What is the Manhattan Project. The main secrets of the Manhattan Project (3 photos)

Basic information

Many prominent scientists who emigrated from Germany in 1933 (Frisch, Bethe, Szilard, Fuchs, Teller, Bloch and others) were connected to the secret project, which started in 1939, as well as Niels Bohr, who was taken out of Denmark occupied by Germany. As part of the project, its employees worked in the European theater of operations, collecting valuable information about the German nuclear program (see Alsos Mission).

By the summer of 1945, the US military department managed to obtain atomic weapons, the action of which was based on the use of two types of fissile material - the uranium-235 isotope (" uranium bomb""), or an isotope of plutonium-239 ("plutonium bomb"). Main difficulty when creating an explosive device based on uranium-235, it consisted in enriching uranium - that is, in increasing the mass fraction of the 235 U isotope in the material (in natural uranium, the main isotope is 238 U, the fraction of the 235 U isotope is approximately equal to 0.7%), in order to make it possible a nuclear chain reaction (in natural and low-enriched uranium, the isotope 238 U prevents the development of a chain reaction). Obtaining plutonium-239 for the plutonium charge was not directly related to the difficulties in obtaining uranium-235, since in this case uranium-238 and a special nuclear reactor are used.

Trinity "based on plutonium-239 (during the test, it was the implosion-type plutonium bomb that was tested) was carried out in New Mexico on July 16, 1945 (Alamogordo test site). After this explosion, Groves very revealingly responded to Oppenheimer's words: "The war is over," he said: "Yes, but after we drop two more bombs on Japan."

The Manhattan Project brought together scientists from the UK, Europe, Canada, and the USA into a single international team that solved the problem in the shortest possible time. However, the Manhattan Project was accompanied by tensions between the US and the UK. Great Britain considered itself the offended party, since the United States took advantage of the knowledge of scientists from Great Britain (the Maud Committy committee), but refused to share the results with Great Britain.

Development of the uranium bomb

Natural uranium is 99.3% uranium-238 and 0.7% uranium-235, but only the latter is fissile. The chemically identical uranium-235 must be physically separated from the more common isotope. Were considered various methods uranium enrichment, most of which were carried out at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The most obvious technology, the centrifuge, failed, but electromagnetic separation, gaseous diffusion, and thermal diffusion were successful in the project.

Isotope separation

The first test of the Trinity nuclear explosive device based on plutonium-239 was carried out in the state of New Mexico on July 16, 1945 (Alamogordo test site).

see also

• British nuclear program: M.C. Factory Valley, Hurricane (nuclear test)

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Notes

Literature

• L. Groves

Links

An excerpt characterizing the Manhattan Project

When they brought Nikolushka to Prince Andrei, who looked frightened at his father, but did not cry, because no one was crying, Prince Andrei kissed him and, obviously, did not know what to say to him.
When Nikolushka was taken away, Princess Marya went up to her brother again, kissed him, and, unable to restrain herself any longer, began to cry.
He looked at her intently.
Are you talking about Nikolushka? - he said.
Princess Mary, weeping, bowed her head affirmatively.
“Marie, you know Evan…” but he suddenly fell silent.
- What are you saying?
- Nothing. There is no need to cry here,” he said, looking at her with the same cold look.

When Princess Mary began to cry, he realized that she was crying that Nikolushka would be left without a father. With great effort on himself, he tried to go back to life and transferred himself to their point of view.
“Yes, they must feel sorry for it! he thought. “How easy it is!”
“The birds of the air neither sow nor reap, but your father feeds them,” he said to himself and wanted to say the same to the princess. “But no, they will understand it in their own way, they will not understand! They cannot understand this, that all these feelings that they value are all ours, all these thoughts that seem so important to us that they are not needed. We can't understand each other." And he was silent.

The little son of Prince Andrei was seven years old. He could hardly read, he knew nothing. He experienced a lot after that day, acquiring knowledge, observation, experience; but if he had then mastered all these later acquired abilities, he could not have better, deeper understood the full significance of the scene that he saw between his father, Princess Mary and Natasha than he understood it now. He understood everything and, without crying, left the room, silently went up to Natasha, who followed him, looked shyly at her with beautiful, thoughtful eyes; his upturned ruddy upper lip quivered, he leaned his head against it and wept.
From that day on, he avoided Dessalles, avoided the countess who caressed him, and either sat alone or timidly approached Princess Marya and Natasha, whom he seemed to love even more than his aunt, and softly and shyly caressed them.
Princess Mary, leaving Prince Andrei, fully understood everything that Natasha's face told her. She no longer spoke to Natasha about the hope of saving his life. She took turns with her at his sofa and wept no more, but prayed incessantly, turning her soul to that eternal, incomprehensible, whose presence was now so palpable over the dying man.

Prince Andrei not only knew that he would die, but he felt that he was dying, that he was already half dead. He experienced a consciousness of alienation from everything earthly and a joyful and strange lightness of being. He, without haste and without anxiety, expected what lay ahead of him. That formidable, eternal, unknown and distant, the presence of which he had not ceased to feel throughout his whole life, was now close to him and - by that strange lightness of being that he experienced - almost understandable and felt.
Before, he was afraid of the end. He twice experienced this terrible tormenting feeling of fear of death, the end, and now he no longer understood it.
The first time he experienced this feeling was when a grenade was spinning like a top in front of him and he looked at the stubble, at the bushes, at the sky and knew that death was in front of him. When he woke up after the wound and in his soul, instantly, as if freed from the oppression of life that held him back, this flower of love blossomed, eternal, free, not dependent on this life, he no longer feared death and did not think about it.
The more he, in those hours of suffering solitude and semi-delusion that he spent after his wound, thought about the new beginning of eternal love revealed to him, the more he, without feeling it, renounced earthly life. Everything, to love everyone, to always sacrifice oneself for love, meant not to love anyone, meant not to live this earthly life. And the more he was imbued with this beginning of love, the more he renounced life and the more completely he destroyed that terrible barrier that, without love, stands between life and death. When, this first time, he remembered that he had to die, he said to himself: well, so much the better.
But after that night in Mytishchi, when the woman he desired appeared before him half-delirious, and when he, pressing her hand to his lips, wept quiet, joyful tears, love for one woman crept imperceptibly into his heart and again tied him to life. And joyful and disturbing thoughts began to come to him. Remembering that moment at the dressing station when he saw Kuragin, he now could not return to that feeling: he was tormented by the question of whether he was alive? And he didn't dare to ask.

