What is the Manhattan Project. The main secrets of the Manhattan Project (3 photos)

The board game "Project Manhattan" makes it possible for every person to feel the power and might. Imagine that you have a huge territory, a local economy, factories and workers at your disposal. You immediately feel tremendous power. The principle of the strategy is based on the development of its own nuclear power. Such a sensitive topic is gaining more and more popularity in our world, but do not forget that this is just a game.

It will be a great gift for a birthday, Defender of the Fatherland Day or New Year.

Difficulty level: Above average

Number of players: 2-5

Develops skills: Intelligence, Communication skills, Budget planning

Review of the board game The Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project is a new masterpiece Brandon Tibets, a fairly complex board game, can participate in it 2-5 players. Recommended age of players - over 12 years, not every adult will dare to operate a nuclear weapon. Usually the game lasts about two hours, but beginners will need more time to understand all the rules and subtleties. You can win by collecting as many victory points as possible and destroying the enemy country.

Your goal

Victory comes to one of the players, but you need to remember that for each number of participants there are certain conditions agreed at the beginning of the game:

• 2 players - 70 points
• 3 players - 60 points
• 4 players - 50 points
• 5 players - 45 points

You have to take part in the development of nuclear weapons and the creation of an atomic bomb. One way to win is espionage. Observation of enemies by placing spies on his field. You are given one chance, use it correctly when choosing a strategy and tactics.

In the economic game Manhattan Project there are 50 building cards, you can rebuild your own, destroy enemy ones. To create new buildings, you need to move a certain number of workers to the cell " Construction". Then you choose from the seven available buildings the one you want to build, cheap ones are built for free, for expensive ones it is worth giving one coin to the category “ Bribes».

Basic information

Many prominent scientists who emigrated from Germany in 1933 (Frisch, Bethe, Szilard, Fuchs, Teller, Bloch and others) were connected to the secret project, which started in 1939, as well as Niels Bohr, who was taken out of Denmark occupied by Germany. As part of the project, its employees worked in the European theater of operations, collecting valuable information about the German nuclear program (see Alsos Mission).

By the summer of 1945, the US military department managed to obtain atomic weapons, the action of which was based on the use of two types of fissile material - the uranium-235 isotope ("uranium bomb"), or the plutonium-239 isotope ("plutonium bomb"). The main difficulty in creating an explosive device based on uranium-235 was to enrich uranium - that is, to increase the mass fraction of the 235 U isotope in the material (in natural uranium, the main isotope is 238 U, the fraction of the 235 U isotope is approximately equal to 0.7%), so that make a nuclear chain reaction possible (in natural and low-enriched uranium, the isotope 238 U prevents the development of a chain reaction). Obtaining plutonium-239 for the plutonium charge was not directly related to the difficulties in obtaining uranium-235, since in this case uranium-238 and a special nuclear reactor are used.

Trinity "based on plutonium-239 (during the test, it was the implosion-type plutonium bomb that was tested) was carried out in New Mexico on July 16, 1945 (Alamogordo test site). After this explosion, Groves very revealingly responded to Oppenheimer's words: "The war is over," he said: "Yes, but after we drop two more bombs on Japan."

The Manhattan Project brought together scientists from the UK, Europe, Canada, and the USA into a single international team that solved the problem in the shortest possible time. However, the Manhattan Project was accompanied by tensions between the US and the UK. Great Britain considered itself the offended party, since the United States took advantage of the knowledge of scientists from Great Britain (the Maud Committy committee), but refused to share the results with Great Britain.

Development of the uranium bomb

Natural uranium is 99.3% uranium-238 and 0.7% uranium-235, but only the latter is fissile. The chemically identical uranium-235 must be physically separated from the more common isotope. Various methods of uranium enrichment were considered, most of which were carried out at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The most obvious technology, the centrifuge, failed, but electromagnetic separation, gaseous diffusion, and thermal diffusion were successful in the project.

Isotope separation

Centrifuges Electromagnetic separation Gaseous diffusion

The first test of the Trinity nuclear explosive device based on plutonium-239 was carried out in the state of New Mexico on July 16, 1945 (Alamogordo test site).

see also

• British nuclear program: M.C. Factory Valley, Hurricane (nuclear test)

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Notes

Literature

• L. Groves

Links

Manhattan Project Places Los Alamos Places tests Separate centers Weapon Tests Leaders Scientists Articles on this topic

An excerpt characterizing the Manhattan Project

- What can I say about me! she said calmly and looked at Natasha. Natasha, feeling her gaze on her, did not look at her. Again everyone was silent.
“Andre, do you want ...” Princess Mary suddenly said in a trembling voice, “do you want to see Nikolushka?” He always thought of you.
Prince Andrey smiled slightly perceptibly for the first time, but Princess Marya, who knew his face so well, realized with horror that it was not a smile of joy, not tenderness for her son, but a quiet, meek mockery of what Princess Mary used, in her opinion. , the last resort to bring him to his senses.
– Yes, I am very glad to Nikolushka. He is healthy?

When they brought Nikolushka to Prince Andrei, who looked frightened at his father, but did not cry, because no one was crying, Prince Andrei kissed him and, obviously, did not know what to say to him.
When Nikolushka was taken away, Princess Marya went up to her brother again, kissed him, and, unable to restrain herself any longer, began to cry.
He looked at her intently.
Are you talking about Nikolushka? - he said.
Princess Mary, weeping, bowed her head affirmatively.
“Marie, you know Evan…” but he suddenly fell silent.
- What are you saying?
- Nothing. There is no need to cry here,” he said, looking at her with the same cold look.

When Princess Mary began to cry, he realized that she was crying that Nikolushka would be left without a father. With great effort on himself, he tried to go back to life and transferred himself to their point of view.
“Yes, they must feel sorry for it! he thought. “How easy it is!”
“The birds of the air neither sow nor reap, but your father feeds them,” he said to himself and wanted to say the same to the princess. “But no, they will understand it in their own way, they will not understand! They cannot understand this, that all these feelings that they value are all ours, all these thoughts that seem so important to us that they are not needed. We can't understand each other." And he was silent.

