Tuxedo Park

by Jennet Conant

  As Alvarez reflected years later, it was a great stroke of luck for the country that Loomis was involved in the uranium project from the beginning, not as an originator of ideas so much as an individual who knew how to exploit them, and his actions would contribute to “the remarkable lack of administrative roadblocks experienced by the Army’s Manhattan District, the builders of the atomic bombs.” This “smooth sailing,” he wrote, “was due in large part to mutual trust and respect the Secretary of War and Alfred had. Alfred was in effect Stimson’s minister without portfolio to the scientific leadership of the Manhattan District—his old friends Ernest Lawrence, Arthur Compton, Enrico Fermi, and Robert Oppenheimer.”

  * * *

  1. In nuclear chemistry, as explained by Arthur Compton in Atomic Quest, when a U-238 nucleus catches a neutron, its mass is increased by one unit, becoming U-239. But the nucleus is radioactive and emits an electron with a charge of minus 1 and of very small mass. The loss of one unit of negative charge increases the atomic number from 92 to 93, while the atomic weight remains unchanged at 239.

  Chapter 12

  LAST OF THE GREAT AMATEURS

  Ward’s expression had not changed; he was very pale and there were blue circles under his eyes.

  —WR, from Brain Waves and Death

  LOOMIS’ work had placed him at the very center of the atomic bomb debate, but in the wake of the disaster at Pearl Harbor, he had little time for Lawrence and his uranium separation project. The terrible and unexpected defeat showed just how poor the nation’s radar defenses were against an air attack. In the confused and bitter aftermath, Washington was awash in guilt, and half a dozen boards were quickly set up, busying themselves with assigning responsibility for the catastrophe to various military departments and officers. Like most Americans, Loomis was shocked by the overwhelming reports of the carnage, which had killed more than 2,400 servicemen and civilians, wrecked eight battleships, three destroyers, and three cruisers, and left the better part of three hundred aircraft in smoldering ruins. He had felt it all the more keenly because his youngest boy, Henry, a navy ensign, was stationed in Hawaii on the Pennsylvania, and it was several days before he heard that he was safe. But the blow also demonstrated what he had been arguing for months, that the radar systems being developed at his laboratory were vital to their ability to protect themselves against an attack on American territory. Even on December 7, Loomis knew that the months of indecision and relative inaction had finally come to an end. He was no longer exploring the speculative art of radar for possible defense applications, he was in the business of building detection devices for the offense.

  On December 10, three days after the strike on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the Philippines and destroyed Britain’s brand-new battleship Prince of Wales and the famous old battle cruiser Repulse, along with their escort of destroyers. The Japanese launched an amphibious offensive against Malaya, overrunning the British defense with their superiority in the water and the air, and were driving south to Singapore. The following day, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. America was in a shooting war on two fronts, and it was clear that radar—airborne and shipboard—would play a leading role in the conflict. At this point, Loomis’ Radiation Laboratory had been in operation for little over a year and had completed most of the basic research, achieved the important breakthroughs, and carried out field tests. It had an impressive array of prototype systems in operation. But because of the skeptics in the military, and entrenched resistance to new techniques and experimental models, not a single ten-centimeter microwave radar system was in use in combat anywhere. In one stroke, all that had changed. Just as the Chain Home system had played a decisive role in the Battle of Britain, Loomis knew with certainty that the Rad Lab’s powerful radar equipment would be the critical factor in the Allies’ favor.

  Among the first systems to be put into service was an RCA production model of an air-to-surface-vessel radar that was salvaged from the wreckage of the USS California in Pearl Harbor and quickly set up at the Oahu radar training school, where Loomis’ son served as an instructor. By December 1941 the Rad Lab ASV radar was detecting ships twenty to thirty miles away and locating submarines at a distance of two to five miles. Thanks to the invention of the circular oscilloscope screen called the “plan position indicator” (PPI), pilots could determine the vessels’ location at a glance and calculate their range and bearing relative to their plane. The U.S. Navy had been sufficiently impressed to order ten experimental ASV sets for their own pilots and had ordered a hundred shipboard microwave search units for their destroyers. The British had been so eager to equip their pilots with the microwave radar device that they had diverted two of their B-24 bombers to be fitted with the ASV sub-hunting system, subsequently dubbed “Dumbo I” because the radar dome in the swollen nose of the aircraft gave it an elephantine look. On December 11, as America went to war in Europe, Dumbo I made its first test flight. That same week, the Rad Lab physicists began converting all the available AI sets into improvised ASV search radar systems to send out after German subs close to America’s shores.

