The Lake Norman Brief
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project and the atomic bombs, 1939-1945: nine chaptered articles on fission and the Einstein letter, General Groves and Chicago Pile-1, Oak Ridge and the Calutron Girls, Hanford and the B Reactor, Los Alamos and the spies, the Trinity test, the 509th Composite Group and the decision, Little Boy and Hiroshima, and Fat Man, Nagasaki and the surrender. Start with the interactive atlas.
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Fat Man and Nagasaki, 9 August 1945, and the Surrender of Japan
Bockscar’s mission from Tinian, the failed runs over Kokura and the bomb over the Urakami valley at 11:02; the dead of Nagasaki;…
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Little Boy and Hiroshima, 6 August 1945
The Enola Gay’s mission from Tinian, the bomb that burst over the Shima Hospital at 08:15, what it did to the city…
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The 509th Composite Group, Tinian and the Decision to Use the Bomb
How the Army built the 509th Composite Group to deliver the atomic bomb, how Tinian became its base, how the Target and…
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Trinity: The First Atomic Explosion, 16 July 1945
The first nuclear explosion, on the Jornada del Muerto in New Mexico: why the implosion bomb had to be tested, Bainbridge’s Project…
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Los Alamos: Oppenheimer, Project Y and the Spies
How a boys’ ranch school on a New Mexico mesa became Project Y: Oppenheimer and Groves choose the site, life on the…
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Hanford: The B Reactor and the Making of Plutonium
How the Army and DuPont built the Hanford Engineer Works on the Columbia River in twenty months: the displaced towns and Wanapum…
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Oak Ridge: The Secret City, the Calutron Girls and the Race for Uranium-235
How the Army turned an East Tennessee valley into a fenced city of 75,000 and built four plants to make uranium-235: Y-12’s…
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General Groves and Chicago Pile-1: The First Chain Reaction, 2 December 1942
How Col. Leslie Groves, builder of the Pentagon, took command of the Manhattan Project in September 1942 and won its priority, land…
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From Fission to the Einstein Letter: How the Atomic Bomb Began, 1938–1942
How a barium puzzle in a Berlin laboratory became an American Army project in under four years: Hahn, Meitner and Frisch, Szilard’s…