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During the early years of World War II, American ships crossing the Atlantic with oil and supplies were virtually defenseless against German U-boats. Bombs and torpedoes fitted with TNT barely made a dent in the tough steel plating that covered the hulls of Axis submarines and ships. Then, seemingly overnight, a top-secret, $100 million plant appeared near Kingsport, Tennessee, manufacturing a sugar-white substance called Research Department Explosive (code name RDX). Behind thirty-eight miles of fencing, thousands of men and women synthesized 23,000 tons of RDX each month. Twice as deadly as TNT and overshadowed only by the atomic bomb, this ordnance proved to be pivotal in the Battle of the Atlantic and directly contributed to the Allied victory in WWII. In The Secret History of RDX, Colin F. Baxter documents the journey of the super-explosive from conceptualization at Woolwich Arsenal in England to mass production at Holston Ordnance Works in east Tennessee. He examines the debates between RDX advocates and their opponents and explores the use of the explosive in the bomber war over Germany, in the naval war in the Atlantic, and as a key element in the trigger device of the atomic bomb. Drawing on archival records and interviews with individuals who worked at the Kingsport "powder plant" from 1942 to 1945, Baxter illuminates both the explosive's military significance and its impact on the lives of ordinary Americans involved in the war industry. Much more than a technical account, this study assesses the social and economic impact of the military-industrial complex on small communities on the home front.
The noted historian offers “a compelling sociohistorical account of an often overlooked yet critical” WWII explosive twice as powerful as TNT (Choice). During the early years of World War II, American ships crossing the Atlantic were virtually defenseless against German U-boats. Bombs and torpedoes fitted with TNT barely dented the hulls of Axis naval vessels. Then, seemingly overnight, a top-secret manufacturing plant appeared near Kingsport, Tennessee, producing a sugar-white substance called Research Department Explosive, code name RDX. Twice as deadly as TNT and overshadowed only by the atomic bomb, RDX proved to be pivotal in the Battle of the Atlantic and directly contributed to the Allied victory in WWII. In The Secret History of RDX, Colin F. Baxter documents the journey of the super-explosive from conceptualization at Woolwich Arsenal in England to mass production at Holston Ordnance Works in east Tennessee. Baxter examines the debates between RDX advocates and their opponents and explores the use of the explosive in the bomber war over Germany, in the naval war in the Atlantic, and as a key element in the trigger device of the atomic bomb. Drawing on archival records and interviews with individuals who worked at the Kingsport “powder plant,” Baxter illuminates both the explosive’s military significance and its impact on the lives of ordinary Americans involved in the war industry. Much more than a technical account, this study assesses the social and economic impact of the military-industrial complex on small communities on the home front.
Although there are many books and films dealing with the Vietnam War, Sideshow tells the truth about America's secret and illegal war with Cambodia from 1969 to 1973. William Shawcross interviewed hundreds of people of all nationalities, including cabinet ministers, military men, and civil servants, and extensively researched U.S. Government documents. This full-scale investigation—with material new to this edition—exposes how Kissinger and Nixon treated Cambodia as a sideshow. Although the president and his assistant claimed that a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia was necessary to eliminate North Vietnamese soldiers who were attacking American troops across the border, Shawcross maintains that the bombings only spread the conflict, but led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and the subsequent massacre of a third of Cambodia's population.
From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold USA Today bestselling story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units. Surprise . . . your target. Kill . . . your enemy. Vanish . . . without a trace. When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly-classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world. Originally known as the president's guerrilla warfare corps, SAD conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to defend America from its enemies. Almost every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and, yes, assassination. With unprecedented access to forty-two men and women who proudly and secretly worked on CIA covert operations from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day, along with declassified documents and deep historical research, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen unveils -- like never before -- a complex world of individuals working in treacherous environments populated with killers, connivers, and saboteurs. Despite Hollywood notions of off-book operations and external secret hires, covert action is actually one piece in a colossal foreign policy machine. Written with the pacing of a thriller, Surprise, Kill, Vanish brings to vivid life the sheer pandemonium and chaos, as well as the unforgettable human will to survive and the intellectual challenge of not giving up hope that define paramilitary and intelligence work. Jacobsen's exclusive interviews -- with members of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service (equivalent to the Pentagon's generals), its counterterrorism chiefs, targeting officers, and Special Activities Division's Ground Branch operators who conduct today's close-quarters killing operations around the world -- reveal, for the first time, the enormity of this shocking, controversial, and morally complex terrain. Is the CIA's paramilitary army America's weaponized strength, or a liability to its principled standing in the world? Every operation reported in this book, however unsettling, is legal.
