The Manhattan Project

You all saw the movie, didn’t you? It was a theatrical marvel, to say the least. Christopher Nolan, as brilliant as he is, did justice in telling the story of the ages to come. From the late 1940s to the date of the Trinity test, it was not a week-long journey; it took several discoveries to determine whether such a technology could be achieved.

From the First Spark

WWII, amidst the chaos it ensued, cornered the great minds of that age to think beyond the realm of the ordinary and come up with technologies that can be argued to be either a boon for the present times or a bane that should never have surfaced to scorch the earth as it did.

In 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission, which was later theoretically proven by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch. This led to the theoretical concept of an atomic bomb. This research was fueled by the United States after receiving a letter from Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, which was signed and acknowledged by Albert Einstein himself, pressing the concern that the Germans might develop an extremely powerful bomb. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the then President, called a meeting with Lyman Briggs to head the Advisory Committee on Uranium and stockpile uranium ore for fueling Enrico Fermi’s research and other nuclear chain reactions.

In February 1940, the US Navy funded the University of Columbia, where a group of scientists created the first nuclear fission reactor in the United States. With further research, Briggs suggested using funds to study Uranium-235 isotope and plutonium, which was first isolated in Columbia in 1941. In Britain, Frisch and Peierls at the University of Birmingham made a breakthrough in determining the critical mass of U-235.

On October 9, 1941, President Roosevelt approved the Atomic Program, creating a top policy group consisting of himself, Wallace, Bush, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and Chief of Staff of the Army General George C. Marshall. On October 11, Roosevelt shared his thoughts about collaborating on the atomic project with the British with then Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Moving Ahead with the Project

Robert J. Oppenheimer was approached in 1942 to take over research on fast neutron calculations—key to calculations for critical mass and weapon detonation. John H. Manley was appointed as assistant to Oppenheimer, who, along with Robert Serber, studied the problems associated with neutron diffusion (the movement of neutrons in a nuclear chain reaction) and hydrodynamics (the effects of explosions caused by nuclear reactions).

On Oppenheimer’s suggestion to move the operations of ‘Project Y’ near Albuquerque, New Mexico, Patterson approved the acquisition of the site on November 25, 1942, authorizing $440,000 for the purchase of 54,000 acres of land. It took $3 million to convert the area into a laboratory and a place for staff to stay and work simultaneously; it was referred to as “Site Y” or “the Hill” during the war due to its confidentiality.

After strenuous efforts to separate plutonium from uranium, in early 1944, the first shipment of 80 grams of 95% pure plutonium was hand-delivered to Los Alamos. The atomic project focused on creating two distinct types of bombs: one an implosion-type nuclear bomb, later named ‘Fat Man,’ and the other a shotgun-based atomic bomb, named ‘Little Boy.’

“Trinity” was the name of the first nuclear test ever conducted on Earth. Kenneth Bainbridge was responsible for the test and selected the Alamogordo Bombing Range as the site. A wooden test platform was erected 800 yards from Ground Zero, and 100 tons of TNT were spiked with nuclear fission products. A pre-test was conducted on May 5, 1945, to calibrate the instruments.

On the evening of July 16, 1945, at 5:30 p.m., the weapon, named “the Gadget,” was detonated with an explosive power equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT, leaving a crater of Trinitite (radioactive glass) in the desert, 250 feet wide. The shock from the explosion was felt over 160 kilometres away, and the mushroom cloud reached 12.1 kilometres in height.

The Aftermath

The detonation was successful beyond expectations. As part of the team that developed such a destructive weapon, the scientists and engineers were both pleased and apprehensive about what lay ahead. These questions became pressing concerns as President Truman authorized the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The detrimental effects of that day are still vivid in the memories of those affected, and likely in the minds of the creators who, having achieved a scientific miracle, faced the sombre reality of their creation.