VulcanPub Date : 2018-10-22DOI: 10.1163/22134603-00601003
John M. Curatola
{"title":"Atomic Dysfunction","authors":"John M. Curatola","doi":"10.1163/22134603-00601003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134603-00601003","url":null,"abstract":"Following World War II the US believed its atomic monopoly was the primary tool to offset large, standing communist ground forces within the Soviet orbit. However, both the newly established and civilian-run Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) along with the nascent US Air Forces’ Strategic Air Command (SAC) were models of dysfunction. In the late 1940s neither the civilians nor the military were capable of fulfilling the requirements outlined in the envisioned atomic air offensives of the time. Apart from their internal problems, both the AEC and SAC failed to properly coordinate with each other for effective transfer of bomb material, requisite training, and standing up the required number of atomic ordnance assembly teams. As a result, the American atomic monopoly from 1945–1950 was largely a bluff with few men, materials, and resources to serve as the nation’s primary strategic offense.","PeriodicalId":36324,"journal":{"name":"Vulcan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/22134603-00601003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47604409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VulcanPub Date : 2018-10-22DOI: 10.1163/22134603-00601004
T. Cathcart
{"title":"If God Is with Us","authors":"T. Cathcart","doi":"10.1163/22134603-00601004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134603-00601004","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses the metaphor of the U.S. Air Force as religion to provide a fresh perspective in understanding a technologically-based culture built on matters of life-and-death. The United States Air Force is the youngest military service of the United States, just recently celebrating its 70th anniversary of independent existence. The U.S. Air Force has venerated traditions, hallowed rituals, sacred myths, and holy doctrine. Its culture also has a strong respect for the well-established hierarchy, a deeply instilled reverence for senior members, a bureaucracy famous for resistance to change, and beliefs about salvation from very real, mortal danger. All of these characteristics have counterparts in religions and will be used to describe a model of a “military religion” with particular focus on the U.S. Air Force. Using this model, the Air Force’s organizational resistance to change, approach to technology and technological change, integration with other military services, and systemic cultural issues can be considered in a new light. The religious narrative—with the organizational roles of actors such as priests, prophets, and laity, and the institutional connotations of theological terms such as sacredness—provides a richer understanding of the sublimity of the U.S. Air Force and what it means to be an airman.","PeriodicalId":36324,"journal":{"name":"Vulcan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/22134603-00601004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47461023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VulcanPub Date : 2018-10-22DOI: 10.1163/22134603-00601002
I. Johnson
{"title":"Prophet of Poison Gas","authors":"I. Johnson","doi":"10.1163/22134603-00601002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134603-00601002","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the formation and growth of the Soviet chemical weapons program from 1924 to 1937. Seen as a symbol of modernity by the Soviet government, the Red Army’s chemical weapons directorate became a priority area of research and development. Initially, however, the Red Army’s investment in chemical weapons production encountered a variety of difficulties exacerbated by early Soviet policies, such as the lack of capital and skilled labor. But thanks to Stalin’s broader political aims, Yakov Fishman—the head of the chemical weapons directorate—managed to draw in vast resources to achieve his vision for the Soviet chemical weapons program. In the end, Fishman’s success in building huge chemical weapons production capacities for the Red Army would have a major impact on the course of the Second World War. Drawing from Russian and German military archives, this article offers new insight into a long-hidden, top-secret military program of colossal dimensions.","PeriodicalId":36324,"journal":{"name":"Vulcan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/22134603-00601002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48076176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VulcanPub Date : 2018-10-22DOI: 10.1163/22134603-00601001
D. Ritchie
{"title":"More Beautiful Than Necessary","authors":"D. Ritchie","doi":"10.1163/22134603-00601001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134603-00601001","url":null,"abstract":"What was it about the First World War that brought on Modernism? Like the simplified poppy form and the sword-within-a-cross which both came to memorialize the First World War in British culture, materiel from that era—shells, rifle stocks, helmets, bullets, bunkers— have a thoroughly modern, almost Bauhaus aesthetic. This was not entirely new in the history of weapons; the common soldier had often fought with unadorned weapons. In this war, however, there was nothing else to see; soldiers could safely regard only the sky, their comrades, their weapons and—viewed through a periscope’s framing—a landscape stripped of nature’s adornments. The inference is that this limited vision and consequent focus on unadorned form were key to the modern aesthetic taking hold.","PeriodicalId":36324,"journal":{"name":"Vulcan","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/22134603-00601001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41988660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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