Secret History of RDX (eBook)

The Super-Explosive that Helped Win World War II

Colin F. Baxter (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018
214 Seiten
The University Press of Kentucky (Verlag)
978-0-8131-7531-7 (ISBN)

Infos

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.

Autor

lt;P>Colin F. Baxter is professor emeritus of history at East Tennessee State University and former chair of the Department of History. He is the author of The Normandy Campaign, 1944: A Selected Bibliography; The War in North Africa, 1940--1943: A Selected Bibliography; Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1887--1976: A Selected Bibliography; and coeditor of The American Military Tradition from Colonial Times to the Present.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.5.2018
• Verlagsort: Lexington
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Natur / Technik ► Fahrzeuge / Flugzeuge / Schiffe ► Militärfahrzeuge / -flugzeuge / -schiffe
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Technikgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 0-8131-7531-3 / 0813175313
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-7531-7 / 9780813175317