Detroit evening times., 1945-10-28

THOUSANDS of workers were moving into
secret cities in the hills of Tennessee. Other
thousands were trekking down valleys in the
State Of Washington. Their mission to per
form feat never achieved before-put the ex-
plosive clements of atomic bombs into mass
Mystery enveloped every move Few know
exactly what others were doing Still fewer knew
the ultimate aim
Yet their vast, strange work was no less
unparalleled than that of comparatively small
group of men who undertook the task of actually
manufacturing The bomb itself
When the army started the work OF mass pro.
duction of U.235 and plutonum for atom bomb
purposes in 1912 and the workers put the job
under way there still was no laboratory in the
nation working on the bomb.
Then, in November 1912. Cafornias young
Or. j. r. Oppenheimer suddenly found himself ap-
pointed as chief Of non-existent atom bomb
laboratory in the remote Los Alamos corner OF
the desert lands of New Mexico.
When his party reached it, they found no shops,
no power plant, library. The only approach
was winding road TO the mesa.
Oppenhemer was not feaZed. He had workc
with Professor Gregory Brett, mathematical ply
ctst of the University of Wisconsin. who had
co-ordnated pre-war voluntary censorship by
American uranium scientists, and Professor Brett
a leader in the ensuing war work. So quickly
the transformation OF the desert began, and
eminent physicists began tG@gather there.
From Princeton, Chicago, California Wiscon.
sin and Minnesota universities they came, Three
carloads OF scientific apparatus arrived from
Princeton. Harvard diSmanucd its giant -ete46tf6t
and shipped il 10 Los Aamos. Wisconsin sent
TWO van dc NIfddI type atom SIndSneTS ana the
University of Illinois sent its Cockcroft.Walton
variety Of atom smasher.
The activity so intense that although the
rebuilding OF the Harvard cyciotron was started
only on April Ia 1943, the first experiments with
il there performed early in the following July
To-day" says the authoritative Smyth report
of the War Department this is probably the best
equipped physics research laboratory in the world"
Exactly what young DR.. Oppenheimers group
did there to perfect the atom bomb is a secret the
whole world would like TO see revealed The
SUyth report
close some Of the problems which had TO be solved
The great battling job. was TO reverse all the
steps in uranium splitting which had been followed
earlier with the new element, plutonum. The plu-
tonium was being made by transmitting an ordi-
nary type Of uranium into the new substance
In earlier experiments with the putonium. the
object had been 10 set up chain.reacton of split
ting atoms which would progress slowly that
there would be no chance Of blowing up the very
thing around it,
NOW DR.. Oppenheimers group set out to learn
~ how 10 make chain reaction proceed swiftly,
with resulting explosion. The explosion had 10
develop rapidly the bomb would be no more
than a unique kind OF fizzling firecracker dud
in a military sense
one essential, known ut the start, was that
the explosive reaction would result only Whct
pieces OF either U-235 or plutonium were brought
together to form certain critical size The riddle
how TO create bomb in which the separate
pieces could be brought together at precisely the
Hnstant explosion might be desired
If the chain reaction explosion should run its
course too slowly, the separate pieces of the bomb
would be blown apart and only portion of the
explosive materials would be used. The remainder
of the unexploded bomb would fall to the ground