Tuxedo Park

by Jennet Conant

  One of the Bell engineers asked, “And what wavelength do you think that is?” Bowen’s off-the-cuff estimate put it at around ten centimeters. “And how much power do you think it is giving?” Bowen had been quoting the figure he had been given of ten kilowatts, but he knew the glow discharge he was looking must be higher. In fact the magnetron had generated a pulse power in excess of fifteen kilowatts at a wavelength of 9.8 centimeters—“as a demonstration it could not have been more successful.” Bowen then learned that Loomis had already swung into action and had told Bell that if the test run went as planned, they were to immediately commence manufacturing thirty copies. When Bowen departed, he was “walking on air.”

  But by the law of averages, Bowen should have known that everything had gone too smoothly. The next day brought a terse call from the director of Bell Labs, Mervin Kelly, who had worked himself up into quite a state. Bowen’s presence was urgently required in New York—“right now or tomorrow morning at the latest.” While Kelly could not spell out the problem on an open phone line, clearly something had gone very wrong. “Oh, my God,” Bowen thought, “the magnetron must have blown up.” He did not have a clue what the problem was and spent an uneasy night wondering if the whole mission had foundered only days away from the magnetron’s being put into mass production. He caught a six forty-five A.M. flight to New York and went straight to Bell’s headquarters on West Street, where he was ushered into the top-floor conference room. There, Kelly, acting like judge and jury rolled into one, and flanked by two or three others who “looked suspiciously like company lawyers,” produced the magnetron and laid it on the table. “Is that the magnetron you brought here last week?” he demanded. Bowen, still mystified, had to agree that it was.

  There was a long pause, and then Kelly produced a photograph. It seemed that in an effort to gain more information about the magnetron, Bell’s engineers had taken an X-ray picture of the device. As Bowen put it, “The result came as a considerable shock.” The magnetron, which had demonstrably worked very well, had eight holes, not the six clearly specified in all the blueprints and manufacturing material supplied by Wembley. Bowen looked from the magnetron to the photograph. There was nothing he could say. The unspoken accusation that the British had pulled a fast one hung in the air.

  Bowen asked if he could make a transatlantic call to clear up the matter, and in moments the Bell people had Eric Megaw, the resident genius of GE’s Wembley plant, on the line. At first Megaw was as confused as Bowen and at a loss for an answer. Then “the penny dropped.” He remembered that on the afternoon he had placed the order for the first twelve magnetrons, he had gone back at ten P.M. that same night and had told the foreman, “Look, on that order for twelve magnetrons, make ten with six holes, one with seven, and one with eight.” Later, rushed and under tremendous pressure, he had completely forgotten about it. When Bowen had gone to Wembley and picked out the best magnetron to bring to America, he had selected the last model on the line—number twelve—the one with eight holes. As soon as the discrepancy was explained, the air cleared. But now they were faced with a new problem: Should Bell build their copies based on the blueprints for the six-cavity magnetron supplied by the British or from their X-ray picture of the eight-hole device? “We agreed there was only one way to go,” recalled Bowen, “to copy the one they knew worked.” The Bell copy followed the X-rayed model to the letter, which is why all the early British magnetrons had six holes, while all the American versions had eight.

  WITH Germany threatening to bomb Britain into submission and moving in submarines to blockade shipments of food and supplies, events demanded quick action. Britain was involved in a life-and-death struggle, as Cockcroft had made painfully clear. Loomis knew that getting the laboratory up and running, and new radar systems developed in time to rout Hitler’s forces, was going to be a massive undertaking. It would take American ingenuity and American money. Before he left Tuxedo Park, Loomis put in a call to Ernest Lawrence. Since their success with the great cyclotron, they were regarded as something of a dynamic duo. Now the crisis in Europe required that they work their magic one more time and together create another astoundingly powerful device.