His illness followed its own physical order, but what Natasha called it happened to him, happened to him two days before Princess Mary's arrival. It was that last moral struggle between life and death in which death triumphed. It was an unexpected realization that he still cherished life, which seemed to him in love for Natasha, and the last, subdued fit of horror before the unknown.
It was in the evening. He was, as usual after dinner, in a slight feverish state, and his thoughts were extremely clear. Sonya was sitting at the table. He dozed off. Suddenly a feeling of happiness swept over him.
“Ah, she came in!” he thought.
Indeed, Natasha, who had just entered with inaudible steps, was sitting in Sonya's place.
Since she began to follow him, he always experienced this physical sensation her closeness. She was sitting on an armchair, sideways to him, blocking the light of the candle from him, and knitting a stocking. (She had learned to knit stockings ever since Prince Andrei had told her that no one knows how to look after the sick as well as old nannies who knit stockings, and that there is something soothing in knitting a stocking.) Her thin fingers quickly fingered from time to time spokes colliding, and the thoughtful profile of her lowered face was clearly visible to him. She made a move - the ball rolled from her knees. She shuddered, looked back at him, and shielding the candle with her hand, with a careful, flexible and precise movement, bent over, picked up the ball and sat down in her former position.
He looked at her without moving, and saw that after her movement she needed to take a deep breath, but she did not dare to do this and carefully caught her breath.
In the Trinity Lavra they talked about the past, and he told her that if he were alive, he would thank God forever for his wound, which brought him back to her; but since then they have never talked about the future.
“Could it or couldn’t it be? he thought now, looking at her and listening to the light steely sound of the spokes. “Is it really only then that fate brought me so strangely together with her in order for me to die? .. Was it possible that the truth of life was revealed to me only so that I would live in a lie?” I love her more than anything in the world. But what should I do if I love her? he said, and he suddenly groaned involuntarily, out of a habit he had acquired during his suffering.
Hearing this sound, Natasha put down her stocking, leaned closer to him, and suddenly, noticing his luminous eyes, went up to him with a light step and bent down.
- You are not asleep?
- No, I have been looking at you for a long time; I felt when you entered. Nobody like you, but gives me that soft silence... that light. I just want to cry with joy.
Natasha moved closer to him. Her face shone with ecstatic joy.
“Natasha, I love you too much. More than anything.
- And I? She turned away for a moment. - Why too much? - she said.
- Why too much? .. Well, what do you think, how do you feel to your heart, to your heart's content, will I be alive? What do you think?
- I'm sure, I'm sure! - Natasha almost screamed, passionately taking him by both hands.
He paused.
- How nice! And taking her hand, he kissed it.
Natasha was happy and excited; and at once she remembered that this was impossible, that he needed calmness.
"But you didn't sleep," she said, suppressing her joy. “Try to sleep…please.”
He released her, shaking her hand, she went to the candle and again sat down in her previous position. Twice she looked back at him, his eyes shining towards her. She gave herself a lesson on the stocking and told herself that until then she would not look back until she finished it.
Indeed, soon after that he closed his eyes and fell asleep. He didn't sleep long and suddenly woke up in a cold sweat.
Falling asleep, he thought about the same thing that he thought about from time to time - about life and death. And more about death. He felt closer to her.
"Love? What is love? he thought. “Love interferes with death. Love is life. Everything, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists only because I love. Everything is connected by her. Love is God, and to die means for me, a particle of love, to return to the common and eternal source. These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But these were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, something that was one-sidedly personal, mental - there was no evidence. And there was the same anxiety and uncertainty. He fell asleep.
He saw in a dream that he was lying in the same room in which he actually lay, but that he was not injured, but healthy. Many different persons, insignificant, indifferent, appear before Prince Andrei. He talks to them, argues about something unnecessary. They are going to go somewhere. Prince Andrei vaguely recalls that all this is insignificant and that he has other, most important concerns, but continues to speak, surprising them, with some empty, witty words. Little by little, imperceptibly, all these faces begin to disappear, and everything is replaced by one question about the closed door. He gets up and goes to the door to slide the bolt and lock it. Everything depends on whether or not he has time to lock it up. He walks, in a hurry, his legs do not move, and he knows that he will not have time to lock the door, but all the same, he painfully strains all his strength. And a tormenting fear seizes him. And this fear is the fear of death: it stands behind the door. But at the same time as he helplessly awkwardly crawls to the door, this is something terrible, on the other hand, already, pressing, breaking into it. Something not human - death - is breaking at the door, and we must keep it. He grabs the door, exerting his last efforts - it is no longer possible to lock it - at least to keep it; but his strength is weak, clumsy, and, pressed by the terrible, the door opens and closes again.
Once again, it pressed from there. The last, supernatural efforts are in vain, and both halves opened silently. It has entered, and it is death. And Prince Andrew died.
But at the same moment he died, Prince Andrei remembered that he was sleeping, and at the same moment he died, he, having made an effort on himself, woke up.
“Yes, it was death. I died - I woke up. Yes, death is an awakening! - suddenly brightened in his soul, and the veil that had hidden the unknown until now was lifted before his spiritual gaze. He felt, as it were, the release of the previously bound strength in him and that strange lightness that had not left him since then.
When he woke up in a cold sweat, stirred on the sofa, Natasha went up to him and asked what was wrong with him. He did not answer her and, not understanding her, looked at her with a strange look.
This was what happened to him two days before Princess Mary's arrival. From that very day, as the doctor said, the debilitating fever took on a bad character, but Natasha was not interested in what the doctor said: she saw these terrible, more undoubted, moral signs for her.
From that day on, for Prince Andrei, along with the awakening from sleep, the awakening from life began. And in relation to the duration of life, it did not seem to him more slowly than awakening from sleep in relation to the duration of a dream.

The Manhattan Project is the code name for the US nuclear weapons program, which began on September 17, 1943. Before that, research was conducted in the "Uranium Committee" (S-1 Uranium Committee, since 1939). Scientists from the United States of America, Great Britain, Germany and Canada took part in the project.

The project created three atomic bombs: the plutonium "Thing" (Gadget) (exploded during the first nuclear test), the uranium "Kid" (Little Boy) (dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945) and the plutonium "Fat Man" (Fat Man) (dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945).

The project was led by American physicist Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves.

In order to hide the purpose of the newly created structure, the Manhattan Engineering District (Manhattan Engineering District) was formed as part of the military engineering forces of the US Army, and Groves (until then a colonel) was promoted to brigadier general and appointed commander of this district, by name which the whole project got its name.

So, what were the reasons for creating such a large-scale complex? The year is 1939 - Nazi Germany is preparing to start a war in Europe. Some people have bad ideas about making weapons of universal mass destruction. Naturally, such a statement cannot be ignored.

