The Bombers Were on the Runways

David A. Nichols. Eisenhower 1956. Simon & Schuster. 2011. 346 pp.
In the fall of 1956 my father was the Machine Accounting Officer at Sculthorpe, a US Air Force base in England. This was during the combined crises of Suez and Hungary. The base was on full alert, or as he put it, "the bombers were on the runway, fueled, armed, and ready to go." World War III was a distinct possibility. Yet historians have for years downplayed this incident. Perhaps because the danger did not seem as immediately threatening as did the Missile Crisis six years later. Or, could it be that Eisenhower was a more behind the scenes type of leader?
With the publication of Eisenhower 1956, that oversight has been rectified. Not only does the author restore the Suez Crisis to prominence but in so doing he demonstrates this as the starting point of American full-scale involvement in the Middle East. In tying in the election campaign of 1956, Nichols shows that politics did not end at the water's edge even in 1956 and that game playing and posturing were just as much a part of the scene as they are in 2011.