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Manhattan Project: New Mexico
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The Manhattan Project was the American program for researching and developing the first atomic bombs. The weapons produced were based solely upon the principles of nuclear fission of uranium 235 and plutonium 239, chain reactions liberating immense amounts of destructive heat energy. Although originally established in Manhattan, New York by the Manhattan Engineer District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the majority of the research took place under director General Leslie Groves at the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico. The goal of the Manhattan Project was effectively summed up by scientist Robert Serber when he deduced, “Since the one factor that determines the damage is the energy release, our aim is simply to get as much energy from the explosion as we can.”[1] Thus, due to the nature of the program’s objective, the Manhattan Project is one of scientific engineering’s foremost successes.
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The Manhattan Project had four main facilities. In the basement of the unused football stadium of the University of Chicago, scientists Enrico Fermi and Arthur Compton built an atomic pile and in December 1942 produced the first chain reaction in uranium. At Hanford, Washington, a plant produced plutoniumâ€239 from uraniumâ€238. The Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, separated uraniumâ€235 from uraniumâ€238 through gaseous diffusion. A secret new laboratory, headed by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, was built in 1943 on a secluded mesa at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to design and build atomic bombs.
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Soon after the Manhattan Project became a success, the Soviet Union developed their own atomic bomb. With these new weapons that could destroy entire cities and civilizations, the atomic arms race and cold war began. First these weapons were attached to bombers, but soon space-based systems were developed. These systems utilized rockets that could take a nuclear warhead from one side of the globe to another in under an hour. Since the 1950's, there has existed an amount of weaponry on earth great enough to destroy humanity and all it's accomplishments. No one has used these weapons against another country since WW-II....
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The Manhattan Project produced four atomic bombs. One was tested July 16, 1945, at a bombing range site known as Trinity near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Two others were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. A fourth was ready for use in late August, but by then Japan had surrendered and World War II had ended.
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On Wednesday, February 20, 2008, the Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF) and the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project sponsored an in-depth discussion of the Manhattan Project and its Cold War legacy. The session featured William Lanouette and James Hershberg as well as veteran Robert Furman (pictured), who directed the first atomic intelligence unit. The panel was introduced by Mircea Munteanu. Cynthia C. Kelly, president of AHF, talked about its new book, The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007). The event was followed by a reception.
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The Manhattan Project combined America's technological, industrial, scientific and financial might to produce the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project brought together all the knowledge then known with regards to nuclear fission and culminated on July 16th, 1945, with an atomic bomb being exploded at Alamogordo in New Mexico. On August 6th and August 9th, two atomic bombs were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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