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

The board game “The Manhattan Project” gives every person the opportunity to feel power and might. Imagine that you have a huge territory, a local economy, factories and workers at your disposal. You immediately feel colossal power. The principle of the strategy is based on the development of our 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 an excellent 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 that can be played by 2-5 players. Recommended age of players – more than 12 years, not every adult would dare operate a nuclear weapon. Usually a 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 aim

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

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

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

In the economic game Project Manhattan there are 50 building cards, you can rebuild your own and 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 you need to give one coin to the “ category Bribes».

Basic information

The secret project, which started in 1939, involved many prominent scientists who emigrated from Germany in 1933 (Frisch, Bethe, Szilard, Fuchs, Teller, Bloch and others), as well as Niels Bohr, taken from German-occupied Denmark. 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 operation of which was based on the use of two types of fissile material - the isotope of uranium-235 (“uranium bomb”), or the isotope of plutonium-239 (“plutonium bomb”). The main difficulty in creating an explosive device based on uranium-235 was the enrichment of uranium - that is, increasing the mass fraction of the 235 U isotope in the material (in natural uranium the main isotope is 238 U, the share of the 235 U isotope is approximately 0.7%) so that make a nuclear chain reaction possible (in natural and low-enriched uranium, the 238 U isotope 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, an implosion-type plutonium bomb was tested) was carried out in New Mexico on July 16, 1945 (Alamogordo test site). After this explosion, Groves very tellingly responded to Oppenheimer's words: “The war is over,” he said: “Yes, but after we drop two more bombs on Japan.”

The Manhattan Project united 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 United States and Great Britain. Great Britain considered itself the offended party, since the United States took advantage of the knowledge of scientists from Great Britain (the Maud Committee), but refused to share the results obtained with Great Britain.

Development of the uranium bomb

Natural uranium consists of 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 abundant isotope. Various methods of uranium enrichment were considered, most of which were carried out at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

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

Isotopic separation

Centrifuges Electromagnetic separation Gas diffusion

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

see also

• British nuclear program: M.S. 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 Managers Scientists Articles on this topic

Excerpt describing the Manhattan Project

- What to 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 Marya suddenly said in a shuddering voice, “do you want to see Nikolushka?” He thought about you all the time.
Prince Andrei smiled faintly 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 of quiet, gentle mockery of what Princess Marya used, in her opinion. , the last resort to bring him to his senses.
– Yes, I’m very happy about Nikolushka. He is healthy?

When they brought Nikolushka to Prince Andrei, who was looking at his father in fear, but was not crying, 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 resist any longer, began to cry.
He looked at her intently.
-Are you talking about Nikolushka? - he said.
Princess Marya, crying, bowed her head affirmatively.
“Marie, you know Evan...” but he suddenly fell silent.
- What are you saying?
- Nothing. There’s no need to cry here,” he said, looking at her with the same cold gaze.

When Princess Marya began to cry, he realized that she was crying that Nikolushka would be left without a father. With great effort he tried to return to life and was transported to their point of view.
“Yes, they must find it pathetic! - he thought. “How simple 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! What they cannot understand is that all these feelings that they value are all ours, all these thoughts that seem so important to us are that they are not needed. We can't understand each other." - And he fell silent.

Prince Andrei's little son was seven years old. He could barely read, he didn't know anything. He experienced a lot after this day, acquiring knowledge, observation, and experience; but if he had then possessed all these later acquired abilities, he could not have understood better, more deeply the full meaning of that scene that he saw between his father, Princess Marya and Natasha than he understood it now. He understood everything and, without crying, left the room, silently approached Natasha, who followed him out, and shyly looked at her with thoughtful, beautiful eyes; his raised, rosy upper lip trembled, he leaned his head against it and began to cry.
From that day on, he avoided Desalles, avoided the countess who was caressing him, and either sat alone or timidly approached Princess Marya and Natasha, whom he seemed to love even more than his aunt, and quietly and shyly caressed them.
Princess Marya, 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 alternated with her at his sofa and did not cry anymore, 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 worry, awaited what lay ahead of him. That formidable, eternal, unknown and distant, the presence of which he never ceased to feel throughout his entire life, was now close to him and - due to the strange lightness of being that he experienced - almost understandable and felt.
Before, he was afraid of the end. He experienced this terrible, painful feeling of fear of death, of the end, twice, 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, eternal, free, independent of this life, blossomed, he was no longer afraid of death and did not think about it.
The more he, in those hours of suffering solitude and semi-delirium that he spent after his wound, thought about the new beginning of eternal love that had been revealed to him, the more he, without feeling it himself, renounced earthly life. Everything, to love everyone, to always sacrifice oneself for love, meant not loving anyone, meant not living this earthly life. And the more he was imbued with this principle 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, at first, he remembered that he had to die, he said to himself: well, so much the better.
But after that night in Mytishchi, when the one he desired appeared in front of him in a semi-delirium, and when he, pressing her hand to his lips, cried quiet, joyful tears, love for one woman imperceptibly crept into his heart and again tied him to life. Both joyful and anxious 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 ask this.