The little son of Prince Andrei was seven years old. He could hardly read, he knew nothing. He experienced a lot after that day, acquiring knowledge, observation, experience; but if he had then mastered all these later acquired abilities, he could not have better, deeper understood the full significance of the scene that he saw between his father, Princess Mary and Natasha than he understood it now. He understood everything and, without crying, left the room, silently went up to Natasha, who followed him, looked shyly at her with beautiful, thoughtful eyes; his upturned ruddy upper lip quivered, he leaned his head against it and wept.
From that day on, he avoided Dessalles, avoided the countess who caressed him, and either sat alone or timidly approached Princess Marya and Natasha, whom he seemed to love even more than his aunt, and softly and shyly caressed them.
Princess Mary, leaving Prince Andrei, fully understood everything that Natasha's face told her. She no longer spoke to Natasha about the hope of saving his life. She took turns with her at his sofa and wept no more, but prayed incessantly, turning her soul to that eternal, incomprehensible, whose presence was now so palpable over the dying man.

Prince Andrei not only knew that he would die, but he felt that he was dying, that he was already half dead. He experienced a consciousness of alienation from everything earthly and a joyful and strange lightness of being. He, without haste and without anxiety, expected what lay ahead of him. That formidable, eternal, unknown and distant, the presence of which he had not ceased to feel throughout his whole life, was now close to him and - by that strange lightness of being that he experienced - almost understandable and felt.
Before, he was afraid of the end. He twice experienced this terrible tormenting feeling of fear of death, the end, and now he no longer understood it.
The first time he experienced this feeling was when a grenade was spinning like a top in front of him and he looked at the stubble, at the bushes, at the sky and knew that death was in front of him. When he woke up after the wound and in his soul, instantly, as if freed from the oppression of life that held him back, this flower of love blossomed, eternal, free, not dependent on this life, he no longer feared death and did not think about it.
The more he, in those hours of suffering solitude and semi-delusion that he spent after his wound, thought about the new beginning of eternal love revealed to him, the more he, without feeling it, renounced earthly life. Everything, to love everyone, to always sacrifice oneself for love, meant not to love anyone, meant not to live this earthly life. And the more he was imbued with this beginning of love, the more he renounced life and the more completely he destroyed that terrible barrier that, without love, stands between life and death. When, this first time, he remembered that he had to die, he said to himself: well, so much the better.
But after that night in Mytishchi, when the woman he desired appeared before him half-delirious, and when he, pressing her hand to his lips, wept quiet, joyful tears, love for one woman crept imperceptibly into his heart and again tied him to life. And joyful and disturbing thoughts began to come to him. Remembering that moment at the dressing station when he saw Kuragin, he now could not return to that feeling: he was tormented by the question of whether he was alive? And he didn't dare to ask.

His illness followed its own physical order, but what Natasha called it happened to him, happened to him two days before Princess Mary's arrival. It was that last moral struggle between life and death in which death triumphed. It was an unexpected realization that he still cherished life, which seemed to him in love for Natasha, and the last, subdued fit of horror before the unknown.
It was in the evening. He was, as usual after dinner, in a slight feverish state, and his thoughts were extremely clear. Sonya was sitting at the table. He dozed off. Suddenly a feeling of happiness swept over him.
“Ah, she came in!” he thought.
Indeed, Natasha, who had just entered with inaudible steps, was sitting in Sonya's place.
Ever since she'd followed him, he'd always had that physical sensation of her closeness. She was sitting on an armchair, sideways to him, blocking the light of the candle from him, and knitting a stocking. (She had learned to knit stockings ever since Prince Andrei had told her that no one knows how to look after the sick as well as old nannies who knit stockings, and that there is something soothing in knitting a stocking.) Her thin fingers quickly fingered from time to time spokes colliding, and the thoughtful profile of her lowered face was clearly visible to him. She made a move - the ball rolled from her knees. She shuddered, looked back at him, and shielding the candle with her hand, with a careful, flexible and precise movement, bent over, picked up the ball and sat down in her former position.
He looked at her without moving, and saw that after her movement she needed to take a deep breath, but she did not dare to do this and carefully caught her breath.
In the Trinity Lavra they talked about the past, and he told her that if he were alive, he would thank God forever for his wound, which brought him back to her; but since then they have never talked about the future.
“Could it or couldn’t it be? he thought now, looking at her and listening to the light steely sound of the spokes. “Is it really only then that fate brought me so strangely together with her in order for me to die? .. Was it possible that the truth of life was revealed to me only so that I would live in a lie?” I love her more than anything in the world. But what should I do if I love her? he said, and he suddenly groaned involuntarily, out of a habit he had acquired during his suffering.
Hearing this sound, Natasha put down her stocking, leaned closer to him, and suddenly, noticing his luminous eyes, went up to him with a light step and bent down.
- You are not asleep?
- No, I have been looking at you for a long time; I felt when you entered. Nobody like you, but gives me that soft silence... that light. I just want to cry with joy.
Natasha moved closer to him. Her face shone with ecstatic joy.
“Natasha, I love you too much. More than anything.
- And I? She turned away for a moment. - Why too much? - she said.
- Why too much? .. Well, what do you think, how do you feel to your heart, to your heart's content, will I be alive? What do you think?
- I'm sure, I'm sure! - Natasha almost screamed, passionately taking him by both hands.
He paused.
- How nice! And taking her hand, he kissed it.
Natasha was happy and excited; and at once she remembered that this was impossible, that he needed calmness.
"But you didn't sleep," she said, suppressing her joy. “Try to sleep…please.”
He released her, shaking her hand, she went to the candle and again sat down in her previous position. Twice she looked back at him, his eyes shining towards her. She gave herself a lesson on the stocking and told herself that until then she would not look back until she finished it.
Indeed, soon after that he closed his eyes and fell asleep. He didn't sleep long and suddenly woke up in a cold sweat.
Falling asleep, he thought about the same thing that he thought about from time to time - about life and death. And more about death. He felt closer to her.
"Love? What is love? he thought. “Love interferes with death. Love is life. Everything, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists only because I love. Everything is connected by her. Love is God, and to die means for me, a particle of love, to return to the common and eternal source. These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But these were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, something that was one-sidedly personal, mental - there was no evidence. And there was the same anxiety and uncertainty. He fell asleep.
He saw in a dream that he was lying in the same room in which he actually lay, but that he was not injured, but healthy. Many different persons, insignificant, indifferent, appear before Prince Andrei. He talks to them, argues about something unnecessary. They are going to go somewhere. Prince Andrei vaguely recalls that all this is insignificant and that he has other, most important concerns, but continues to speak, surprising them, with some empty, witty words. Little by little, imperceptibly, all these faces begin to disappear, and everything is replaced by one question about the closed door. He gets up and goes to the door to slide the bolt and lock it. Everything depends on whether or not he has time to lock it up. He walks, in a hurry, his legs do not move, and he knows that he will not have time to lock the door, but all the same, he painfully strains all his strength. And a tormenting fear seizes him. And this fear is the fear of death: it stands behind the door. But at the same time as he helplessly awkwardly crawls to the door, this is something terrible, on the other hand, already, pressing, breaking into it. Something not human - death - is breaking at the door, and we must keep it. He grabs the door, exerting his last efforts - it is no longer possible to lock it - at least to keep it; but his strength is weak, clumsy, and, pressed by the terrible, the door opens and closes again.
Once again, it pressed from there. The last, supernatural efforts are in vain, and both halves opened silently. It has entered, and it is death. And Prince Andrew died.
But at the same moment he died, Prince Andrei remembered that he was sleeping, and at the same moment he died, he, having made an effort on himself, woke up.
“Yes, it was death. I died - I woke up. Yes, death is an awakening! - suddenly brightened in his soul, and the veil that had hidden the unknown until now was lifted before his spiritual gaze. He felt, as it were, the release of the previously bound strength in him and that strange lightness that had not left him since then.
When he woke up in a cold sweat, stirred on the sofa, Natasha went up to him and asked what was wrong with him. He did not answer her and, not understanding her, looked at her with a strange look.
This was what happened to him two days before Princess Mary's arrival. From that very day, as the doctor said, the debilitating fever took on a bad character, but Natasha was not interested in what the doctor said: she saw these terrible, more undoubted, moral signs for her.
From that day on, for Prince Andrei, along with the awakening from sleep, the awakening from life began. And in relation to the duration of life, it did not seem to him more slowly than awakening from sleep in relation to the duration of a dream.