  In those first weeks after the United States declared war, while the army raced to install the Rad Lab’s modified microwave radar sets in their B-18s, the country paid a high price for its lack of preparedness. The Allied strategy, agreed upon immediately after the United States officially entered the conflict, was to defeat Germany first and then go after Japan. German U-boats already controlled the waters off the eastern coast and the Gulf of Mexico and were inflicting devastating losses: in February alone, eighty-two U.S. merchant ships were sunk by Nazi submarines. Almost every day of the war brought news of the sinking of two or three more tankers, and their steel carcasses littered the Atlantic floor. Without the aid of radar, army and navy pilots managed to attack only four Nazi submarines in the first two months of patrol.

  On April Fools’ Day, the first B-18 with the modified ASV radar search units took off from Langley Field. On its first night patrol, it spotted three U-boats. It gave chase and, zeroing in on the enemy at a range of eleven miles and an altitude of three hundred feet, found and sank one of the submarines.

  From then on, America’s scores improved steadily. A few days later, the USS Augusta, armed with the first production model of shipboard search radar, joined the fight. All that summer, the roaming eye of the Rad Lab ASV radar had the German wolf packs on the run. The U-boats, equipped with receivers that had been designed to pick up the old long-wave ASV, were not capable of detecting the microwave pulses from the Allies’ new search radars. By late summer, convoy losses dropped sharply. In Berlin, German admiral Karl Dönitz, who in 1940 had boasted that “the U-boat alone can win this war,” was forced to admit that “the methods of radio-location that the Allies have introduced have conquered the U-boat menace.” As he later wrote, radar threatened to provide the Allies with the key to victory unless Germany could address the disparity in their technological prowess:

  For some months past, the enemy has rendered the U-boat ineffective. He has achieved this objective, not through superior tactics or strategy, but through his superiority in the field of science; this finds its expression in the modern battle weapon—detection. By this means he has torn our sole offensive weapon in the war against the Anglo-Saxons from our hands.

  Ironically, Loomis was helped in his campaign to sell radar to the military’s top brass by his old nemesis, Ed Bowles, who was now an expert adviser to the secretary of war. Loomis had consistently sought to keep Stimson informed of the advances in the Rad Lab radar and hoped that he might use his influence on the newly formed Joint Committee on New Weapons and Equipment (JCNWE), a panel that had been formed under the Joint Chiefs of Staff to coordinate civilian research for the war effort. Loomis’ efforts were not wasted, for Stimson was so unhappy about the services’ conservative approach to the new technology that after personally checking out a demonstration of the ASV-equipped Dumbo II, which successfully located a dista
nt ship, he fired off irate notes to Generals Marshall and Arnold demanding action: “I’ve seen the new radar equipment. Why haven’t you?” But it was Bowles, eager to establish a role for himself in Washington, who wrote persuasive reports for the JCNWE, courted the various generals, and assiduously worked from within to change their perception of microwave radar. He pointed out the ways in which the new weapons were not being deployed to their full potential, arguing that the Rad Lab ASV could not be treated “simply as a magic gadget” but needed to be part of “an operational framework.” By August 1942, Bowles—who according to Bush had virtually become assistant secretary of war for radar—was winning support for the establishment of a regular ASV-equipped bomber unit at Langley Field to search out and attack German submarines, and for a new offensive strategy—air search—that would do so much to finally win the U-boat war.