His illness took its own physical course, but what Natasha called: this happened to him happened to him two days before Princess Marya’s arrival. This was the last moral struggle between life and death, in which death won. It was the unexpected consciousness that he still valued the life that seemed to him in love for Natasha, and the last, subdued fit of horror in front of 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 overwhelmed him.
“Oh, she came in!” - he thought.
Indeed, sitting in Sonya’s place was Natasha, who had just entered with silent steps.
Since she began following him, he had always experienced this physical sensation of her closeness. She sat on an armchair, sideways to him, blocking the light of the candle from him, and knitted a stocking. (She learned to knit stockings since Prince Andrei told her that no one knows how to take care of the sick like old nannies who knit stockings, and that there is something soothing in knitting a stocking.) Thin fingers quickly fingered her from time to time the clashing spokes, and the pensive profile of her downcast face was clearly visible to him. She made a movement and the ball rolled off her lap. She shuddered, looked back at him and, shielding the candle with her hand, with a careful, flexible and precise movement she bent, raised the ball and sat down in her previous 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 took a breath.
In the Trinity Lavra they talked about the past, and he told her that if he were alive, he would forever thank God for his wound, which brought him back to her; but since then they never spoke about the future.
“Could it or could it not have happened? - he thought now, looking at her and listening to the light steel sound of the knitting needles. - Was it really only then that fate brought me so strangely together with her that I might die?.. Was the truth of life revealed to me only so that I could 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, according to the habit that he acquired during his suffering.
Hearing this sound, Natasha put down the stocking, leaned closer to him and suddenly, noticing his glowing eyes, walked up to him with a light step and bent down.
- You are not asleep?
- No, I’ve been looking at you for a long time; I felt it when you came in. No one 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 rapturous joy.
- Natasha, I love you too much. More than anything else.
- 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 in your soul, in your whole soul, will I be alive? What do you think?
- I'm sure, I'm sure! – Natasha almost screamed, taking both his hands with a passionate movement.
He paused.
- How good it would be! - And, taking her hand, he kissed it.
Natasha was happy and excited; and immediately she remembered that this was impossible, that he needed calm.
“But you didn’t sleep,” she said, suppressing her joy. – Try to sleep... please.
He released her hand, shaking it; she moved to the candle and sat down again in her previous position. She looked back at him twice, his eyes shining towards her. She gave herself a lesson on the stocking and told herself that she wouldn't look back until she finished it.
Indeed, soon after that he closed his eyes and fell asleep. He did not sleep for long and suddenly woke up in a cold sweat.
As he fell asleep, he kept thinking about the same thing he had been thinking about all the 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 one thing. Love is God, and to die means for me, a particle of love, to return to the common and eternal source.” These thoughts seemed comforting to him. But these were just thoughts. Something was missing in them, something was one-sided, personal, mental - it was not obvious. 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 was actually lying, but that he was not wounded, but healthy. Many different faces, insignificant, indifferent, appear before Prince Andrei. He talks to them, argues about something unnecessary. They are getting ready to go somewhere. Prince Andrey vaguely remembers that all this is insignificant and that he has other, more important concerns, but continues to speak, surprising them, 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 he has time or not time to lock her. He walks, he hurries, his legs don’t move, and he knows that he won’t have time to lock the door, but still he painfully strains all his strength. And a painful fear seizes him. And this fear is the fear of death: it stands behind the door. But at the same time, as he powerlessly and awkwardly crawls towards the door, something terrible, on the other hand, is already, pressing, breaking into it. Something inhuman - death - is breaking at the door, and we must hold it back. He grabs the door, strains his last efforts - it is no longer possible to lock it - at least to hold 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 were in vain, and both halves opened silently. It has entered, and it is death. And Prince Andrei died.
But at the same moment as he died, Prince Andrei remembered that he was sleeping, and at the same moment as he died, he, making an effort on himself, woke up.
“Yes, it was death. I died - I woke up. Yes, death is awakening! - his soul suddenly brightened, and the veil that had hitherto hidden the unknown was lifted before his spiritual gaze. He felt a kind of liberation of the strength previously bound in him and that strange lightness that has not left him since then.
When he woke up in a cold sweat and stirred on the sofa, Natasha came 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 the arrival of Princess Marya. 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 this day on, for Prince Andrei, along with awakening from sleep, awakening from life began. And in relation to the duration of life, it did not seem to him slower than awakening from sleep in relation to the duration of the dream.

