Eyeing the Red Storm: Eisenhower and the First Attempt to Build a Spy Satellite

by Robert M. Dienesch

Overview

In 1954 the U.S. Air Force launched an ambitious program known as WS-117L to develop the world’s first reconnaissance satellite. The goal was to take photographic images from space and relay them back to Earth via radio. Because of technical issues and bureaucratic resistance, however, WS-117L was seriously behind schedule by the time Sputnik orbited Earth in 1957 and was eventually cancelled. The air force began concentrating instead on new programs that eventually launched the first successful U.S. spy satellites.


Eyeing the Red Storm examines the birth of space-based reconnaissance not from the perspective of CORONA (the first photo reconnaissance satellite to fly) but rather from that of the WS-117L. Robert M. Dienesch’s revised assessment places WS-117L within the larger context of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency, focusing on the dynamic between military and civilian leadership. Dienesch demonstrates how WS-117L promised Eisenhower not merely military intelligence but also the capacity to manage national security against the Soviet threat. As a fiscal conservative, Eisenhower believed a strong economy was the key to surviving the Cold War and saw satellite reconnaissance as a means to understand the Soviet military challenge more clearly and thus keep American defense spending under control. 


Although WS-117L never flew, it provided the foundation for all subsequent satellites, breaking theoretical barriers and helping to overcome major technical hurdles, which ensured the success of America’s first working reconnaissance satellites and their photographic missions during the Cold War.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803255722
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	04/01/2016
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Robert M. Dienesch is an adjunct assistant professor of history at the University of Windsor, Ontario, and a research affiliate with the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society. His work has been published in Quest: The History of Spaceflight and Northern Mariner.
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Filling in the Gap
List of Abbreviations

Part 1. Eisenhower's Delicate Balance
1. Truman and Eisenhower on the Cold War (1945-55)
2. Eisenhower and Defense: Three Challenges, Three Responses (1953-56)
3. Eisenhower and Satellite Reconnaissance: Three Projects (1954-58)

Part 2. WS-117L
4. Origins: RAND and Satellite Reconnaissance (1945-54)
5. WS-117L: Two Stages (1954-57)
6. Satellite Photography, Film Return, and the Birth of CORONA (1957-58)
7. SENTRY/SAMOS, MIDAS, and the Dissolution of WS-117L (1958-60)

Epilogue: WS-117L in Perspective

Appendix: Historiography of Eisenhower and Space Reconnaissance
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

“Dienesch combines an explication of high-level policy formulation with technical details about reconnaissance satellite development. He penetrates the secrecy that surrounded America’s first military satellite program, WS-117L, to assess both its contributions and disappointments.”—Rick W. Sturdevant, deputy director of history, Air Force Space Command

Rick W. Sturdevant

“In his well-researched and convincingly argued book, Robert Dienesch has demonstrated clearly that the American spy satellite program, rather than being a knee-jerk reaction to the launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957, was instead the culmination of years of effort by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.”—Galen Perras, associate professor of history at the University of Ottawa and author of Franklin Roosevelt and the Origins of the Canadian-American Security Alliance, 1933–1945: Necessary but Not Necessary Enough
 

Galen Perras

"This book definitively offers a foundation for future research and as such is a welcome addition to Cold War historiography."—Emily Redman, Pacific Historical Review

Pacific Historical Review - Emily Redman

"Eyeing the Red Storm is an important contribution and a worthy resource for undergraduate or graduate settings as well as for readers interested in the history of satellite reconnaissance and Cold War strategy."—Nicholas Sambaluk, H-War

H-War - Nicholas Sambaluk

"For those who have a 'Space and the Cold War' shelf in their library, this book deserves a place on it."—Pat Norris, Aerospace

Aerospace - Pat Norris

"Eyeing the Red Storm is a valuable contribution to the existing literature on military space programs."—Washington Book Review

Washington Book Review

"An intriguing and incisive study. . . . Eyeing the Red Storm puts readers into the middle of the Cold War."—Scott Neuffer, Foreword Reviews

Foreword Reviews - Scott Neuffer

02/08/2016
During the Cold War, many American leaders believed that the U.S.S.R. wanted to conquer the world, writes Dienesch, an adjunct assistant professor of history at the University of Windsor, Ontario, in this scholarly investigation of American spy-satellite development. According to military leaders, national security required a vast expansion of the military. When President Eisenhower took office in 1953, he was determined to defend the U.S. without bankrupting it or converting it into a garrison state. His major barrier was ignorance of the U.S.S.R.’s military capabilities. Satellites solved the problem in the 1960s, but Dienesch concentrates on their origins, emphasizing a nearly forgotten program to build the first, named WS-117L and approved in 1953. As a pioneering piece of technology it was clunky; its power needs required a heavy nuclear reactor, its camera resolution was no better than that of television, and its reel-to-reel tapes were difficult to control remotely. Canceled in 1959, the WS-117L never flew, but several of its systems were used in later satellites. Though this is an academic study replete with coverage of committee meetings, panels of experts, and official reports, it thankfully lacks turgid prose. Readers searching for a detailed analysis of early spy satellite development will approve of Dienesch’s accessible work. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

2016-01-13
A study of how the Dwight Eisenhower administration created the first U.S. satellite reconnaissance mission. The desperate need for better intelligence of Soviet strategic capacities plagued the post-World War II presidencies of Harry Truman and Eisenhower, gaining special urgency in the wake of the Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957. Canadian historian Dienesch (Univ. of Windsor, Ontario) examines how the shock and terror that the orbiting of the Sputnik satellite instilled in the American public and the Eisenhower administration proved the catalyst for the implementation of the American reconnaissance satellite program, which was up and running only 34 months after the Russian's launch. The WS-117L program, the precursor to the more successful Corona satellites, was the prototype, engineered during the early years of the Eisenhower administration by the U.S. Air Force and cloaked in secrecy. Dienesch asserts that very little has been written about this precursor, dwarfed by research on the later Corona program, which the CIA took over from the Air Force. To understand the later triumphs, the author steps back to look at Eisenhower's initial motivation. The threefold challenges Eisenhower faced were to protect the U.S. from Soviet aggression, to establish economic security (the economy was besieged by the huge increase needed for defense spending to combat this threat), and to withstand the pressure from the military, which was whipping itself into a state of overmilitarization. Deterrence and containment were the new watchwords, and a satellite that would monitor the Soviet Union was the answer. The author looks at the RAND development of the satellite from 1945 to 1954 and how the satellite was supposed to retrieve film, though it suffered from management and other problems and was retired by the end of Eisenhower's second term, replaced by Corona. While WS-117L was not entirely successful, Dienesch asserts in this solid, specialized scholarly study, it laid the foundation for the U.S. space effort for the next 40 years.

Kirkus Reviews