Essay/Term paper: Decision to fund the atomic bomb

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Humanities Essays

"No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had

ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared

description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light

with the intensity many times greater than that of the midday

sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray, and blue..."( Groueff

355). The words of Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell

describe the onset of the atomic age, which began on July

16, 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico. This was the site of

the first large-scale atomic test, which utilized the tool of

destruction that would soon decimate the populations of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a month afterwards. This

test consummated the years spent developing the bomb, and

was the end result of the efforts of nuclear scientists who

constructed it, and those of President Franklin Delano

Roosevelt, who made the decision to fund the so-called

Manhattan Project.



In a letter dated August 2nd, 1939, Albert Einstein first

informed President Roosevelt of the research that had been

done by Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard with unstable

Uranium which could generate large amounts of power and

energy (Einstein1 PSF Safe Files). Einstein also included

another possible use for the uranium- the construction of

extremely powerful bombs, which were capable of

destroying a seaport and the surrounding territory. This

information may have come precisely at the right time, for in

October of 1938 Roosevelt asked Congress for a $300

million military appropriation, and in November instructed

the Army Air Corps to plan for an annual production of

twenty thousand planes. Later, in 1939, Roosevelt called for

actions against "aggressor nations," and in the same year

submitted to Congress a $1.3 billion defense budget (Boyer

861). In an accompanying memorandum that was sent with

the Einstein letter, scientist Leo Szilard explained the

technical science of nuclear fission and stressing the

importance of chain reactions (Walls 1 PFS Safe Files).



Both documents, the Einstein letter and the Szilard

memorandum, were to be delivered by Alexander Sachs, an

adviser to Roosevelt"s New Deal since 1933 who would

know how to approach Roosevelt and the government

(Lanouette 200). It was not until mid-October 1939 that

Sachs wangled an invitation to get in to see the President

over breakfast (Burns 250). Though Roosevelt found the

documents interesting, he seemed hesitant about committing

government funds to such speculative research. But after

Sachs reminded him of Napoleon"s skepticism of Robert

Fulton"s idea of a steamship, Roosevelt agreed to proceed.

Regarding the steamship issue, Sachs went on to comment,

"This is an example of how England was saved by the

shortsightedness of an adversary,"; this insight made

Roosevelt greatly consider the creation of the bomb.

President Roosevelt authorized a study, but the decision to

devote full energy to the production of the bomb was not

made until December 6, 1941, the day before the Japanese

attack on Pearl Harbor.



It was the influence of Leo Szilard, along with that of

Alexander Sachs, that swayed Roosevelt"s decision to fund

and construct the bomb. To aid the presentation to President

Roosevelt, Szilard contacted aviator Charles Lindbergh, to

discuss how "large quantities of energy would be liberated"

by a "nuclear chain reaction," and also wanted to discuss

how "to make an attempt to inform the administration (of the

project)." Soon after, however, they discovered that the

anti-arms Lindbergh was not one to help them in their

request to the President (Lanouette 208). Szilard then went

on a mission to find pure graphite for the experiment, (which

would be based on Einstein"s E=mc2), by exchanging

dozens of letters with chemical, carbon, and metallurgical

companies, and bargained with manufacturers for contracts

of fresh material (Lanouette 209). During this time, Szilard

was creating a decisive difference between U.S. and

German nuclear efforts. Szilard also inquired to Colonel

Keith F. Adamson of the U.S. Army as to funding of the

graphite and uranium needed for a large scale experiment,

and Adamson estimated that it might only cost $6,000,

though this sum eventually swelled to more than $2 billion

dollars of funds from the U.S. government (Lanouette 211).

Although Einstein later said that he "really only acted as a

mailbox" for Leo Szilard, in popular history his famous

equation E=mc2 and his letter to President Roosevelt are

credited with starting the American effort to build atomic

weapons (Lanouette 206).



Fission was discovered in 1938 by German scientists, which

led to the fear of American scientists that Hitler might

attempt to develop a fission bomb.

(http://yourpage.blazenet.net/aljadam/atomicmain.html).

Because of German aggression throughout Europe in

1938-39, Roosevelt and the scientists thought it necessary to

develop the bomb before the Germans. Fortunately for the

United States bomb effort, many of the world"s top

scientists, from both Europe and the U.S. pooled their

expertise in the Manhattan Project to create the weapon.



Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England at the time

of the war, later expressed the concern that many were then

feeling, "We knew what efforts the Germans were making to

produce supplies of "heavy water," "a sinister, eerie,

unnatural, which began to creep into our secret papers.

What if the enemy should get an atomic bomb before we

did... ! I strongly urged that we should at once pool all our

information, work together on equal terms, and share the

results, if any, equally between us." On the same note,

President Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked to Alexander

Sachs, "Alex, what you are after is to see that the Nazis

don"t blow us up,...This requires action."



This action came under the fear that the Germans would be

ahead in the construction of the bomb. Since the initiation of

the atomic project in 1941 by Franklin D. Roosevelt,

American policy makers never doubted they would use the

weapon if it could be rapidly developed. Roosevelt had also

decided by late 1944 not to share information about the

bomb with the Soviets (LaFeber 26). Scientist Neils Bohr

likened the work of the atomic scientists to the "Alchemists

of former days, groping in the dark in their vain efforts to

make gold." An advisory committee on uranium was

created, with representatives of the Ordnance Department of

both the Army and the Navy, and with Lyman J. Briggs,

Director of the National Bureau of Standards, as chairman.