A letter dated August 2, 1939 and signed by Albert Einstein is placed on the desk of then US President Franklin Roosevelt. In it, several scientists - Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller - express their concern about the possibility of developing in Germany "an extremely powerful new type of bomb." In their message, they also say that thanks to new research in the field of atomic physics, it has become possible to create an atomic bomb.

We must pay tribute to Roosevelt - he treated this letter with great attention. By his order, a uranium committee (S-1 Uranium Committee) was created. That's just a little missed with the management. Lyman Briggs, appointed head of the committee, did not really let the project unfold in all its might. At a meeting held on October 21, 1939, it was only decided to use uranium and plutonium as the main raw materials for creating an atomic bomb. In fact, until 1941, the project was purely research in nature, without affecting the defensive part of the issue.

Roosevelt listened to the opinion of the brilliant physicist, and appointed Lyman Briggs of the National Bureau of Standards to head the Uranium Committee to investigate the issues raised in the letter. And when the scientists of the committee confirmed that uranium can be used to create super-powerful weapons, the secret Manhattan Project unfolded in the United States. He brought together scientists from Germany, Great Britain, Europe, Canada, the USA into a single international team, says Doctor of Technical Sciences Igor Ostretsov:

"Germany had rather large reserves of uranium. And they fell into the hands of the United States. In addition, there was some kind of documentation. That is, the situation formally boils down to this: American program went much more smoothly, since such a giant as Heisenberg (a German physicist) worked there. My personal point of view is that, judging by the fact that the Manhattan Project went quite smoothly in the early stages, the Americans had some additional information. And she could only be from Germany."

Leading American physicists, as well as scientists from other countries who emigrated to the United States, were involved in the implementation of the project.

Work on "atomic projects" was carried out in a number of countries, but in a war only the United States had sufficient funds to confidently move forward.

The implementation of the project required the creation of several new military factories, around which cities with increased secrecy were formed. At the same time, American intelligence efforts were focused on obtaining information about how the German nuclear project was progressing. German research stalled without the necessary support from the state - Hitler needed a weapon that could be used immediately, and not in a few years.

In July 1942, the American atomic bomb program received additional fuel - Roosevelt obtained from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill the consent to move to the United States the main participants in the British atomic project Tube Alloys.

The Manhattan Project started on September 17, 1942. But the work related to the study of radioactive substances was carried out long before that. In particular, since 1939 experiments have been carried out at the "Uranium Committee". Works of this kind were classified from the very beginning and remained secret for a long time after the end of the war.

The main reason that the creation of a nuclear bomb became one of the priority scientific areas was the interest of Nazi Germany in creating the latest weapons of mass destruction. April 24, 1939 - the authorities of this country received a letter from a professor at the University of Hamburg, Paul Harteck. The letter discussed the fundamental possibility of creating a new type of highly effective explosive. At the end, Harteck writes: “The country that can be the first to practically master the achievements nuclear physics will acquire absolute superiority over others.

General Groves was engaged in the selection and placement of the leaders of individual areas of the project. In particular, Groves' perseverance made it possible to enlist Robert Oppenheimer for the scientific direction of the entire project.
Before joining the atomic project, Groves was not involved in physics, in addition to administrative activities in the US military, he was a construction specialist. Under his skillful leadership, the Pentagon building was built, which attracted the attention of the authorities, both military and civilian.
The experience of building the Pentagon showed that Groves is an excellent organizer, can get along with people and, most importantly, is able to solve tasks in short time with high efficiency.
On his appointment as project manager, Groves insisted on being promoted to the rank of brigadier general, stating, "I have often observed that symbols of power and rank work more strongly on scientists than on the military."
After the successful completion of the project, many American funds mass media the general was accused of lack of humanity and loyalty to his subordinates, which caused numerous conflicts with the scientific fraternity, which, having world fame behind it, was not always inclined to obey the military discipline established by the project manager.

The first experiment on artificial irradiation of living people as part of the Manhattan Project was carried out at the University of Rochester in November 1944. Then they used volunteers. Four men and one middle-aged woman agreed to be injected with radioactive polonium-210. All of them were treated for cancer, and they were inspired that such "therapy" would give them a chance at life. The first of these unfortunates died six days later. His body was immediately and carefully examined. Scientists, as it turned out, were by no means interested in the patient's health, but in the effect of a radioactive element on human biological tissues.

During his visit to Berkeley, Groves began to think about appointing Oppenheimer to this position. The week before, Groves called Oppie and asked him to join him in Chicago. On October 15, Oppenheimer squeezed his way into the cramped compartment where Groves, Nichols, and an army officer were already seated to discuss the new laboratory. As the train was heading east, somewhere between Chicago and Detroit, Groves suggested that Oppenheimer be the new director of the lab. Lansdale had already warned the general that Oppie had had trouble getting security clearance in the past. Groves later stated that he personally read the FBI file on Oppenheimer and did not find anything in it that would change his opinion. In addition, it seemed to Groves that Oppenheimer's problems with the security service were safely behind them. Less than a month earlier, on September 20, the Presidio Office of Inquiry dropped the case against Oppenheimer after one of the agents spoke to Birge, who described his colleague as "one of the world's two greatest physico-mathematicians." As before, no final decision was made regarding Oppenheimer's admission, but the army command advised that he be kept under observation. Before finally settling on Oppie, Groves asked the opinion of the others about him. Ernest, they say, was extremely surprised and discouraged that for such work the army command chose a theorist, and not an experimenter. "He can't even make a hamburger," was one of Oppenheimer's Berkeley colleagues. Compton also expressed doubts about Oppie's organizational skills. "None of those I spoke to were particularly enthusiastic about Oppenheimer as a possible director," Groves later wrote in an admirable understatement. But the general was sure that, if necessary, he himself would be able to cope with the administrative part of the work. In the end, Compton and Lawrence agreed to Oppenheimer's candidacy, but on one condition: if Oppie failed, Groves would hand over the lab to them. McMillan was assigned a supporting role, and his office at LeConte became the headquarters for the duration of the laboratory's establishment. Just five days before Groves opted for Oppenheimer, the FBI received disturbing new evidence of the physicist's "left ferment".

The first atomic explosion did not produce too many memorable sayings. Only one was included in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. After the successful test of a plutonium bomb on July 16, 1945, at Jornado del Muerto, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, quoted, somewhat altered, a verse from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am Death, destroyer of worlds!" Other words uttered by the specialist in charge of the test, Kenneth Bainbridge, should have been forever remembered. As soon as the explosion sounded, he turned to Oppenheimer and said: "Now we are all sons of bitches ...". Later, Oppenheimer himself believed that nothing more precise and expressive was said at that moment.

