Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.

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Intersect: Danger

a novel

by John T. Cullen

33.

June-July 1945

The Director of the atomic bomb project, Brigadier General Leslie Groves, was in Washington, D.C. at various times in May 1945 because, just as technical issues of critical mass were being resolved in building the bombs, so metaphorical critical mass issues were beginning to take shape in the political, philosophical, social, and economic arenas.

Newly inaugurated President Truman had been shocked to learn of FDR’s development of at least two types of atomic bombs (uranium-235 and plutonium-239) and that the development was as far along as it actually was. The transitional leader between FDR’s death and Truman’s ascendancy was Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who helped usher the development along at the topmost political level. There were even higher considerations being broached by the developers, including their chief, Dr. Oppenheimer.

A lot of agonizing was going on. For one thing, the fiercely destructive firestorming of Japanese cities, which was costing hundreds of thousands of civilian lives, was causing Stimson much moral anguish. Profound questions continued to be raised—was firestorming truly cost effective (in the cost of human lives vs. political result) in the destruction of the Third Reich, or had it simply been a cruel adjunct? Would destroying hundreds of thousands of more lives in Japan produce any more intrinsically meaningful result?

Groves was having breakfast at his Washington apartment with David Hawkins, a young philosophy graduate from Columbia and Berkeley, whom Oppenheimer had insisted on installing as his assistant. The gesture struck Groves as pointed—Oppenheimer, hamstrung by the constraints of wartime development, and knowing he was under serious surveillance as a possible Soviet spy, in large part because of his own past involvement with the Soviets, and his wife’s and his brother’s active membership in the Communist Party USA, had suggested that on humanitarian grounds the President share his information with Stalin.

Like his OSS counterpart Wild Bill Donovan, Groves was a pragmatic, results-oriented man. Both Groves and Donovan had distinguished themselves as professionals and business executives before the war. Groves had accomplished a miracle of civil engineering and wartime mass organization by building the world’s largest manmade building—the Pentagon—-on schedule and under budget. Donovan, disliked by the military establishment as an amateur and a civilian at heart, had built for FDR an espionage structure that was the equal of any in the world—except that it was reputedly riddled with Communist informants.

The same accusation was often made against Groves’s organization, even though Groves had surrounded himself with a cadre of his own intelligence operatives. Groves felt, on a pragmatic level, that the Soviets were had been desperately fighting for their survival for years—first against famine and economic collapse following the disastrous end of World War I and the Czarist regime they had overthrown, and then by Hitler’s assault which thus far had cost something like one fifth of their population (although easily a third of the losses were directly due to the purges, pogroms, and mass murders of Stalin and his henchmen). Since the Soviets were as staunchly anti-Nazi as any group on earth, it only made sense to get in bed with them to defeat Hitler. In the process, it was understandable that they would raid the cupboard whenever possible.

Groves had created a sprawling and highly secret infrastructure employing at least 100,000 persons across the nation at various facilities. Few persons other than Truman, Stimson, Oppenheimer, and now Hawkins (who was also under surveillance as a possible Soviet agent) had any idea of how widespread the industrial network was for producing the bomb.

There was not one bomb, but there were at least three: uranium, plutonium, and uranium-deuterium. The last of these, brainchild of a team led by Edward Teller, had been abandoned as impracticable. The world’s supply of H3 (Deuterium, or heavy water) was negligible, and there were too many practical reasons against the project. This was the version that Hitler’s scientists had been developing, until the Allies in a risky and brilliant series of operations destroyed the Norsk facility in Scandinavia, and destroyed a barge holding much of Nazi Germany’s heavy water supply.

Uranium-235 was being made into a bomb at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, while plutonium-239 was being weaponized at Hanford. It was a shotgun approach, in other words, using the best minds and research results in the world (including Einstein’s), hoping at least one approach would stick.

Groves had a special message for Hawkins to take to Oppenheimer this morning as they worked on black coffee and poached eggs. “I have a big surprise for Oppie,” Groves said, using the unsentimental nickname Oppenheimer had earned over the years. “We have our hands on a fresh supply of very high-grade uranium oxide.”

“Oh? What source?” Hawkins might not be a trained physicist, but his scientific background was adequate for dealing with technical issues.

“German.”

“I thought we had all that covered. Donovan sent teams out across Europe and they earmarked every major dump the Krauts had set up.”

