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Our Books:
- How South Africa Built Six Atom Bombs
- Dive South Africa
- Wreck Hunt
- Mercenary Invasion of Seychelles
- Jack Malloch
- Deadline Africa
- Battles of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879
- Diving with Sharks
- Neall Ellis
- Barrel of a Gun
- South Africa's Border Wars
- The 'Coloured' People of South Africa and Apartheid
About our Authors:
Al J Venter
John H. Visser
Charles Shapiro
SITEMAP
HOW SOUTH AFRICA BUILT SIX ATOM BOMBS (And Then Abandoned its Nuclear Weapons Program)
A remarkable new book by AL J. VENTER
238 pages, 85 illustrations, sketches, diagrams, photos, cutaways etc
BUY THIS BOOK NOW
Price SA Rand: R249.50
Price excludes Pst & Pckg
How South Africa Built Six Atom Bombs is the definitive account of how a maverick government was able to secretly develop and test atom bombs. South Africa – then still dominated by Pretoria ’ s apartheid-orientated regime.
That objective was achieved within six years – or roughly half the time it took Pakistan to test its first nuclear weapon. More salient, it did so with only a fraction of the number of scientists, technicians and specialists involved in other nuclear programs, such as those of India, Pakistan and North Korea: there were never more than a half-dozen nuclear physicists involved in the actual weaponization of the South African bombs.
The same analogy holds for the medium range intercontinental missile program that South Africa launched with strong Israeli help. Before it was abruptly terminated by Washington, Pretoria managed to launch at least one of its RSA-3 missiles into the South Indian Ocean: it landed within a few hundred metres of its designated target. With Israeli involvement – this cooperation that dated back to the early 1970s - there was a plan in the works for a satellite launch (illustration page 118).
Al Venter argues that if a small country like South Africa could achieve so much – while using only the limited human resources drawn from its five or six million whites - then it is axiomatic that other countries – or radical political groups - will ultimately be able to do the same. Al-Qaeda has already signalled its intention in a series of web-based nuclear weapons lectures, with examples of this trend (pages 12 and 13).
It is also significant that Dr Mohammed AlBaradei, head of Vienna ’ s International Atomic Energy Agency, said in 2007 that it was of grave concern that there were currently more than 30 countries involved in nuclear matters, quite a few of them clandestinely.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Dr Helen Purkitt, Professor of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy and a Research Associate for the Center for Technology and International Security at the National Defense University, Washington D.C. comments on How South Africa Built Six Atom Bombs:
‘ This analysis provides valuable insights about how a government can secretly develop, test and store an array of sophisticated nuclear strategic and tactical weapons underground, The alternative history of South Africa ’ s former weapons program also provides invaluable clues and indicators of whom, among the three dozen plus nation-states in the world today capable of developing nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems are pursuing covert programs [and] offers interesting insights about possible weapons and delivery systems that terrorist networks [like al-Qaeda] are likely to attempt to obtain in the future. ’
C O N T E N T S:
HOW SOUTH AFRICA BUILT SIX ATOM BOMBS
(And then Abandoned its Nuclear Weapons program)
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1: South Africa ’ s Atom Bomb Program: Historical
Perspective
Chapter 2: Background to the Bomb Program
Chapter 3: Lead Up to the Bomb
Chapter 4: The Nuclear Program Gets Underway
Chapter 5: What the South African Atom Bomb Program was all About
Chapter 6: The Early Approach
Chapter 7: What the Bomb Meant to South Africa
Chapter 8: Missiles: Stoking the Forge of Fire
Chapter 9: The Vela Satellite Conundrum
Chapter 10: The Search for a Tactical Nuclear Weapon
Epilogue: Putting the Genie Back into the Bottle
Appendix A Glossary of Nuclear and Related Terms and Phrases
Appendix B How Saddam Hussein Almost Built his Bomb
Appendix C Seminal Documents in the Development of the Atom Bomb
Appendix D The American View: South Africa ’ s Secret Nuclear Weapons
INDEX
Images from the 'Dive South Africa' Photographers
(Click on image to enlarge)
