Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb

685 Pages·2003·20.27 MB·English

by  Vincent C. Jones

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
Special Studies
MANHATTAN:
THE ARMY AND THE ATOMIC BOMB
by
Vincenl C. Jones
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C, 1985

Foreword
The U.S. Army played a key role in the formation and administra-
tion of the Manhattan Project, the World War II organization which
produced the atomic bombs that not only contributed decisively to
ending the war with Japan but also opened the way to a new atomic
age. This volume describes how the wartime Army, already faced with
the enormous responsibility of mobilizing, training, and deploying vast
forces to fight a formidable enemy on far-flung fronts in Europe and
the Pacific, responded to the additional task of organizing and adminis-
tering what was to become the single largest technological project of its
kind undertaken up to that time.
To meet this challenge, the Army—drawing first upon the long-time
experience and considerable resources of its Corps of Engineers—
formed a new engineer organization, the Manhattan District, to take
over from the Office of Scientific Research and Development adminis-
tration of a program earlier established by American and refugee scien-
tists to exploit the military potentialities of atomic energy. Eventually,
however, the rapidly expanding project turned for support and services
to a much broader spectrum of the Army, including the War Depart-
ment, the Ordnance Department, the Signal, Medical, Military Police,
and Women's Army Corps, the Military Intelligence Division of the
War Department General Staff, and the Army Air Forces. These and
other Army elements worked together in close collaboration with
American industry and science to win what was believed to be a des-
perate race with Nazi Germany to be first in producing atomic weap-
ons. For both soldiers and civilians this history of the Army's earlier
experience in dealing successfully with the then novel problems of
atomic science seems likely to offer some instructive parallels for find-
ing appropriate answers to the problems faced in today's ever more
technologically complex world.
DOUGLAS KINNARD
Washington, D.C. Brigadier General, USA (Ret.)
1 March 1984 Chief of Military History
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The Author
Vincent C. Jones, after graduating from Park College (Parkville,
Missouri) with a B.A. in history, earned an M.A. degree at the Universi-
ty of Nebraska with a thesis on German public opinion in World War I
and spent a year as a Sanders Fellow in History at George Washington
University. Moving to the University of Wisconsin, he began work on a
doctoral degree in modern European history just before the outbreak
of World War II in Europe. During the war, he was a noncommis-
sioned officer in a heavy weapons company of the 81st Infantry Divi-
sion, participating in the Peleliu-Angaur and Leyte campaigns in the
Pacific Theater. He was in training in the Philippines in August 1945,
preparing for the impending invasion of Kyushu, when the Army Air
Forces dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Following
the surrender of Japan, he served in the American occupation forces in
that country before returning to the University of Wisconsin as an
instructor in history.
Completing his doctorate at Wisconsin in 1952, Dr. Jones served a
year as a research associate in American history at the State Historical
Society of Wisconsin and as an assistant professor of history at the
Central State College of Connecticut. Since January 1955 he has been a
historian on the staff of the U.S. Army Center of Military History,
where he has been a major contributor to The Army Almanac and the
ROTC textbook American Military History. In addition to the present
volume, Dr. Jones is author of articles and reviews in professional
journals and of biographical sketches of military figures in a number of
encyclopedias.
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Preface
During the nearly four decades since the atomic bombings of Hiro-
shima and Nagasaki in August 1945, much has been written about the
developments leading up to that climactic moment in world history.
Within days of that event, the War Department released its official ac-
count, the well-known semitechnical report by Professor Henry D.
Smyth of Princeton University. Soon popular histories also appeared,
and with the gradual opening of the archival records relating to the top
secret World War II program known as the Manhattan Project, scholars
began examining in detail the scientific, technological, strategic, and
diplomatic story of atomic energy and the atomic bomb (see Biblio-
graphical Note). Yet amid this outpouring of books, none has provided
an adequate and full account of the United States Army's participation
in the atomic program from 1939 to the end of 1946. It is the purpose
of this volume to tell that story.
Stated in its simplest terms, the achievement of an atomic bomb re-
sulted from the highly successful collaboration of American science and
industry carried out under the direction and guidance of the U.S.
Army. This triad—scientists, industrialists and engineers, and sol-
diers—was the product of a decision in early 1942 by America's war-
time leaders to give to the Army the task of administering the atomic
program. Convinced that the Allies were in a race with Germany to be
the first to develop an atomic weapon, they decided that only the Army
could provide the administration, liaison services, security, and military
planning essential to the success of a program requiring ready access
to scarce materials and manpower, maximum protection against espio-
nage and sabotage, and, ultimately, combat utilization of its end
product.
In telling how the Army met the challenge of its unique assignment,
eventually achieving results that would have the most profound impli-
cations for the future of mankind, I have taken a broadly chronological
approach but with topical treatment of detailed developments. The
focus of the narrative is from the vantage point of the Manhattan
Project organization, which functioned under the able direction of Maj.
Gen. Leslie R. Groves and such key scientific administrators as Vanne-
var Bush, James B. Conant, Arthur Compton, and J. Robert Oppen-
heimer in compliance with policies established at the highest levels
of the Washington wartime leadership. The volume begins with a
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