In 1939, Fermi did not yet believe in the reality of the atomic bomb. Laura Fermi, in her memoir Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi, cites her husband's phrase in this connection: "we pursued the chimera." Everything rested on the enthusiasm of one Szilard, who closely followed what was happening in Germany and, especially, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. The information coming from his home institute was disturbing. In this regard, on March 7, 1940, he writes another “Einstein letter” to Roosevelt, in which he reports: “Since the beginning of the war, interest in uranium has increased in Germany. Now I have learned that in Germany, in an atmosphere of great secrecy, research work, in particular at the Physical Institute, one of the branches of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. This institute has been taken over by the government, and at present a group of physicists led by K. F. von Weizsäcker is working there on uranium problems in collaboration with the Institute of Chemistry. The former director of the institute was removed from leadership, apparently until the end of the war.

The next meeting of the Uranium Committee was held on April 28, 1940. By that time, scientists already knew that the fission of uranium caused by neutrons occurs only in uranium-235. In addition, it became known that in Germany, scientists from the Physical Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society are used for research on uranium. Therefore, the question was raised about more effective support for the work and their better organization. However, research work, due to managerial bureaucracy, rivalry between different militaries, and the shortsightedness of politicians, unfolded very slowly.

When an atom fissions, it usually splits into two smaller atoms and along with that, emits several neutrons as waste. These junk neutrons can hit nearby atoms and cause them to fission. A nuclear fission type bomb explodes when the essentially uranium or plutonium fuel becomes supercritical. This means that there are enough fissile (fissile) atoms for the neutrons to maintain a constant fission chain reaction. This requires a certain mass and volume of material (the so-called critical mass). One of the key studies of the Manhattan Project was to determine the exact controlled conditions under which one could take an ordinary radioactive piece of uranium or plutonium and make it supercritical - thus creating an atomic bomb.

While you might think that such supercriticality studies should be carried out by chemists and physicists who are a kilometer away from the bomb in a shelter and move fissile material with long metal armatures, the Los Alamos scientists were big extremes. To determine the critical mass of plutonium nuclei that would be used for the Trinity experiment and the Fat Man bomb detonation, Los Alamos scientist Louis Slotin developed a procedure that Richard Feynman himself called "pulling the dragon's tail." In the course of this technique, Slotin - wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots, apparently - lowered a beryllium hemisphere onto a plutonium charge. Beryllium is a neutron reflector, so if close enough to the nucleus, the neutrons bounce back to the plutonium, causing a supercritical state. Slotin almost completely covered the charge with a beryllium hemisphere, and the only thing that prevented her from completely covering it was the sting of a flathead screwdriver.

He pulled the dragon's tail almost a dozen times until the screwdriver finally popped off - on May 21, 1946 - causing the plutonium charge to gain supercritical mass and emit a massive burst of neutron radiation. Slotin spoke of a flash of blue light and a wave of heat that traveled through his skin, before literally half a second later he was able to flip the beryllium reflector, stopping the chain reaction. But it was too late: he received about 1000 sieverts of radiation and died nine days later from acute radiation sickness.

Since ancient times, mankind has been inventing new, more and more destructive types of weapons. Bows and crossbows were replaced by firearms, along with the development of aviation, bombs appeared. Then chemical and bacteriological weapons were invented. And in 1945, scientists were able to create something fundamentally new: a weapon that can destroy the entire human civilization. Work on the creation of a nuclear bomb was carried out in many countries - Germany, Great Britain, the Soviet Union. But the Americans were the first to succeed. The program to develop nuclear weapons was called the Manhattan Project.

The Manhattan Project - how it all began

The Manhattan Project started on September 17, 1942. But the work related to the study of radioactive substances was carried out long before that. In particular, since 1939 experiments have been carried out at the "Uranium Committee". Works of this kind were classified from the very beginning and remained secret for a long time after the end of the war.

The main reason that the creation of a nuclear bomb became one of the priority scientific areas was the interest of Nazi Germany in creating the latest weapons of mass destruction. April 24, 1939 - the authorities of this country received a letter from a professor at the University of Hamburg, Paul Harteck. The letter discussed the fundamental possibility of creating a new type of highly effective explosive. At the end, Harteck writes: “The country that can be the first to practically master the achievements of nuclear physics will gain absolute superiority over others.”

Main tasks of the project

Absolute superiority - that was exactly what he aspired to. So the project participants faced two tasks at the same time. It was necessary not only to create their own nuclear weapons, but also, if possible, to prevent the Nazis from developing the same.

To solve the first problem, the efforts of the most talented nuclear physicists were necessary. The best of the best were involved in the project. Any specialist in nuclear physics reads the list of participants in the Manhattan Project with respect, to such an extent there are many outstanding scientists of world renown in it: Rudolf Peierls, Otto Frisch, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Klaus Fuchs, Leo Szilard, John von Neumann, Richard Feynman, Joseph Rotblat, Isidor Rabi, Stanislaw Ulem (Hulem), Robert Wilson, Victor Weiskopf, Herbert York, Kenneth Bainbridge, Samuel Allison, Edwin Macmillan, Robert Oppenheimer, John Lawrence, Georgy Kistiakovsky, Hans Bizet, Ernest Lawrence, R. Roberts, F. Mohler, Alexander Sachs, Hans Bethe, Schweber, Busch, Eckere, Halban, Simon, E. Wagner, Philip Hauge Abelson, John Cockcroft, Ernest Walton, Robert Serber, John Kemeny.

Regarding the second task, only the military could solve it. That is why the leadership of the project was double. It was led by the American physicist Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves. The task that Groves faced was not an easy one: while scientists were spending sleepless nights trying to develop a “capable” model of a new weapon, he needed not only to find out the achievements of the enemy, but to capture and deliver to America leading German physicists, stocks of fissile material and related to the fission of the nucleus of the atom documents and equipment.

Mission "Alsos"

1943 - Groves formed special unit for scientific intelligence. Its leader, General Strong, proposed sending to Italy "a small team of scientists, accompanied by the necessary military personnel." This unit entered the history of the Manhattan Project under the code name "Alsos" mission.

The Italian mission group "Alsos I" included 4 officers led by Boris Pash. She arrived in Italy on June 17, 1943. Meetings with officers of the Italian navy who were aware of the German research provided valuable information: the Germans were very interested in the heavy water produced in Norway. To slow down the work of German researchers, a heavy water ferry was blown up (local partisans distinguished themselves), and the factory for its production was bombed by British aircraft.

Intelligence officers sought to control any source of raw materials for nuclear weapons. They closely monitored the largest factories in Germany, making a list of those that could be involved in the German nuclear project.