The first atomic explosion did not produce too many memorable sayings. Only one made it into the Oxford Collection of Quotations ( Oxford Dictionary of Quotations ). After the successful test of a plutonium bomb on July 16, 1945, at Jornado del Muerto, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, quoted, somewhat altered, a verse from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am Death, destroyer of worlds!" . Other words uttered by the specialist responsible for the test, Kenneth Bainbridge, should have been forever remembered. As soon as the explosion sounded, he turned to Oppenheimer and said: "Now we are all sons of bitches ...". Later, Oppenheimer himself believed that nothing more precise and expressive was said at that moment.

In general, a lot of nonsense was said in connection with the explosion. When Samuel Allison said his "two, one, zero - go!", A general standing nearby remarked: "It's amazing that you can count backwards at a time like this!" Allison later recalled that he flashed: “Wow, they survived! The atmosphere did not ignite ... ". Chemist George Kistiakovsky rushed to Oppenheimer and said, "Oppy, you owe me ten dollars!" (they were arguing about the test results). Project General Director Manhattan General Leslie Grose immediately appreciated the significance of what he saw: "The explosion was just right ... The war is over."

If the scientists and engineers said anything at all immediately after the explosion, they were mostly exclamations of surprise. Some remained silent - they were too absorbed in calculating the power of the explosion; others were amazed in various ways by the color of the fungus, the strength of the flash, and the roar. Physicist Edwin Macmillan later wrote that the observers were shocked by horror rather than rejoicing at the success. After the explosion, there was silence for a few minutes, followed by remarks like: "Well, this thing worked ...". Something similar, according to his brother Frank, Oppenheimer himself muttered, as soon as the roar died down enough to say: “It worked!”

Another reaction was not to be expected. Scientists and engineers worked on the creation of the atomic bomb for more than two years. The test was to show whether they succeeded or not. Looking into the past from the height of our time, we want to see an expression of anguish on their faces, we expect repentant tirades about the terrible consequences of what they have done, but nothing like this happens to most of them. Moral and political condemnation came later - and not to everyone. More than anyone, Oppenheimer indulged in public self-flagellation. Everyone especially remembered his statement: “Physicists have known sin. This knowledge is not to be avoided…”. But repentance began later. When the issue of using the atomic bomb against civilian population Japan, he, unlike some of his scientific colleagues, not only did not object, but insisted on it - and only a few months after Hiroshima and Nagasaki he told President Truman: "It seems to me that there is blood on our hands." Truman replied to the scientist: “It's okay. Everything will be washed off ... ”, and he severely punished his assistants:“ So that this slobber is no longer here! ”. Oppenheimer continued to suffer from remorse until the end of his days. Among other things, he was haunted by the question: why were there almost no such remorse? then, in then time? Here is the answer he offered to himself and others in 1954: “When you have an exciting scientific problem in front of you, you go headlong into it, and you put off the question of what to do with the solution to the future, to the time when this technical solution will be found. So it was with the atomic bomb ... "

Both authors, Sylvan Schweber and Mary Palewski, are concerned about the gap between moral ideals and moral reality among those scientists who heralded the atomic age to the world and lived in its atmosphere in the postwar years. Both are moralists; both were driven to take up the pen by impulses of a very personal nature. Schweber is a physicist turned historian of science. In the 1950s, he worked at Cornell University with Hans Bethe, who during the war years was director of the theory department at the Los Alamos Laboratory. Book Under the shadow of the bomb , developed during the work of Schweber on the fundamental and not yet completed biography of the teacher, is, in essence, a lengthy glorification of Bethe's "decency", shown in the course of settling difficult relations between science and the Pentagon in the postwar period, in easing tensions between science and politics in the era McCarthyism. Bethe's impeccable behavior is contrasted with Oppenheimer's ambiguous behavior. As for Mary Palewski, she is the daughter of an electrical engineer who worked at the Los Alamos laboratory on the bomb trigger, whose misgivings about Hiroshima and the work on the bomb formed part of her daughter's "moral legacy". atomic fragments - a collection of not too closely related interviews with surviving project participants Manhattan. The author is interested in their experiences and political considerations - in the past, in Los Alamos, and in the future. What did they think of their brainchild when they were working on the bomb? what did they think of it after its creation?