The first atomic explosion did not produce too many memorable statements. Only one was included in 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 the city of Alamogordo in New Mexico, the scientific director of the Los Alamos laboratory, Robert Oppenheimer, quoted, slightly 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 always be 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 what flashed through his mind: “Wow, we survived! The atmosphere did not ignite...” Chemist George Kistiakowski rushed to Oppenheimer with the words: “Oppy, you owe me ten dollars!” (they were arguing about the test results). General Director of the project Manhattan General Leslie Grose immediately appreciated the significance of what he saw: “The explosion was just right... The war is over.”

If scientists and engineers said anything at all immediately after the explosion, then for the most part they were exclamations of surprise. Some remained silent - they were too absorbed in calculating the power of the explosion; others were amazed in different ways by the color of the mushroom, the strength of the flash and the roar. Physicist Edwin MacMillan later wrote that observers were shocked by horror rather than elated by the success. After the explosion there was silence for several minutes, followed by comments like: “Well, that thing worked...”. Oppenheimer himself muttered something similar, according to his brother Frank, as soon as the roar died down enough to say: “It worked!”

No other reaction should have been 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 heights of our time, we want to see an expression of agony on their faces, we expect repentant tirades about the terrible consequences of what they did, but nothing like that happens to most of them. Moral and political condemnation came later - and not to everyone. More than anyone else, Oppenheimer indulged in public self-flagellation. Everyone especially remembered his statement: “Physicists have known sin. This knowledge cannot be eliminated...” But repentance began later. When the question 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 we have blood on our hands.” Truman replied to the scientist: “It’s okay. Everything will be washed off...”, and he strictly punished his assistants: “So that this slobber won’t be here anymore!” 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 remorse? Then, V That time? This is the answer he proposed to himself and others in 1954: “When you are faced with an exciting scientific problem, you plunge into it headlong, and the question of what to do with the solution is postponed until the future, until the time when this technical solution will be available.” found. It was the same with the atomic bomb..."

Both authors, Sylvan Schweber and Mary Palewski, are concerned with the gap between moral ideals and moral reality among those scientists who ushered in the atomic age to the world and lived in its atmosphere in the post-war years. Both are moralists; both were prompted to take up the pen by motives of a very personal nature. Schweber is a physicist turned historian of science. During the 1950s, he worked at Cornell University with Hans Bethe, who was director of the Los Alamos Laboratory's theoretical department during the war years. Book Under the shadow of a bomb , which emerged during Schweber’s work on a fundamental and not yet completed biography of the teacher, is, in essence, a lengthy praise of Bethe’s “decency”, shown in the course of reconciling the difficult relations between science and the Pentagon in the post-war period, in mitigating the tensions between science and politics in the era McCarthyism. Bethe's impeccable behavior is contrasted with Oppenheimer's ambiguous behavior. As for Mary Palevsky, she is the daughter of an electrical engineer who worked at the Los Alamos laboratory on the bomb trigger, whose forebodings about Hiroshima and the work on the bomb formed part of his daughter’s “moral legacy.” Atomic fragments - a collection of not too closely related interviews with project participants who have survived to this day Manhattan. The author is interested in their experiences and political considerations - in the past, at Los Alamos, and beyond. What did they think about 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 United States republic. Already during the project Manhattan the corridors of power were always open to some of them. After the end of the war, the overwhelming majority dreamed of returning to universities and research work as soon as possible, but now everything went differently for them. The bomb cost America two billion dollars, and America thought the money was well spent. When they began work at Los Alamos, physicists pledged to produce only a few bombs, but now the government wanted a large nuclear arsenal, and Edward Teller had already launched a public campaign for the creation superbombs- hydrogen bombs. The Japanese were defeated, but from March 1944 General Groves was credited with saying that the real purpose of the bomb was to rein in the Soviets. In 1954, he announced this publicly. The Cold War was a bonanza for American physicists, but it also presented difficult political and moral challenges for some of them.

