The Secret History of RDX: The Super-Explosive That Helped Win World War II by Colin F. Baxter (review)

In The Secret History of RDX: The Super-Explosive That Helped Win World War II, Colin F. Baxter presents the story of the development of RDX (Research Department Explosive), which begins at the Woolrich Arsenal in London in 1941. Baxter hopes this study will contribute to the “History from the Middle” of the Second World War, as opposed to the usual accounts that focus on activity at the top (leadership and campaigns), or the bottom (small-unit histories and solider/sailor biographies). The story takes us from London to Canada and, most importantly, to the Holston Ordinance Works near Kingsport, Tennessee, United States.

The British, looking to procure a more powerful explosive for the war, achieved this by working with its own scientists and military personnel and with her allies in Canada and the United States. While initially developed to replace older explosives used in bombs—Amatol—which made up approximately 30 percent of the munitions’ weight when an equivalent German bomb was 50 percent explosive by weight, RDX and its spinoffs were, the author argues, on par with more familiar technologies that helped in the war for the Allies. RDX-based products such as Composition B2 and C-4 were used in a variety of applications, including the biggest non-nuclear air-dropped bombs during the war: the 14,000 pound Tallboys and the 22,000 pound Grand Slams. Torpex, another RDX byproduct, was a crucial ingredient used in confronting the U-Boat threat to Great Britain. Baxter commits an entire chapter to this subject, which is arguably the best in the book.

Baxter emphasizes familiar themes in the history of the relationships between governments, modern militaries, science, and technology. For example, all Allied militaries were skeptical of civilian scientists’ ability to understand military needs, which was coupled with a military culture characterized by a pervasive anxiety over secrecy. This caused friction between various ordinance personnel, government research committees, and civilian-dominated councils. In the end, though, relationships smoothed and the Tennessee Eastman Company was hired to develop RDX production processes, which it did on a massive scale, from a production output of 60 tons a week by British manufacturing in 1941 to 340 tons per day in the United States by the end of the war.

While an interesting and useful book from a scholarly perspective, The Secret History of RDX also includes several anecdotes that many military veterans will find familiar and amusing, this reviewer included. One occurred in 1944 when bomber crews were taken in by a rumor begun by senior officers concerned over mishandling the new RDX-based munitions. This led young bomber crews to believe that Composition B2 (RDX) bombs were exceptionally fragile and prone to exploding if handled too roughly. On one particularly turbulent mission to Germany on 20 April, the nervous bombardiers dumped 2,472 of 6,344 bombs into the English Channel rather than risk delivering them to their targets. Based on this and similar incidents, ordnance officers and crews were then told to disregard information that suggested RDX bombs required special, delicate handling. The outcome of this change-in-message resulted in a predictable fiasco just a few months later when, on 15 July, a detail of American airmen found themselves delivering a load of 500-pound bombs to an ammo dump in Suffolk, England on a Saturday night. The young men, sure the munitions were safe and anxious to complete their work before a night on the town, disregarded standard unloading procedures. The driver of one of the trucks put the vehicle in reverse, gunned the engine and slammed on the breaks, jettisoning the cargo onto the tarmac. The crew was successful in quickly unloading the bombs, but in doing so, 12,000 tons of RDX-based explosives went off, killing five airmen in an explosion that could be heard miles away.

Generally, then, this...