CONTINENTAL DEFENSE
IN THE EISENHOWER ERA
From Palgrave Macmillan
Pub date: September 2010
288 pages
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-0230623408
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Continental Defense In The Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War
This book tells the interesting and little known story of the thousands of nuclear antiaircraft weapons which were deployed in hundreds of locations around cities and defense installations in the United States during most of the Cold War. Beginning in Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency, these Army Nike-Hercules missiles, Air Force Genie rockets, and BOMARC and Falcon missiles were meant to shoot down Soviet planes before they attacked America with atomic bombs.
Among other topics, based upon once-secret government documents (including some declassified especially for this study) Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era reveals:
- the existence of these arms was well known to the American public, and they were widely accepted
- military officers had the authority to use them in certain circumstances without further approval
- extensive plans were made to test some versions over the Gulf of Mexico in 1958; President Eisenhower quashed the effort just a few days before in a tense Oval Office meeting
- details of some of these weapons were allegedly provided to the Soviet Union by an Army officer believed to be one of the highest ranking spies in the U.S. military
- the curious role played by TV's Lassie, Hollywood insiders, a Massachusetts industrialist, a beauty pageant contestant, and others, including officials who worried about harming television reception.
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