President Roosevelt chose people from various departments

so that no one service would dominate the initial research

and evaluation (Burns 250). Once it was proved to

Roosevelt that the scientific techniques were available to

construct a bomb, he approved tens of millions of dollars for

pilot plants. In June of 1942, Roosevelt and Churchill met at

Hyde Park to discuss their progress with "Tube Alloys,"

which was the English code name for the project. From this

meeting came the creation of a new division within the Army

Corps of Engineers to direct to direct the construction of

massive research plants and secret atomic cities. Hence, the

Manhattan Engineering District was launched in August

1942.



Little progress within the project had been made until after

the fall of France, when considerable government funds were

committed to atomic research. Although British scientists

were also experimenting with atomic weaponry, Churchill

found it wiser for the United States to take control of the

project, since Britain was under severe bombing at the time.

The Project, directed by army engineer General Leslie

Groves, employed more than 120,000 people.



The Manhattan Project comprised of many different

development sites throughout the country. The premier

development area for the project was in Oak Ridge,

Tennessee, near the tiny town of Clinton in eastern

Tennessee. The site, selected by Colonel James Marshall

and Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Nichols, met all of the

needs for the ensuing project: it was an isolated area with

adequate electrical power, an abundant water supply, low

population, a mild climate, and convenient access by means

of railway or roadway (Groueff 16). A huge gas diffusion

plant was built to produce weapon-grade uranium. An

extremely corrosive uranium hexafluoride gas was pumped

through barriers that was permeated with millions of holes.

The lighter molecules containing the needed uranium235 were

diffused faster than the heavier uranium238 molecules. After

the gas had been cycled through thousands of barriers it was

"enriched" to a high concentration, 90 percent, of pure

uranium235.



There were three other secret development sites, one being

the Metallurgical Lab at the University of Chicago. The task

at this lab was to prepare plutonium239 for atomic bombs,

but first to prove that the nuclear chain reaction needed to

produce that plutonium could actually work, which at that

time, many felt, was not necessary to effect the outcome of

the war.



The third was located on the Hanford Reservation, a desert

plateau in western Washington adjacent to the Columbia

River near the town of Richmond, which was selected for

many of the same reasons as Oak Ridge was selected. At

Hanford, there was a large water supply, electricity, a 12 by

16 mile area, a low population, and an absence of any main

roads or highways. It was here that the uranium 238 was

bombarded with neutrons to create plutonium239, enough of

which was made by July 1945 to make three bombs a

month. One of the bombs was created for the first test in

New Mexico that month, another intended for Nagasaki,

and the third conceived for Kokura, a Japanese weapons

plant, on August 20.



The fourth site, perhaps the most important, was a mesa

near Santa Fe called Los Alamos, which would collect

information from the previous three sites to construct the

world"s first atomic bombs (Lanouette 231). At the Los

Alamos site, theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer

was chosen to direct the isolated weapons laboratory. The

advantage of the site was that the bombs could be tested in

the surrounding canyons of the area. After all of the research

had been conducted, a supply of uranium235 was sent to the

Los Alamos weapons laboratory, where it was fashioned

into a gun-type weapon in which a piece of uranium was

fired into another, creating an explosion. At the same time,

another bomb type was constructed using plutonium, which

in Los Alamos, was surrounded by explosives to compress it

into a dense mass. This plutonium bomb proved to be more

effective than the uranium bomb, and was the first to explode

successfully in New Mexico in 1945. Later in the year,

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by two American

atomic bombs, dubbed "Little Boy" and "Fat Man," dropped

from the Enola Gay.



Finally the day came when all at Los Alamos would find out

whether or not The Gadget(code-named as such during its

development) was either going to be the colossal dud of the

century or perhaps end the war. It all came down to a fateful

morning of midsummer, 1945.



At 5:29:45 on July 16th, 1945, in a white blaze that

stretched from the basin of the Jemez Mountains in northern

New Mexico to the still-dark skies, The Gadget ushered in

the Atomic Age. The light of the explosion then turned

orange as the atomic fireball began shooting upwards at 360

feet per seconds, reddening and pulsing as it cooled. The

characteristic mushroom cloud of radioactive vapor

materialized at 30,000 feet. Beneath the cloud, all that

remained of the soil at the blast site were fragments of jade

green radioactive glass. All of this caused by the heat of the

reaction.



The brilliant light from the detonation lit up the early morning

skies with such intensity that even residents from a far

neighboring community swore that the sun came up twice

that day. Upon seeing the massive explosion, the reactions of

the people who created the bomb were mixed. Physicist

Isidor Rabi, a member of the Manhattan Project, felt that the

equilibrium in nature had been upset, as if humankind had

become a threat to the world it inhabited. Oppenheimer,

though pleased with the success of the project, quoted a

remembered fragment from The Bhagavad Gita, the most

widely-read, ethical text of ancient India, "I am become

Death," he said, "the destroyer of worlds." Ken Bainbridge,

the test director, told Oppenheimer, "Now we"re all sons of

bitches."



Several participants, shortly after viewing the explosion

signed petitions against ever utilizing the bomb, but their

protests were in vain. As history unfolded, the Trinity site of

New Mexico was not the last site to experience an atomic

explosion (http://terabyte.virtual-pc.com/vik/vik/nuke/).