As 15th August ( the surrender by Japan in WW II ) approaches one can anticipate the usual diatribes from the unwashed and soy-latte sets lecturing us on how bad we were in 1945 to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. None of these know-alls were even alive in 1945 so whatever they have to say comes from their collective backsides.
Britain, Germany and the USA were all working to become the first to master nuclear fission. Thankfully it was America who won.
The American effort began in 1939 when Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt setting out the possibilities and predicted consequences of unleashing nuclear power. Einstein, a German born Jew, left Germany to study in Zurich and renounced his citizenship in 1896 to avoid compulsory military service.
He was not granted Swiss citizenship until 1901. He had a lack lustre career as a student but his results in mathematics and physics were so brilliant they carried him through. In 1913 he returned to Germany as director of The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin where he served until 1933. In 1932 he became a target of Nazi persecution and left Germany forever settling at Princeton, New Jersey at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Albert Einstein meets Leo Szlard to compose his letter to FDR
During 1938-1939 a group of four scientists discovered that vast amounts of energy could be unleashed by splitting the atom of uranium. In July, 1939 a physicist colleague persuaded Einstein to write to President Roosevelt urging him to develop an atomic bomb. The letter was delivered on 2nd August, 1939, to Alexander Sachs, an economic advisor to the President. The President received the letter on 11th October, and on the 19th replied to Einstein that he had organised the Uranium Committee to study the issue. Thus the Manhattan Project was born but Einstein was never a part of it. J Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI considered that Einstein’s participation in various pacifist movements was a threat to national security and recommended that he be denied entry to the USA. He was overruled by the State Department and Einstein was granted US citizenship in 1940.
Since 1934 the Nazis had been conducting research into Heavy Water, a substance of the same molecular structure as ordinary water except that the hydrogen atoms were different and had the ability to unleash extraordinary power. Britain was also doing atomic research and was aware of the potential of heavy water.
Between 1940 and 1944 allied bombing and attacks by British and Norwegian commandos attacked and destroyed the Nazi plant in German occupied Norway which was producing heavy water and with it, Germany’s ability to develop an atomic bomb.
Unfortunately for the Germans the Nazi policy for development was to create several teams to compete with each other theorising that this would bring out the best of all teams. It was considered that the minimum critical mass for successful development of an atomic bomb was 1,000 kgs of uranium. The Nazis had two teams. One was given 600 kgs and the other 400 kgs of uranium with the result that both failed to deliver.
Having acquired all of the technical knowledge of Einstein the project became a production matter and his participation was not vital to continue the programme. In August 1942, President Roosevelt realised that the production of an atomic bomb could not be left to groups of scientists spread all around the country. He needed an organisation devoted to production rather than new research. He also did not have time to develop a new organisation to run this brand new never before done project and he turned to the US Army Engineers Corps which had a track record of being able to undertake massive projects and carry them through to a successful conclusion.
He created the Manhattan Engineering District under the command of Major General Leslie Groves. The choice of Groves raised a number of eyebrows. He had until then, a lack lustre career, was overweight, not generally popular and not one to be recognised as a battle front leader.
General Leslie Groves, commander of the Manhattan Engineers District, better known as the Manhattan Project, looks over a map with members of the Project's Tech Board. To the right of Groves is Eric Jette, head of Plutonium Metallurgy for the Project. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
On the plus front, Groves turned out to be an inspired choice. He had a track record of getting things done on time and on budget. He had controlled a number of very large engineering projects of the US army and was not in any way a desk bound leader. With a forceful personality he got whatever he wanted when he wanted it. When he undertook the job he required five things in place. One was a design for the bomb. Two was a vast source of uranium. Three was a nuclear reactor to put it in. Fourth was to replicate the reactor to carry out the work on an industrial scale and fifth was an aeroplane that could travel 3,000 miles and drop the bomb with pin point accuracy.
His first target was the appointment of J Robert Oppenheimer to oversee the scientists designing the bomb.
Next he procured the supply of one million pounds of uranium from the Belgian Congo.
Uranium mining in the Belgian Congo primarily took place at the Shinkolobwe Mine owned by the Union Minière du Haut Katanga (Mining Union of Upper Katanga). It is located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (previously known as the Belgian Congo and later Zaire), approximately 100 miles northwest of Lubumbashi. The uranium in Congo was especially pure; at times, the pitchblende where the uranium was embedded created sixty times more usable uranium than the average mine.