After the Allied landings in Normandy in August 1944, the Alsos II mission arrived in Paris, which had its own scientific unit, headed by the Dutchman Samuel Goudsmit. The powers of the officers of the Alsos mission were extremely high. They could count on unlimited military assistance when it came to the nuclear program.

When it became known that the German city of Hechingen was about to be taken by French units, at the request of Boris Pasha, American troops changed the direction of the offensive and were the first to enter the city. Thanks to this maneuver, it was possible to remove a large German atomic laboratory from the city and transport the outstanding German physicist Max von Laue abroad.

Then the Americans learned that the city of Oranienbaum fell into the Soviet zone. The Soviet Union was a possible competitor in the struggle for the creation of atomic weapons. Therefore, at the request of General Groves, General Marshall bombed the plant in this city, along with all the equipment. The mission was also engaged in the search for raw materials: during the work, more than 70 tons of uranium and radium were captured and exported to America.

True, many of the scientists were dissatisfied with the leadership of Groves. His attitude towards scientists was extremely dismissive. In addition, physicists were annoyed by the methods by which Groves sought to prevent information leakage. Each scientist did his part of the work. They could exchange thoughts about the progress of the experiments only with the staff of their department. If there was a need to transfer information from department to department, special permission was needed. It cannot be said that these measures were unnecessary: ​​according to the recollections of Soviet intelligence officers, many employees were introduced into the Manhattan Project. And the Americans sought not only to create a nuclear bomb, but also to maintain a monopoly on it.

The process of creating an atomic bomb

Meanwhile, scientists worked on various versions and experimented. 1942, December 1 - after 17 days of round-the-clock work, the Fermi group completed the creation of the SR-1 reactor, capable of carrying out a chain reaction. This reactor contained 36.6 tons of uranium oxide; 5.6 tons of uranium metal and 350 tons of graphite. The next day, the first chain reaction, the thermal power of which was 0.5 watts.

A serious problem was obtaining radioactive substances with the desired qualities. To solve this problem, plutonium production reactors and a plutonium enrichment facility are being built at Hanford. And in Oak Ridge, a large X-10 research reactor is being built, which is supposed to synthesize plutonium for further research.

Since March 1943, the research center at Los Alamos began active work. By 1944, three directions were developing there: the creation of an atomic bomb, the extraction of uranium-235 and plutonium-239 on an industrial scale, and preparation for the combat use of weapons. Behind the last wording is the creation of an army unit that is capable of ensuring the combat use of nuclear weapons. From the very beginning it was clear that nuclear bombs would be dropped by aircraft. It was necessary to slightly change the design of the bombers, to prepare the crews. For example, when the bomb was created, 17 bombers were upgraded in America, ready to deliver a terrible "gift" to anywhere in the world.

The process of creating an atomic bomb did not progress as quickly as the military would like. 1944, September - there were two main schemes for creating a bomb: one based on uranium, the other based on plutonium. But the project participants faced an almost insurmountable obstacle. They could not produce a detailed version of the uranium bomb, because the total amount of highly enriched uranium-235 at that time was only a few grams, and there were no industrial methods for producing it yet. With plutonium, the situation was just the opposite: they knew how to extract it in the right quantities, but there was no scheme for a bomb based on plutonium.

By the middle of 1945 most technical problems have been resolved. Gradually, the required amount of radioactive substances accumulated. Along with this, a potential list of targets for nuclear bombings is outlined - all of them were in Japan. Initially, this list included Tokyo Bay (for demonstration), Yokohama, Nashya, Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima, Kokura, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Sasebo. Later, this list changed several times: some of the Japanese cities were destroyed as a result of conventional bombing.

Test of the first nuclear bomb

Atomic bomb "Trinity"

1945 - July was a turning point in the history of the Manhattan Project. Scientists eagerly prepared to test the world's first nuclear bomb. Initially, they were going to arrange an explosion in a closed metal thick-walled container in order to save as much plutonium as possible in case of failure. But, fortunately, this idea was abandoned. Scientists could not accurately predict how the brainchild they created would behave. Too little was known at that time about the possibilities of the atom. Finally, they decided to blow up the Trinity (Trinity) at an open range, away from populated areas. After considering several options, the committee finally settled on the Alamogordo area. It was located on the territory of the air base, although the airfield itself was located at some distance.

The day of testing has come. The bomb was prepared and planted on a 33-meter steel tower. Recording equipment was located around it at a great distance. Three observation posts were set up 9 km south, north and east of the tower deep underground. A command post was located 16 km from the steel tower, from where the last command was to come. Due to bad weather, the explosion was postponed twice. Finally, the decision was made to detonate the bomb at 05:30 on July 16, 1945.

Later, Groves, who was personally present at the tests, described his impressions: “My first impression was the feeling of a very bright light flooding everything around, and when I turned around, I saw a picture now familiar to many fireball. My first reaction, as well as Bush's and Conant's, while we were still on the ground watching the spectacle, was a silent handshake. Soon, literally 50 seconds after the explosion, a shock wave reached us. I was surprised by her comparative weakness. In fact, the shock wave was not so weak. It's just that the flash of light was so strong and so unexpected that the reaction to it reduced our susceptibility for a while.

After the test, the head of the Los Alamos laboratory, Robert Oppenheimer, quoted an altered verse from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am Death, the destroyer of worlds!". Kenneth Bainbridge, the laboratory specialist responsible for the test, responded to his words. His words were not so poetic: "Now we are all sons of bitches."

In general, the atmosphere at the training ground was strange. Some spectators (from among the military) simply could not understand the essence of what was happening, others were frankly glad that they had survived, and others were immersed in calculations. The spectacle of a nuclear mushroom turned out to be so frightening that for the first time many of the scientists thought about what kind of force they had unleashed.

Some time after the explosion, the epicenter was examined by several Sherman tanks lined with lead slabs from the inside. The sight was terrible: dead, scorched earth, on which all life was destroyed within a radius of one and a half kilometers. The sand sintered into a glassy greenish crust that covered the ground. In a huge crater lay the mangled remains of a steel tower. To the side lay a warped steel box turned on its side - the same one from which they first wanted to make a test container.

The power of the explosion was estimated at 20,000 tons of TNT. It was the most powerful explosion that ever thundered on Earth. In order to imagine its power, suffice it to say that 2,000 of the most powerful bombs times of World War II. But Trinity was only the first brainchild of the Manhattan Project. The "Fat Man" and the "Kid" were already preparing to carry out their terrible task.

The military and politicians at first only rejoiced at the appearance of new weapons and looked forward to when they could be used. Ethical issues were of little concern. Much more frequently discussed was whether to use the bombs as they were made, or to accumulate a supply of several bombs in order to mass-bomb Japan. After receiving a report on the successful Trinity test, President Truman presented Japan with an ultimatum in which he demanded an immediate end to the war.