Although Oppenheimer returned to his academic career in the months after Hiroshima, his work as a key government adviser on weapons issues was just beginning. He sat on Pentagon committees, 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 agreement and complicity that Schweber has in mind when he speaks of Bethe’s moral superiority over Oppenheimer. There were security guards outside Oppenheimer's office at the Princeton Institute for Basic Research. When he received calls on secret matters, guests had to leave his office. All these visible signs of power and privilege were considered by many to be something Oppenheimer liked - at least until they suddenly stopped. On the contrary, Bethe's participation in government nuclear weapons development was indirect and sporadic. Unlike his Los Alamos boss, he remained faithful to his research work, which became for him, Schweber says (as many as four times!), a saving “anchor of impeccability.”

It is permissible to disagree with this black and white picture. In assessing the morality of the positions of Oppenheimer and Bethe, it would be more natural to resort to halftones. The General Advisory Committee, headed by Oppenheimer, while not rejecting the idea of ​​​​creating a hydrogen bomb in principle, objected to its urgent development. The same committee, cleverly called the gray board, was convened in 1954 in order to free Oppenheimer from the constant presence of guards. When, in 1950, Truman decided to create a bomb urgently, 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 should we do with a civilization that has always considered ethics as an important part of human life and was incapable of talking about the complete murder of everyone and everyone, except in in plausible and game-theoretic terms?”

Bethe, unlike Oppenheimer, was at that time just a consultant at Los Alamos. He could and did say 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 creating a hydrogen bomb "would be a terrible mistake." And yet, he overcame himself so much that he worked diligently to create this very bomb, justifying himself by the fact that if such a weapon is feasible in principle, then the Soviets will sooner or later make it. The threat posed by them must be balanced. Then, it is one thing to develop weapons in peacetime, and another thing to develop them in wartime. The second, according to Bethe, was a moral matter, so the outbreak of the Korean War contributed to his mental peace. But that’s not all: when starting work on the hydrogen bomb, he, it turns out, hoped that the upcoming technical difficulties were insurmountable (the judgment was “somewhat naive,” according to his colleague on the project Manhattan Herbert York). There was also this argument: “if not me, then there will always be someone else.” Finally, among scientists who looked 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 “seemed very logical” at the time, but would add that now “from time to time” he was concerned: “I wish I had been a more consistent idealist... To this day I can’t shake the feeling that I did the wrong thing. But that’s how I did it...”

Schweber further attempts to show that Bethe responded appropriately and honorably to McCarthy's attacks on left-wing, internationalist, and pacifist scientists. In fact, no scientist with enough weight to resist these attacks emerged from this episode unsullied. Oppenheimer, clearly saving his own skin, condemned his own graduate students in such a way that he instilled fear in his 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 us not forget that it was incomparably easier for him to answer before the university commission of inquiry than for Oppenheimer - before the thunder and lightning commission on un-American activities; secondly, this very intercession of Bethe on behalf of his colleague, inspired and effective, was by no means unconditional. He first told the interim president of Cornell University that he, Bethe, was irritated by Morrison's "complacent attitude" toward the Soviet approach to disarmament, and then agreed with the university administration that his political speech needed to be reined in.

Another consequence of Hiroshima was that, as difficult as it was for their role as courtiers of the atomic state, some of the scientists working on the project Manhattan, became public moralists. They were prompted to do this by both personal and purely technical considerations. First of all, they felt that they had unique knowledge about the bomb they created: about what the bomb could do; about what to expect in connection with it; about how a bomb can affect political structures and military strategy. Fearing that politicians, in whose power scientists are, and the public have little, if any, understanding of the transformed reality, some physicists have taken upon themselves the task of morally reflecting 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 the monstrous weapon - and if some treated this memory calmly, others lamented 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 get used to the idea that the triumph of science threatened these gains. The generation of scientists who believed (as Schweber writes about it) that “scientific knowledge brings goodness 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 was among the builders of the new world , which shook the faith that nourished him.

