Steve Weintz
War Is Boring
Las Vegas, NV, United States
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Past articles by Steve:
See the Beautiful Stained Glass at the U.S. Air Force’s Mushroom Cloud Chapel
This story originally appeared on Sept. 14, 2014. Glass has a curious relationship with nuclear energy. That’s why it’s fitting to find a stained-glass depiction of a mushroom cloud in a U.S. Air Force chapel. The Strategic Air Command Chapel at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, is a... → Read More
Rescuing the Atomic Dog
This story originally appeared on March 9, 2014. Can dogs survive nuclear fallout? Indeed they can. In 1958, American scientists were stunned to find a canine survivor of the disastrous Castle Bravo test—the largest ever U.S. nuclear detonation. It also took a little politicking with American Airlines to rescue the... → Read More
The Lithium Blues—Or How America Triggered an Out-of-Control Nuke
This story originally appeared on March 17, 2014. You know lithium as the stuff that powers your iPhone, but you may not know that the lightest solid element also powers atomic bombs. Ignorance of lithium’s true nature once sparked a nuclear disaster. In 1954, the U.S. tested its first hydrogen... → Read More
Nuking the Aleutians
This story originally approved on Oct. 5, 2014. On Nov. 6, 1971, the United States conducted its most powerful underground nuclear test to date. The massive, five-megaton blast detonated more than a mile below remote, windswept Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Cannikin shot tested a huge warhead the Pentagon planned... → Read More
The U.S. Navy Tried to Create a Far-Out Seaplane Strike Force
This story originally appeared on March 1, 2015. After World War II, the U.S. Navy found itself in uncertain waters, despite its enormous successes in the Pacific and Atlantic theaters. Blame the atomic bomb. The 1946 Operation Crossroads nuclear tests demonstrated naval power’s vulnerability to atomic attack. And the newly-independent... → Read More
The SLAM Missile Would Have Been a Flying Chernobyl
This story originally appeared on Sept. 7, 2014. It was the perfect airborne death machine—a supersonic drone of nearly unlimited range, loaded with hydrogen bombs zooming around Earth at more than 2,500 miles per hour. To the engineers who worked on its development, it was “technically sweet” and the high... → Read More
Space Marines With Jetpacks!
This story originally appeared on March 22, 2015. In the early Space Age, everything seemed possible — no matter how crazy. Which is why, in the 1960s, one American engineer seriously designed a space rocket to transport troops wearing jetpacks. This far-out concept aimed to lob Marine jet-battalions into space... → Read More
Disarming an Atomic Bomb Is the Worst Job in the World
This story originally appeared on April 5, 2015. In the spring of 1952, the U.S. government tested tactical nuclear weapons at the Nevadoa Proving Ground as part of Operation Tumbler-Snapper. It was the third nuke test series in 18 months at the Nevada site in an era of breakneck atomic... → Read More
Remember When Australia Pretend-Nuked a Rainforest?
This story originally appeared on Aug. 22, 2015. During the Cold War, nuclear states tested atomic weapons in almost every conceivable environment — deserts, oceans, space, islands. Scientist already knew nukes’ effects on cities. But how would they affect jungles? The Australian government wanted to know. So in July 1963... → Read More
For a Brief Inglorious Moment, the U.S. Navy Had a Nuclear-Powered Wetsuit
Originally published on Nov. 26, 2014. You get pretty cold pretty fast when you’re wet. Water absorbs more heat than air—and absorbs it 20 times faster. Without some kind of protection, people can suffer hypothermia even in warm tropical seas. There are several ways to stay warm in the deep... → Read More
The Plot to Nuke Japan’s Fleet
This story originally appeared on Nov. 12, 2015. Less than a year after the formal end of World War II the United States tested its new superweapons in peacetime. Operation Crossroads in 1946 at Bikini Atoll tested the effects of nuclear weapons on naval fleets and harbors. While burrowing through the vast... → Read More
His Majesty’s Scary Steam Subs
This story first appeared on Nov. 6, 2015. Like the airplane, the submarine evolved in the early 20th century into a real weapon. But for the British Royal Navy, this posed a dilemma. The Admiralty’s battle plan for its revolutionary new dreadnoughts foresaw high-speed clashes between rival fleets armed with very-long-range guns.... → Read More
This Nuclear Outboard Motor Was a Really Terrible Idea
This story originally appeared on Aug. 6, 2013. In the early 1960s the U.S. Navy could have gotten a disposable, atomic-powered outboard motor that would have made America’s warships a Hell of a lot more efficient. But there was the little problem of all that noise and radiation. File this... → Read More
How to Find a Missing H-Bomb
This story originally appeared on April 20, 2015. When a routine Cold War operation went terribly wrong, two planes and seven men died, a village got contaminated and a hydrogen bomb disappeared. The search and cleanup required 1,400 American and Spanish personnel, a dozen aircraft, 27 U.S. Navy ships and... → Read More
War and Forgiveness
This story first appeared on Dec. 24, 2013. With war rumbling across the planet, it’s good to remember that even sworn enemies can, in time, find deep and lasting peace. Spring 1942. The Allies were reeling from the ferociously successful Japanese assault upon East Asia and the Western Pacific. From... → Read More
In the 1940s, the U.S. Navy Launched Planes From Trapezes
This story originally appeared on Jan. 25, 2015. Today’s small drones launch off catapults and land in big nets. Large drones require runways, whether on land or at sea. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way, as a wacky—and successful—World War II technique proved. During the Pacific War,... → Read More
The U.S. Navy’s Secret Undersea Lair
This story originally appeared on June 24, 2013. Point Sur is 600 feet of tough rock facing Pacific rollers that come 6,000 miles to pound the central California coast. Like the 19th-century lighthouse that marks the Point, the now-derelict compound of the former Naval Facility Point Sur evokes another era.... → Read More
America Had a Problem With Its Nuclear Warheads Freezing
This story originally appeared on Nov. 5, 2015. The U.S. Air Force is once again pushing for a nuclear-armed cruise missile to “fill the gap” between heavy bombers and ballistic missiles. The W-80 warhead will be the missile’s business end. The flying branch’s push comes during the largest planned overhaul of... → Read More
Here Come the Hypersonic Attack Planes!
Like a bolt out of the blue, Lockheed Martin’s renown Skunk Works publicly teased one of aviation’s great snark hunts—revealing plans for a successor to the SR-71, the legendary Mach-3 reconnaissance plane designed with slide rules and retired when the millenials were born. That 59-year old aircraft, originally developed as... → Read More
U.S. Marines’ Portable Helicopters Were Too Crazy to Survive
This story originally appeared on Feb. 15, 2015. During the Korean War, quite a few American pilots went down behind enemy lines. Some got lucky and escaped with the help of daring airborne-search-and-rescue crews, while others never made it home alive. The U.S. Marine Corps looked to helicopters to help... → Read More