skills as well as scientific and technical acumen in pushing innovations in naval ordnance. Parsons’s career reads like an object lesson in the value and importance of engineering knowledge in scientific and technological development. Paul Boyer has also considered the atomic bombing...