Why was Hiroshima the target for the bombing? The project leader explained it this way: “Hiroshima was the most important military facility in Japan.

The headquarters of the army was located in the castle. The garrison of the city consisted of 25,000 people. The port of Hiroshima was the main hub for all communications between the islands of Honshu and Kyushu. This city was the largest among the cities not affected by American air raids, with the exception of Kyoto. The population, which, according to our data, was more than 300,000 people, was almost entirely employed in military production, carried out at enterprises of a small and very small scale, and even just at home.

First nuclear explosions. Effects

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1945, August 6 - at 9:15 a.m., a bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The B-29 bomber that delivered the terrible cargo was flown by Colonel Tibbets. Major Firby was the bombardier, Captain Parsons was the weapons specialist, and Lieutenant Jepson was in charge of the electronic equipment.

The height of the huge white cloud that covered Hiroshima after the explosion, according to pilots, reached 13 km. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was equivalent in strength to a charge of 20,000 tons of TNT. The diameter of the fireball was 17 m, the temperature inside it rose to 300,000 °C.

Photographing what was happening in Hiroshima was impossible. Only the next day, the military could see the results of the bombardment: almost 60% of the city was destroyed, fires were blazing, the destruction zone extended 1,800 meters from the epicenter and covered an area of ​​4.5 square kilometers. Of the 250,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima, 160,000 were killed and wounded. The bomb that caused this tremendous destruction was called "Baby" ...

After the bombing of Hiroshima, they decided to distribute leaflets in Japan with an appeal to the people and the message that America had become the owner of the most powerful weapon on Earth. They demanded immediate surrender and said that the Japanese had better be prudent until the US ordered another bomb to be used. Why didn't the Americans stop? Why did they drop a second atomic bomb? Perhaps because the decision to use it was made even before the first batch of leaflets reached Japan. Most likely, the government and the military did not even think of being limited to one bomb.

On August 9, it was the turn of another "brainchild" of the Manhattan Project - the Fat Man bomb. It was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. At the time of the explosion, about 73,000 people died, another 35,000 died after much torment. Then Japan capitulated.

The Manhattan Project was one of the most expensive in the history of mankind. It involved many participants: from 1942 to 1945, up to 130,000 people worked at various sites. The cost of creating nuclear weapons has reached two billion dollars (in today's prices - about 20 billion). At first, the project participants were sincerely confident that the creation of such a powerful weapon would put an end to all wars. But its appearance led to a nuclear arms race and attempts to invent even more powerful bombs.

75 years ago, German scientists O. Gan and F. Strassmann made a sensational discovery - they split the nucleus of uranium-235 using a neutron.

The famous Ernest Rutherford, called the "father" of nuclear physics, did not believe in the possibility of obtaining atomic energy, calling talk about it "nonsense."

However, the discoveries of German scientists in Göttingen after some twenty years refuted the opinion of the scientist.

About the beginning of a new era in nuclear physics, the prehistory of the creation of "Baby" and "Fat Man" in the article by Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, USSR State Prize Laureate Yuri Grigoriev.

O. Gan and F. Strassman made a sensational discovery - they split the nucleus of uranium-235 using a neutron

In June 1919, the scientific director of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge (Great Britain), Professor Ernest Rutherford, published the materials of his research, which proved that nitrogen atoms split when bombarded with alpha particles, and nitrogen turns into oxygen, i.e. one substance is transformed into another.

Scientific Director of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge (UK) Professor Ernest Rutherford

This discovery, confirmed by the research of other scientists, undermined the foundation of classical physics of that time and opened up unknown ways to use the energy of the atom.

However, Rutherford himself until the end of his days categorically denied the possibility of obtaining nuclear energy, did not accept the idea of ​​a chain reaction, did not foresee the possibility of uranium fission.

In the autumn of 1933, at the annual meeting of the British Association, Rutherford gave a speech in which he noticed that people talking about getting atomic energy on a large scale were talking nonsense.

German brains in the service of atomic energy

Goettingen University is one of the oldest in Europe,

In Germany, the center of research, the school of physicists, was the small quiet university town of Göttingen, where scientists of different nationalities worked, physicists from many countries. He taught here in the 19th century.

Carl Friedrich Gauss,

he was succeeded by Felix Klein.

Lectures here:

Physicists from many countries have been here.

But after the economic crisis of 1930, when the Nazis began to gain strength in Germany, the situation in Göttingen changed significantly.

A group of German physicists led by Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Stark began to call themselves "national researchers" who rejected "Jewish physics" and extolled a certain "German physics".

Nobel Laureates

A. Einstein, who lived in Germany, went every winter to his villa in Passadena (California, USA). He went there in 1933, but never returned to Germany.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, the persecution of "non-Aryan" professors began in Göttingen, 7 of them were immediately fired, many emigrated.

A. Einstein, then living in Germany, used to go every winter to his villa in Passadena (California, USA).

He went there in 1933, but never returned to Germany, for which he was declared an enemy of the nation and expelled from the Berlin Academy of Sciences.

When the nucleus of uranium-235 is split, great amount energy (chain reaction)

In 1938, German scientists O. Gan and F. Strassmann made a sensational discovery - they split the nucleus of uranium-235 using a neutron. On January 5, 1939, O. Frisch (Denmark), and on January 24 of the same year, J. Dunning (USA) experimentally established that a huge amount of energy is released during the fission of a uranium-235 nucleus.

On April 24, 1939, Professor Paul Harteck of the University of Hamburg informed the German War Office that nuclear explosives could be developed. He wrote: "The country that has learned to use their energy first will have such superiority over others that it will not be possible to close this gap." This was the beginning of a new era in nuclear physics.

The "Uranium Society" was founded in Germany. Outstanding physicists took an active part in its work:

On September 26, 1939, the "Uranium Society" was founded in Germany. Outstanding physicists took an active part in its work: W. Heisenberg, G. Geiger, W. Bothe, K. Weizsacker and others. In the Armaments Department, with the participation of physicists, a detailed program was developed - the uranium project (Project U).

22 research institutes were involved in the work. The Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute was designated as the scientific center, headed by Nobel laureate Professor Werner Heisenberg. He was considered the most famous German physicist left in Germany and one of the best theoreticians.

But back in July 1937, an article was published in the official SS organ, the Black Corps newspaper, under the heading "White Jews in Science." Its author, the staunch Nazi Johannes Stark, argued that scientists such as Werner Heisenberg and Max Planck were the patrons and sing-alongs of the Jews, that German science did not need their services, and that it would be best to treat them like Jews.

