Salt Wells Pilot Plant in August 1946. These are the machining buildings. The heavy walls and earth-filled berms protect adjacent structures from explosions.
The Salt Wells Pilot Plant was a facility established by the Manhattan Project at the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) at Inyokern, California, where non-nuclear explosive components of nuclear weapons were manufactured. The first explosives were melted, mixed and poured on 25 July 1945. Between 1945 and 1954, it manufactured explosive components of the Fat Man, Mark 4, Mark 5 and Mark 12 nuclear bombs. The Salt Wells Pilot Plant also helped design, equip, and train workers for the Burlington AEC Plant in Iowa and the Pantex Plant in Texas. The Salt Wells Pilot Plant closed on 30 June 1954.
By late 1944, rocket development and testing work began to taper off, and production models started to reach the Navy and USAAF in quantity. The director of the OSRD, Vannevar Bush, saw an opportunity to use some of the expertise at Caltech on another secret wartime project he was involved with, the Manhattan Project. Bush arranged for Charles C. Lauritsen, the head of the rocket team at Caltech, to visit the Los Alamos Laboratory, and meet with the project director, Major GeneralLeslie R. Groves, Jr., the laboratory director, Robert Oppenheimer, and senior scientists.[3]
Oppenheimer and Lauritsen knew each other well, as Oppenheimer had worked at Caltech before the war.[4] In addition to its scientists, Caltech also possessed an experienced procurement team, headed by Trevor Gardner. This group worked closely with its counterpart at Los Alamos, which was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Robert W. Lockridge.[3] All the work done at NOTS on behalf of the Manhattan Project came under the codename Project Camel. The name is said to have come from a remark by a Los Alamos scientist that once a camel (meaning Caltech) gets its nose under a tent flap it is hard to dislodge.[4]
The Los Alamos Laboratory was engaged in the development of an implosion-type nuclear weapon, codenamed Fat Man.[5] This used explosive lenses to focus an explosion onto a spherical shape using a combination of both slow and fast high explosives. The design of lenses that detonated with the proper shape and velocity turned out to be slow, difficult and frustrating.[6] Various explosives were tested before settling on composition B as the fast explosive and baratol as the slow explosive.[7] The final design resembled a soccer ball, with 20 hexagonal and 12 pentagonal lenses, each weighing about 80 pounds (36kg).[8]
The explosive lenses required by the Fat Man had to be fabricated. A small explosive plant was established at Los Alamos known as Site S, as it was a former sawmill. Groves was appalled at the work practices and safety at Site S, and considered it only a matter of time before it blew up. Graves expressed his concerns about Site S to Captain William S. (Deak) Parsons,[9] a Navy officer who was in charge of O (for ordnance) Division at Los Alamos.[10] Parsons recommended establishing another explosives plant. While Site S had the capacity to produce enough explosive lenses for one or two bombs per month, more might be required.[9]
Parsons suggested that NOTS might be a suitable location. It was remote and easy to secure,[9] and Caltech had experience with pilot plants, such as the ones at Eaton Canyon and China Lake, where rocket propellants were manufactured.[11] Groves had some misgivings about this, because he thought that the Navy might err too far on the side of workplace safety when time was of the utmost importance.[9]
Construction
On 1 January 1945, Groves and Parsons flew to Pasadena, California, where they met with Lauritsen and Bruce Sage, who had built the China Lake Pilot Plant where the rockets were made, and it was agreed that Caltech would build and operate the pilot plant for the manufacture of the non-nuclear explosives used in the atomic bomb. Groves wanted the plant working within 100 days to meet the expected demand in the months to come.[12]
The boiler plant and cooling towers. The Salt Wells Pilot Plant required large volumes of water at various temperatures.
