Lt-Col John Lansdale, chief of atomic security and intelligence for the Manhattan Project, admitted that he handled the disposal of the small cases aboard U-234.138 He recalled that the American military authorities reacted with panic when they discovered the cargo aboard the U-boat. Lansdale went on to say that the German material was sent to Oak Ridge where the isotopes were separated and put into the pot of material used to make America’s first atom bombs.
Obviously Lansdale did not mean U235 isotopes here since they are the final result of the separation process. The only fissile isotopes which can be separated from irradiated uranium are the range of plutonium isotopes from fissioned material bred in a working reactor or sub-reactor assembly. This would have made them panic, particularly if they knew how a small-scale German atom bomb was constructed. All that was needed for detonation would be an effective implosion fuse.
Natural uranium powder in its natural state is highly pyrophorous and ignites spontaneously on contact with air, but this would not require it to be packed in eighty small radioisotope containers. It is, however, the manner in which plutonium-enriched uranium powder would need to be transported.
The thickness of lead required to reduce the initial intensity of gamma radiation by a factor of ten is 1.8 inches. The thickness of the walls, lid and base of the lead containers described by Hirschfeld would have provided an interior volume for each container sufficient for about 19 kilos of uranium metal powder, multiply by eighty = 1520 kilos: divide by 750 kilos = enough for two small-scale atom bombs.
The Implosion Fuses
A final twist to the U-234 story has been suggested.139 The German small-yield device could not have been properly detonated without an effective implosion fuse. For eighteen months the scientists at Los Alamos had failed to develop such a fuse. In October 1944 Robert Oppenheimer created a three-man committee to look into the problem. Luis Alvarez was on this team and became one of the heroes of the American A-bomb story when he solved it in the final days before the Trinity test at Alamogordo in July 1945.
The need was for a fusing system that could fire multiple detonators simultaneously. Harlow Russ, who worked on the plutonium bomb team, stated in his book Project Alberta that improvements were made to the detonator at the last moment. A new type of implosion fuse suddenly becoming available to the Manhattan Project gave a result four times better than expected at the Trinity A-test.
But did the real impetus for this success come from Luis Alvarez or German technology? Germany could not have detonated small-scale atom bombs without the most superior implosion fuse. According to the CI0S-BI0S/FIAT 20 report published by the US authorities in October 1946, by May 1945 Germany already had every kind of fuse known to the Americans –; “and then some”. Professor Heinz Schlicke, one of the passengers aboard U-234, was an expert in fuse technology. Infra-red proximity fuses were discovered to be aboard U-234 on 24 May 1945, apparently as a result of the interrogation of Dr Schlicke in which he mentioned that he had fuses which worked on the principles that govern light. A memorandum by Jack H. Alberti dated 24 May 1945 states:
“Dr Schlicke knows about the infra-red proximity fuses which are contained in some of these packages. Dr Schlicke knows how to handle them and is willing to do so.”
Schlicke and two others were then flown to Portsmouth NH to retrieve the fuses. It is not suggested that these were the fuses used to explode the American plutonium bomb, but rather confirms that Schlicke knew more about fuses than the Manhattan Project did. From a transcript of a lecture given by Dr Schlicke to the Navy Department in July 1945, there seems to have been a close cooperation for some reason between Dr Schlicke and Luis Alvarez. And it is in the fact that the technological side of the Manhattan Project failed them that the real weakness of the American project is exposed.
CHAPTER 13
The Manhattan Project
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT was founded in order that the United States should have a nuclear capability in the event that Hitler developed the atom bomb. By the end of hostilities in Europe in May 1945 the United States did not have a bomb which worked, and, as that was the Project’s raison d’être, it obviously failed. The American failure was in technology, for they were unable to devise an efficient implosion fuse.
