July 16, 1945 - The Trinity Site, a remote corner of New Mexico desert near the end of the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death), a device labeled "Gadget" hung suspended on a 100-foot steel tower. At 0510 mountain wartime, (renamed daylight saving time after the war), the countdown began. The scientists waited anxiously for the result. Gadget might be a dud. Some speculated that it might ignite the earth's entire atmosphere.
It had been an arduous, painstaking, costly road to get to this point; the witching hour had arrived. With war clouds hovering over Europe, the "Einstein letter," drafted by Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein, sent to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, had warned of Nazi Germany's interest in developing nuclear weapons. In 1940, physicists Otto Frisch and Rudolph Peceris prepared a theoretical analysis of fast fission of U-235 with implications for a bomb design.
Through 1941, additional work led to methods of uranium enrichment and development of plutonium. With entry into war in December 1941, a project labeled "S-1," to investigate atomic weapons began in earnest. In 1942 Army General Leslie Groves was tapped to lead the effort, dubbed "The Manhattan Project."
Three major facilities were constructed: one at Oak Ridge, Tenn. to produce enriched uranium; one at Hanford, Wash. to produce a new element, plutonium; and the third, the facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico to design and build the actual bomb. Gen. Groves recruited University of California physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to lead the effort at Los Alamos.
Under leadership of Oppenheimer, some of the world's greatest scientific minds labored over theory and actual design and construction of the bomb. Although they had to overcome numerous setbacks, by 1944 enough progress had been made for a test site to be selected.
From a series of eight potential sites in California, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, Trinity Site was selected. It was already part of the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, and the secluded Jornada del Muerto offered secrecy, safety, and relative proximity to Los Alamos.
Autumn 1944 - Soldiers started arriving at Trinity Site, setting up security and checkpoints. At first, horses were planned for patrol. But as distances were so vast, they resorted to Jeeps and trucks. As the soldiers at Trinity Site settled in, they became familiar with nearby Socorro. Water from local ranch wells was so alkaline that they had to haul drinking water from the firehouse in Socorro.
In 1913, a German immigrant, Franz Schmidt, had built a 1750-square-foot adobe ranch house. It was later purchased by George McDonald, and abandoned when the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range took over the land to train WWII bombing crews. The house stood empty until 1945 with preparations for the big test.
In this abandoned adobe ranch house, the assembly team prepared Gadget for its test. Workbenches and tables were installed in the master bedroom, dubbed "the assembly room." The team used only tools and materials from a specially designed kit. Several such special tool kits existed and some were already on their way to Tinian, the Pacific island designated as base for the bombers - that is, should the test be successful.
The idea was to test the assembly tools as well as the bomb itself.
Scientists and support personnel used a large concrete water tank adjacent to the ranch house as a swimming pool during the hot summer of 1945.
The bomb would utilize two explosions; an initial explosion of TNT followed instantaneously by a nuclear chain reaction. A 214 ton steel container, named "Jumbo," was designed to contain the plutonium should the nuclear explosion fail and the TNT blast the unexpended plutonium into the atmosphere. But as confidence in the plutonium bomb grew Jumbo was not used, but remained at the site during the test.
Jumbo was transported from Ohio to New Mexico by rail, and the remaining miles to Trinity on a specially designed trailer with sixty-four wheels. At the time, Jumbo was the heaviest item ever transported by rail. Several trestles between Ohio and New Mexico were damaged by the weight and had to be rebuilt.
It was during this period in 1945 that the mysterious "prospectors" arrived and stayed in Augustus Halversen Hilton's rooming house in San Antonio (not to be confused with San Antonio, Texas) and managed to tie up Gus Hilton's phone lines and procure his rationed gasoline. And it was during this time that the "prospectors," support personnel, and soldiers patronized the Owl Bar and initiated its reputation for famous green chile cheeseburgers.
July 12 - Gen. Groves' deputy, Gen. Thomas Farrell, receives plutonium for the bomb. When asked to sign for it, he requests to handle it. He is quoted as saying, "So I took this heavy ball in my hand and I felt it growing warm. I got a certain sense of its hidden power. It wasn't a cold piece of metal, but it was really a piece of metal that seemed to be working inside. Then, maybe for the first time, I began to believe some of the fantastic tales the scientists had told about this nuclear power."
July 13 - With the bomb under the tower, the plutonium core was inserted into Gadget. Once assembled, the personnel took a swim in the ranch house water tank.
July 14 - Gadget was raised to the top of the 100-foot tower. A crew attached the detonators and by 1700 hours, mountain wartime, it was complete. Observations points for the team and scientific observers were set up some distance from ground zero.
