The hell bombLaurence, William L. (William Leonard)
Philosophy
The hell bomb
Laurence, William L. (William Leonard)
Hydrogen bomb
Radar, as compared with its modern types, was primitive in quality and
inadequate in quantity. Automatic antiaircraft guns, interceptor planes,
and night fighters were either nonexistent in the early days of the
blitz or in a crude stage of development compared with present
equivalents.
How vastly different is our situation today vis-à-vis Russia! Instead of
a short hop across the English Channel she would have to cross the
Atlantic or the Pacific to reach our continent, whereas we can reach her
heartland from bases all around her borders. It is unthinkable that any
of her bombers can cross either ocean without being detected hundreds of
miles before they reach our shores. With modern radar devices, which are
constantly being improved, and fleets of fast interceptors far in
advance of anything Russia could develop, we would destroy them long
before they would do us any harm. If she attempts to fly over the North
Pole, she will still have to cross all of Canada before she can reach
us, and if we and our Canadian friends are on the alert, as we must and
shall be, any hostile planes could be detected and destroyed over the
Arctic.
There is, of course, the possibility of exploding an H-bomb some
distance off shore from a submarine or from a tramp steamer, but here,
too, eternal vigilance will be the price of our liberties and our lives.
There can be no question that we shall succeed in finding the answer to
the detection of the Snorkel-type submarine and master it just as we
mastered the earlier types. American ingenuity and superior technology
have never failed yet in the face of an emergency, and it is unthinkable
that they should fail now.
We often hear it said that an enemy could smuggle an A-bomb in small
parts into this country and assemble it here. While such an operation is
possible, its successful execution against a nation fully on guard is
highly improbable. As for the H-bomb, it requires large quantities of
liquefied gas, which must be kept in a vacuum surrounded by large
vessels of liquid air. In addition it must have its A-bomb trigger and
other complicated devices. All this makes its surreptitious smuggling
into a country such as ours even more improbable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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