Oppenheimer's moral reflections took a more philosophical direction than all the others. He is concerned about the properties of the open society created by science: “Coming from the womb of a centuries-old area of ​​human activity, in which violence was perhaps less represented than in any other; from the bosom of the region, which owes its triumph and its very existence to the possibility of open discussion and free research, the atomic bomb appeared before us as a strange paradox: firstly, because everything connected with it is shrouded in mystery, that is, closed from society , secondly, because she herself became 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 one society, that all truths are reducible to one, and that every experience is comparable and consistent with another, finally, that complete knowledge is achievable - perhaps this belief foreshadows the most pitiable end..." Oppenheimer warned society against cowardly accepting on faith the judgments of scientists in areas of activity not related to science: “Science does not exhaust the entire activity of the mind, but is only part of it... Research in the field of physics and in other fields of science (I hope my colleagues working in these areas, let me say this on their behalf) do not provide the world with philosopher rulers. So far, these studies have not yielded rulers at all. They almost never produced real philosophers...”

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. They got it more than once due to the moral side of what they did; They won’t be surprised by new books either. Mary Palewski's approach is serious and respectful. The scientists she interviewed hardly said much more than they had said many times before. For his first interview, Bethe prepared two handwritten sheets in which he laid out his main arguments in an order convenient for him. He was not indifferent to the judgment of history - and fully armed he tried to contribute to its writing. Mary Palevsky listened to her interlocutors with bated breath from respect; asked them questions with the naivety of a heroine Mira Sofia, - and, however, Atomic fragments recreate (and better than Schweber’s more professional and intellectually ambitious book) the spirit and essence of a living moral question, with all its uncertainties and inconsistencies.

Palevski asks nuclear physicists why they took on the task of 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 pointed to the circumstances that forced them to work on the bomb. The apologetics of physicists did not shake the author's position, but Mary Palevsky 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, the bomb was not intended to be used: it was needed only to deter the Germans from using theirs. - Why didn’t you leave 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 great hopes were pinned on establishing lasting peace, and the UN had to know that such weapons exist and that their destructive power is enormous. This is what a righteous man like Niels Bohr meant when, upon hearing about the successful bomb test, he asked: “Was the explosion powerful enough?” - Why do so many of you justify Hiroshima? - The demonstration explosion proposed in June 1945 in the Frank report could have failed - and entailed catastrophic consequences during the Pacific War; even if such an explosion were successful, Emperor Hirohito might not be reported about it; only the use of a bomb against manpower could ensure unconditional surrender; Without the bomb, many more people would have died on both the Japanese and Allied sides; Moreover, some of those interviewed believed that Soviet participation in the Japanese war should be made as brief as possible, and at the same time show the communists what power America had. - 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 is used. In a democratic society, law, common sense, and virtue itself dictate that orders expressing the will of the people must be obeyed. By what right would physicists lecture a democratically elected government? It is true that disobeying Roosevelt's orders was easier than disobeying Hitler's orders, but the meaning of this disobedience would have been completely different, and the very comparison of democracy with totalitarianism is unacceptable.

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

This majority felt no need to justify themselves. Herbert York, who spent much of his post-war career fighting for nuclear disarmament, summed up the arrogance that reigned at the time quite plausibly: “The first thing you knew about the Second World War was how it broke out. For me, this was the last thing I learned about it... The first thing you learned about the atomic bomb was that we used it to kill a lot of people in Hiroshima. For me, this was the last thing I learned about the bomb...” The more the fog of uncertainty that shrouds wartime weapons development is cleared, the more difficult it is to find any basis for blaming specific individuals whose motives and opinions, influence and attitude were not unchanged during the years during which they developed the bomb. . May the world be a better place if atomic weapons had not been created and used. Once you accept this, you are faced with the difficulty of identifying a scientist or group of scientists who could with any certainty be found guilty.

