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National Security History Series National Security History Series The Manhattan Project 5 Visit our Manhattan Project web site: http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/index.htm 5 DOE/MA-0002 Revised National Security History Series The Manhattan Project F. G. Gosling Office of History and Heritage Resources Executive Secretariat Office of Management Department of Energy January 2010 5 National Security History Series Volume I: The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb Volume II: Building the Nuclear Arsenal: Cold War Nuclear Weapons Development and Production, 1946-1989 (in progress) Volume III: Nonproliferation and Stockpile Stewardship: The Nuclear Weapons Complex in the Post-Cold War World (projected) The National Security History Series is a joint project of the Office of History and Heritage Resources and the National Nuclear Security Administration. 5 Foreword to the 2010 edition In a national survey at the turn of the millennium, journalists and historians ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb and the surrender of Japan to end the Second World War as the top story of the twentieth century. The advent of nuclear weapons, brought about by the Manhattan Project, not only helped bring an end to World War II but ushered in the atomic age and determined how the next war—the Cold War—would be fought. The Manhattan Project also became the organizational model behind the impressive achievements of American “big science” during the second half of the twentieth century, which demonstrated the relationship between basic scientific research and national security. This edition of the Office of History’s perennial “bestseller” is part of a joint project between the Office of History and Heritage Resources and the National Nuclear Security Administration to produce a three- volume National Security History Series documenting the Department of Energy’s role in developing, testing, producing, and managing the Nation’s nuclear arsenal. There will be hard copy and online versions of each volume as well as complementary websites. The first website–The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History–is available on the Office of History and Heritage Resources website, http://www.cfo. doe.gov/me70/history. The Office of History and Heritage Resources and the National Nuclear Security Administration hope that the National Security History Series will provide the Department and the public with reliable and useful information about the national security policies and programs of the Department and its predecessor agencies. Erica De Vos Thomas P. D’Agostino Director Administrator Office of the Executive Secretariat National Nuclear Security Administration F. G. Gosling Chief Historian Office of History and Heritage Resources 5 5 Table of Contents Introduction: The Einstein Letter--------------------------------------------------vii Part I: Physics Background, 1890-1939--------------------------------------------1 Part II: Early Government Support------------------------------------------------6 Part III: The Manhattan Engineer District----------------------------------------15 Part IV: The Manhattan Engineer District in Operation-------------------------20 Manhattan Project Photo Gallery--------------------------------------------- 36 - 73 Part V: The Atomic Bomb and American Strategy-------------------------------87 Part VI: The Manhattan District in Peacetime------------------------------------99 Manhattan Project Chart-----------------------------------------------------------103 Notes-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 104 Select Bibliography------------------------------------------------------------------106 Manhattan Project Chronology----------------------------------------------------107 v5 5 weapon. But Roosevelt, preoccupied with events Introduction in Europe, took over two months to meet with Sachs after receiving Einstein’s letter. Szilard and his colleagues interpreted Roosevelt’s inaction as unwelcome evidence that the President did not take the threat of nuclear warfare seriously. Introduction: The Einstein Letter Roosevelt wrote Einstein back on October On October 11, 1939, Alexander Sachs, Wall 19, 1939, informing the physicist that he had Street economist and longtime friend and set up a committee consisting of civilian and unofficial advisor to President Franklin Delano military representatives to study uranium.2 Roosevelt, met with the President to discuss a Events proved that the President was a man letter written by Albert Einstein the previous of considerable action once he had chosen a August. Einstein had written to inform Roosevelt direction. In fact, Roosevelt’s approval of uranium that recent research on chain reactions utilizing research in October 1939, based on his belief uranium made it probable that large amounts of that the United States could not take the risk of power could be produced by a chain reaction and allowing Hitler to achieve unilateral possession that, by harnessing this power, the construction of “extremely powerful bombs,” was merely the of “extremely powerful bombs” was conceivable.1 first decision among many that ultimately led to Einstein believed the German government the establishment of the only atomic bomb effort was actively supporting research in this area that succeeded in World War II—the Manhattan and urged the United States government to do Project. likewise. Sachs read from a cover letter he had prepared and briefed Roosevelt on the main The French, who did important research on points contained in Einstein’s letter. Initially fission and the feasibility of chain reactions the President was noncommittal and expressed using uranium in 1939 and early 1940, fell under concern over locating the necessary funds, but at German occupation in June 1940. The British, a second meeting over breakfast the next morning who made significant theoretical contributions Roosevelt became convinced of the value of early in the war, did not have the resources to exploring atomic energy. pursue a full-fledged atomic bomb research program while fighting for their survival. Einstein drafted his famous letter with the help Consequently, the British acceded, reluctantly, of the Hungarian émigré physicist Leo Szilard, to American leadership and sent scientists to one of a number of European scientists who had every Manhattan Project facility. The Germans, fled to the United States in the 1930s to escape despite Allied fears that were not dispelled until Nazi and Fascist repression. Szilard was among the ALSOS mission in 1944,3 were little nearer to the most vocal of those advocating a program producing atomic weapons at the end of the war to develop bombs based on recent findings in than they had been at the beginning of the war. nuclear physics and chemistry. Those like Szilard German scientists pursued research on fission, and fellow Hungarian refugee physicists Edward but the government’s attempts to forge a coherent Teller and Eugene Wigner regarded it as their strategy met with little success.4 responsibility to alert Americans to the possi- bility that German scientists might win the race The Russians built a program that grew increas- to build an atomic bomb and to warn that Hitler ingly active as the war drew to a conclusion, but would be more than willing to resort to such a the first successful Soviet test was not conducted vii5 Introduction until 1949. The Japanese managed to build several protected by oceans on both sides, managed to cyclotrons by war’s end, but the atomic bomb take the discovery of fission from the laboratory research effort could not maintain a high priority to the battlefield and gain a shortlived atomic in the face of increasing scarcities. Only the monopoly. Americans, late entrants into World War II and 5viii Geiger, Rutherford postulated that electrons orbit Part I: an atom’s nucleus, much as the planets orbit the Physics Background, 1890-1939 sun. The second fundamental atomic particle, the proton, was “identified by Rutherford in 1919.” The Danish physicist Neils Bohr combined Rutherford’s atomic concepts with Max Planck’s quantum theory to produce the first modern The Atomic Solar System model of the atom. In 1913, Bohr demonstrated The modern effort to uncover the inner structure that electrons moved around an atom’s nucleus in of the atom began with the discovery of the certain discrete energy “shells” and that radiation electron by the English physicist J. J. Thomson is emitted or absorbed when an electron moves in 1897. Thomson proved that cathode rays were from one shell to another. The following year, not some sort of undefined process occurring in Henry Moseley, an English physicist, showed that “ether” but were in fact composed of extremely each element could be identified by its “unique small, negatively charged particles. Dubbed atomic number.” electrons, their exact charge and mass were soon determined by John Townsend and Robert By the 1910s, then, scientists investigating the Millikan. inner structure of the atom had come to believe, among other things, that energy exists within the At the same time, discoveries relating to the atom. Considered in light of Albert Einstein’s 1905 curious phenomenon of radioactivity had also theoretical formula E=mc2 (energy equals mass begun to propel atomic research forward. In 1896, times the square of the velocity of light) stating the French physicist Antoine Becquerel detected that matter and energy were equivalent, this belief the three basic forms of radioactivity, which were held breathtaking possibilities.
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