  WITH the demonstrable success of the ASV in the Atlantic, and new appreciation for the strategic opportunities presented by the advancing technology, there was a mad rush of activity at Loomis’ laboratory. The Allied air forces were revving up for a full-scale bombing offensive against continental Europe, and the physicists went to work on advanced radar aids to bombing. There was a feverish drive to construct twenty of the Rad Lab’s highly accurate three-centimeter sets, code-named H2X, so that they could be shipped to England before the cloudy fall weather set in. The effort to develop radar beacons, echo amplifiers to be used as blind-landing aids, was reorganized and accelerated. By the summer of 1942, the CXBK, an experimental microwave ASV radar, was in operation over the Bay of Biscay, and when the British reviewed pictures of its scope presentations, with their clearly defined coastlines and bays, the towns and cities standing out brightly, an RAF dignitary declared, “Gentlemen, this is a turning point in the war.”

  The Rad Lab physicists scrambled to meet all the requests for radar equipment, took on dozens of new projects, and came up with still more innovative gadgets. Most important, they finally overcame the wariness of the military services so that they could work closely together in developing new tactical devices and guarantee that they would be successful in the field. Loomis, who was a strong believer in the necessity of a “follow through” policy, fought to increase the Rad Lab’s role, declaring that it should not only stay in the engineering business, but should be expanded greatly to handle more of it. His microwave committee recommended “a several-fold increase in the number of scientists and engineers engaged in its research and development program.”

  Loomis’ drive to increase the size of the lab was stoutly opposed by a number of leading industry representatives, who jealously accused Loomis of creating his own private factory and leveled charges of government encroachment. But with Compton’s backing, and the unanimous support of the microwave committee, Loomis’ proposal carried the day. The Rad Lab was now permitted to create a “model shop” to produce limited numbers of the experimental microwave radar it was designing for the military, and given unprecedented freedom to operate, it became more a partner to the army and navy than a mere adviser to manufacturers. At the outset, Loomis had worked hard to achieve a “meeting of minds” with industry, but after a while, as Bush put it, “The Radiation Laboratory took the ball and ran away.” Some of the fights between the sides became quite entrenched. The big companies were “damn conceited,” in Bush’s view; then again, the physicists were “also conceited.” Much of the time he felt like saying, “A plague on both your houses.”

  “Loomis thought that we were fighting the war and not doing pure research, that our job was not only to develop the equipment but to get it into use,” explained DuBridge. “There were people who felt that we put too much effort in the field and there were other people who felt we didn’t put in anywheres near enough. We tried to strike a balance,” he said, but “the idea that we would see our equipment help win the war was basic of the laboratory philosophy from the day we began.”

  Still, convincing the military to cooperate with the scientists was not easy. Rabi, who was in charge of advanced development, vividly recalled what happened when one navy contingent came to the lab to describe the various devices they wanted: “I asked, ‘What are they for? What is their purpose?’ This naval officer looked me in the eye and said, ‘We prefer to talk about that in our swivel chairs in Washington.’ ” Rabi did not answer, but he did not do anything, either. Engineering specifications alone would not help foresee combat needs. When they returned again with another problem, he told them, “Now look, you bring back your man who understands radar, you bring your man who understands the navy, who understands aircraft, you bring your man who understands tactics, and then we’ll talk about your needs.” Taking that from one of the “longhairs”—the academics—“was pretty hard for them to swallow,” acknowledged Rabi, “but they did.” From that day on, they started working together as a team:

  They were worried about snooper planes following the fleet, and they wanted to shoot them down. We developed a height-finding radar to be used on the ship, a radar to be used in conjunction with airborne radar. This started a relationship with the navy that was very important to us. When we got to know one another, when they learned we were trying to help them and that we respected them, when they discovered we didn’t want any of the glory, we came to be friends with great mutual respect.

  The Rad Lab scientists no longer confined themselves to their cubbyholes but often developed their weapons in the field, traveling to the European and Pacific theaters of operation to assess the military’s needs, going back to the lab to fine-tune their design, and then returning to the front to oversee the deployment of their devices.