How the Implosion Bomb Works
As any physicist will explain, the only economical way to detonate a Pu239 or plutonium bomb is by the implosion method. The bomb core is made as a sub-critical sphere surrounded by a layer of non-fissile U238. A uniform layer of high explosive surrounds the tamper. When the thirty-two fuses are triggered simultaneously, the explosive detonates, creating a massive uniform pressure of millions of pounds per square inch which compresses the core to a supercritical density, causing the implosion. The implosion method is essential for plutonium-type bombs because the radioisotope Pu240, being more fissile than Pu239, would otherwise cause a premature detonation of the material known as a ‘fizzle’. The least speed required for assembly of the critical mass by implosion is in the region of 3500 feet/sec.
The U235 bomb is more fissile than the plutonium device and the speed of assembly of the critical mass can be as low as 1000 feet/sec. For this reason an implosion fuse is not necessary for this type of bomb, but the amount of uranium material required is vastly greater.
In order to conceal the failure of the Manhattan Project, General Groves and his associates wanted people to continue to believe that ideally a plutonium bomb is detonated by an implosion fuse, while ideally the U235 bomb is detonated by a ‘gun-type’ device. The ‘gun-type’ detonator is, of course, what they say was used to detonate the so-called ‘Thin Man’ device used to devastate Hiroshima and which works in principle in the following manner: since one cannot assemble a critical mass without there being a reaction from it, two sub-critical lumps of highly enriched U235 are kept apart until detonation when they are fired together within a howitzer barrel with a breech at each end. The supercritical mass assembles at a reasonably fast speed in sub-atomic terms and so achieves the explosion.
The Development of the Manhattan Project without an Implosion Fuse
Since the Americans had no effective implosion fuse to hand before the end of May 1945, no question ever arose of detonating a plutonium bomb in the preceding period. The U235 bomb was the only possibility. Although the actual information regarding the Hiroshima bomb is probably still classified half a century later, it is known that the critical mass in the most favourable configuration as calculated by Richard Feyman was 50 kilos of U235. Robert Oppenheimer put it at double that. This is an awful lot of U235 to expend in one bomb. Of course, nobody in his right mind would dream of putting half a field gun into a bomb to set it off if he had an implosion fuse. To separate 50 to 100 kilos of U235 is fantastically expensive and wasteful of resources and takes nearly three years to amass with (at today’s money) an investment of about 200,000 million dollars. Depending on the factor by which the uranium material is compressed, the U235 rationally needed for an implosion bomb would have been, at the most, just over ten kilos.
Explaining the Delays in Producing the U235 Bomb
Early in 1944, the head of the Manhattan Project, General Groves, had indicated that he would have “several” U235 bombs ready, but it would be the end of 1945 before they were available for use. What this means is that if the United States had had an implosion fuse in early 1944, three or four bombs would have been available for use against Germany. He expected to have the material for three or four devices for implosion, but if no implosion fuse were forthcoming, then it would be fifteen months or so before there was enough material to set off one ‘gun-type’ bomb. This explains how it was possible for Groves to dictate to the Secretary for War, Stimson, on 23 April 1945 that the target was, and was always expected to be, Japan. Groves was not the maker of State policy; it was simply the fact that his scientists could not produce the goods within the time scale which determined the policy.
Since the autumn of 1943 the Los Alamos e
xperts had been working without success on how to compress a sphere the size of an orange uniformly over its surface area using 32 detonators fired within the same three-thousandth of a second. They had not progressed beyond a thermoelectric fuse taking 0.5 micro-seconds, which was too slow. In the hope of finding a solution, in October 1944 Robert Oppenheimer set up a three-man committee headed by physicist Luis Alvarez.
The technical portfolio being taken to Japan by U-234 passenger Dr Heinz Schlicke was a substantial one. He was an expert in explosives, detonators and fuses, in very high technology radar and radio systems, in the field of high frequency light waves, guided missile development and the V-2 rocket. Before leaving Germany he had met with numerous scientists to receive instruction in their technologies for later dissemination in Japan where he would serve as a scientific advisory liaison officer. A nuclear physicist with whom he had consulted was Professor Gerlach, Reich Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Science.
