The cleavage between the scientific and military organizations was such that by the end of the summer, Conant realized that if something did not change soon, the bomb would never be ready in time. The difficulty of procuring manpower and materials, compounded by bureaucratic rivalries and suspicion, had resulted in one setback after another. Given the critical shortages, the army’s top officers did not want to go ahead with five ways of producing plutonium and U-235. They were completely focused on winning the ground war: preparing for the upcoming North African offensive, supplying its own arsenals and proving grounds, equipping its soldiers abroad, and housing and training the thousands of recruits pouring into induction centers. To them, the bomb was at best a long shot, and while the scientists fiddled, they had to make sure the battle was not lost.
On August 26 Conant called a meeting of the S-1 Executive Committee, the small leadership council that replaced the S-1 Section that had grown too large and had been pared down to Briggs, Compton, Lawrence, Urey, and Murphree. Their backs were to the wall. They desperately needed to solve the priority problem. Under enormous pressure from the army, the committee members pleaded with him to reduce the number of production methods. It looked like the electromagnetic method would probably be the first to yield fissionable material, but it was not necessarily the best approach. They debated whether to throw everything they had at it at the expense of the others. Had the time come to abandon their overambitious strategy?
With the committee teetering on the brink of an imprudent decision, Conant, according to his colleagues, “raised a steadying hand.” He reminded them that in June he had said no sound basis existed for eliminating any of the five processes, and it was still “too soon by one or two months” to make a decision. To bet on one method and lose might cost the war. He convinced the committee to stick to his original plan. But he warned Bush that they had to find a way to win the army’s support. Unless it was a full partnership, they would not prevail.
Fed up with army resistance, Bush decided it was time to reboot the project’s leadership. What he had in mind was a sort of board of directors to advise the Manhattan District’s new director, with both him and Conant as balancing members, ensuring that the civilian scientists had a say in any decisions. As part of the arrangement, Bush expected his new board to handpick the commanding officer who would be in charge of the bomb project. But this proved to be another failure in communication with his military counterparts. So when a portly, aggressive, and supremely self-confident colonel by the name of Leslie R. Groves swaggered into his office on the afternoon of September 17, Bush gave him a “cool reception,” dismissing his claims that he had been given the job and refusing to answer most of his questions.
As soon as the cocky officer was out the door, Bush was on the phone to army headquarters. Much to his irritation, it turned out that Groves had indeed been appointed and, through some oversight, Bush had not been informed. Convinced that the West Point graduate, who had earned a formidable reputation overseeing the massive Pentagon construction project, was a disastrous choice, Bush sent Conant a note expressing his displeasure. Having seen Groves only briefly, Bush groused that he was “very seriously” bothered, and considered the colonel “abrupt and lacking in tact.” Groves was old school: tough, uncompromising, and impatient. Bush worried that his brusque manner would rub the scientists the wrong way. Although he was on record as being against it, he told Harvey Bundy that it looked like a done deal, adding resignedly, “I fear we are in the soup.”
On September 23 Conant had an opportunity to size up the man for himself at a meeting in the secretary of war’s office to discuss the reorganization of S-1. His first impression was also not particularly favorable. Stimson agreed to Bush’s proposal for a new Military Policy Committee to supervise the atomic effort, and suggested it be composed of seven or nine high-ranking representatives from the army, navy, and OSRD. Even though Groves was the most junior man present—having received his promotion to brigadier general only that morning—he objected immediately, arguing strenuously that such a large group would be “unwieldy” and that any more than three committee members would be more of a hindrance than help. This was rather awkward for Conant, as it meant that either he or Bush would have to be eliminated. Fortunately, Stimson intervened and solved the problem by proposing Bush as chairman and Conant as his alternate, so that both indispensable scientists would have a voice. Admiral William R. Purnell would serve as the navy member. After Groves excused himself, announcing he had to catch a train to inspect the Tennessee site, Stimson chose Lieutenant General Styer, an experienced engineer, to represent the army.
With Groves in charge, the pace of the work quickened. The general was a force to be reckoned with: obstacles crumbled at his feet, and orders came hard and fast and were followed through. Despite himself, Conant developed a grudging respect for the way he got things done. After only forty-eight hours on the job, Groves acquired the Tennessee site and cleared up the priority problem that had hampered them all summer. He had a quick mind, keen sense of how to motivate people, and his compelling presentations moved industrialists to “perform miracles.” Conant did not doubt that without Groves’s ferocious energy and drive, the second phase of the operation would never have gotten off the ground.
For his part, Groves took an immediate liking to the blunt, no-nonsense chemist. He appreciated his honesty and directness. Bush was more circumspect, more political, and had an acerbic edge. He preferred to rely on Conant to keep him informed of the goings-on in Washington. The general was also keenly aware that outside of the OSRD, Conant wielded enormous influence. “Conant had always been on a level far above Bush,” he recalled, repeating the old line that “if you said something about the president in Boston, you did not mean the president of the United States. You meant the president of Harvard.”