One of the immediate consequences of Hiroshima was that American atomic scientists, primarily physicists, became a kind of courtiers of the Republic of the United States. Already in the course of the project Manhattan the corridors of power were always open to some of them. After the end of the war, the vast majority dreamed of returning to universities as soon as possible, to research work - but now everything went differently for them. The bomb had cost America two billion dollars, and America thought the money well spent. At the start of work at Los Alamos, physicists had pledged to make only a few bombs, but now the government wanted a large nuclear arsenal, and Edward Teller had already launched a public agitation for the creation superbombs- hydrogen bombs. The Japanese were defeated, but since March 1944, General Groves was credited with saying that the real purpose of the bomb was to rein in the Soviets. In 1954, he declared this publicly. The Cold War was a bonanza for American physicists, but it also presented some of them with difficult political and moral problems.

Although Oppenheimer returned to his academic career months after Hiroshima, his career as the government's most important arms adviser was just beginning. He sat on committees in the Pentagon, he chaired the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the US Atomic Energy Commission, which developed a plan for the scientific development of nuclear weapons. It is this kind of conciliation and complicity that Schweber has in mind when speaking of Bethe's moral superiority over Oppenheimer. There were security guards in front of Oppenheimer's office at the Princeton Institute for Basic Research. When he was called on secret matters, the guests had to leave the office. All these visible signs of power and privilege, according to many, pleased Oppenheimer - at least until they suddenly stopped. On the contrary, Bethe's participation in the government's development of nuclear weapons was indirect and episodic. Unlike his Los Alamos boss, he remained committed to his research work, which became for him, says (as many as four times!) Schweber, the saving "anchor of impeccability."

It is permissible to disagree with this black and white picture. In assessing the morality of Oppenheimer's and Bethe's positions, it would be more natural to resort to semitones. The General Advisory Committee headed by Oppenheimer, while not rejecting the idea of ​​creating a hydrogen bomb in principle, objected to its urgent development. This same committee, wittily called the Gray Board, was convened in 1954 to relieve Oppenheimer of the constant presence of guards. When, in 1950, Truman nevertheless decided to create a bomb on an urgent basis, he by special orders closed any opportunity for Oppenheimer to speak publicly on this topic. The forced silence was painful for Oppenheimer, as is clear from the words spoken later: “What are we to do with a civilization that has always considered ethics as an important part of human life and was unable to talk about almost the total murder of everyone and everyone, except perhaps in in fine and game-theoretic terms?”

Bethe, unlike Oppenheimer, was at that time only a consultant at Los Alamos. He could speak and said what his conscience prompted: “The hydrogen bomb is no longer a weapon, but a means of destroying entire nations. Its use would be a betrayal of common sense and the very nature of Christian civilization." Even building a hydrogen bomb "would be a terrible mistake." And yet, he overcame himself so much that he worked diligently on the creation of this very bomb, justifying himself by the fact that if such a weapon is feasible in principle, then the Soviets will make it sooner or later. The threat posed by them must be balanced. Then, it is one thing to develop weapons in peacetime, and another thing in wartime. The second, according to Bethe, was a moral matter, so the outbreak of the Korean War contributed to his spiritual peace. But that's not all: starting work on the hydrogen bomb, it turns out that he hoped that the upcoming technical difficulties were insurmountable (the judgment is "somewhat naive", according to his colleague on the project Manhattan Herbert York). There was also such an argument: "if not me, then there will always be someone else." Finally, among scientists who looked back at the moral side of the matter, there was a judgment: "If I were closer to Los Alamos affairs, I could contribute to disarmament." Years later, Bethe would write that all these considerations then “seemed very logical,” but would add that he was now “occasionally” preoccupied: “I wish I were a more consistent idealist... To this day I have the feeling that I did wrong. But that's what I did..."

Further, Schweber tries to show that Bethe behaved appropriately and honorably in response to the McCarthyist attacks on left-wing, internationalist, and pacifist scientists. In fact, no scientist of sufficient weight to withstand these attacks came out of this episode unsullied. Oppenheimer, apparently to save his own skin, denounced his own graduate students in a way that instilled fear in former colleagues at Los Alamos, including Bethe. Bethe, at first glance, behaved much better. When his colleague at Cornell University, Philip Morrison, came under attack, he rushed to defend him - but, firstly, let's not forget that it was incomparably easier for him to answer to the university commission of inquiry than Oppenheimer - to the anti-American commission that threw thunder and lightning. activities; secondly, this intercession of Bethe for a colleague, inspired and effective, was by no means unconditional. He first told the interim president of Cornell University that he, Bethe, was annoyed by Morrison's "benevolent attitude" to the Soviet approach to disarmament, and then agreed with the university administration that he, Morrison's, political speech needed to be curbed.

Another consequence of Hiroshima was that, however complicated their role as courtiers of the nuclear state, some of the scientists working on the project Manhattan became public moralists. They were motivated to do so by both personal and purely technical considerations. First of all, they felt they had unique knowledge about the bomb they had created: what the bomb could do; about what should be expected in connection with it; about how the bomb might affect political structures and military strategy. Fearing that the politicians who control scientists and the public have little understanding (if any) of the transformed reality, some physicists have taken it upon themselves to morally reflect not only on what should be done in a world that has become a nuclear arsenal, but also on the very nature of moral actions in this world. Then, they remembered that it was they, and not someone else, who handed people a monstrous weapon - and if some took this memory calmly, others lamented about what they had done. Driven by remorse, they wanted to publicly explain why they did what they did, and why it was right or at least excusable.

Like many at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer initially believed that the bomb was made to save the centuries-old gains of Western civilization and culture from Nazism, but later he had to come to terms with the idea that the triumph of science threatened these gains. The generation of scientists who believed (as Schweber writes about this) that “scientific knowledge brings a good beginning to the world, that it is apolitical, open to everyone and belongs to everyone, and finally, that it is the engine of progress” - this generation turned out to be among the builders of the new world that shattered the faith that fed him.