It was thus that on July 16, 0500 mountain wartime, the countdown began. Unknown to the world except for a very few people, the countdown began with the scientists anxiously awaiting the result.
Next week: Explosion and aftermath.
- John Waelti's column appears in the Times every Friday. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
It had been an arduous, painstaking, costly road to get to this point; the witching hour had arrived. With war clouds hovering over Europe, the "Einstein letter," drafted by Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein, sent to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, had warned of Nazi Germany's interest in developing nuclear weapons. In 1940, physicists Otto Frisch and Rudolph Peceris prepared a theoretical analysis of fast fission of U-235 with implications for a bomb design.
Through 1941, additional work led to methods of uranium enrichment and development of plutonium. With entry into war in December 1941, a project labeled "S-1," to investigate atomic weapons began in earnest. In 1942 Army General Leslie Groves was tapped to lead the effort, dubbed "The Manhattan Project."
Three major facilities were constructed: one at Oak Ridge, Tenn. to produce enriched uranium; one at Hanford, Wash. to produce a new element, plutonium; and the third, the facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico to design and build the actual bomb. Gen. Groves recruited University of California physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to lead the effort at Los Alamos.
Under leadership of Oppenheimer, some of the world's greatest scientific minds labored over theory and actual design and construction of the bomb. Although they had to overcome numerous setbacks, by 1944 enough progress had been made for a test site to be selected.
From a series of eight potential sites in California, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, Trinity Site was selected. It was already part of the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, and the secluded Jornada del Muerto offered secrecy, safety, and relative proximity to Los Alamos.
Autumn 1944 - Soldiers started arriving at Trinity Site, setting up security and checkpoints. At first, horses were planned for patrol. But as distances were so vast, they resorted to Jeeps and trucks. As the soldiers at Trinity Site settled in, they became familiar with nearby Socorro. Water from local ranch wells was so alkaline that they had to haul drinking water from the firehouse in Socorro.
In 1913, a German immigrant, Franz Schmidt, had built a 1750-square-foot adobe ranch house. It was later purchased by George McDonald, and abandoned when the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range took over the land to train WWII bombing crews. The house stood empty until 1945 with preparations for the big test.
In this abandoned adobe ranch house, the assembly team prepared Gadget for its test. Workbenches and tables were installed in the master bedroom, dubbed "the assembly room." The team used only tools and materials from a specially designed kit. Several such special tool kits existed and some were already on their way to Tinian, the Pacific island designated as base for the bombers - that is, should the test be successful.
The idea was to test the assembly tools as well as the bomb itself.
Scientists and support personnel used a large concrete water tank adjacent to the ranch house as a swimming pool during the hot summer of 1945.
The bomb would utilize two explosions; an initial explosion of TNT followed instantaneously by a nuclear chain reaction. A 214 ton steel container, named "Jumbo," was designed to contain the plutonium should the nuclear explosion fail and the TNT blast the unexpended plutonium into the atmosphere. But as confidence in the plutonium bomb grew Jumbo was not used, but remained at the site during the test.
Jumbo was transported from Ohio to New Mexico by rail, and the remaining miles to Trinity on a specially designed trailer with sixty-four wheels. At the time, Jumbo was the heaviest item ever transported by rail. Several trestles between Ohio and New Mexico were damaged by the weight and had to be rebuilt.
It was during this period in 1945 that the mysterious "prospectors" arrived and stayed in Augustus Halversen Hilton's rooming house in San Antonio (not to be confused with San Antonio, Texas) and managed to tie up Gus Hilton's phone lines and procure his rationed gasoline. And it was during this time that the "prospectors," support personnel, and soldiers patronized the Owl Bar and initiated its reputation for famous green chile cheeseburgers.
July 12 - Gen. Groves' deputy, Gen. Thomas Farrell, receives plutonium for the bomb. When asked to sign for it, he requests to handle it. He is quoted as saying, "So I took this heavy ball in my hand and I felt it growing warm. I got a certain sense of its hidden power. It wasn't a cold piece of metal, but it was really a piece of metal that seemed to be working inside. Then, maybe for the first time, I began to believe some of the fantastic tales the scientists had told about this nuclear power."
July 13 - With the bomb under the tower, the plutonium core was inserted into Gadget. Once assembled, the personnel took a swim in the ranch house water tank.
July 14 - Gadget was raised to the top of the 100-foot tower. A crew attached the detonators and by 1700 hours, mountain wartime, it was complete. Observations points for the team and scientific observers were set up some distance from ground zero.
It was thus that on July 16, 0500 mountain wartime, the countdown began. Unknown to the world except for a very few people, the countdown began with the scientists anxiously awaiting the result.
Next week: Explosion and aftermath.
- John Waelti's column appears in the Times every Friday. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