  The sense of urgency that suddenly prevailed was expressed in the telegram Bush sent Lawrence summoning him to Washington:

  EARLY TRIP DESIRABLE IMPORTANT MEETING BOSTON TENTH STOP YOU SHOULD CONSULT LOOMIS AT LENGTH BEFORE THEN STOP SECRETARY SENDING YOU APPOINTMENT AND TRAVEL ORDERS AIRMAIL ARRANGE DETAILED PLANS WITH LOOMIS AS YOU WILL BE ATTACHED TO HIS SECTION.

  Lawrence, who was still immersed in pure science, was not convinced he should make war work his first priority. He wanted to stay on the job in Berkeley and believed that was the best use of his time. Bush had prevailed on him on behalf of the NDRC once before, when a month earlier he had asked him to head a roving committee—“a sort of fire department”—to call in on any problem that might arise. Lawrence had made various excuses, and the impatient Bush had finally replied, “Forget the whole thing.” But this time it was Loomis who was requesting his services. He sent telegrams to both men saying he was on his way and left for New York on October 5.

  Lawrence took the oath of office required to work for the top-secret radar division of the NDRC, then Loomis brought him up-to-date on the secrets contained in the black box and all the plans that were under way. On Thursday, October 10, a morning meeting was held at Compton’s office at MIT that lasted into late afternoon. The following day, Loomis held a meeting of the microwave committee at the Carnegie Institution on P Street in Washington, attended by Bush, Compton, Bowles, and Bowen. Loomis introduced Lawrence, the famous Nobel laureate, to the radar specialists. Their purpose was to establish a civilian research laboratory, as proposed by Loomis at Tuxedo Park. It was decided that they would begin with a nucleus of about twelve scientists, to be recruited from universities, and then expand it as rapidly as possible. Each scientist they recruited would be asked to recommend the names of four or five other candidates, then they would be contacted, and so forth. Bush, who was worried about potential conflicts with Carnegie, rejected the idea of basing the lab at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Bowen also pointed out the importance of having an experimental aircraft at their disposal. Loomis suggested they look into Bolling Field, a U.S. Army Air Corps base on the outskirts of Washington, which had a large heated hangar that he could have quickly fitted up as a laboratory for experimental work.

  That weekend they adjourned to Tuxedo Park, where the talks would continue in a more relaxed setting. They were joined by Cockcroft and, in Bush’s absence, Carroll Wilson. Bowen and Cockcroft once again pulled out the magnetron and blueprints and explained to Lawrence what the small device could mean. Lawrence had been very pessimistic about Britain’s ability to survive the Blitz and felt nothing could save England in the face of that onslaught. But listening to Bowen and Cockcroft, he envisioned for the first time the many possibilities opened up by the magnetron and very short radio waves. “This is something you can get your teeth into!” Lawrence told them.

  Loomis then laid out the three main projects that needed to be tackled first and paid tribute to the Tizard Mission by indicating that they were the radar systems most urgently needed by Britain. Their first priority would be to develop the magnetron into a ten-centimeter airborne intercept system, code-named AI-10. Second, they would work on high-accuracy ten-centimeter gun-laying (GL) radar for antiaircraft use. Third on Loomis’ wish list was a long-range aircraft navigation system, of a yet unspecified type.

  After a hearty English breakfast laid on by Loomis’ expat butler, they discussed which areas America could be of most help in. Tizard was convinced that North America was the ideal place to work on a long-range navigational system, primarily because Britain was severely limited in its ability to test such a system without risk of being shot at by hostile aircraft. The morning’s discussion was animated, but Loomis and his guests did not overly exert themselves. It was Saturday after all, and they ha
d been hard at it for weeks now. Everyone was in need of a little rest and recreation. In the afternoon, Bowen and Lawrence played tennis, and the Welshman found himself being “thoroughly beaten” by the Berkeley physicist. Before dinner that night, a Tuxedo neighbor, Averell Harriman, dropped by to talk and to have a quiet drink. Like Loomis, Harriman had been drafted as one of Roosevelt’s “dollar a year” wartime advisers. Loomis talked about his large motor-powered yacht, which he had just sold to the navy for “the bottom price of one dollar” to be refitted for service as a troop carrier. Bowen could not help noticing that it was “a very different world” from the one in which he had grown up in the Swansea Valley.