"World War II was the largest and most destructive conflict in human history. It was an existential struggle that pitted irreconcilable political systems and ideologies against one another across the globe in a decade of violence unlike any other. There is little doubt today that the United States had to engage in the fighting, especially after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The conflict was, in the words of historians Allan Millett and Williamson Murray, "a war to be won." As the world's largest industrial power, the United States put forth a supreme effort to produce the weapons, munitions, and military formations essential to achieving victory. When the war finally ended, the finale signaled by atomic mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, upwards of 60 million people had perished in the inferno. Of course, the human toll represented only part of the devastation; global environments also suffered greatly. The growth and devastation of the Second World War significantly changed American landscapes as well. The war created or significantly expanded a number of industries, put land to new uses, spurred urbanization, and left a legacy of pollution that would in time create a new term: Superfund site"--
Mustard gas is typically associated with the horrors of World War I battlefields and trenches, where chemical weapons were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Few realize, however, that mustard gas had a resurgence during the Second World War, when its uses and effects were widespread and insidious. Toxic Exposures tells the shocking story of how the United States and its allies intentionally subjected thousands of their own servicemen to poison gas as part of their preparation for chemical warfare. In addition, it reveals the racialized dimension of these mustard gas experiments, as scientists tested whether the effects of toxic exposure might vary between Asian, Hispanic, black, and white Americans. Drawing from once-classified American and Canadian government records, military reports, scientists’ papers, and veterans’ testimony, historian Susan L. Smith explores not only the human cost of this research, but also the environmental degradation caused by ocean dumping of unwanted mustard gas. As she assesses the poisonous legacy of these chemical warfare experiments, Smith also considers their surprising impact on the origins of chemotherapy as cancer treatment and the development of veterans’ rights movements. Toxic Exposures thus traces the scars left when the interests of national security and scientific curiosity battled with medical ethics and human rights.
First book about key Soviet spy and Canadian communist. Fred Rose was deeply involved in atomic espionage.
The Black Bruins chronicles the inspirational lives of five African American athletes who faced racial discrimination as teammates at UCLA in the late 1930s. Best known among them was Jackie Robinson, a four‐star athlete for the Bruins who went on to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball and become a leader in the civil rights movement after his retirement. Joining him were Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Ray Bartlett, and Tom Bradley—the four played starring roles in an era when fewer than a dozen major colleges had black players on their rosters. This rejection of the “gentleman’s agreement,” which kept teams from fielding black players against all-white teams, inspired black Angelinos and the African American press to adopt the teammates as their own. Kenny Washington became the first African American player to sign with an NFL team in the post–World War II era and later became a Los Angeles police officer and actor. Woody Strode, a Bruins football and track star, broke into the NFL with Washington in 1946 as a Los Angeles Ram and went on to act in at least fifty‐seven full-length feature films. Ray Bartlett, a football, basketball, baseball, and track athlete, became the second African American to join the Pasadena Police Department, later donating his time to civic affairs and charity. Tom Bradley, a runner for the Bruins’ track team, spent twenty years fighting racial discrimination in the Los Angeles Police Department before being elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
By some margin the most successful British medium-range airliner ever produced, the world-beating Viscount was a sublime combination of Vickers state-of-the-art postwar design and Rolls-Royces cutting-edge power-plant technology, both companies being at the very peak of their powers during the types genesis and evolution.Tracing its origins back to the wartime Brabazon Committee, the Viscount was one of several designs from various British aircraft manufacturers produced to fulfill the committees specifications for a fast, economical short- to medium-range airliner to satisfy the demands of the burgeoning postwar civil aviation market, which was predicted to grow at a healthy rate over the following decades. Vickers chief designer and Managing Director George Edwards was quick to respond, the result being the Dart turboprop-powered Vickers V.630, which made its first flight in July 1948, despite its future looking uncertain after British European Airways having twenty examples of ordered its chief rival, Airspeeds Ambassador, six months before. The Viscount nevertheless entered full service with BEA in 1953, much to the relief of its manufacturer, orders flooding in thereafter from numerous airlines and air forces all over the world. Ultimately, some 200 individual airlines, companies and organizations in more than eighty countries operated the dependable and, crucially, development-friendly Viscount over its long and distinguished career.This book tells the full story of the worlds first turboprop airliner, from its Brabazon Committee beginnings, through its early flight trials program and entry into service, to its almost unassailable position as the worlds number one medium-haul turboprop, including its astonishing breakthrough in the USA, where it single-handedly broke the big American manufacturers stranglehold on the airliner market. The types military career is also covered, as is its construction; also included in this volume are details of the numerous variants produced and those of the 444 built still surviving as exhibits today, along with twenty-four superb artworks by world-renowned aviation illustrator Juanita Franzi.
The stories behind more than 50 secret projects undertaken by the famed Lockheed Martin Skunk Works on behalf of the US Armed Forces, DARPA, and the CIA - all illustrated with official Skunk Works photography and commissioned artworks. Hatched in June 1943 after a special request of the US Army Air Forces to develop a turbojet-powered fighter to counter growing German threats, Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works has gone on to develop remarkable aeronautical and space technologies, including stealth. Some have made it into production, while others never quite made it off drafting boards and computer screens, but proved fascinating nonetheless. This generously illustrated history tackles Skunk Works programs ranging from jet fighters and jet engines to missiles and rockets, helicopters, research aircraft, airships, unmanned aerial vehicles and recon drones, and even the seagoing stealth ship Sea Shadow - more than 50 in all. Author Steve Pace examines the historical context which led government organizations to approach the Skunk Works, as well as the technologies and projects developed there (often on a handshake and unburdened by bureaucracies), and the anecdotes and legends associated with each program. Pace includes official Skunk Works photography of the projects taken both at its headquarters and at test facilities such as Area 51. In addition, commissioned color artworks help further illustrate many of these projects featured herein. In addition to profiling legendary aircraft like the F-80, F-94, F-104, U-2, SR-71, F-117, and F-35, Pace takes on more obscure projects from the past as well as those still to come, such as the hypersonic SR-72 and High Speed Strike Weapon, and even offers a peak into what the future might hold with the proposed TR-X.