Oppenheimer's moral thinking took a more philosophical direction than anyone else's. He is concerned about the properties of the open society created by science: “Having come into the world from the bosom of a field of human activity nurtured for centuries, in which violence was represented, perhaps, less than in any other; from the bosom of the region, owing its triumph and its very existence to the possibility of open discussion and free research - the atomic bomb appeared to us as a strange paradox: firstly, because everything connected with it is shrouded in mystery, that is, closed from society , secondly, because she herself has become an unparalleled instrument of violence ... ". Then, he was concerned about the social consequences of excessive faith in the limitlessness of possibilities and the reliability of scientific knowledge: “The belief that all societies are in fact a single society, that all truths are reducible to one, and every experience is comparable and uncontroversially linked to another, finally, that complete knowledge is achievable - perhaps this belief portends the most deplorable end ... ". Oppenheimer warned society against the cowardly acceptance of the judgments of scientists in fields of activity not related to science: “Science does not exhaust all the activities of the mind, but is only a part of it ... Research in physics and in other fields of science (I hope my colleagues working in these areas, let me say it on their behalf) do not supply the world with philosopher-rulers. So far, these studies have not produced rulers at all. They almost never produced real philosophers either…”.

Few of the scientists who worked on the project have survived to this day. Manhattan. The youngest are over eighty, Beta is 94 years old. More than once they got it in connection with the moral side of what they did; they will not be surprised by new books either. Mary Palewski's approach is serious and respectful. The scientists she was able to interview hardly told many more than they had said many times before. For his first interview, Bethe prepared two handwritten sheets in which he arranged his main arguments in the order convenient for him. He was not indifferent to the court of history - and fully armed tried to contribute to its writing. Mary Palewski listened to her interlocutors with bated breath in reverence; she asked them questions with the naivety of a heroine Mira Sofia, and yet atomic fragments recreate (moreover, better than Schweber's more professional and intellectually aspiring book) the spirit and essence of a living moral question, with all its uncertainties and inconsistencies.

Palewski asks nuclear physicists why they took to making this terrible weapon and how they felt after the bomb was dropped on Japanese cities. Most of those interviewed justified their actions on principles as rooted in civilization as the moral issue it raised, or else pointed to the circumstances that compelled them to work on building the bomb. The apologetics of physicists did not shake the author's position, but Mary Palewski ends the book without being able to consistently substantiate her deep conviction that the bomb should not have been made.

Why did you agree to participate in the project Manhattan? - The Nazi bomb would mean the destruction of all countries with an open and tolerant society; at first it was not supposed to use a bomb: it was needed only to keep the Germans from using their own. - Why didn't you withdraw from the project when by the end of 1944 it became clear that the Nazis did not have a bomb? - On the agenda was the creation of the UN, an organization with which high hopes were attached to establishing a lasting peace, and the UN should have known that such weapons exist and that their destructive power is enormous. This is what a saint like Niels Bohr had in mind when he heard about the successful test of the bomb and asked: "Was the explosion powerful enough?" - Why do so many of you justify Hiroshima? - The demonstration explosion proposed in Frank's report in June 1945 could have failed - and entailed catastrophic consequences during the Pacific War; even if such an explosion had been successful, Emperor Hirohito might not have been informed of it; only the use of a bomb against manpower could secure an unconditional surrender; without the bomb, many more people would have died both from Japan and from the allies; moreover, some of those interviewed felt that the Soviet involvement in the Japanese war should be kept as brief as possible, while at the same time showing the communists what power America had at its disposal. - Why didn't you put more effort into expressing your concern about the possible use of the bomb? - It was none of our business. Scientists are responsible for conducting research, not how their research results are used. In a democratic society, law, common sense, and virtue itself prescribe obedience to orders expressing the will of the people. By what right would physicists lecture a democratically elected government? It is true that it was easier to disobey Roosevelt's order than to disobey Hitler's order - but the meaning of this disobedience would be completely different, and the very comparison of democracy with totalitarianism is unacceptable.

Not all scientists spoke in this spirit, but the majority passionately defended some of these positions. Only one physicist left Los Alamos when it became clear that the Nazis could not create a bomb - Briton [Polish origin] Joseph Rotblat. He later wrote: “The destruction of Hiroshima seemed to me an act of irresponsibility and barbarism. I was beside myself with anger…”. Experimenter Robert Wilson expressly regrets that he did not follow Rotblat's example, and of the others, very few spoke in this spirit. Subsequently, a few people - among them Wilson, Rotblat, Morrison and Victor Weiskopf - swore to work on the creation of weapons, but most continued to receive easy money with a clear conscience, which so fundamentally changed the nature of research in physics in the post-war years.

This majority felt no need to justify themselves. Herbert Yorke, who devoted most of his post-war career to the fight for nuclear disarmament, was very plausible in describing the arrogance that reigned at the time: “The first thing you know about the Second World War is how it broke out. For me, this was the last thing I learned about it ... The first thing you knew about the atomic bomb was that we killed many people in Hiroshima with its help. For me, this was the last thing I learned about the bomb ... ". The more you can dispel the fog of uncertainty surrounding the development of weapons in wartime, the more difficult it is to find grounds for blaming specific people whose motives and opinions, influence and attitude towards what was happening did not remain unchanged during the years when they were developing the bomb. . Let the world be a better place if atomic weapons had not been created and put into action. Once you accept this, you are faced with the difficulty of identifying a scientist or a group of scientists who could be found guilty with any credibility.

However, there is still something to be said in connection with the experience of working on the project. Manhattan: something as disturbing as it is understandable and even seductive. For most scientists, it was an exciting, exciting game. They themselves admitted it, and more than once. Bethe wrote that for all the scientists at Los Alamos, their time there "was the most wonderful time of their lives." The English physicist James Tuck directly calls it "golden time". All the eminent scientists of that time were gathered there; they enjoyed each other's company; they worked together on a common and urgent task, the completion of which broke down artificial barriers between related university disciplines. The problems were scientifically interesting, the funding inexhaustible. According to Teller, the Los Alamos scientists were "one big happy family." After Hiroshima, when Oppenheimer left Los Alamos and returned to Berkeley, scientists in a farewell address thanked him for the wonderful time spent under his leadership: “We received much more satisfaction from our work than our conscience should allow us ...” They were so well together that some jokingly called the fence around the object not a means to keep the inhabitants inside, but a protective wall from the outside world, not allowing outsiders to join their happiness. And we have to say: it was precisely this happy rapture with work, this complete absorption in the generously funded "scientific feast", that just hindered reflections of a moral nature.

