Michael Burleigh
Fully Cocked
15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation
By L Douglas Keeney
St Martin’s Press 372pp £16.67 order from our bookshop
At the end of the Second World War the US was the sole nuclear power in the world, although paradoxically it did not possess a single functioning atomic bomb after the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were big, complex devices requiring weeks to prepare and prime. The US also had an air force and navy capable of projecting power around the globe, even if in Europe the Soviets had a colossal advantage, with 4.5 million troops, 15,500 combat aircraft and vast numbers of tanks.
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