Manhattan Project Essays (1818 words) - , Term Papers

Manhattan Project Manhattan Project In the early morning hours of July 16, 1945, the first ever nuclear explosion took place in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The explosion was the first test of the most destructive weapon ever known to man, and was the result of almost six years of research and development by some of the world's top scientists. This endeavor was known as the Manhattan Project. Less than a month after the test, which was known as Trinity, the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, three days apart, which forced the Japanese to surrender. The story of the Manhattan Project is an abysmal subject, as is the effect of the Manhattan Project on international politics, and both will be covered in this paper. Indeed, the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb were good things, because it actually decreased the likelihood of nuclear war in the post- World War II era. The Manhattan Project was preceded by a variety of scientific discoveries in the 1920's and the 1930's. During this time of scientific discovery, Hitler had been steadily rising to power in Germany, and before long, physicist Leo Szilard and fellow Hungarian Jews Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller became worried. They decided that the President of the United States must be informed about the new fission technology that had been discovered, which they believed was capable of making bombs. The three physicists enlisted the help of Albert Einstein, the foremost scientist in that period, and together they drafted a letter addressed to President Roosevelt describing their beliefs that nuclear fission "Would...lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable...that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed." At first, not much money or interest was spent on the atomic bomb program. However, the combination of France's fall to Germany in 1940, the belief that Germany was ahead in the race for the atomic bomb, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor soon convinced Roosevelt that something more had to be done on this atomic research. Roosevelt quickly assigned his top security advisors to form committees on this project, and to determine what should be done and how. By the end of 1942, bomb research had become bomb production, and the Manhattan Project was now run by the military, with Colonel (soon to be General) Leslie R. Groves as the officer in charge. Bomb production was carried out in three locations; Oak Ridge, Tennessee handled the production of the bomb fuel U-235, Hanford , Washington handled the production of plutonium fuel, and Los Alamos, New Mexico handled bomb production and assembly. These three locations became huge cities due to the size of and manpower required for this project. "About half of [the American Physical Society's 4000 members] joined the Manhattan Project, which at its height employed roughly 10,000 scientists with advanced degrees." Eventually, fuel production began meeting the needs of Los Alamos, and by 1945, the bombs themselves were in production. On April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died, and Harry Truman took over. Secretary of War Henry Stimson took the primary role of filling in President Truman on the details of the Manhattan Project, which Truman had known nothing about. In July of 1945, President Truman met with Winston Churchill of Britain and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union at the Potsdam conference, at which time the "Big Three" drafted the Potsdam Declaration, which offered the Japanese the opportunity to unconditionally surrender, or "Risk the alternative of 'prompt and utter destruction.'" Japan declined the Potsdam Declaration, and President Truman was left to consider his options. President Truman made the decision to use this nuclear capability, and on August 6, 1945, Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets flew the B-29 bomber Enola Gay over Hiroshima, Japan and dropped the first atomic bomb, named "Little Boy." Due to the lack of Japanese surrender, three days later Maj. Charles W. Sweeney flew Bock's Car toward Kokura, Japan, but was detoured by bad weather. Sweeney then flew over the alternate target of Nagasaki and dropped the second atomic bomb, "Fat Man." A few days after the second bombing, Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and surrendered. World War II was over. The effects of the Manhattan project were enormous on all levels- individual, domestic, and international. On the individual level, the lives of the thousands of people involved in the Manhattan Project were forever changed. Robert Oppenheimer, the civilian director of the Manhattan Project and the one whom many credit with the Manhattan Project's success, was stripped of his security clearance during the McCarthy era because of suspected communist