However, there is still something to be said about 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 this, and more than once. Bethe wrote that for all the scientists at Los Alamos, their time there "was the wonderful time of their lives." The English physicist James Tuck directly calls it the “golden time.” All the outstanding scientists of that time were gathered there; they enjoyed each other's company; they worked together on a common and urgent task, the implementation of which broke down the artificial barriers between related university disciplines. The problems were scientifically interesting, and the funding was 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 facility not a means to keep the inhabitants inside, but a protective wall from the outside world, preventing outsiders from joining in their happiness. And I have to say: it was precisely this happy rapture of work, this complete absorption in the generously funded “scientific feast” that prevented 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 power. Physicist Azidor Rabai notes how his friend Oppenheimer changed after the first bomb test: “ Noon- that's what his gait brought to mind; In my opinion, you can’t say more precisely. He achieved his goal!..” This was the kind of power that not only coexists 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 himself as the prince of darkness, the destroyer of worlds...”. Johnny von Neumann repeated more than once: “Some people like to repent. You can build a reputation on sinfulness...” But the fault of the scientists who created the bomb does not lie with the bomb itself. On closer inspection, their fault was that they took true pleasure in their work.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

5. Edwin Mattison McMillan (1907-1991), American nuclear physicist, Nobel laureate (1951, together with Glen Seaborg) in chemistry for the synthesis of the first transuranic element neptunium. Creator of the synchrocyclotron (simultaneously with the Soviet scientist V.I. Veksler, he 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, Nobel Prize laureate (1967) for research in astrophysics. He studied in Frankfurt and Munich, worked with Enrico Fermi in Rome in 1931, lectured in Tübingen (until 1933), and from 1934 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 - the prize named after. Enrico Fermi, gold medal named after. Lomonosov (1990).

7. This was the name of the US government's 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. He worked for Niels Bohr in Copenhagen and taught in Göttingen (1931-33). In the USA since 1935. Together with the Soviet physicist Georgiy 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 began to create 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 been transferring American and British nuclear secrets to Moscow for seven years (1943-50), President Truman threw all his efforts into developing the hydrogen bomb, and Teller, along with Stanislav Yulam, proposed (1951) the so-called Teller-Yulam configuration, which provides a theoretical basis for the explosion. During the hearing of Oppenheimer's case in 1954, Teller spoke against him, which contributed to the end of the administrative career of his former leader. In 1954-58 he was deputy director of the Livermore Nuclear Laboratory. Ernest Lawrence in California, the Pentagon's second nuclear laboratory. In 1983, he convinced President Reagan of the need for the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”).

9. Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908-1957), US Senator; achieved extraordinary influence in the early 1950s thanks to sensational but unproven accusations of subversive communist activities against 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 Commission of Investigation. In 1954, he was convicted (in a virtually unprecedented) act of the Senate for inappropriate behavior.

10. World of Sofia- a book by Norwegian writer Josten Gorder, which became a bestseller in the mid-1990s, in form - fairy tale, essentially - a presentation in person of the history of European philosophy for teenagers; the completeness and clarity of this presentation 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, communicates with talking animals. Her counselor, Arno Knox, is obsessed with teaching the girl philosophy.

11. James Franck (1882-1964), American physicist, Nobel Prize winner in 1925 (with Gustav Hertz). Born in Germany, emigrated to Denmark in 1933, and from 1935 to the USA. Participated in the development of the atomic bomb. He objected to its military use: he proposed demonstrating to the enemy the power of an atomic explosion in an uninhabited place.

12. Hirohito (born 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 fauna. Nominally, before the capitulation of Japan, he was a sovereign monarch, but in fact, more often than not, he only approved the policies 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 (breaking the custom of silence of Japanese emperors) with a message about accepting the terms of surrender to the Allies. In 1946, he abolished the dogma of sanctity of the Japanese emperors. In 1975, he visited Europe, breaking another (1,500-year-old) custom that ordered Japanese emperors not to leave the country.

13. Joseph Rotblat (1908), physicist, anti-nuclear weapons activist, co-founder (1957), Secretary General (1957-73) and President (since 1988) of the Pugwash Science and Policy Conference, a world organization of scientists headquartered in London . The organization studies ways of national development and international security. The first meeting of scientists took place in July 1957, on 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 their decades-long struggle for disarmament, particularly for organizing and financing meetings between American and Soviet scientists.

14. Victor Frederick Weiskopf, American physicist, whose name is given to the famous formula for calculating the theoretical speed of the proton (single-proton theoretical rate).