Groves fully understood the implications of Donovan’s findings. In one case, they’d found, in a French laboratory, hundreds of drums of abandoned uranium ore, some of it in barrels that had rusted apart in an open-air dump. “This is different. It appears to be very high grade material from abandoned Silesian silver mines.”

“Percentage?” Hawkins licked his spoon.

“Over fifteen per cent.”

Hawkins whistled. “Wow. That’s outstanding. How much?”

“At least 560 kilograms. Enough to refine down to build at least half of one critical bomb mass.”

Hawkins thought about this. “It’s a bit late in the game.”

“I understand. We’re less than three months away from usability, assuming the C-in-C approves.”

“Stimson will talk him into it.”

“I think you’re right. I’m not worried about it. The consideration of losing a million fighting men to put the Japanese down will be more than any President or political party in this country will want to bear.”

“So what are you suggesting, General?”

“I’m suggesting we can hop on this stuff, get it refined, and have it fissionable in time for transport.” He was thinking of the small island of Tinian in the Marianas, where the Seabees had been busily constructing a forward base—kind of a Manhattan Island in its own right, like a giant aircraft carrier—to launch final super-raids on mortally weakened Japan.

Hawkins knew he was being used as a messenger, and would let the technical objections if any rest with Oppie.

Groves pressed on: “I’m suggesting we use the German material as the trigger. That will increase the output of our uranium bomb by at least 20 per cent if not more.”

“As if it weren’t already powerful enough,” Hawkins grumbled.

“Philosophy aside,” Groves grumbled, “we don’t know if it’s going to work at all, do we? We’re shooting blind here, so why not give ourselves the best shot in the arm we can.”

“I’ll have to run it by Oppenheimer.”

“You tell him I said to do it. I’ve already sent the stuff to Oak Ridge for enrichment.” Groves slapped his napkin down, hefted his appreciable bulk erect, and walked angrily from the room.

Hawkins sat in his chair and stared after the general’s retreating figure with equal frustration. He had great misgivings about the use of these weapons. On the wildest side—and who was he to know?—a few scientists had expressed fears that if a sufficient concentration of fissionable uranium-235 were in one place, the chain reaction might conceivably spread and set the earth’s entire atmosphere on fire, incinerating every shred of life forever. The majority of scientists involved had poopooed this possibility, but it pointed out to an ethicist like Hawkins how dangerous the one-sided determination of a bunch of generals and politicians could be.

So far, not even top military leaders like Eisenhower or MacArthur knew how far along the U.S. was to having the atomic bomb. Now Stimson was helping Truman organize the political and economic discussion regarding the bomb’s use. At the same time, Truman was about to address the world’s leaders in a new organization that would hopefully be more effective than the lamentable League of Nations. On June 26 Truman would address the fledgling United Nations in San Francisco, whose first and Acting Secretary-General was a highly placed State Department official named Alger Hiss.

Before his death, FDR had made concessions to the rapacious Stalin that many leaders considered tantamount to treason—but again, like Donovan and Groves, FDR had been guided by the overarching needs to get the job done with a minimum of philosophical shavings being thrown off.

In that spirit, in July, the U.S. participated in the Potsdam Conference. Truman had no idea Stalin knew the U.S. had the atomic bomb. The groundwork was well under way for a long, insidious war of stealth and bluff that would go on for decades, with smaller hot wars being fought in proxy nations around the world. Stalin was determined not only to have the geopolitical advantage of territory and United Nations control—he would have the latest and most powerful atomic weapons in his grip.

The uranium bomb and the plutonium bomb each had their advantages. The uranium bomb was exceedingly difficult to refine into a fissionable state because it required the rare isotope of atomic mass 235, which had to be refined to 97% purity by the most advanced and complex methods known—or being developed on the fly by the world’s best scientific minds. Once the critical mass was in one place, the rest was relatively easy. In fact, theoretically, it was possible that enough pure Uranium-235 could assemble naturally, and create a nonmanmade fission explosion—though none had yet been found or documented anywhere.

The plutonium bomb was theoretically easier to build, and it might be more powerful to a slight degree, but it was more complex to maintain and explode. Groves’s answer had been to build both types.

The plutonium bomb would be tested June 15 in a live run called Trinity.

The uranium bomb was considered such a sure thing—and supplies of the pure fissionable material were so slight, including some precious material luckily obtained from the captured U-234, that a test was considered unnecessary and would only deplete the only supply of material on hand. The captured German material would be a valuable backup, a second trigger, in case something went wrong with the one already on hand for the first device to be dropped on Japan.