The fusing system to fire multiple detonators simultaneously was developed in the seven weeks between Schlicke arriving and the beginning of July. The solution was probably some kind of fuse in which a high-tension electrical impulse vaporized a wire to activate all 32 charges in 0.04-0.08 microseconds. The type of impulses involved, e.g. Thyratrons and Krytons, are produced in special high-tension and high-efficiency vacuum tubes notably in the field of HF radar in which Dr Heinz Schlicke was a specialist.
Three days after the Trinity test on 16 July 1945 Dr Schlicke delivered a lecture to the Navy Department on the subject of detonator fuses and afterwards shared the platform with Luis Alvarez for a question and answer session from the scientists present.
The likelihood exists that the Hiroshima device was detonated by an implosion fuse. The first mock-up version of the U235 bomb was so large that it would not have fitted into the bomb-bay of a B-29140, but the B-29 carrying the Hiroshima bomb had room in the bomb bay for several to fit in easily.
The Oak Ridge records show a large increase in enriched uranium stocks occurring in the third week of June 1945, at about the time when the implosion fuse suddenly became available. As this could be used to detonate a U235 bomb with far less material, one assumes that the bomb was split down and the surplus returned to store, thus radically increasing the amount available. This, and the smallness of the bomb, increases the probability that the Hiroshima device was imploded. The sudden increase in U235 stock has led people to speculate that it must have been of German origin, leading to claims that “the bombs dropped on Japan came from German arsenals”, but that was not, and logically cannot have been, the case.
Did the U-234 Cargo Influence US Policy?
The weight of evidence available suggests that the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan occurred as the result of some hitherto unexplained factor occurring between 16 and 30 May, 1945, which dictated the chief aim of American strategic atomic policy to be the military defeat of Japan at the earliest possible opportunity.
As at 16 May, no executive decision had been taken to use the bomb, and Secretary for War Stimson advised President Truman that the rule of sparing the civilian population “should be applied, as far as possible, to the use of any new weapons”.141
On Saturday 19 May 1945 the German submarine U-234 berthed at Portsmouth New Hampshire: her specialist passengers were interrogated during the week beginning 24 May: Major Vance of the Manhattan Project arrived on 30 May to inspect the cargo and take away the heavy water and eighty little cases of “uranium powder”.
At a meeting of the Interior Committee on the morning of 31 May 1945:
“Mr Byrnes recommended and the Committee agreed that the Secretary for War should be advised that, while recognizing that the final selection of the target was a military decision, the present view of the Committee was that the bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible, that it be used on a war plant surrounded by workers’ houses, that it be used without prior warning.”
Arthur H. Compton of the scientific panel noted of that morning’s decision that “it seemed to be a foregone conclusion that the bomb would be used”142, and when the meeting reconvened that afternoon the agenda had been amended so that consideration could be given to the question of the effect of the atom bomb on the Japanese and on their will to fight.
When President Truman learned of the decision on 1 June he admitted to Byrnes that he had been giving the matter serious thought for some days and that, after considering other plans, he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that there was no alternative. Although he did not give the order on 1 June, it appears that he had made the decision by then.
The political activity during the last two weeks in May 1945 was such that Stimson appears to have been a man overtaken by events. Somewhere in that period he ceased to treasure jealously the United States’ reputation for fair play and humanity. He never explained why satisfactorily. In retrospect he stated:
“My chief purpose was to end the war in victory with the least possible cost in the lives of the men in the armies which I helped to raise.”143
It had ceased to be his rule to “spare the civilian population, as far as possible, to the new weapons” and worse, with his words, he justified the perpetration of any atrocity against civilians in order to save military lives. If, and only if, the possibility existed that Japan might have been gifted a number of small-scale atom bombs by Germany would the American Government have had an arguable right to order the deployment of their atomic arsenal. It is one of the great ironies of war that Korvettenkapitän Heinrich Fehler disobeyed his last order and surrendered his submarine to the United States in the hope of obtaining better treatment for his crew in captivity and presented Washington with the justification for the terrible action against Japan which was to follow, and with a weapon under whose shadow the world has existed ever since.