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

16. Apparently a reference to a Hollywood movie Noon Stanley Kramer (1952) with actor Gary Cooper.

17. Stanislav Marcin Yulem (Ulam, 1909-1984), American mathematician, originally from Lviv (Polish at that time), who proved the fundamental possibility of creating a hydrogen bomb (Teller-Yulam 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 (Neumann, 1903-57), American mathematician and physicist, originally from Hungary. In the USA since 1930. He studied functional analysis, logic, meteorology, game theory, and quantum mechanics. Paved the way for the creation of the first computers. His game-theoretic models have had a significant impact on economics. From 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,
Borehamwood, Hertfordshire;
posted online January 22, 2010

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

Agreement between the US and Britain. Things went differently in the USA. America was rich enough to encourage scientific and engineering development of all types of weapons. The world's most powerful industry effortlessly coped with the production of products of any complexity in any quantity. The State Department paid scientists working in the States for experiments of any cost. Exceptionally wide possibilities allowed us to try any options and choose the best. In addition, the White House could put pressure on dependent coalition partners, in particular on the British, so that the latter would 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, suggested that the “English Bulldog” transfer the main forces of the Tube Alloys program to American soil. The proposal was carefully argued. They explained to Churchill that it was safer overseas, more free in terms of technical and raw material resources, and so on. The honorable Sir Winston had no opportunity to refuse his comrade, since American participation in the major operation in North Africa planned for the fall of the same year was desperately required. 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 asked to give America a British atomic project. The leader of the crumbling empire had no choice. And although Churchill was tormented by suspicions that the Allies might appropriate the fruits of British labors, he agreed. The prime minister was not tormented in vain; a year later, at a conference in Quebec, he had to agree to the recognition of American primacy in the nuclear research of the allies. Thus, justice was restored to some extent. The British, who had “cleansed” French scientists by appropriating all the patents for their 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 “whoever had time, got to eat.”

August 13, 1942 The White House considered that the preparatory phase was completed, and it was necessary to move 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. Leaders were appointed: sapper Leslie Groves, who was hastily promoted to general, was responsible for the administrative part, and Robert Oppenheimer, who was in charge of scientific issues. With excellent financial lubrication, the machine started working quickly and confidently. American scientists were not faced with the question of which path to choose: extracting explosives by separating uranium isotopes, or accumulating plutonium in reactors - there was enough money to travel both ways. In the state of Washington, the city of Hanford was founded, where 3 nuclear reactors were built, entrusted to the care of the Italian emigrant Enrico Fermi.

The second nuclear city was located in Tennessee, it was called Oak Ridge. There, the isotope selection plant became the city-forming enterprise. What was beyond the capabilities of the British and the Nazis, America did effortlessly. US Chemistry and Metallurgy produced an isotope sieve through which the uranium semi-finished product was passed, catching active particles of 235. Oppenheimer reigned over all this vastness of factories and the constellation of local and foreign scientists, calculating 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 plagiaristic work evoked a certain amount of respect. Work on the mistakes of the British was carried out using computers created with the latest technology.

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 practically carried out the self-sustaining chain decay of uranium nuclei. It is interesting that the British were not allowed to carry out the experiment. The first reaction was soon followed by others, and then the boilers producing plutonium started working. America began to accumulate bomb stuffing, with the expectation that by 1945 it would be sufficient to equip three ammunition.

In November 1942, in the desert state of New Mexico, construction began on the next secret city of Los Alamos, where the first American atomic monsters with the nicknames “Baby” 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 became the excellent B-29 strategic bombers. The giant aircraft had record performance characteristics for their age, for which they were called “superfortresses.” The ceiling of the 29th Boeing product was 11-12 km, the speed was almost fighter, about 570 km/h. At such altitude and speed, the fortresses were not threatened by fighters and anti-aircraft fire. In the rarefied atmosphere of high altitudes, interceptor engines stalled without oxygen, and conventional caliber anti-aircraft gun shells exploded 1 km below. The Germans, in principle, could reach such an enemy; the Japanese did not even have the illusion of such a possibility.

