Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [109]
Einstein closed by noting that Germany had recently stopped selling uranium from Czech mines, and that research was being conducted in Berlin. One month later Germany attacked Poland and the Second World War began.
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler reportedly dismissed relativity theory as “the Jewish science” and thereby drove many of the world’s leading physicists to America. Consequently, little came of the German program, though that was not known until war’s end. But the American bomb could not have succeeded without the Jewish scientists.
The colleagues whom Einstein mentioned were the Italian Enrico Fermi and the Hungarian Leo Szilard, who, in 1942, would create the first atomic chain reaction. They became crucial members of the Manhattan Engineering District (MED), the cover name for America’s atomic bomb program.
Other nations were involved, including British, Australian, and Canadian scientists and engineers. There was even a German, Hans Bethe, a leading theorist who had emigrated in 1935.
Chosen to oversee the scientific portion of the project was a first-generation American, J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose Jewish parents had moved from Germany in the 1880s. Tall and thin to the point of being gaunt, he wore himself down to 114 pounds during World War II.
When the Manhattan Project began in August 1942, the assemblage of raw brainpower was still amazingly youthful. Of the leading lights, Szilard was the eldest at forty-four. Edward Teller was probably the youngest at thirty-four; Oppenheimer was thirty-eight. Fermi, then forty-one, had begun his doctoral work at seventeen. A Czech researcher, Frederic de Hoffmann, was invited to participate at nineteen.
Commanding the Manhattan Project was Colonel Leslie R. Groves, a driven taskmaster who graduated fourth in the West Point class of ’18. He had supervised construction of the Pentagon building and, considering the crucial importance of the MED and its immense budget (over $2 billion in 1945), he was surprisingly junior. He was promoted to temporary brigadier general in September 1942 and temporary major general two years later.
Groves and Oppenheimer made an odd couple: the gruff, portly general and the often eccentric, rail-thin scientist. But they made Manhattan work. At times it was difficult for Groves to support “Oppie,” who made a bad situation worse by refusing to cooperate with security agents investigating his prewar Communist affiliations. (It was not known until much later that the Soviets had collaborators inside the project.) Yet Groves recognized Oppenheimer’s unique ability to manage the soaring intellects and often clashing egos of so many geniuses and keep them moving toward completion of the task.
A crucial early decision was what kind of bomb to build: uranium or plutonium. Not knowing the status of the German project, America produced both types of weapons, though far more effort went into the plutonium design, which scientists called “the gadget.” LeMay glibly referred to either bomb as “the firecracker.”
MED had three primary facilities: Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Hanford, Washington. The brain center was “Los Al,” in the high desert north of Santa Fe, established on a former boys ranch. From 1943 onward Oppenheimer directed the efforts of the physicists, scientists, and engineers who tackled the theoretical and practical aspects of building an atomic bomb.
The raw materials came from Oak Ridge (uranium) and Hanford (plutonium). Both places were subject of much speculation, though some “explanations” leaned toward the whimsical. Student naval aviators at Pasco, Washington, were threatened with “death or worse” for overflying Hanford. Recalled one pilot, “ ‘Rumor Control’ had two theories as to Hanford’s purpose. Republicans said it was a secret factory making Roosevelt campaign buttons. Others said, ‘No, they’re making the front ends of horses for shipment to D.C. and final assembly.’”
Oppenheimer the enthusiastic horseman ramrodded a scientific herd