CHAPTER 14
Gravity II
GERMANY BETWEEN THE two World Wars was a fertile ground for research into UFOs and alternative technologies. UFO sightings go back of course to the beginnings of recorded history. Research shows that celestial lights and flying saucer shapes have been reported since the days of the Ancient Greeks. In the more recent epoch of the last two hundred years or so, marine insurers at Lloyds of London have taken note of occurrences reported in the logs of registered vessels, the majority of which were written by the most serious minded and perhaps Godfearing ships’ masters and officers. The reports go on, backward in time to the first records of true oceanic navigation, proving that there never was “a time in 1947 when flying saucer sightings really began”, (an expression much favoured by those striving to prove that all UFO sightings are of terrestrial US origin), but only that there was a great spate of reported sightings from that year.
The oriental influence behind Nazism has already been remarked upon and will be raised again in the final chapter, and one of the areas to which the SS directed their attentions was the Aryan scientific treatises of pre-Hindu India. These Aryans of antiquity, far in advance of the rest of humanity in terms of scientific development, devised machines called Vimanas which “flew the skies like aircraft, utilizing a form of energy obtained directly from the atmosphere” and whose description resembles ‘flying saucers’.
There are some authenticated Sanskrit texts which, being technological, are called Manusa and are said by the writers to explain how certain machines were constructed for aerial flight. The Yantra Sarvasa deals with machinery, for example. Rukma Vimana144elucidates their construction, describing metal alloys, weights and heat-resistant metals.
According to the Samarangana Suradhara, the craft could fly “to great distances” and were “propelled by air”. The text devotes over 200 stanzas to building plans. As to propulsion, “four strong mercury containers must be built into the interior structure”. When these are heated, “the vimana develops thunder-power through the mercury, and at once it becomes like a pearl in the sky.”145 The vimanas were equally at home in the air, on water or subme
rged, confirming that the vimana could also be a submersible if so desired. Among the non-technical works known as Daiva, there would appear to be suggestions, if not evidence, that such vimanas could be put to the most gruesome and devastating use in wartime. One might be suspicious that it was for this very purpose that the Third Reich built vimanas, and not for the peaceful exploration of space, which was the supposedly secret reason why Wernher von Braun put so much effort into the V-2. There is alleged to exist a terrible sidereal force known to the Aryan rishis or wise men in the treatise Ashtar Vidya and to the mediaeval hermeticists as the ‘sidereal light’ or Milk of the Celestial Virgin and other such terms. It was the Vril of the coming races of mankind described in Bulwer-Lytton’s occult novel The Coming Race published in 1871, which influenced Hitler. The force is not doubted by the rishis, since it is mentioned in all their works. It is a vibratory force which, when aimed at an army from an Agni Rath, or, for want of a better term, gun, fixed to a vimana or balloon according to the instructions in Ashtar Vidya, reduced to ashes 100,000 men and elephants as easily as it would a dead rat. The force is allegorized in Vishnu Purana, the Ramayana and other Hindu volumes. The Vril would be the weapon par excellence and throughout the war a precise knowledge of its manufacture must have been earnestly sought by the Waffen-SS.
By a curious coincidence, in the edition of the periodical Science of 3 January 1969, Schubert, Gerald and Whitehead reported that when a heat source was revolved slowly below a dish of mercury, the mercury began to revolve in the contrary direction and then gathered speed until it was circulating faster than the flame. This is the projection of energy by an exceedingly simple process, and poses two interesting questions: where does the mercury obtain its surplus energy if not from the atmosphere itself, and was this in some way connected with Aryan vimana flight?
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