And besides, the best minds of the scientific world, for the most part, did not remain indifferent to the temptation to join the power. Physicist Azidor Rabai notes how his friend Oppenheimer changed after the first bomb test: “ Noon- that's what his walk brought to mind; I don't think you can be more precise. He achieved his goal!..” This was the kind of power that not only gets along with moral torment, but also feeds on it, even flaunts at its expense. Stanislav Yulam wrote that Oppenheimer "perhaps exaggerated his role when he saw in himself the prince of darkness, the destroyer of worlds ...". Johnny von Neumann said more than once: “Some people like to repent. On sinfulness you can make a reputation for yourself ... ". But the fault of the scientists who created the bomb lies not in the bomb itself. On closer examination, their fault was that they took real pleasure in their work.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

5. Edwin Mattison McMillan (1907-1991), American nuclear physicist, Nobel laureate (1951, jointly with Glen Seaborg) in chemistry for the synthesis of the first transuranic element neptunium. The creator of the synchrocyclotron (simultaneously with the Soviet scientist V.I. Veksler developed the principle of autophasing). Chairman of the US National Academy of Sciences from 1968 to 1971.

6. Hans Albrecht Bethe (Bethe, 1906), American theoretical physicist, originally from Germany, winner of the Nobel Prize (1967) for research in astrophysics. He studied in Frankfurt and Munich, in 1931 he worked with Enrico Fermi in Rome, lectured in Tübingen (until 1933), from 1934 he worked at Cornell University in Ithaca, USA, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the Los Alamos Laboratory. After the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he was among those who recognized their responsibility for the disaster. In 1955 he was awarded the medal. Max Planck, in 1961 - a prize to them. Enrico Fermi, gold medal to them. Lomonosov (1990).

7. This was the name of the US government project to create the first atomic bomb (1942-45).

8. Edward (Edie) Teller (1908-2003), American physicist, originally from Hungary, participated in the development of the atomic bomb, led the creation of the hydrogen bomb. He studied in Karlsruhe and Munich, where he was hit by a car and lost his foot. Worked with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, taught in Göttingen (1931-33). In the USA since 1935. Together with the Soviet physicist Georgy Gamow (1904-68), who fled to the West, he developed a new classification of subatomic particles during the radioactive decay of molecules. In 1939, in response to President Franklin Roosevelt's call for scientists to help defend the United States from Nazi aggression, he set about building nuclear weapons. From 1941 he worked with Enrico Fermi in Chicago, then with Oppenheimer at the University of California and at the Los Alamos Laboratory. After the end of the war, he was among those who encouraged the US government to create a hydrogen bomb, especially after the first Soviet nuclear test in 1946. When it became known that the physicist and communist Emil Klaus Julius Fuchs (1911-88) had passed American and British nuclear secrets to Moscow for seven years (1943-50), President Truman threw all his efforts into the development of the hydrogen bomb, and Teller, together with Stanislav Yulam, proposed (1951) the so-called Teller-Ulam configuration, which provides the theoretical basis for the explosion. During Oppenheimer's hearing in 1954, Teller spoke against him, thereby contributing to the end of his former leader's administrative career. In 1954-58 he was deputy director of the Livermore Nuclear Laboratory. Ernest Lawrence in California, the second nuclear laboratory of the Pentagon. In 1983, he convinced President Reagan of the need for a strategic defense initiative ("Star Wars").

9. Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908-1957), US Senator; achieved extraordinary influence in the early 1950s with sensational but unproven allegations of communist subversion by many government officials. In 1952-54 - Chairman of the Senate Committee of the Congress on the activities of government agencies, since 1953 - Chairman of its standing committee of inquiry. In 1954, he was convicted in an (almost unprecedented) act of the Senate for inappropriate behavior.

10. Sofia World- a book by the Norwegian writer Josten Gorder, which became a bestseller in the mid-1990s, in form - fairy tale, in essence - a presentation in faces of the history of European philosophy for teenagers; the completeness and clarity of this exposition made it popular among adults. The heroine, the girl Sofia, lives in a world full of miracles: she passes through dense surfaces, finds herself in parallel spaces, and communicates with talking animals. Her counselor, Arno Knox, is obsessed with teaching the girl philosophy.

11. James Franck (James Franck, 1882-1964), American physicist, Nobel laureate for 1925 (together with Gustav Hertz). Born in Germany, in 1933 he emigrated to Denmark, since 1935 in the USA. Participated in the development of the atomic bomb. He objected to its military use: he offered to demonstrate to the enemy the power of an atomic explosion in an uninhabited place.

12. Hirohito (at birth Mitinomiya Hirohito, posthumous name Showa ("enlightened world"), 1901-1989), Emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989 (the longest reign in Japanese history). Author of several books on marine life. Nominally, before the surrender of Japan, he was a sovereign monarch, in fact, more often he only approved the policy of his ministers. According to some reports, he objected to an alliance with Nazi Germany and foresaw defeat in the war against the United States. In August 1945, he addressed the people by radio (violating the custom of silence of the Japanese emperors) with a message about the acceptance of the terms of surrender to the allies. In 1946, he abolished the dogma of holiness of the Japanese emperors. In 1975, he was on a visit to Europe, violating another (1,500-year-old) custom that ordered Japanese emperors not to leave the country.

13. Joseph Rotblat (1908), physicist, anti-nuclear activist, co-founder (1957), general secretary (1957-73) and president (since 1988) of the Pugwash Science and Policy Conference, a worldwide organization of scientists headquartered in London . The organization studies the paths of national development and international security. The first meeting of scientists took place in July 1957, at the initiative of Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Frederic Joliot-Curie and others, in the village of Pugwash in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, on the estate of the American philanthropist Cyrus Eaton. Subsequent meetings were held in many countries, including the USSR. In 1995, Rotblat and his organization were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for many years of fighting for disarmament, especially for organizing and funding meetings between American and Soviet scientists.

14. Victor Frederick Weiskopf, American physicist, whose name bears the famous formula for calculating the theoretical proton velocity (single-proton theoretical rate).

15. Azidor Isaac Rabay (1898-1988), American physicist, Nobel laureate (1944) for his 1937 method of studying the atomic spectrum using nuclear magnetic resonance. Professor at Columbia University (1937-1940) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1940-45). Member of the General Advisory Committee of the US Atomic Energy Commission (1946-56), chairman of that committee (Oppenheimer's successor) from 1952 to 1956.

