At the navy’s request, the Rad Lab began work on the first Loran network, a chain of four stations that would cover the whole North Atlantic from Greenland to Nova Scotia. Over the summer, the physicists rushed to complete and assemble the equipment for the field stations, while a flying survey party of laboratory and navy personnel selected sites in Newfoundland, Labrador, and Greenland. By September 1942, the two Canadian stations were operational, and the southernmost one was synchronized with the Montauk Point station and with its northern mate at the other end of Nova Scotia. One month later, regular Loran navigational fixes became possible, with the Rad Lab scientists, U.S. Coast Guard, and Royal Canadian Navy supervising the sixteen-hour-daily operation of the service. Bad weather and shipping delays hampered the setup of the northern three stations in Newfoundland, Greenland, and Labrador, and during that critical winter the physicists and engineers braved foul weather and U-boat-infested waters to work on the installations. By spring, the entire seven-station system was operational. The navy’s next priority was the northeast Pacific, where ships needed help navigating the fog-bound Aleutians, and the north-east Atlantic. Eventually, the Loran network covered the whole of Europe east to the Danube and south to the North African coast.
One of the shortcomings of Loomis’ Loran system was its relatively short range over land: 150 to 200 nautical miles for the ground wave, as opposed to 700 to 800 nautical miles over water. Once it was discovered that after sunset sky waves traveled equally well over land and water, a new form of Loran known as SS (“Sky-wave synchronized”) was developed. SS Loran appeared to be particularly well suited to nighttime operations, such as those by RAF Bomber Command, which flew planes over central Europe at night, so the navy requested that the Rad Lab start a full-scale trial of the SS Loran system in the United States. Stations were set up near Duluth, Minnesota, and on Cape Cod to establish an east-west baseline; Key West and Montauk were used for a north-south baseline. By fall, army, navy, and RAF observation planes were flying missions across the east-central United States, navigating entirely by SS Loran. The results were “marvelous and phenomenal,” according to the pilots who flew the B-18s, and the navy immediately diverted some of its badly needed Loran ground station equipment to the European theater to help the RAF bombers.
Loomis reported on Loran’s progress to the secretary of war over a long dinner at Woodley on May 7, 1943. Afterward, the two men sat on the porch, talking late into the night. Stimson noted that his cousin was in “cheerful spirits” and full of news of “the enormous work being done by the laboratory in Boston.” Loomis described some of the new inventions and assured him that “the Germans have not progressed nearly as far in their developments of Radar as we have.” Their intelligence reports indicated that very few German submarines were even equipped with ASV radar yet. But he again warned Stimson, “Everything depends on our pushing ahead as rapidly as we can before they have developed it.”
Riding high on the Rad Lab’s string of successes, Loomis agreed to meet with the Rad Lab’s official historian, Henry Guerlac, who had been appointed by Bush to write a detailed account of the radar project, intended to justify, in the event of a congressional investigation, the huge sums of money spent. Loomis regarded the whole undertaking with suspicion and saw it as a kind of bureaucratic apologia aimed at mollifying the politicians on Capitol Hill and proving some half-baked thesis about government programs that he personally wanted no part of—“as for example, that capitalism was a bad thing.” He made this clear with almost his first remark, Guerlac recalled, when he “brushed aside” his carefully prepared list of questions, being much more interested in interrogating his interrogator: “He is a man of abundant energy, who talks rapidly and confidently, and who dominated the conversation from start to finish so effectively that I never really succeeded in making an interview of it.”
Finally, “while trying to avoid all direct references to himself,” Loomis reluctantly came round to answering a few questions about the developments in microwave radar “in which he took such a leading part.” He was thrilled by the United States’ ability to outdistance Germany in wartime radar capability and said that it was “convincing proof of the magic efficiency of American individualism and laissez-faire.” He believed Bush’s confidence in the ability of civilian scientists to apply their talents to military invention—“leaving them with complete freedom” on technical matters—epitomized the American way. The country’s fast results, he argued, came from “free agency and free[dom] from politics.” That said, he made some excuse and hurried away, leaving the stunned historian with almost nothing to show for his hour’s time with the microwave committee’s illustrious chairman.
