Niels Bohr said:
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Good one!
www(dot)atomicforum.org
http://www(dot)atomicarchive.com
http://www(dot)ask.ne.jp/~hankaku/english/nptarget.html
This link to
A-bomb is a bit… too detailed
US A-bomb:
12/02/1942 – Chicago, metallurgic Lab of Enrico Fermi – for the first time ever chain reaction succeeded, after 28 minutes of chain reaction it was stopped.
1944 Mission AlSOS (France, Germany – search for atomic bomb research documents, Boris Pash – chief of mission)
Sam Goldsmith in report to Pash after documents found in University of Strausburg: ‘Germans don’t have an atomic bomb, so we don’t have to launch ours.’ To what Pash replied: ‘You are naïve as a provincial college graduate. If we have such weapon, we have to use it.’
During
Quebec Conference Chirchill and Rusvelt signed secret agreement on cooperation in A-bomb development. Third countries [read: Russia] were completely excluded from any possession of atomic weapons secrets.
General Leslie Groves - leader in charge of Manhattan project
Boris Pash - his main security man
Robert Oppenheimer (Opi) - scientific director of Manhattan project
Berkeley article On Oppengeimer
some Los Alamos personalia
Los Alamos labs were working separately, only few persons knew about the whole project
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Hanford plant for plutonium production
In 1943
Rudolf Peierls,
Otto Frisch and
Klaus Fuchs joined Manhattan project. Fuchs was eventually invited to participate in the British program to develop an atomic bomb (the project named "Tube Alloys") because of his expertise. At some point after the project began, Soviet agents contacted Fuchs and he began to pass information about British progress to them. Since 1943, Fuchs was among a group of British scientists brought to the US to work on the Manhattan Project. In Los Alamos Klaus Fuchs was assigned with developing mathematical apparatus of processes of uranium depletion and regularly met with russian agent Garry Gold to transmit data to russians.
Young physicist Tedd Hall spied for russians too.
Leslie Groves in report to Minister of Defence
Henry L. Stimpson stated an exact date when A-bomb will be ready to deployment: August, 1, 1945.
Special group in Los Alamos Labs, consisting of matematicians, meteorologists, physisists- teoretics, researchers on explosions has been assigned to find a concrete object for A-bomb. Matematicians calculated that radius of hit wave would be in a range of 1,5 km.
4 Japanese cities were chosen as targets: Hiroshima, Kakura, Niigata, Kyoto. Then Kyoto has been excluded from the list because of its ancient capital status. Final decision was up to Roosevelt.
06/04/1945 during extended meeting of Coordination Centre Enrico Fermi stated about 100% readiness of all labs to test plutonium device ‘Trinity’. In several days Klaus Fuchs met agent Gold and sent info about plutonium test, its location, and date to russians. Almost the same time Tedd Hall met agent Leslie Cohen and passed her documents about plutonium test. Shortly data were in Moscow. But Beria didn’t bring them to Stalin but stored under the rug.
‘Trinity’ test(3 bombs were manufactured) in desert near Los Alamos – at 5.30 am, july 16 1945.
Testimonials immediately after Trinity test:
Dr. George Kistyakovski: One can imagine that the Judgment Day will happen exactly this way
Robert Oppenheimer: This exact moment I remembered the passage from BhavadGita, indian sacred book: I became a death, the Destroyer of the Worlds
Enrico Fermi: How interesting is Physics!!
Thomas Farell (second man after Leslie Groves) – to Groves: The war is over!
Leslie Groves: It will be over when we drop one or two bombs on Japan.
The same morning Leslie Groves sent a telegram to cruiser Indianapolis (CA-35, commissioned in 1932) to urgently transport materials for ‘baby’ A-bomb to isle Tenyan. On 07/26/1945 cruiser Indianapolis delivered a part of a uranium-235 slug and other components for the atomic bomb that was used against Hiroshima to isle Tenyan. On return Indianapolis was hit by Japanese submarine warhead and sunk.. Because of secrecy of the mission rescue operation has been delayed and almost all equipage (> 1000) died, only 45 were saved.
On 07/16/1945 at 19.30 (mid-european time) during a Potsdam Conference President Truman received a telegram from Leslie Groves: ‘Operation made in the morning. Examination is still incomplete but results seem promising and already surpass all expectations. Doctor Groves is satisfied.’ To that telegram Truman replied with ‘I send my best wishes to doctor and his patient’.
Later Oppengeimer said to Truman: I feel my hands are covered with blood. Truman replied: We all go in the shower and thoroughly wash ourselves.