A site was chosen in the Salt Wells Valley. The cost of the plant and its equipment were estimated at $13 million.[12] Sage was in overall charge, with particular responsibility for planning, administration and the approval of special equipment. William Lacey was in charge of safety; Paul A. Longwell, a chemical engineer, of technical aspects; and Palmer Sabin was chief architect.[13] The firm of Holmes and Narver were chosen as architect-engineers, and Haddock Engineers as the construction contractor. Complicating the construction program was the fact that Los Alamos had not finalized what processes would be used. [12] Of particular concern was whether they would use casting or hot pressing with the explosives. For a time, work proceeded so as to accommodate either process, but ultimately a decision was required. Lauritsen pushed for a decision, and in April it was decided to use the melting and casting method.[13]
Work commenced on 80 buildings, 52 of them permanent.[12] To meet the deadline, construction was carried out around the clock. Equipping the plants involved its own challenges. As soon as specifications were drawn up for certain items, the design group would place orders for them. Some facilities had to be fabricated for the purpose. Some items were hard to locate, while others were in short supply in the wartime economy. The Manhattan Project's overriding priority overcame this problem. In some cases, the Army had representatives at the factories where items were made who designated them for use by the Manhattan Project and took possession of them as they came off the assembly line.[14] The molds, which needed to be surrounded by cooling water coils, proved difficult to fabricate, and went through several design changes. The melting kettles required stainless steel mixing blades, cooling jackets and tilting supports. Since each held enough high explosive to level a building, they were operated remotely, behind thick concrete walls.[14]
Groves felt that his fears about excessive safety were realized; reinforced concrete structures, barricades, blast proof doors, deluge systems and electrical shielding all drove up costs.[14] In the end, the Salt wells Pilot Plant was completed and equipped for $16,500,000.[15] The first explosives were melted, mixed and poured on 25 July 1945, missing the 100-day deadline by 15 days.[14]
Operations
The end of the war in August 1945 did not immediately affect operations at the Salt Wells Pilot Plant. Indeed, the process chosen for manufacturing the explosives, that of melting and casting, more or less mandated that operations continue, as it was undesirable to allow a full kettle of high explosive to freeze solid. There were administrative changes, however.[16] On 6 August 1945, Sage proposed that Salt Wells and China Lake Pilot Plants be placed under a single administration. Sage was the only candidate for the administrator position, and this change was implemented with the concurrence of both the Manhattan Project and the Bureau of Ordnance.[17] Another major change was that all civilian staff were transferred from Caltech to the United States federal civil service in October 1945. All employees of the Salt Wells Pilot Plant, whether military or civilian, had to hold Q clearances.[16]
Production at Site S ceased in late 1945 due to the cold weather. By the time it became warmer, the Los Alamos Laboratory had lost so many staff that routine manufacture of explosive lenses would have unacceptably hindered casting of explosives for experimental purposes.[18] All work was then done at Salt Wells.[19] The last construction work was completed in January 1946, and all equipment was installed and working by May 1946, by which time the plant had been in operation for several months. Work was initially dogged by an unacceptably large number of defects in the form of cracks or imperfections in the explosive blocks. The core of the problem was that the techniques used at Los Alamos did not scale to a production site, so different methods were required. Special instrumentation was devised by Caltech's Ira Bowen to assess the quality of the explosive blocks.[17]
In 1945, 120 prefabricated housing units had been hurriedly erected to provide accommodation for the work force. Rent was $15 for a furnished one-bedroom unit, $19 for a two-bedroom unit and $23 for a three-bedroom unit. Despite their temporary nature, these units were retained, and remained occupied until 1961.[16] The influx of new employees called for more accommodation, and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which took over from the Manhattan Project on 1 January 1947,[20] spent $3.252 million on 380 sets of family quarters, streets, electricity, sewers, mains water, and a small school, which was named after Groves, that opened in 1948.[17]
Improved techniques and facilities allowed the plant, which operated on a 48-hour week, with the occasional 51- and 54-hour week, to triple its output in 1947. By 1949, the pilot plant employed over 700 people.[17] The lenses were initially shipped by rail, but this was inconvenient because their high security classification required armed guards. This was therefore replaced by an air transport route, with the lenses being flown in C-54 aircraft based at Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base. On two occasions, C-54s loaded with explosives were struck by lightning, but no damage to the plane, the crew or the explosives resulted.[21]