When Guerlac later mentioned Loomis’ dismissive manner to John Trump, one of the other Rad Lab physicists, he was assured that it was probably nothing personal and that Loomis was just making sure he did not “gum up the present work at hand (e.g. building radar to win the war) by writing anything that would offend anybody.” Loomis had “one important characteristic,” Trump noted. “His ability to concentrate completely on a chief objective,” even at the cost of neglecting “matters that appear to other people to be of equal importance.”
THROUGHOUT the winter of 1943, the British and American air forces continued carrying out extensive bombing missions over Germany. Now that they had gained control over the Atlantic, and ASV radar together with a strengthened convoy system had broken the back of the German submarine offensive, the Allies could concentrate on the war in Europe. For months now, Allied troops had tried to smash their way into Italy and had been repulsed, and it became obvious that a new plan was needed to unlock the stalemate at the front. Beginning in March, American planes equipped with the H2X blind-bombing radar system began destroying Italian roads and railways that supplied the enemy stronghold at Anzio. Loomis’ Rad Lab had delivered the first H2X systems to the U.S. Army Air Forces that fall, and now they would have the satisfaction of seeing it fly blind-bombing missions over Germany. Rabi, who asked of every invention, “How many Germans will it kill?” and had pushed the microwave radar sets from ten centimeters to three, was responsible for making the advanced systems that much deadlier: now bombardiers flying above thick cloud cover could still see, on their radar screens, detailed images of strategic targets on the ground.
The big push began in the summer of 1943, when the U.S. Seventh Army and British Eighth Army invaded Sicily in one of the bitterest and costliest campaigns of the war. On September 3, Italy surrendered, and the Allied armies drove forward, slowly fighting their way north along the peninsula toward the Gustav line, where the German defense held. To break the locked front, the British planned a diversionary attack to give American amphibious forces a chance to make a surprise landing at the beach at Anzio, close to Rome. On January 22, 1944, when the American divisions waded ashore at Anzio, they brought with them the Rad Lab’s SCR-584 gun-laying radar systems, which the troops buried deep in the sand so that only the antenna was visible. Although they had trained more on textbook than on actual sets, with the radar guiding their artillery, they shot down five German planes the first night, and before the month was over the total had risen to sixty-three. While they achieved the beachhead at Anzio, the operation—in exposing a large force to risk for a relatively small advantage—was not considered an Allied triumph. But the performance of the Rad Lab’s radar in securing the perimeter had been impeccable.
In the early months of 1944, the bombing raids over Germany intensified, preparing the way for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of the European heartland. The ultimate success of the Normandy invasion depended on minimizing the strength of the German opposition. The Ninth Air Force had as their objective the destruction of German fighter strength, and flew radar-guided missions over all of northern France, Belgium, and Holland, identifying and attacking airfields and landing strips. Allied bombers also wreaked havoc with the French transport system, taking out the railways, roads, and bridges the German
army would need to build up forces at the battlefield. It was expected that D-Day casualties would be high—very high—and the devastation from the steady strategic bombing was the best hope the seaborne infantry had that they would survive the landing and initial combat. In January, Loomis and Stimson discussed the secret operation, and the secretary of war noted that Alfred was full of warnings about rockets: “He thinks they are going to take the place of artillery and, as he is a pretty shrewd in his outlook, I am giving considerable weight to that now, thinking up the possibility of getting a rocket coverage for Overlord.”
