Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [20]
Fully fueled and armed, the R-5 weighed twenty-nine tons. Its range was 1,200 kilometers, roughly 800 miles. Its payload was an eightykiloton nuclear warhead, the equivalent force of six Hiroshima bombs. And the R-5 was not a mock-up or test vehicle. It was operational. Three weeks earlier, on February 2, the missile had carried its lethal cargo 800 miles, setting off a mushroom cloud over a target area near the Aral Sea in Soviet central Asia. The test had marked the world’s first nuclear detonation delivered by a ballistic missile, the dawn of a new age in warfare. The Soviet Union had fired the first salvo of an arms race that would consume trillions of dollars and hold the planet hostage for the next forty years.
The Presidium members stared intently at their revolutionary new weapon. It seemed incomprehensible that such a strange, fragile object could wield such power; that with one push of a button it could vaporize an entire city in an instant. Khrushchev and a few of the other Presidium members had seen war, and they knew that it was incremental, a process of attrition. In the sieges of Stalingrad and Kursk, Leningrad and Kiev, the devastation had been progressive. A little bit of each city had died each day, and the process had lasted for agonizing months. With the R-5, everything would be over within seven minutes of launch. You didn’t need planes, tanks, or troops, or an invasion fleet. You didn’t need to worry about logistics or supply trains. You didn’t need to put your soldiers in harm’s way. It made war seem almost effortless.
For nearly a minute no one spoke. Khrushchev finally broke the silence. Which countries were in its range? he wanted to know. His son recorded the scene: “Korolev walked over to a map of Europe, which was hanging on a special stand. It looked just like the ones we had had in school, except that this one had arcs of intersecting circles against the blue background of the Atlantic Ocean. Thin radii drawn with India ink stretched to [the Soviet bloc’s] western borders, to the frontier of East Germany. In the upper right-hand corner of the map there was a calligraphic inscription: ‘Highly classified. Of special importance.’ Slightly below that was Copy Number—I don’t remember the number, but it was no higher than three.”
The map showed that the R-5 could strike every nation in Europe, except Spain and Portugal, which were still out of range. A murmur of satisfaction rose from the Presidium members. “Excellent,” said Khrushchev. “Until recently we couldn’t even dream of such a thing. But the appetite grows by what it feeds on. Comrade Korolev, isn’t it possible to extend the rocket’s range?”
No, the Chief Designer replied flatly, a new missile would be required. Khrushchev and the others seemed disappointed. But Korolev appeared unperturbed; his authority was already well established within Kremlin circles. The delegation remained rooted in front of the map for some time, contemplating Armageddon. “Father stared piercingly at it,” Sergei Khrushchev recalled.
“How many warheads would be needed to destroy England?” the party leader finally asked. “Have you calculated that?”
Dmitri Ustinov, the armaments minister, fielded the question. “Five. A few more for France—seven or nine, depending on the choice of targets.”
Only five? Khrushchev seemed skeptical. The British had withstood a daily barrage of V-2s. They had shrugged off the Junker bombers during the Blitz, displayed a tenacity that even Stalin had praised. But now Great Britain was America’s closest ally; it would have