He set up his production facility at Los Alamos in New Mexico in a secret and isolated location far from any inkling of civilisation. To run this facility Groves chose the Du Pont Company. Du Pont had been the supplier of all explosives in WW1 and had been accused of profiteering. They did not want to repeat the experience and rejected the appointment, Groves persuaded Du Pont that this was not a profit making exercise. It was a project carrying the personal endorsement of the President and was one of patriotic duty. Du Pont accepted the appointment and to avoid any further accusations of war profiteering it accepted on the basis that its sole reward for the task was to be one dollar.
Du Pont soon realised that the Los Alamos facility would be too small to produce the quantity of fissionable material called for so it set about building another in Washington State.
Vannevar Bush, James Conant, Groves, and Franklin Matthias, Hanford, Washington
Between the two over 100,000 people were employed to build over 2,000 tubes of fissionable uranium. To do this the project drew down from the US treasury,15,000 tons of silver to make the cores of the reactors. Two bombs were under construction, one called Thin Man and the other Fat Man. In June 1944 the Allies landed in France and Germany was on the run. Groves decided that Japan had to be the target and set a date of August, 1945 for delivery. In July, 1945, the first real test took place at Los Alamos using a device named Gadget. It was more than a mere success. It stunned all concerned to the point where many of the scientists wondered what they had done and whether they had done something reprehensible.
Since the beginning of the war, Boeing had been developing a totally new concept of bomber. The B24, the major bomber used by the US Army Air Force, did not have the range to reach Japan thus the new and far more advanced bomber known as the B29 was enlisted to do the job of delivery. At the time, the B29 was the most advanced and sophisticated aeroplane in the world but on its first test flight it caught fire coming into land and crashed into an office building in Seattle.
The cause of this crash was resolved and Boeing finalised its plans for the production of the B29. To do this in the quantity of aircraft needed Boeing had to construct a brand new factory at Wichita, Kansas. The plane was so complicated that the War Production Board wanted nothing to do with it so the project became solely a Boeing one and they were left with the task of co-ordinating production of the component parts being supplied by 1,400 sub contracted manufacturers.
The B29 was named the Super Fortress and by comparison it reduced the B24 and the B17 to medium bomber status.
The B24, at the time, the most sophisticated aeroplane in operation had about 500,000 parts. The B29 had one million. The B29 was the most expensive aeroplane built at that time. It had taken four years of design and development and by April, 1944 only 150 had been built. However, by the end of the year this had risen to 2,000.
At this stage it was evident that Japan was beaten but its fierce resistance to the American invasion of Saipan, Okinawa and Iwo Jima lead the US Navy to conclude that an invasion of the Japanese home islands would cost over 1,000,000 casualties. To avoid this sacrifice the bombing campaign of Japan was conceived and the 20th Air Force commanded by General Curtis Lemay was formed.
Lemay knew that Japanese cities were mainly constructed of wood and paper. His tactic was to use incendiary bombing and on 9th March, 1945 he sent 300 B29s carrying 2,000 tons of incendiaries to bomb Tokyo. Sixteen square miles of the city was destroyed by raging fires. The casualties have never been counted but it was the biggest destruction of human life ever undertaken to that time by a single bombing raid. Still the Japanese refused to surrender so the raids continued.
Enter the Enola Gay. At 8.00 am on 6th August 1945, this sole B29, accompanied by two others as observation platforms, dropped the first atomic bomb on the unsuspecting city of Hiroshima. Hiroshima had not been used as a target by the US Forces because they wanted to keep it intact for pinpoint accuracy if and when the atom bomb was to be used.
70,000 Japanese are killed outright. 70,000 die in the next few days from injuries received and countless more die subsequently from radiation sickness.
This still did not achieve a Japanese surrender so a second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki by another B29 named Bock’s Car following which representations were made to the Emperor who over rode the military hierarchy and ordered surrender on 15th August, 1945.
Today when one goes to Hiroshima there is a comprehensive museum devoted to the event adjacent to the actual site. The target was a bridge over a river and the bomb detonated at about 600 feet within 100 metres of the actual target. I found the museum rather irritating, there is no remorse displayed for the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese Army before and during WW2. Rather it was a subtle condemnation of the evil Americans for doing what they did and much hand-wringing for the poor unfortunate victims. The whole place has an overtone that reeks of UN composition of the exhibits.
After having been there and read all this drivel one comes away with the feeling of “serve the buggers right” and when one reads the efforts and achievements of the US military industrial complex it also reinforces the feeling of “thank God for America”. It was American industry that won WW2. The Allied forces on the ground, in the air and on the seas were merely the means of delivery.
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