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Relieved of some of the management burdens, Conant spent most of his time bird-dogging the different separation processes and keeping Bush informed of problems or new developments. His province encompassed the Harvard and MIT research labs in Cambridge and the Met Lab in Chicago, extending to the new Oak Ridge site in Tennessee and westward to Lawrence’s Rad Lab in Berkeley, with many stops in between.I As he crisscrossed the country that fall, he searched for signs of success—experimental results showing that one of the competing processes had emerged as a surefire winner. He needed solid evidence before committing all their resources to one method.
At an S-1 meeting at the Bohemian Grove Lodge, an exclusive campground just outside San Francisco, in mid-September, a gung-ho Lawrence pushed his calutron as the best bet to produce uranium-235 before the end of 1944. It was impossible not to admire his spirit and dedication, and some excited committee members were so carried away by what they had seen on “Cyclotron Hill” high above Berkeley’s campus that they advocated concentrating everything they had on the electromagnetic process. Although expensive, it promised to be a shortcut to victory. Conant, who had learned to steel himself against Lawrence’s infectious enthusiasm, was more judicious. He wanted to wait and see how the other methods fared before eliminating one that might eventually prove better and cheaper. But he and the committee were sufficiently impressed to recommend expediting work on a calutron pilot plant and making a start on a portion of the full-scale system in Tennessee. In the weeks that followed, Conant continued to receive encouraging reports from Lawrence, Compton, and Urey, but he worried that their judgment might be distorted by their extravagant hopes and the excitement of the chase.
By late October, with time running out, Conant knew he had to narrow the field. He told Bush that the centrifuge method was the “weakest horse” and could be dropped, despite the angry protests from its supporters. The high-speed centrifuges built to separate U-235 required huge amounts of energy, and the machinery kept breaking down, making them unsuitable for industrial production. Positive results coming from the gaseous diffusion tests confirmed it was a promising approach t
o separating U-235 on a large scale, but it might be difficult to complete in time. He still considered Compton’s pile program to be the wildest gamble, and “boggled” at its problems and complexities. There was no experimental proof that his hoped-for nuclear chain reaction would actually occur, as a result of which a small fraction of U-238 would be transmuted into plutonium-239. And the recovery of the plutonium from the highly radioactive material had been accomplished only on a microchemical scale. Conant remained so dubious about the pile’s chances of succeeding that he offered to treat all the members of S-1 to a “champagne dinner” if the project attained full production by January 1, 1945.
Compton was understandably anxious to demonstrate the chain reaction to the skeptical Conant, who would determine the fate of his pile project. He was also eager to prove that it could be done safely to the doubtful officials of the DuPont Company, the colossus of American explosives Groves had approached about taking on the design, construction, and operation of the full-scale pile project. Compton, along with many of the talented, independent-minded scientists at Chicago, had been reluctant to accept the idea that they needed outside assistance. Conant, who had worked as a DuPont consultant, admonished him against trying to hunt “elephants with a peashooter,” arguing that he was underestimating the magnitude of the challenge. They were going to have to accept the army’s insistence on an immense production operation, by private industry under military supervision, to provide fissionable material in quantity. They were no longer talking about building one bomb and counting on the overwhelming psychological advantage to weaken the enemy’s resolve. Total victory would require them to turn out bombs on an assembly line. They were all going to have to start thinking in much bigger terms.
Earlier that fall, Compton had informed him they were almost ready to attempt building a large pile. Conant had expected that the dangerous experiment would be conducted at the Argonne Forest Preserve outside Chicago, which had been carefully selected for the purpose. The army had completed plans for a structure suitable for housing the nuclear reactor, but was running behind schedule due to labor disputes. Compton was frustrated by the holdup. In early November, acting on his own initiative, he agreed to Fermi’s urgent request that they brook no delay and begin assembling the pile right there on campus. Space was found in a building formerly occupied by the squash court under the west stands of Stagg Field, the university stadium. Without waiting for blueprints, Fermi and his team set to work stacking heavy graphite bricks and uranium-oxide units on a wood frame, constructing a sphere some twenty-six feet in diameter. Unused to manual labor, the physicists emerged at the end of each day exhausted and as black as coal miners from the carbon dust.
Fermi had assured Compton that he could make the controlled chain reaction safe. According to his calculations, which Compton checked carefully, a small fraction of the neutrons associated with the fission process was emitted a few seconds after the reaction occurred. These “delayed” neutrons gave them a small window in which they could make adjustments so the reaction would always be under full control. The only reason for worry was if some new, unforeseen phenomenon occurred that might result in the release of nuclear energy that far exceeded their figures. While they did not really see how a true nuclear explosion could occur, they were pinning their safety on only “a marginal fraction”—less than 1 percent—of all the neutrons. Elaborate precautions were planned to keep the pile within the proscribed limits. Fermi would only permit the reaction to grow very slowly to avoid any chance of its “breaking out of control.” If the intensity of the reaction exceeded the preset limit, a cadmium control rod (which absorbed neutrons) would be reinserted to stop the process.