Heisenberg had to go through an inquest by the Gestapo that lasted almost a year. During this inquiry, the scientist proved his loyalty to the regime. And although in the end Himmler came to the conclusion that he was in front of a real German patriot, this hardly added enthusiasm to Heisenberg in developing an atomic bomb for Hitler.

The process of converting uranium-238 into nuclear reactor into a new element called "plutonium"

In July 1940, the 29-year-old German physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker theoretically established that uranium-238 should turn into a new element in a nuclear reactor, similar in properties to uranium-235. It was named "plutonium".

In 1941, Weizsäcker applied for a patent, in which he first described in detail the principle of the plutonium bomb.

Americans did not appreciate the scientific discovery

In the prewar years, the United States did not have any scientific and technical groundwork for the atomic bomb. At the same time, many European physicists settled in the United States, who fled Germany and other European countries to escape the Nazis.

They were not yet US citizens, but it was they who perfectly understood that if Hitler got an atomic bomb, he would certainly use it.

Enrico Fermi - one of the greatest experimenters, the discoverer of transuranium elements, the father of the US nuclear program

Attempts by immigrant physicists to interest the American military in the superbomb were unsuccessful.

On March 17, 1939, physicist Enrico Fermi tried for a long time to convince the head of the US Navy Technical Directorate, Admiral Hooper, of the need to conduct nuclear research in the interests of ensuring US security, but everything was in vain.

To the admiral, the very idea of ​​using the energy of an invisible atom for military purposes seemed simply absurd.

Desperate physicists-immigrants:

turned to Albert Einstein for help. They asked him to get an audience with Roosevelt and convince him of the need to expand work on atomic energy, but Einstein refused, because he himself did not believe in the possibility of releasing atomic energy, which he openly spoke to the American reporter W. L. Lawrence.

Nevertheless, on August 2, 1939, Teller and Szilard persuaded Einstein to at least sign the letter they had prepared to Roosevelt, since their names were not known to the President. This letter pointed out the possibility of creating an atomic bomb, explained the danger of it in the hands of Hitler, and offered to provide financial support for experimental work.

Teller and Szilard persuaded A. Einstein to sign a letter prepared by them to Roosevelt, since their names were unknown to the President

The representative undertook to convey this letter to the President financial group Lehman Brothers, personal friend and unofficial adviser to the president, a native of Russia, Alexander Sachs. On October 11, 1939, Roosevelt received Sachs.

At first, he listened to him extremely inattentively and distractedly, and sometimes incredulously, but when Sachs reported on the possible work of Hitler's physicists, reinforcing his story by handing over Einstein's letter, Roosevelt understood everything.

US President Franklin Roosevelt

After Sachs left, he called his military assistant, General E. Watson, and said to him, pointing to the papers brought by Sachs: "This calls for action!"

On November 1, 1939, the Uranium Advisory Council was established in the United States, but the American bureaucratic machine unwinded very slowly - the first appropriations for the uranium project were allocated only in February 1940, but this was not enough for practical work.

Szilard begged Einstein to sign another letter to the president. It was sent on March 7, 1940, but after that nothing significant happened.

The chain reaction was not carried out, a significant amount of uranium 235 could not be isolated from uranium 238, the production of large quantities of metallic uranium, heavy water, beryllium and pure graphite was still largely under discussion.

War was already raging in Europe, German troops were near Moscow and Leningrad, and the United States lived a peaceful life, and the war was far from them.

President Roosevelt made the decision to start the Atomic Project on Saturday, December 6, 1941, at a time when Japanese aircraft carriers were already approaching the line of attack on Pearl Harbor.

With a stroke of a pen, Roosevelt allocated $2 billion for the project. And already on the evening of December 6, he was delivered an intercepted and deciphered note that had come from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in the United States, which the Japanese intended to hand over to the US authorities the next day. After reading it, Roosevelt said: "This is war!"

The war for the United States began on Sunday, December 7, 1941, with the defeat of the American fleet based at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.

"Manhattan Project"

At the beginning of the war, the US leadership did not believe that the Soviet Union would withstand Hitler's onslaught, and they were very afraid that after the defeat of the USSR, no one would be able to prevent Hitler from using the atomic bomb being developed in Germany against the United States.

Therefore, the need to develop their own atomic bomb for many senior officials became obvious. On June 7, 1942, the head of the National Defense Research Committee, W. Bush, reported to Roosevelt that a nuclear bomb could be carried out in practice.

On August 13, 1942, the atomic bomb plan was named the Manhattan Project. General Leslie Groves was appointed the administrative head of the project. Los Alamos, a desert area in the state of New Mexico, was chosen as the center of work.

Los Alamos Laboratory

The first American reactor. In December 1942, the reactor for the first time started operating in the mode of a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

Italian physicist - emigrant Bruno Pontecorvo (since 1950 a citizen of the USSR, later - Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences)

On December 2, 1942, under the stands of a sports stadium in Chicago, the world's first nuclear reactor, built under the guidance of emigrants E. Fermi and L. Szilard, started working.

This was reported to Moscow by a participant in these works, an agent of foreign intelligence of the NKVD, an Italian physicist - an emigrant Bruno Pontecorvo (since 1950 a citizen of the USSR, later - an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences).

At Los Alamos, a bomb design was developed, the critical mass of the warhead was calculated, and methods were tested to detonate an atomic charge.

In July 1943, Robert Oppenheimer was appointed Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory. He managed to create a team, which included large group outstanding scientists: E. Lawrence, G. Urey, A. Compton, E. Fermi, Y. Wigner, E. Teller and many others.

At Los Alamos, the design of the bomb was developed, the critical mass of the warhead was calculated, and methods for detonating an atomic charge were tested. In Oak Ridge, Tennessee, uranium ore was used to produce uranium-235 and then make a bomb. At Hanford, Columbia, uranium-238 was irradiated in a nuclear reactor into plutonium, which could also be used to make an atomic bomb.

The case was moving forward, but there was not enough uranium, and this slowed down all the work. Uranium ore was mined in the Belgian Congo by the Belgian firm Union Minier, which was managed by Edgar Sengier. After the capture of Belgium by the Germans in 1940, Sengier emigrated to the United States, from where he ran the company. He ordered all the uranium ore in warehouses in the Congo to be transported to the United States.

At the end of 1940, 1250 tons of uranium ore were transported to New York and stored in a warehouse on Staten Island. And then Edgar Sengier began long walks around various offices of the US State Department, where he offered uranium ore, told what a valuable ore it was, that uranium, radium, etc. could be obtained from it, but everything was useless - the officials did not react.