  Because the Rad Lab could not accommodate all the additional projects they had taken on at the request of the army and navy, Loomis arranged for additional funds from the NDRC, and the laboratory began to grow rapidly. He first purchased the Hood Milk Company building on Massachusetts Avenue, just two blocks away, and had the three-story brick structure overhauled as laboratory space, and then he bought the neighboring Whittemore Building. Four floors and a penthouse were piled onto one of the original labs, and field stations cropped up in Orlando, Florida, Spraycliff, Rhode Island, and Deer Island in Boston Harbor. New men were brought in and trained to run these facilities, and an army of young women came—and kept on coming—to meet the lab’s growing administrative needs, working as secretaries, bookkeepers, and technicians, so that they eventually outnumbered the men almost two to one. By the end of the year, the staff would reach almost two thousand people and was still growing, with a budget of $1,150,000 monthly. Loomis’ small secret community of physicists had evolved into a large, energetic, affectionate mob, complete with raucous parties—comings and goings were vigorously feted—romances, and intralab marriages. Any concerns that were raised about the reproductive effects of all the high-frequency energy emanating from the early radar sets were put to rest when three people in the aptly named “propagation group” became parents at the same time.

  Under Loomis, the Rad Lab moved from research into development, design, and manufacturing and was reorganized into ten divisions working in parallel and reporting to a steering committee. Dozens of new departments were created to handle the great flood of orders. In the early days, with everyone acutely aware the Germans were pounding American ships, everything was done with an eye to speeding the lab’s progress: the personnel office expanded to organize the tremendous human traffic; the accounting office kept the books and paid the bills; the business office handled the maze of requisitions, purchase orders, and invoices; the purchasing group bought the thousands of mechanical and electrical hardware items—the largest item being a carnival merry-go-round—required by the physicists; the self-service stockroom carried over five thousand electronic parts; the receiving room handled, at its peak, a monthly average of twenty thousand boxes; the mailroom, which by the end employed twenty-five very popular girls, sorted the sacks of internal and outgoing letters and documents; and the shipping ro
om moved the tons of radar equipment that had to be crated and loaded before leaving for the docks and England. After a luncheon meeting with Loomis that fall, Stimson noted in his diary: “His work in Boston seems to be progressing satisfactorily. His inventions are making rather more rapid progress than we can take care of them.”

  The Rad Lab had officially entered “the big time,” with a total of fifty projects on its books. The lights burned all night, and the scientists, who lived on coffee, doughnuts, and sandwiches, worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week, that first year. “Tea wagons” loaded with equipment constantly rattled down the corridors, and as the yearbook notes, “Things got so busy it was fashionable not to answer your phone.” Security was tightened, identification badges were mandatory, and despite the well-intentioned warnings about secrecy, gossip remained the major form of recreation. Everybody talked all the time—whether it was about the imminent danger of enemy agents or the latest dope on a newly launched project. Despite the constant hum of conversation, there was never any evidence then or since of a single laboratory leak. The Rad Lab was its own world, self-contained, urgent, and alive, and it absorbed everything so that the outside world seemed almost distant. Alvarez, who had been sidelined for several months by surgery and serious side effects from the anesthesia, returned to a laboratory that was very different from the one he had left. “We really were working as industrial scientists now,” he recalled. “Activities and staff had grown exponentially. It took me a while to catch up.”

  One of the projects Alvarez was originally assigned to—the automatic tracking fire-control radar—had been completed in his absence, and an operating SCR-584 prototype, the first of its kind, had been mounted on the MIT roof. The second, known as the XT-1, which was mounted on a truck, had been completed a month before Pearl Harbor and sent to Fort Monroe in Virginia for evaluation. Alvarez, who became something of a Rad Lab legend for the three words Suppose we have, often found scrawled in his laboratory notebooks, had another idea. One day back in August, watching the first microwave fire-control radar automatically track an airplane, he suddenly realized that if a radar set could continuously track an enemy plane accurately enough to shoot it down, it should be able to use the same information to guide a friendly pilot to a safe landing in bad weather. With strong support from Loomis, Alvarez had begun developing the concept that would emerge as one of the most valuable contributions of the Rad Lab—an aircraft blind-landing system, or “ground-controlled approach” (GCA). Thanks to the accelerated post–Pearl Harbor development schedule, XT-1 prototypes became available sooner than expected, and early in the spring of 1942, Alvarez and a group of about twenty physicists got down to work testing his idea.