  The next morning, the foundations of a great radar research laboratory were laid. Loomis, backed by Bush and Compton, wanted Lawrence to be the new laboratory’s director. Lawrence did not think he could delay work on his 184-inch cyclotron for that long but promised to help with the initial planning and organization, as well as enlisting the very best scientific minds in the country. But that raised an interesting question: Where would so many qualified scientists come from? Cockcroft and Bowen described how academic scientists had been drafted into radar research in Britain and had taken to the military work “like ducks to water.” Loomis asked Bowen to write out detailed specifications for an airborne radar system, while Cockcroft drafted the corresponding specs for a gun-laying radar. Loomis then threw open the subject of long-range navigation for discussion, and the British outlined a proposed system—which later became known as GEE—in which ground stations transmitted a grid of radio beams that enabled aircraft to fix their locations within the distance of a couple of hundred miles. It was generally agreed, recalled Bowen, that the range should be one thousand miles or more, with an accuracy of plus or minus five miles.

  Bowles, whose early resentment of Loomis was hardening into dislike, watched as the former Wall Street financier milked the British physicists for all they were worth:

  He took a great liking to Taffy Bowen, realizing here was a source to be cultivated. Loomis’ nature was such that he would have done very well as a G2 agent, it was very clear he was going to do his best to extract every vestige of information he could from Taffy Bowen on what the GEE navigation system comprised. He was the kind of person who if one didn’t know him, could seem to be operating very innocently. It was clear to me what he was up to.

  According to Bowles, after they had all dressed for dinner and gathered for drinks downstairs, Loomis came in and announced that he had just had an epiphany in the shower. After taking Bowen and himself “quietly out of reach of hearing of anyone else,” Loomis told them “he suddenly knew what kind of system we should develop for navigation. Taffy Bowen looked at me and winked and I knew damn well that Loomis had extracted all the information he needed so we could proceed as if we had a disclosure from the British of what they had.” Bowles refused to believe that Loomis could have come up with such an idea on his own and immediately jumped to the conclusion that Bowen must have been the source of his “inspiration.” He was livid that Loomis had used his “devious charm” to get one step ahead of him and the rest of his American colleagues and was now in possession of top-secret details of the GEE system, which the British had not disclosed officially to the United States.

  Before the weekend was over, Loomis proposed that since the magnetron was already being manufactured, the first priority of the new lab was to assemble a ten-centimeter radar system that could be tested against echoes from ground objects in the same manner as he had been doing in Tuxedo Park with short-wave systems. The British and American scientists then compiled a list of everything they would need, including desirable figures for things like the pulse width, receiver sensitivity, cathode ray tube display, and so forth. Grabbing notepads and scribbling on the backs of envelopes, “We sketched the block diagram of a typical system right there,” recalled Bowen, with all of the components: a modulator, a transmitter based on the magnetron, a receiver, an indicator, and adequate power supplies. Much to their surprise, Loomis then announced he was convening a meeting of the microwave committee for the very next day to allocate the contracts for the components.

  Early Monday morning, October 14, Loomis and company drove to New York City and gathered at his penthouse apartment at 21 East 79th Street at eleven A.M. Due to the short notice, not all the committee members could make it, and the representatives from both GE and Westinghouse were absent. In his blunt fashion, Loomis informed the industry representatives present of his intention to begin building the ten-centimeter air interception system. “This visibly shook those who had not been in Tuxedo Park,” recalled Bowen. Loomis “further astonished” the committee members by asking each one to select those parts of the project he wished to tender bids to manufacture and to deliver his contribution in thirty days. The industry representatives from Sperry, Bell, and RCA replied that they saw no difficulty in getting their bids in under a month’s time. “No,” Loomis told his stunned audience, “you misunderstood me. I want you to submit your tender next week and deliver thirty days after that.”