16. Seemingly an allusion to a Hollywood movie Noon Stanley Kramer (1952) with actor Gary Cooper.

17. Stanislav Marsin Yulam (Ulam, 1909-1984), an American mathematician, originally from Lvov (at that time Polish), who proved the fundamental possibility of creating a hydrogen bomb (Teller-Ulam configuration). Graduate of the Lviv Polytechnic Institute. At the invitation of von Neumann, he worked at the Princeton Institute for Basic Research (1936), lectured at Harvard University (1939-40) and at the University of Wisconsin (1941-43). At Los Alamos from 1943 to 1965.

18. John (Johann, Janos) von Neumann (1903-57), American mathematician and physicist, originally from Hungary. In the USA since 1930. He was engaged in functional analysis, logic, meteorology, game theory, quantum mechanics. He paved the way for the creation of the first computers. His game-theoretic models have had a significant impact on economics. Since 1931 - professor at Princeton University, from 1933 until the end of his life - at the Princeton Institute for Basic Research.

Translation by Yuri Kolker, 2001,
Boremwood, Hertfordshire;
posted online January 22, 2010

magazine INTELLECTUAL FORUM(San Francisco / Moscow) No. 6, 2001 (with distortions).

US-UK agreement. Things were different in the USA. America was wealthy enough to encourage the scientific and engineering development of all kinds of weapons. The most powerful industry in the world easily coped with the production of products of any complexity in any quantities. For scientists working in the United States, the State Department paid for experiments of any cost. Exceptionally wide opportunities allowed to try any options and choose the best. In addition, the White House could put pressure on dependent coalition partners, in particular the British, to share the results already achieved. Which is what was done.

In July 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was visiting Washington, where Frank the Great gently, without pressure, proposed to the "English Bulldog" to transfer the main forces of the Tube Alloys program to American soil. The proposal was carefully argued. They explained to Churchill that overseas is safer, more free in terms of technical and raw materials, and so on. The Honorable Sir Winston had no opportunity to refuse his comrade-in-arms, since American participation was desperately required in the major operation planned for the autumn of that year in North Africa. Britain wanted to save the empire. To do this, we needed american tanks, guns, planes and a blow to the rear of Rommel's army from Algeria and Morocco. Roosevelt promised to help, but in exchange he asked to give America the English atomic project. The leader of the crackling empire had no choice. And although Churchill was tormented by suspicions that the Allies might appropriate the fruits of English labors, he agreed. The premier's torment was not in vain; a year later, at a conference in Quebec, he had to agree with the recognition of American primacy in the nuclear research of the allies. Thus, to some extent, justice was restored. The British, who "purged" the French scientists with the appropriation of all patents for discoveries, themselves found themselves in the position of being robbed by a stronger partner. What can you do - "the bestial grin of the market", as they say, "who had time, he ate it."

August 13, 1942 The White House considered that the preparatory phase was completed, it was necessary to proceed directly to the creation of weapons. On August 13, 1942, all work on nuclear energy was brought into the system. On this day, the organization was given the code name "Manhattan". The budget was set at $2 billion. They appointed leaders: sapper Leslie Groves, who was hastily promoted to general, was in charge of the administrative part, and Robert Oppenheimer, who was in charge of science. With excellent financial "lubrication", the car started working quickly and confidently. American scientists did not face the question of which path to choose: to extract explosives by separating uranium isotopes, or to accumulate plutonium in reactors - there was enough money to move both ways. In the state of Washington, the city of Hanford was founded, where 3 nuclear reactors were laid, entrusted to the care of the Italian emigrant Enrico Fermi.

The second nuclear city is located in Tennessee, it was named Oak Ridge. There, the isotope selection plant became the city-forming enterprise. What turned out to be beyond the capacity of the British and the Nazis was done effortlessly in America. Chemistry and metallurgy of the United States produced an isotope sieve through which a semi-finished uranium product was passed, trapping the active particles of the 235th. Over all this mass of factories and a constellation of local and foreign scientists reigned Oppenheimer, who calculated the critical mass of explosives suitable for detonating a bomb. However, it would be more accurate to say that he did not calculate, but checked the work of his British colleagues. However, the level of this plagiarist work caused a certain amount of respect. Work on the mistakes of the British was carried out using state-of-the-art computers.

First results. On December 2, 1942, an experimental reactor built at the University of Chicago was heated for the first time by a controlled nuclear reaction. Fermi realized in practice the self-sustaining chain decay of uranium nuclei. Interestingly, the British were not allowed to carry out the experiment. The first reaction was soon followed by others, and then the plutonium-producing boilers started up. America began to accumulate bombs, with the expectation that by 1945 they would have enough of them to equip three munitions.

In November 1942, in the desert state of New Mexico, the construction of another secret city of Los Alamos began, where the first American atomic monsters with the nicknames "Kid" and "Fat Man" were to be born. Engineers already knew the approximate weight of the "babies" and the industry ordered carriers for atomic death. They were excellent B-29 strategic bombers. Giant aircraft had performance characteristics that were record-breaking for their years, for which they were called "super-fortresses". The ceiling of the 29th product of the Boeing company was 11-12 km, the speed was almost fighter, about 570 km / h. With such altitude and speed, the fortresses were not threatened by fighters and anti-aircraft fire. In the rarefied atmosphere of high altitudes, the engines of the interceptors stalled without oxygen, and the shells of anti-aircraft guns of conventional calibers exploded 1 km below. The Germans, in principle, could get such an enemy, the Japanese did not even have the illusion of such a possibility.

"Superfortresses" for bombs. It was the “superfortresses” that they decided to adapt for the delivery of atomic bombs to the target. On specialized vehicles, the bomb bays were somewhat expanded to receive overall nuclear products, and some of the defensive weapons were removed to compensate for the overload that occurs when transporting heavy "kids" and "fat men". 15 of these aircraft were ordered, bringing them to the 509th Special Air Regiment, which was to be trained under a special program. The pilots of the regiment endlessly worked out the same technique: reaching the target in normal weather, dropping, and then there was a “zest” of tactics - a rapid turn and leaving to a safe distance so that the carrier would not be destroyed by powerful air currents. Such tasks as repelling an attack by interceptors or overcoming an enemy air defense zone were not assigned to pilots. When the regiment began training, it became clear to the command of the US Air Force that by the time the regiment was put into action, the opponents would not be able to resist, and the “killer fortresses” would work without risk. The American air generals had more reason to assess the situation in this way than they needed.