Under the stormy skies of D-Day itself, the Rad Lab’s state-of-the-art radar systems stood watch, guaranteeing the Allied troops fire support during the landing and security from surveillance. On June 6, 1944, the largest amphibious invasion force ever mounted hit the beaches at Normandy. They were accompanied by a total of thirty-nine SCR-584 radar sets, which would help protect the infantry from air attacks as they advanced through Europe. In the darkness of the early morning hours, 450 airplanes equipped with H2X radar systems bombarded the French coastline, cloaking the beach in clouds of smoke and dust as five Allied divisions—two American, two British, and one Canadian—struggled ashore through the surf and dodged enemy fire as they headed for the shelter of the cliffs. It was a precisely timed operation, allowing only five minutes between when the last bomb fell and the first swarm of infantry debarked. While no Allied troops were felled by misdirected bombs, the fear of releasing payloads on their own men compounded a variety of other errors, resulting in hundreds of bombs being dropped onto fields behind German front lines and leaving thousands of American soldiers to be slaughtered at the water’s edge on Omaha beach. The air bombardment was more successful at Utah beach, where radar beacons successfully guided parachute troops and glider-borne infantry to their targeted drop zones. The Rad Lab’s precise navigation system, known as landing craft control (LCC), was also used to control the landing of the invasion force, directing wave after wave of assault troops to prearranged points on the sixty-mile-long beach.
By evening, a beachhead had been established. Despite the horrific losses at Omaha beach—where the American army suffered most of their 4,649 casualties—the Allies had succeeded in landing 120,000 men with artillery and supplies on the French shores. The Atlantic Wall—miles of trenches, reinforced concrete, barbed wire, and mines blocking access to Germany—had finally been breached. From then on, it was only a matter of time before Allied victory was assured.
The MEW system, set up across the Channel, also had a chance to star on D-Day. Beginning in the prelude, as fighter sweeps were sent over France, the MEW radar tracked their progress and spotted the enemy interceptors that soon followed. The pilots were warned, and as a result, the fighters made unprecedented numbers of kills. It also helped guide bombers over specific targets and aided in the air-sea rescue of downed pilots. Another set, mounted on a truck, plowed through windshield-high water onto the Normandy beach and ran much of the Ninth Tactical Air Command’s missions in support of the First Army. When Patton went on the offensive, the British borrowed a MEW set from the lab so the Nineteenth TAC could have it to support the Third Army. Rad Lab scientists had a front row seat on the aerial assault as they worked in the control room, standing by with little or no sleep for days, checking the system, observing the results, and correcting tactics. Alvarez’s MEW system, the greatest of the high-power warning radars, ended up chaperoning more and more tactical aircraft—controlling Thunderbolts flying off the Brest peninsula, dispatching bombers, and arranging rendezvous with friendly tank columns. According to Fortune: “Many a fighter pilot, returning from the Continent exhausted and out of ammunition, knew he owed his life to the radio voice of the seeing radar eye in the Fairlight ops room, which called out to him some such warnings as ‘Bandits on your left, take vector 090.’ The longhairs with their giant folly with short waves had brought him home.”
On June 12, six days after the Normandy invasion, the first buzz bombs came over the English Channel, loudly announcing themselves before suddenly, silently, plunging to earth, followed by a deafening explosion. In the first month of the V-1 attack, thousands of civilians in London and neighboring cities were killed by the flying bombs, which came to be known as Hitler’s “revenge weapon.” RAF fighters, guided by MEW, teamed up to fight the V-1 menace and succeeded in destroying a great many of the flying bombs before they hit their targets. Before long, RAF patrols cruised the skies day and night, waiting to intercept the deadly drones, which the MEW system could spot as far as 130 miles away. But the ballistic missile program was the pride of the Third Reich, and they had a seemingly endless store of these rockets, which were capable of placing a few tons of explosives on London daily.
After a desperate plea from Churchill to Roosevelt, two hundred of the Rad Lab’s SCR-584 gun-laying radar systems were transferred and deployed against the V-1s. What made the SCR-584 so effective in the end was the miniaturized radar proximity fuse—a shell with a radio-controlled detonator—which exploded near a plane or flying bomb for maximum destructive effect. Along with radar, the proximity fuse was one of the most important applications of the cavity magnetron, and it was given top priority by Bush’s NDRC, who assigned the development of the “smallest radar” to the noted Carnegie physicist Merle Tuve. For this revolutionary new device, the flight characteristics of the German V-1, which traveled in a straight line at a constant speed, made for a relatively easy target. Unlike the RAF fighters, which were not always successful in destroying the missiles as they left their launch sites, the SCR-584s, coupled with the proximity fuse, inflicted a heavy toll on the V-1s, destroying 85 percent of the flying bombs that succeeded in crossing the Channel.