  For a moment, everyone in the room was speechless. Rather than risk Loomis’ displeasure, the committee members decided to reserve judgment until they could get back to their respective companies and consult with their colleagues. But one representative complained, “This is a funny committee—they tell us how long to take to do things.” Pressed for an answer, however, Mervin Kelly confirmed Bell’s interest in manufacturing the magnetron and disclosed to the others for the first time that they were, in fact, already under way. This revelation spurred the others into action: GE asked to make the magnet; RCA, the pulse modulator, cathode ray tubes, and power supply; Sperry, the parabolic reflectors and scanning gear. They all put their dibs in on the receivers and indicators. Loomis later negotiated with GE to supply the magnets and contracted Westinghouse to deliver the antennas. Bendix, an aviation company, won the bid to provide the power supply, which would ultimately run off an aircraft engine. The British scientists marveled at the dispatch with which the New York banker made decisions and handed down orders: “Only five weeks had passed since the arrival of the Mission in Halifax,” Bowen reflected, “and things were moving exceptionally fast!”

  After the meeting broke up, Loomis asked Bowen and Lawrence to stay behind. He then turned to Lawrence: Would he be willing to act as the principal recruiting agent for the new laboratory? Lawrence not only agreed, he immediately volunteered two of his very best students, Luis Alvarez and Edwin McMillan, though he was canny enough to suspect that his old friend had already had his eye on both of them. Lawrence had done a little advance work of his own before coming to Tuxedo Park. On October 8, right after being briefed by Loomis, he had gone to Harvard to meet with Kenneth T. Bainbridge, the respected physicist who had built the university’s cyclotron. As they walked the streets of Cambridge, Lawrence, swearing his colleague to silence, described the radar project and asked if he was prepared to undertake “some important secret research.”

  Lawrence, whom Bowen observed was a man of sudden enthusiasms, “began using the telephone right there in Loomis’ apartment, and the telephone bill must have been astronomical.” The following day, on October 15, Lawrence, still operating out of Loomis’ sitting room, called up his friend and protégé Lee DuBridge, chairman of the Physics Department of the University of Rochester and a perfect candidate for the new laboratory’s director. At thirty-nine, DuBridge was popular and well regarded and had gained national prominence by constructing Rochester’s first cyclotron and embarking on an ambitious program of nuclear research. “Look,” Lawrence told him over the phone, “we have an important job having to do with the national defense coming up. I can’t tell you about it, but I assure you it’s very important.”

  In the days that followed, Lawrence would have that same conversation with every physicist of consequence in the country. These were accomplished scientists—many of them his former students—who were on the brink of ex
citing careers in nuclear physics. In each case, they dropped what they were doing and came for the simple reason that Lawrence had asked them to. He was so successful in rallying his colleagues to the cause that by November one eminent physicist was joining the staff each day. After he talked to Lawrence, DuBridge was on a train that evening to New York. He felt that “if Lawrence was interested in the program, that was what I wanted to be in.”

  At a meeting at the Commodore Hotel the following day, Loomis and Lawrence persuaded him to accept the post of director. “DuBridge was such a good sport that he said he would give up everything to do it,” said Loomis. He and Lawrence had already started writing down the names of all the talented physicists they could think of. “Then the three of us sat down and made a list,” continued Loomis. “The Physical Society was meeting at MIT a few days later, so the recruiting was not done by mail, but in the hallways.” It was a cloak-and-dagger affair: some six hundred physicists from all over the country were gathered in Boston for the meeting, which Loomis and Lawrence used as a cover to invite their select candidates to town and ask them to volunteer for the clandestine project. Loomis remembered with wry amusement that the conversations all tended to go more or less the same way: “Well, I don’t know if I can or not . . . hmm, well, Jones is coming—oh, is he coming, well, then I’ll come. . . .”