"Super fortresses" for bombs. It was the “superfortresses” that they decided to adapt to deliver atomic bombs to the target. On specialized vehicles, the bomb bays were somewhat expanded to accommodate large nuclear products, and some of the defensive weapons were removed to compensate for the overload that occurs when transporting heavy “toddlers” and “fat ones.” 15 of these aircraft were ordered, forming them into the 509th Special Aviation Regiment, which was to undergo training under a special program. The regiment's pilots endlessly practiced the same technique: approaching the target in normal weather, dropping, and then came the "highlight" of the tactics - a rapid turn and retreat to a safe distance so that the carrier would not be destroyed by powerful air currents. The pilots were not assigned tasks such as repelling an interceptor attack or overcoming an enemy air defense zone. When the regiment began training, it became clear to the command of the American Air Force: 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. America's air generals had more reasons than necessary to assess the situation in this way.

At the end of 1944, when a special regiment was being formed, the Allied superiority over the Luftwaffe was already estimated at 20-24 to one. The armies of the anti-Hitler coalition were already stationed on the Vistula and the approaches to the Rhine. Things were clearly coming to an end. By the way, upon entering Europe, the Americans received accurate information that Hitler’s nuclear scientists were at a dead end, and the Germans would not have a bomb until the end of the war under any circumstances.

The atomic 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 its new capabilities, as in the case of Dresden, had 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 atomic race at the end of World War II was not fought between actual opponents, but among formal allies.

By the way, the version that has taken root these days that the Soviet nuclear weapons program was based solely on copying the American one is a fake. There has always been enough talent 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. Scientists from all countries and peoples know how a bomb is made. Her circuit diagrams placed almost in physics textbooks. However, only about a dozen states possess such weapons. The objection that others are held back by international obligations can only be answered with a smile. The leaders of the DPRK and some others in the world are indifferent to such bans. However, neither Korea nor Iraq have even the most primitive “Hiroshima” type bombs to this day. So, it’s not so simple - I copied the diagram and the order. Both teachers and students know well that when a poor student cheats from an excellent student, don’t expect anything good, the same result will still not happen. But, if the cheating was successful, obviously, the student who borrowed someone else’s problem or phrase in the essay is able to understand the aspect that is addressed to his own benefit. If both have “excellent” grades, then their academic success is approximately identical. It was just that one of them got distracted while explaining the material, but, having looked at a neighbor, he quickly made up for the omission.

Opportunities of the USSR. Perhaps the Soviet Union really got distracted. Being 10-14 times weaker than America in the economy, financial sphere, and 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 working 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. That's why we fell behind. But, having barely recovered, 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 indicates the comparability of our capabilities with the Americans.

But 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 have much faith 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 unknown how the experiments were carried out, the experience of which was used for nuclear attacks 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 town 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 on the Manhattan Project took place. Several secret cities were created throughout the country. One of them, called Site W in Washington state, was essentially a giant factory that produced the plutonium needed to make bombs.

One could only guess at the time about the environmental consequences of the work being carried out and the dangers of radioactive dust. There was only one way to find out how it affects the body - test it on experimental pigs. Coyotes were chosen as them. Preferring them to other inhabitants, scientists assumed that they eat hares, whose diet consists of leaves contaminated by radiation. Soldiers captured coyotes, removed their thyroid glands and measured their iodine levels.

Toxic apple

While studying at Cambridge, physicist Robert Oppenheimer decided to commit murder. One of the teachers was chosen as the victim, for whom the physicist prepared a toxic apple. He pumped the fruit with toxic substances and left it among the teacher’s things, hoping that he would snack on it during a break. However, Robert was never able to complete the plan: before the intended victim arrived, 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 city X, surrounded by barbed wire, was like being 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”; talking about it outside, much less discussing anything with the family, was strictly prohibited. The vast majority of residents had no idea why City X was built until they heard on the radio in August 1945 that two cities in Japan had been practically wiped off the face of the earth.

Trinity

The world's first test of nuclear weapons 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 it 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 era began, but also, to some extent, became part of it. As it turned out, the boxes in which the film was packaged were made from corn husks grown in Indiana, whose fields were contaminated by radioactive fallout from the Trinity tests.

Mouse bombs

During the attack on Pearl Harbor, Pennsylvania dentist Little S. Adams was in the Carlsbad Caverns area. In them he saw bats, an encounter with which prompted the dentist to come up with a crazy idea - to make bombs with bats. His good friend was Eleanor Roosevelt, and despite the absurdity of the project, through her Adams managed to promote the idea and receive financial support. The mice were planned to be armed with ticking incendiary 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 quite successful, and several buildings were destroyed with the participation of mice, but the project was soon abandoned, relying on an atomic bomb that was more predictable in action.