At a November 14 meeting of the S-1 Executive Committee in Conant’s office in Washington, Compton mentioned, with studied casualness, that his team had constructed the pile on campus and was preparing to test the chain reaction. When Conant realized he meant to perform the crucial experiment “in the middle of Chicago,” his face went white. If the pile exploded, there was no way to know how great an area would be affected. An accident could be catastrophic. Groves rushed to the nearest phone and demanded to know how soon the Argonne site could be made ready. Compton maintained that Fermi and the other senior physicists were quite certain there would not be a runaway reaction. Although Conant and Groves were “disturbed,” neither of them put a stop to it. They were both persuaded that work on the pile was so advanced, it was “too late” to halt it. And there was no doubt it would save time. In the end, after much discussion, they accepted the element of danger, which Compton rationalized as a hazard of war.
But privately, Conant was appalled by Compton’s rashness. Threatened with elimination, or a low priority rating, he had acted on his own authority, bypassing both army and university approval, and violating just about every rule of OSRD protocol. Even though luck had been on Compton’s side, Conant noted that in retrospect there were those who would always feel the Met Lab leader had taken an “unwarranted risk.”
If that morning’s disclosure had not been enough to undermine his confidence in Compton, the news Conant received over lunch from the British technical chief, Wallace T. Akers, shook him to the core. Akers informed him that a British study had concluded that plutonium might not be a practical fissionable material for a bomb because the impurities in it might spoil the weapon before it could be completely assembled. Scarcely able to believe what he was hearing, Conant checked with Lawrence, who admitted he was aware of the possibility.
That evening, Conant met with Compton and Lawrence and demanded an explanation. He learned that scientists at both Berkeley and Chicago already knew about the problem and were looking into a chemical process to meet the British specifications. Furious, Conant ordered a complete review of the entire S-1 program. Almost more worrying than the prospect of meeting the new purity requirements was the implication that Compton and his team could not be trusted to supply accurate data. Reprimanding them for the “rather fuzzy state” of their thinking, Conant drove home the need for absolute candor and clearheaded feasibility reports at this critical stage. “I should very much hate the record to show,” he added pointedly, “that American scientists lost their critical acumen and failed to be realistic and hard-boiled about the chance of success.”
“Now is the time for faith,” a desperate Compton wrote Conant at the end of November, urging him to continue to support their venture into the unknown despite the recent blunder.II He had taken that Saturday off and driven to a friend’s log cabin in the woods northwest of Chicago to get some rest and reassess the situation. While there, he had penned the letter addressing the purity crisis and sent it special delivery to the head of S-1. But Conant was not inclined to look to heaven for inspiration. Preferring tangible signs of progress, his answer was short and to the point: “It isn’t faith we need now, Arthur. It’s works.”
December 2, the eve of Chanukah, was fated to be the day of the demonstration. It was Fermi’s show. From the balcony of the squash court at Stagg Field, where twenty members of his team were observing the operation and monitoring instruments, he ordered all the control rods to be removed from the pile. They were drawn out gingerly, a little at a time. The nerve-racking process took all morning and, after Fermi insisted on a break for lunch, much of the afternoon. At 3:20 p.m., he ordered the last rod to be pulled out, and the pile became critical. It performed exactly as he had said it would: a slow, self-sustaining chain reaction. After a few minutes, the increase in radioactivity required him to shut it down.
Conant was in his Washington apartment waiting for news. He had tried to work but found it difficult to keep his mind from imagining all the things that could go wrong. Nothing was harder, he agreed with Groves, than standing by and staying calm in the face of events over which he had no control. The afternoon light was beginning to fade when the phone finally rang. He snatched it from the cradle in time to hear Compton say, “Our Italian navigator has just landed in the new world.�
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“Is that so,” Conant responded, excited but uncertain. All the hours of pent-up fear and apprehension went into the question that immediately formed on his lips: “Were the natives friendly?”
There was no prearranged code, but Conant had immediately fallen in with the subterfuge and wanted Compton’s assurance that there had been no complications. “Everyone landed safe and happy,” said Compton, clearly elated.
It was definitely one for the books. The nuclear reaction was now established fact. The success of the Stagg Field demonstration brought plutonium production to the fore of the atomic program. The Chicago team submitted a report stating that with full support for their project, 500 grams of plutonium could be produced and separated in 1943, and the first plutonium bomb would be ready in 1944. The S-1 Committee recommended the pile be developed at once at full scale at the Argonne site. But significant as it was in the history of science, and as proud as everyone in Chicago had a right to be, the experiment, in practical terms, only confirmed Compton’s prediction of a year earlier.
Conant found the result reassuring, but it did not fundamentally alter his opinion that a plutonium weapon was a much more iffy proposition than a uranium bomb. He continued to fight stubbornly for the electromagnetic process, supporting Lawrence’s claim that he might be able to get sufficient U-235 from his calutrons for a bomb by the end of 1944. Even though the review committee found the production process to be slow and full of difficulties, Conant believed it was crucial they know by that date whether or not the uranium bomb design worked. All he needed was enough fully enriched uranium for one test explosion. Ever present in his thoughts was the “time schedule of the enemy”—the possibility that the Germans were a year or even eighteen months ahead. The knowledge that the Berkeley group had a workable weapon might make all the difference to the Manhattan Project scientists’ morale, especially if the Nazis produced “an effective bomb” while theirs was still in the pipeline.
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