As production increased, the advantages of additional plants became obvious. Brigadier General James McCormack, the AEC Director of Military Application,[22] had his staff investigate World War II ordnance installations, looking for ones that could be converted to use as an additional plants.[23] One was selected at Burlington, Iowa, which became the Burlington AEC Plant. The Salt Wells Pilot Plant helped design, equip, and train workers for the new plant,[24] which became operational in 1949.[25] Negotiations began for land, and plans and designs were made, for a new, larger still, plant at Chillicothe, Ohio, but it was decided not to proceed with building it. Another facility was established at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, which became operational in 1953. Once again, the staff at the Salt Wells Pilot Plant helped establish the new plant.[24]
While the introduction of the Mark 4 nuclear bomb to replace the Fat Man (the Mark 3) in 1949 caused few problems, that of the Mark 5 nuclear bomb in 1951 required extensive re-tooling. The Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and Salt Wells Pilot Plant staffs agreed to adopt direct machining of the explosive components. While this was known to generate additional heat, tests at both sites had been conducted without an explosive accident. Further re-tooling was required for the Mark 12 nuclear bomb explosives, which the Salt Wells Pilot Plant began manufacturing in 1953. It also began tooling up for the Mark 13 nuclear bomb.[26]
In January 1954, the AEC informed the Salt Well Pilot Plant staff that the plant would be closed. The Salt Wells Pilot Plant had a higher unit cost than Burlington or Pantex, largely because its isolation required more expenditure on overhead and community costs. About a quarter of the 100 scientists and engineers accepted other jobs at NOTS. Others went to Picatinny Arsenal and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The plant closed on 30 June 1954.[27]
Estimated final cost of the Salt Wells Pilot Plant[15]
Item
cost
Original construction
$15,000,000
Original plant equipment
$1,500,000
Additions, including equipment
$8,500,000
Operations, including salaries, raw materials and overhead
$40,000,000
Community facilities, including housing, schools, air strips and utilities
"Fat Man" was the codename for the type of nuclear weapon the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. It was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from the Hanford Site, and was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.
Little Boy was the name of the type of atomic bomb used in the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. The bomb was dropped by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group, and Captain Robert A. Lewis. It exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ) and caused widespread death and destruction throughout the city. The Hiroshima bombing was the second nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test.
The Manhattan Project was a program of research and development undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and with support from Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs. The Army component was designated the Manhattan District, as its first headquarters were in Manhattan; the name gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. The project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys. The Manhattan Project grew rapidly and employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak and cost nearly US$2 billion. Over 80 percent of the cost was for building and operating the plants that produced the fissile material for the weapons. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. MWT on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, nicknamed the "gadget", of the same design as the Fat Man bomb later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Concerns about whether the complex Fat Man design would work led to a decision to conduct the first nuclear test. The code name "Trinity" was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, inspired by the poetry of John Donne.
Cyril Stanley Smith was a British metallurgist and historian of science. He is most famous for his work on the Manhattan Project where he was responsible for the production of fissionable metals. A graduate of the University of Birmingham and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Smith worked for many years as a research metallurgist at the American Brass Company. During World War II he worked in the Chemical-Metallurgical Division of the Los Alamos Laboratory, where he purified, cast and shaped uranium-235 and plutonium, a metal hitherto available only in microgram amounts, and whose properties were largely unknown. After the war he served on the Atomic Energy Commission's influential General Advisory Committee, and the President's Science Advisory Committee.
William Sterling Parsons was an American naval officer who worked as an ordnance expert on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He is best known for being the weaponeer on the Enola Gay, the aircraft which dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. To avoid the possibility of a nuclear explosion if the aircraft crashed and burned on takeoff, he decided to arm the bomb in flight. While the aircraft was en route to Hiroshima, Parsons climbed into the cramped and dark bomb bay, and inserted the powder charge and detonator. He was awarded the Silver Star for his part in the mission.
Norris Edwin Bradbury, was an American physicist who served as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory for 25 years from 1945 to 1970. He succeeded Robert Oppenheimer, who personally chose Bradbury for the position of director after working closely with him on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Bradbury was in charge of the final assembly of "the Gadget", detonated in July 1945 for the Trinity test.
