War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination by H. Bruce Franklin

Abstract

188 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CUL TURE strategic bomber offers an intriguing focus for the history of technol­ ogy. Like the ship of the line in the 18th century, it involves not only a multitude of technologies, each for military reasons pushing toward the hither edge of the art, but also relates to national strategy, the state of the economy, enemy innovations, and the like. Kotz’s account of how the B-70 contract was let back in 1957 illustrates the thrust of this book. The North American Aviation Corporation (the miserably bad index fails to mention this firm, along with other significant subjects) had just had to release some 25,000 employees when the government canceled the F-108 fighter and Navaho missile contracts. For the corporation to survive, winning the B-70, a $6-billion-dollar contract, was essential. To build a broad base ofpolitical support as well as technological expertise, North American recruited subcontractors such as Lockheed (Georgia), Chance-Vought (Texas), and Boeing (Washington), each with its coterie of subcontrac­ tors and suppliers scattered across the nation, upward of 60,000 employees. The object, of course, was to secure the widest possible constituency to pressure senators and representatives to “vote right” on the B-70. When the Soviets subsequently shot down the U-2 spy plane at 70,000 feet, the ceiling altitude of the B-70 previously presumed safe from antiaircraft weapons, production of the bomber abruptly became problematical. But once again politics shaped de­ fense policy. President Eisenhower, accused by Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy of being soft on defense and anxious to help Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon, released $100 million to revive the B-70 bomber. The rest of the book consists of reiterations of the B-70 pattern of political intrusions into the defense decision­ making process. For Kotz, the decision to build the B-l was based on the desire to savejobs and thus ensure supportive votes and to extract big campaign contributions from those grateful that California with all its electoral votes would be “kept green.” Now, it is undoubtedly true that political concerns do distort defense decision making excessively. But Kotz is lamentably silent when it comes to offering constructive suggestions on ways and means to minimize this practice. He raises many important issues, such as the tendency of the services to emphasize acquisition of major weapon systems to the relative neglect of supporting infrastructure, but again he offers little or nothing by way of cure. I. B. Holley Prof. Holley, emeritus professor of history, Duke University, is the author of Buying Aircraft, the volume on matériel procurement in the U.S. Army official history of World War II. War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination. By H. Bruce Franklin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp. 256; illustrations, notes, index. $22.95. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 189 This is a book about the cultural roots of Armageddon by a professor of English and American studies at Rutgers University, the author or editor of fifteen books on culture and history. Analyzing such products of popular culture as science fiction and war films, H. Bruce Franklin tells us why he thinks the United States now teeters on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. Weapons of mass destruction must be imagined before they can be devised, he argues, their uses conceived in human minds before their shapes can be molded by human hands. But not just any minds. Noting that American inven­ tiveness has propelled the arms race since World War II, Franklin wonders if something unique to this country’s experience might be faulted. He finds it where two aspects of American culture merge: the people’s long-standing infatuation with technical prowess and their even older self-image as builders of the city on a hill. If American know-how could create the ultimate weapon, then so exceptional a nation might pacify the world—conquest for the most benign of motives: ending war forever. American power would serve all man­ kind, not one country’s own narrow self-interest. How history molded that underlying structure of values and sentiments to threaten the present and jeopardize the future...