On August 12, General Sir Frederick A. Pile, commander of the British antiaircraft command, sent his congratulations to General George Marshall: “The curve is going up at a nice pace, and already we are far away ahead of the fighters. As the troops get more expert with the equipment I have no doubt that very few bombs will reach London.” Marshall forwarded the note to Bush, who passed on his thanks to Loomis.
By September 1944, the SS Loran system was up and in regular service over the Continent, enabling nighttime navigation over land and sea. In the final months of the war, it helped with the bombing operations over Germany. RAF pathfinders equipped with SS Loran flew roughly twenty-two thousand bombing sorties. In the preceding months, the pilots had been relying on the Rad Lab’s radar blind-bombing system, the H2X, but when the results with Loomis’ navigation system were found to be better, the decision was made to conduct all the area bombing operations entirely by SS Loran. Night after night, SS Loran–guided pilots flew strategic bombing missions over the heartland of Germany, raining destruction down on its cities, factories, and railroads. By VJ-Day, the Loran chain extended over one-third of the globe and over most of the contested area, including the Pacific theater, where Loran stations had provided crucial navigational guidance for the Twentieth Air Force’s bombing of Japan. Loran transmitters installed in the Himalayas guided traffic over “the Hump” and safeguarded the vital supply routes into China, Burma, and India. Loran would continue to develop as a vital navigation system in peacetime, offering endless possibilities. The total cost of the Loran project from December 1940 to its close was approximately $1.5 million, while an estimated $100 million was spent on Loran systems, including shipping, assembly, and installation. The research and development of Loran came to no more than 2 percent of the government’s investment in the equipment—not a bad record for Loomis’ laboratory, which under the conditions of war research was “always ready to sacrifice money to buy time.”
IN a sense, the Rad Lab was a catalyst for the burst of creativity and inventive effort that would propel American scientists toward their pioneering achievement in Los Alamos. In the early days of the war, it was Loomis, in his role as scientific agitator, who had been the primary force in organizing the country’s nuclear physicists to wo
rk on radar, at a time when the atom splitters had little to do and fission’s useful applications still seemed remote. So by the fall of 1942, when Bush, Conant, and General Leslie Groves took steps to form the highly secret atomic bomb development program, which was then known as the Manhattan Engineering District (later as the Manhattan Project), along with an urgent effort to develop the component elements in sufficient quantity, they had to look no further than Loomis’ Rad Lab for a readily available pool of brilliant minds to draw on. These scientists had been collaborating on war research for over a year and would bring with them that cluster of collegiality, friendship, and trust that would help mitigate the terrible pressure and frictions inherent in the task ahead. Moreover, the Rad Lab had grown sufficiently in size and number so that those who were taken away would scarcely be missed, and their projects could be completed on schedule by others who would follow in their footsteps.
As soon as General Groves appointed Oppenheimer as scientific director of the Manhattan Project, he suggested he recruit his top men from Loomis’ brain trust of physicists. There would be one critical difference: Unlike Loomis’ civilian operation, the Manhattan Project was to be a military lab, which meant inducting the physicists into the army, something many of them were not happy about. Rabi objected vehemently and pointed to their recent experience at the Rad Lab. “We knew the military,” he explained. “We’d been engaged in making military things, had the military around us. We knew it wouldn’t work. In the first place, none of us would come.”
After a number of heated talks, a compromise was struck allowing the early experimental phase of the Manhattan Project to proceed under civilian administration along the lines of the Rad Lab, with the military assuming control after January 1, 1944 (the latter actually never occurred). “The first idea that Conant and Groves had was that the bomb was such a hot secret that they should get the boys out there in the fall of 1943,” recalled Kenneth Bainbridge, who was among the first Rad Lab alumni to leave for the New Mexico laboratory. “On January 1, they would have to decide whether they would go back and keep their mouths closed forever, or they’d stay on for the duration under the military procedure and put on uniforms.”
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