The "Manhattan Project" was so classified that the US State Department, until the Yalta Conference in February 1945, had no idea that the US was developing an atomic bomb.

And at that time, General Groves was looking for ways and means of obtaining uranium ore. Colonel Nichols, who assisted him in this, accidentally learned that the manager of the Union Minier firm was in New York, and met with him. It should be noted that Sengier, who for almost two years had been knocking around the door of the State Department to no avail, did not greet the colonel very kindly.

After examining his ID, he asked: "Colonel, tell me, did you come here for business or just to talk?" But when Colonel Nichols realized that 1250 tons of uranium ore were lying in containers very close by, everything fell into place. Right there, on a piece of yellow paper that turned up, the first agreement was written by hand, everything else was later. The uranium issue was closed, and nothing interfered with the development of the atomic bomb.

In the United States, a special unit "Alsos" was created, which was to land in Europe with the first divisions of American troops and capture everything related to the German atomic bomb and other new weapons. Colonel Boris Pash, a descendant of Russian emigrants, was appointed commander of this unit.

At the end of August 1944, the Alsos unit, together with the forward detachments of the allied forces, entered Paris, then there were Strasbourg and Germany. They captured the leaders of the German uranium project, including Heisenberg himself, as well as documents and equipment. The very first conversations-interrogations and materials of eavesdropping on the conversations of the captured Germans showed that the Germans were lagging behind in the creation of nuclear weapons, which Boris Pash constantly reported to the United States.

From these reports it became clear that the Germans had no real atomic bomb, and no. And then arose natural question. If so, then why is the US building an atomic bomb? Many physicists believed that it was no longer needed. On August 26, 1944, Niels Bohr was received by Roosevelt and told him for a long time about the changed situation and the opinion of many physicists.

The same Szilard, who several years ago persistently argued to Roosevelt the necessity of creating an atomic bomb, now turned to him with a proposal to stop this work. But he did not wait for an answer - on April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died.

The American president ignored the opinion of nuclear scientists

Szilard drew up a memorandum for the new President G. Truman, in which he argued the need to stop work on the atomic bomb and asked him to accept it. Truman, citing lack of time, entrusted this to James Byrnes, who was going to be appointed US Secretary of State. Byrnes listened to Szilard politely and outwardly attentively, but it was clear that he did not share his opinion.

After testing the first atomic bomb in Alomogordo on July 16, 1945, many American scientists turned to President Truman with a request to prevent the use of the atomic bomb, since Germany had already surrendered, and Japan was on the verge of surrender. All these and many other proposals of scientists were ignored.

A so-called "Provisional Committee" was created, consisting of politicians and the military. The committee considered the question not of whether the atomic bomb should be used, but of how best to use it. A group of scientists led by James Frank developed and sent to the Committee a document called the "Frank Report", which, in particular, stated: "The US military advantage gained by the surprise use of the atomic bomb against Japan will be nullified by the subsequent loss of confidence and the wave of horror and disgust that will sweep the world and probably split public opinion at home."

However, the opinion of scientists was not taken into account by American politicians. Instead, the report proposed to demonstrate to the whole world nuclear bomb, blowing it up somewhere on a desert island so that America can say to the world: “You see what kind of weapons we had, but did not use them. We are ready to abandon its use in the future if other nations join us and agree to establish effective international control..

They carried out a nuclear bombing

ruins of hirashima

Nuclear explosion in Nagasaki

The Committee considered the "Frank Report" and rejected it. US President Truman knew for sure that there would be no retaliation, and ordered an atomic attack on Japan. On August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb "Kid" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. Immediately after this, US President Truman made a public statement:

“16 hours ago, an American plane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important base for the Japanese army. The power of this bomb is greater than the power of an explosion of 20,000 tons of trinitrotoluene. Its explosive power is 2,000 times greater than the strength of the British bomb "Grand Slam" - the largest bomb used in the history of wars ... We are talking about the atomic bomb. It was the use of the forces that underlie the universe. The forces that are the source of the energy of the Sun were thrown against those who unleashed a war on Far East...We went on a gamble - spent 2 billion dollars on the greatest in history scientific invention although we didn't know if it would work. And we won".

US President Truman knew for sure that there would be no retaliation, and ordered an atomic attack on Japan

On August 9, 1945, the Fat Man atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, and the Americans won again because it was a one-sided game. After that, Truman, in his speech on the radio, said: "We thank God that it (the bomb) came from us and not from our opponents, and we pray that he would show us how to use it according to his will and to achieve his goal."

Why Truman did not seek God's help on target designation before deciding to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains on his conscience, of course, if he had one. But God did not heed the prayers of the American president and did not give him any instructions about the further use of atomic bombs, especially "according to his will and to achieve his goal."

Indeed, Mr. Truman should not have tried to cover up his purely earthly goals with divine plans. About a quarter of a million people were killed and maimed by these two atomic bombs. It is unlikely that among them was at least one of those who "unleashed a war in the Far East."

Used Books:

1. R. Jung. Brighter than a thousand suns. State publishing house of literature in the field of atomic science and technology. Moscow, 1961

2. L. Groves. Now you can talk about it . Atomizdat, Moscow, 1964

3. M. Julius. The Secret of Huntsville. Politizdat, Moscow, 1964

About Richland
^^Hanford Engineer Works)
Rochester About
(Health Project)

DC.®
Washington,
Oak Ridge Q
(Manhattan District Headquarters. (Los Alamos Laboratory-Project Y) Clinton Engineering Works)
About Berkeley
(Radiation Laboratory)
(VanSmCor"pjO ChiTJadiumCorp.)
About Inyokern
(Projectcamei) Q j_os Alamos
/I nc Llamnc I aKnra*
About Wendover
(Project Alberta)
(ProjecfAmes ChicagoSE
(Metallurgical Laboratory)

Qsylacauga
(Alabama Ornance Works)

About Alamogordo
(Project Trinity)

• A self-sustaining nuclear reaction has not been implemented in practice;
• Nothing definite is known about the thermal equilibrium of such a reaction;
• None of the nuclear reactor designs considered up to that time looks feasible;
• The possibility of extracting plutonium from a highly radioactive substance is also not proven;
• Even under the best assumptions about each stage of the process, the plant's output in 1943 will be a few grams of plutonium, and in 1944 - a little more. Assuming that the operating plant can be built on time, plutonium production will reach the planned value no earlier than 1945. However, this value may also turn out to be unattainable;
• The practical usefulness of the cycle developed at the Chicago Lab cannot be determined without comparing it with the uranium cycle that the Columbia University laboratories at Berkeley are working on, so it is necessary to conduct studies and compare these methods.