Robert Frederick Christy was a Canadian-American theoretical physicist and later astrophysicist who was one of the last surviving people to have worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He briefly served as acting president of California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS) China Lake is a large military installation in California that supports the research, testing and evaluation programs of the United States Navy. It is part of Navy Region Southwest under Commander, Navy Installations Command, and was originally known as Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS).
Seth Henry Neddermeyer was an American physicist who co-discovered the muon, and later championed the implosion-type nuclear weapon while working on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.
George Bohdanovych Kistiakowsky was a Ukrainian-American physical chemistry professor at Harvard who participated in the Manhattan Project and later served as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Science Advisor.
Robert Fox Bacher was an American nuclear physicist and one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project. Born in Loudonville, Ohio, Bacher obtained his undergraduate degree and doctorate from the University of Michigan, writing his 1930 doctoral thesis under the supervision of Samuel Goudsmit on the Zeeman effect of the hyperfine structure of atomic levels. After graduate work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he accepted a job at Columbia University. In 1935 he accepted an offer from Hans Bethe to work with him at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It was there that Bacher collaborated with Bethe on his book Nuclear Physics. A: Stationary States of Nuclei (1936), the first of three books that would become known as the "Bethe Bible".
The Manhattan Project was a research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The Army component of the project was designated the Manhattan District; "Manhattan" gradually became the codename for the entire project. Along the way, the project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys. The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion. Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and producing the fissionable materials, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons.
Charles Christian Lauritsen was a Danish/American physicist.
Pumpkin bombs were conventional aerial bombs developed by the Manhattan Project and used by the United States Army Air Forces against Japan during World War II. It was a close replication of the Fat Man plutonium bomb with the same ballistic and handling characteristics, but it used non-nuclear conventional high explosives. It was mainly used for testing and training purposes, which included combat missions flown with pumpkin bombs by the 509th Composite Group. The name "pumpkin bomb" was the term used in official documents from the large, fat ellipsoidal shape of the munition casing instead of the more usual cylindrical shape of other bombs, intended to enclose the Fat Man's spherical "physics package".
The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP) was a United States military agency responsible for those aspects of nuclear weapons remaining under military control after the Manhattan Project was succeeded by the Atomic Energy Commission on 1 January 1947. These responsibilities included the maintenance, storage, surveillance, security and handling of nuclear weapons, as well as supporting nuclear testing. The AFSWP was a joint organization, staffed by the United States Army, United States Navy and United States Air Force; its chief was supported by deputies from the other two services. Major General Leslie R. Groves, the former head of the Manhattan Project, was its first chief.
Rear Admiral Sherman E. Burroughs, Jr. was a senior officer in the United States Navy, and the first commander of the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake originally known as the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS).
Project Camel encompassed the work performed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in support of the Manhattan Project during World War II. These activities included the development of detonators and other equipment, testing of bomb shapes dropped from Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers, and the Salt Wells Pilot Plant, where explosive components of nuclear weapons were manufactured.
Britain initiated the first research project to design an atomic bomb in 1941. Building on this work, Britain prompted the United States to recognise how important this type of research was, helped the U.S. to start the Manhattan Project in 1942, and supplied crucial expertise and materials that contributed to the project's successful completion in time to influence the end of the Second World War.
The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret laboratory established by the Manhattan Project and operated by the University of California during World War II. Its mission was to design and build the first atomic bombs. Robert Oppenheimer was its first director, serving from 1943 to December 1945, when he was succeeded by Norris Bradbury. In order to enable scientists to freely discuss their work while preserving security, the laboratory was located on the Pajarito Plateau in Northern New Mexico. The wartime laboratory occupied buildings that had once been part of the Los Alamos Ranch School.
References
Gerrard-Gough, J. D.; Christman, Albert B. (1978). The Grand Experiment at Inyokern. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. OCLC251693280.
Hewlett, Richard G.; Duncan, Francis (1969). Atomic Shield, 1947–1952(PDF). A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN0-520-07187-5. OCLC3717478. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
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