1946: Operation Crossroads US nuclear test, 2 bombs tested, Leslie Groves declined to detonate the third one.
Read about Los Alamos consultant Niels Bohr attitude to A-bomb development, he tried to convince scientists stop developing A-bomb. In 1943 met with Churchill, who remained deaf to his arguments. July 1944 – sent memorandum to White house, 08/26/1944 – Niels Bohr met with Roosevelt, meeting planted in Roosevelt a seed of doubt in A-bomb.
On 09/10/1944 Churchill and Roosevelt met in Quebec, Churchill convinced Roosevelt that there was no need to share A-bomb secrets with Stalin, and he speculated that Niels Bohr may be a russian spy trying to halt Los Alamos research. As argument Churchill stated a letter of Piotr Kapitza to Niels Bohr where he was inviting Bohr to visit Moscow. Churchill suggested to Roosevelt that arresting Bohr was desirable, or at least ‘opening his eyes’ on something that balances on edge of being a crime against the state. Bohr didn’t meet with Roosevelt any more.
04/12/1945 - meeting in Washington park Rock Creek among Niels Bohr, ambassador of Britain in USA lord Halifax and intimate friend of Roosevelt Dr. Frankfurter to arrange for a new meeting between Bohr and Roosevelt. By that time Bohr already had visited Einstein in Berkeley and convinced him to write a letter to Roosevelt about necessity of international control over A-weapon. At the very moment of meeting in Rock Greek park a church bell informed about death of Roosevelt.
http://www.doug-long.com/bohr.htm
German A-bomb:
Werner Heisenberg together with his friend
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker worked on german A-bomb in Institute of Physics, Berlin. Laboratory was disguised as ‘virus fligel’ – inside was 1,5 m strata of uranium oxide and paraffin as slow-off agent.
06/23/1942 – fire in Heisenberg lab, all uranium oxide and D20 lost. Later regular shipments of D20 from Norway were used. The same day is considered the day when German A-bomb ambitions were buried (in Schwaier? daily report to Hitler A-bomb research was listed no 16, not approved).
In 1945 german A-bomb scientists (Heisenberg group) evacuated from Berlin to Heigerloch, a small town in the south Germany, a reactor built in cavity there, then seized by U.S. army (ALSOS).
From review of Igor Kurchatov on German A-bomb, (Heisenberg claimed his interests were purely scientific – to launch a chain reaction, and that he wasn’t aware of possibility of building an atomic bomb)
academician Igor Kurchatov review 03/30/1945 on materials of Main Intelligence Report of KGB on german atomic bomb said:
Material is extraordinary interesting. It contains description of construction of German atomic bomb to be transported on rocket engine Fau type. Material is very detailed / specific, but I don’t have a full convincement that Germans were really experimenting with atomic bomb
Russian A-bomb team – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb
Igor Kurchatov, scientific supervisor
Yakov Zel’dovich
Georgi Flerov
Yulii Khariton
[no wiki link] – Isaak Kikoin
[no wiki link] – Abraam Elikhanov
Pavel Sudoplatov, head of ‘department S’ –– all russian scientific intelligence data on A-bomb
Sarov, later
Arsamas-16, russian ‘Los-Arsamas’
Yalta conference
On 02/08/1945 During final banket of Yalta Peace Conference Stalin made a strange toast saying: ‘I propose to drink for our alliance. On our alliance it’s participants shouldn’t cheat on each other. Skilled diplomats say: why can’t I cheat on my partner in alliance? But I, being a naïve man, think that’s better not to attempt doing so, even if your ally is simply a dumb. Perhaps, our alliance is so strong because it wouldn’t be so easy for us to cheat on each other. And I drink for that.’ Everybody present on this conference felt a strange air after Stalin made this toast. Roosevelt attempted to dissipate heat of situation by pronouncing a next toast on peace, and mutual trust among allies. But situation didn’t clear up. There was trust no more.
08/27/1949 at 6.00 Russian A-bomb successful test at Semipalatinsk polygon
Testimonials after test:
Kurchatov: we did it!
Lavrenti Beria: embraced Kurchatov, then embraced Khariton, paternally kissed both of them in the front, and whispered: It would be a big disaster if it didn’t work! It would be a very big disaster!
Film about successful test was not released for public for fear of possible A-bombs race excalation with US, few copies were made under ‘absolute secret’ cover and shown first to members of Politburo, and then to Mao Tse Tun, who visited Russia in December 1949.