At the end of 1944, when a special regiment was being formed, the superiority of the Allies over the Luftwaffe was already estimated at 20-24 to one. The armies of the anti-Hitler coalition were already on the Vistula and the approaches to the Rhine. The case was clearly coming to an end. By the way, having entered Europe, the Americans received accurate information that the Nazi nuclear scientists were at an impasse, and the Germans would not have bombs until the end of the war under any circumstances.

Nuclear race at the end of World War II. Already in 1944, the “Manhattan product” turned into a weapon not of today, but of tomorrow. The haste with which work was carried out on the US atomic project clearly indicated that the bomb would have to work after the triumph of the anti-Hitler forces. The demonstration of their new capabilities, as in the case of Dresden, was to be carried out as quickly as possible. In 1945, it became clear to the Americans that the Russians were working in the same direction, and they had everything they needed to create their own bomb. Thus, the nuclear race at the end of World War II was not between actual opponents, but among formal allies.

By the way, the version that is rooted in our days that the Soviet nuclear weapons program was based solely on copying the American one is a fake. There have always been enough talents in our country. The technological potential and scientific capabilities of the USSR allowed a lot, including nuclear design. Without going into details of such a historical phenomenon as the Russian bomb, I will point out only one indisputable aspect that proves our independence. Nowadays, the secret of making atomic weapons no longer exists. How a bomb is made is known to scientists of all countries and peoples. Her circuit diagrams placed almost in physics textbooks. However, only about a dozen states possess such weapons. The objection that the rest are held back by international obligations can only be answered with a smile. Such bans are indifferent to the leaders of the DPRK, and to some others in the world. However, neither Korea nor Iraq have even the most primitive "Hiroshima" type bombs to this day. So, not everything is so simple - I wrote off the scheme, and the order. Both teachers and students know well when a loser cheats from an excellent student, do not expect good, the same result will still not be. But, if the cheating succeeded, obviously, the student who borrowed someone else's problem or phrase in the essay is able to figure out the aspect that is turned to his own benefit. If both have “excellent”, then their academic success is approximately identical. Just one was distracted at the moment of explaining the material, but, looking at a neighbor, he quickly made up for the omission.

The possibilities of the USSR. Perhaps the Soviet Union really "distracted". Being 10-14 times weaker than America in the economy, the financial sector, in technology, it produced almost as many tanks, guns and aircraft as the overseas giant, whose territory was inviolable, on whose factories not a single bomb fell, where they did not know what is hunger and work in a workshop without a roof at -20 o C. Our country worked and fought with unprecedented tension, based on the current situation. The USSR did not have free resources, they were completely absorbed by the front passing through our land and adjacent territories. Therefore, we fell behind. But, barely recovering, they managed to catch up with the American “excellent students” in four years. Perhaps the assistance of a number of American scientists saved some time. However, any information received from intelligence required mandatory analysis and verification. The very fact that Soviet scientists coped with this work speaks of the comparability of our capabilities with the Americans.

But the Americans have nothing to be proud of. If dozens of representatives of their scientific elite informed Moscow about the secret aspects of their activities, it means that they did not believe much in American good intentions and tried to work on creating an alternative power pole, which alone could save the world from the US nuclear monopoly with its unpredictable consequences.

The Manhattan Project is the largest and most secret nuclear weapons testing project of the twentieth century. To this day, it is not known how the experiments were carried out, the experience of which was used for nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We tried to collect everything that is known about the project at the moment.

Los Alamos National Laboratory was established in this locality and county in the state of New Mexico, which does not have the status of a city or town and is a statistically separate territory. It was the main, but not the only city in which work was carried out on the Manhattan Project. Several secret cities were created throughout the country. One of them, called Site W in Washington state, was in fact a giant factory producing plutonium needed to make bombs.

At that time, one could only guess about the environmental consequences of the ongoing work and the dangers of radioactive dust. There was only one way to find out how it affects the body - to test it on experimental pigs. Coyotes were chosen as them. Preferring them to other inhabitants, scientists proceeded from the fact that they eat hares, whose diet consists of leaves contaminated with radiation. The soldiers caught the coyotes, pulled out their thyroid gland and measured the level of iodine.

toxic apple

While studying at Cambridge, physicist Robert Oppenheimer decided to commit murder. The victim was one of the teachers, for whom the physicist prepared a toxic apple. He pumped the fruit with toxic substances and left it among the things of the teacher, hoping that he would have a bite to eat during the break. However, Robert could not bring the plan to the end: before the arrival of the intended victim, he returned and took the apple. Despite the dark spot in his biography, Robert Oppenheimer was appointed head of the most expensive and secret project in history at that time - Manhattan.

Top secret

All life in the city of X, surrounded by barbed wire, was like under a microscope. Checkpoints, censorship of letters, wiretapping of phones - literally every step was controlled. People lived in houses with cardboard walls, so everyone knew about each other's lives in the smallest detail. Work on the project remained within the walls of the "offices", it was strictly forbidden to talk about it outside, and even more so to discuss something with the family. The vast majority of the inhabitants did not even know what city X was built for, until in August 1945 they heard on the radio that two cities in Japan were practically wiped off the face of the earth.

Trinity

The world's first test of a nuclear weapon technology called Trinity as part of the Manhattan Project was conducted at the Alamogordo test site in New Mexico. Eastman Kodak decided to tell the world about him by making a documentary. After the release of the film, a flurry of complaints hit the studio. Viewers of the film not only learned about how and where the nuclear age began, but also to some extent became part of it. As it turned out later, the boxes in which the film was packed were made from corn husks grown in Indiana, the fields of which were contaminated with radioactive fallout from the Trinity tests.

mouse bombs

At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Pennsylvania dentist Little S. Adams was in the Carlsbad Caverns area. In them, he saw bats, a meeting with which prompted the dentist to a crazy idea - to make bombs with bats. His good friend was Eleanor Roosevelt, and despite the absurdity of the project, through her, Adams was able to promote the idea and get financial support. The mice were planned to be armed with time bombs and dropped in a container over Japanese cities. After a detachment of winged suicide bombers was caught in the caves, tests began. Some of them were surprisingly successful, and several buildings were destroyed with the participation of mice, but the project was soon curtailed in favor of a more predictable atomic bomb in action.