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Historically Speaking the Manhattan Project

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Historically Speaking the Manhattan Project Historically Speaking The Manhattan Project uring the course of last year’s presi- By Brig. Gen. John S. Brown than a generation, scientists had been Ddential campaign, we heard much U.S. Army retired musing about the potential energy avail- about achieving “energy independence,” able from nuclear fission or fusion. In an imperative if we are to shed crippling geostrategic vul- 1939, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard forwarded a letter to nerabilities, reverse staggering trade imbalances and dig President Franklin D. Roosevelt advising him to pursue an out of the current economic sinkhole. Proposals incorpo- atomic weapon in the belief that Nazi Germany was al- rated further drilling and mining as well as improving ready doing so. For several years, interest, investment and economies and efficiencies. Most people recognize the lim- activity spiraled upward but never achieved focus or co- its of such incremental approaches. Some believe that herence—or genuine results. In September 1942, the fed- “market forces” will solve the problem: When oil gets ex- eral government handed the mission over to the U.S. Army pensive enough, markets alone will propel us into a new in the person of soon-to-be Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves. energy paradigm. Unfortunately, the market itself is incre- Within a week, Gen. Groves purchased 52,000 acres at Oak mental, myopically so when managed by those seeking Ridge, Tenn., to support a laboratory and production site. quarterly returns and pathologically so when led by those He had been advised that he needed an expansive isolated who trade stocks on a daily basis. Historically, true techno- setting with ample electric power; familiar with the Ten- economic breakthroughs have required significant govern- nessee Valley Authority and its setting, he found one. ment intervention to succeed. Within a month, Gen. Groves appointed physicist J. Robert An iconic example of a government-led techno-economic Oppenheimer as the project’s scientific director. Some breakthrough is the harnessing of nuclear energy. For more found Oppenheimer’s political views unnerving and his personality off-putting. Gen. Groves recognized Oppen- heimer’s genius and breadth of vision, and considered his political views irrelevant and his personality manageable. The Manhattan Project, named after the Manhattan Engi- neer District Gen. Groves ostensibly commanded, became massive. The War Production Board, according it the high- est priority, spent more than $2 billion—a substantial sum at the time—and employed more than 130,000 people, in- cluding many of the world’s finest engineers and physi- cists. The massive site at Oak Ridge produced uranium-235; an even more massive site near Richland, Wash., produced plutonium; and a sprawling complex at Los Alamos, N.M., housed laboratories and the facilities that actually assem- bled the weapons. A dozen other sites scattered around the United States provided other support and services. At one point, Oak Ridge alone consumed one-sixth of the electric power being generated in the United States. Despite the scope and scale of the effort, it progressed with creditable secrecy, a testament to the dedication and commitment of the agency and those who staffed it. Even the first man- made nuclear explosion at Alamogordo, N.M., in July 1945 was known but to a few. gy The harnessing of nuclear power did not proceed in a straight line. There were dips and turns as scientists and engineers experimented with techniques and approaches. Gaseous diffusion, electromagnetic isotope separation, U.S. Dept. of Ener thermal diffusion, high-speed centrifuges and cyclotrons— Then-Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves (left) confers with all helped generate nuclear fuels with varying degrees of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist he appointed efficiency and effectiveness. In the end, the project pro- scientific director of the Manhattan Project. duced two weapon types, not one. The bomb dropped on 70 ARMY I January 2009 Hiroshima was a gun-type uranium-235 device, whereas the one dropped on Nagasaki was an implosion-type plutonium-239 device. Changes in the scope and direction of the program, at times radical, required decisive leadership as well as tech- nical brilliance. The organizational skill of Gen. Groves and the scientific genius of Oppenheimer both were tested time and again. Ultimately, the vast project carried the United States and the world into the Atomic Age and through monumental change. When World War II con- cluded, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 turned the entire project over to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, re- flecting both traditional American military deference to civil authority and a desire to divert this newly harnessed power to peaceful purposes. Initial oversight of a project of this scale by the Army Corps of Engineers was not unprecedented and quite sensi- ble. The Army had the organizational skills, technical depth and nationwide footprint to pull it together. Its leaders were salaried civil servants with motivations other than profit. They could take the long view and accept that there would be perturbations en route. They would accept civil- ian control, maintain discipline and focus on the mission. rom the beginning of our nation, the Army has been an Finstrument of national purpose, facilitating federally driven techno-economic advances. The opening of the chives West was federal policy enabled by such trailblazing Army Ar explorers as Lewis and Clark and by the security umbrella the frontier Army produced. The railroads could not have National succeeded without massive land grants and other subsi- Jumbo, an atomic device, is positioned for Trinity, the first dies. Many of their early managers and construction engi- man-made nuclear test, near Alamogordo, N.M., in July 1945. neers were West Pointers on loan or recently retired. The automobile age similarly required huge governmental in- of our governance has been to turn economic working de- vestments in roads and infrastructure to midwife it. The tails over to private enterprise as soon as momentum is ir- fingerprints of the Army Signal Corps were all over reversibly achieved. Transcontinental railroads could not nascent radio and television, and visionary federal appor- have been constructed, nuclear energy could not have been tionment of the electromagnetic spectrum made industries harnessed and the moon could not have been reached with- based upon them possible. Aviation and rocketry both pro- out federal leadership. Conversely, the federal government gressed from technological novelty to commercially feasi- is not actually capable of “running” the new economies that ble possibility under Army auspices, and farsighted fed- result when techno-economic paradigm shifts are achieved. eral programs spun them off into such new paradigms as I have heard it said that the challenges of energy inde- contemporary air travel or satellite-based communications. pendence are so daunting we will need another Manhat- Defense agencies and contractors developed both the com- tan Project to overcome them. If so, we would profit from puter and the Internet, and the federal government trans- the example, inspiration and lessons learned from the last muted them from the military to the commercial sector. one. ( At its best, the genius of our constitutional government has been to envision a better future and to undertake initia- Recommended Reading: tives that lift us from one paradigm to another. The wisdom Groves, Leslie R., Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harper, 1962) BRIG. GEN. JOHN S. BROWN, USA Ret., was chief of mili- tary history at the U.S. Army Center of Military History from Jones, Vincent C., Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic December 1998 to October 2005. He commanded the 2nd Bat- Bomb (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of talion, 66th Armor, in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War Military History, 1985) and returned to Kuwait as commander of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Weigley, Russell F., History of the United States Army Cavalry Division, in 1995. He has a doctorate in history from (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1967) Indiana University. January 2009 I ARMY 71.
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