The Birth of the Manhattan Project - WW2 Special

When nuclear fission was discovered, scientists theorized if it could be used in an atom bomb. Thus, American Army sets up one of the biggest research projects in history: The Manhattan Project.
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Between 2 Wars: • Between 2 Wars
Source list: bit.ly/WW2sources
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Miki Cackowski, Daniel Weiss & Eastory ( / eastory )
Colorizations by:
Daniel Weiss
Norman Stewart - oldtimesincolo...
Mikołaj Uchman
Sources:
Picture of Fritz Strassmann, credit: Hanne Zapp-Berghauser, courtesy Irmgard Strassmann
Core fission by Stefan-Xp commons.wikime...
from the Noun Project: Plunger TNT by Creaticca Creative Agency
Chicago Pile-1 team, © Copyright Triad National Security, LLC. All Rights Reserved
Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Howard Harper-Barnes - London
Johannes Bornlof - The Inspector 4
Fabien Tell - Other Sides of Glory
Reynard Seidel - Deflection
Phoenix Tail - At the Front
Bonnie Grace - Imperious
Johannes Bornlof - Death And Glory 3
Archive by Screenocean/Reuters www.screenocea....
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

[@WorldWarTwo]

Imagine a world where this super-weapon that the Americans working at the manhattan Project are attempting to create, exists. Imagine that not just the Americans have them, but that their biggest enemy have them too -and that they're attempting to build launching sites just off the coast of the USA. Stop imagining, because this will happen. You can watch all about it in our day-by-day coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis: kzbin.info/aero/PLrG5J-K5AYAWbzTXiTzPEFQHLoozkqchz

[@stoopidphersun7436]

This "A-bomb" project will surely be a waste! Even if they do it, by that time the axis will have certainly have won!

[@fabriziomangione3231]

10:30 "Enrico come on! The pasta is getting cold, shut that damn thing off already!" And so Chicago was saved.

[@isilder]

@@julianshepherd2038 yes. Its like Davinci as the inventor of the helicopter. szilard draws a picture Einstein agrees with it and notifies Roosevelt. But its alloy tubes who does the investigations and measurements to really lock in the details of bomb made of U235 or of the plutonium isotope....

[@MartinCHorowitz]

Some missing info Leo Szilard was thing about the Atomic bomb in one HG Wells books, and realized that the math for chain reaction might actually work, that is when he decided to contact Einstien. While Most of the Inventions in HG Well's books haven't come true, the book things to come, provided a scary preview of the WWII battlefield.

[@PhillyPhanVinny]

I love the history of the Manhattan project almost as much as the history of the the Apollo missions (the US missions to land the first humans on the moon). They show what humans can do what nations put large efforts into important tasks. Both of those missions are probably the greatest accomplishments ever by the human species. I can't think of a accomplishment greater then the splitting of the atom which allowed the creation of nuclear energy and nuclear bombs (which have led to the most peaceful period of time in human history which so many people forget when thinking about nukes). And the accomplishment of creating a spacecraft capable of taking humans off of Earth over to the moon, landing them there and then having the ability to take them back to Earth safely is also a insane human accomplishment which is why Neal Armstrong said "One small step for A man and one giant leap for MANKIND". Armstrong says he actually said "one small step for A man" and not one small step for man. NASA said that part of the quote may have not been recorded by the audio equipment but they are of the opinion that he didn't include "A" in there. There are 2 other things I want to add for the future when talking about the Manhattan project. The first thing which bothers me the most is Oppenheimer's quote he says he said after the first nuke worked which was: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. But he didn't actually say that when you look at the historical evidence or what people there including his brother Frank said happened. His Oppenheimer's brother Frank who was also working on the Manhattan project was standing next to his brother Robert during the first test. After the bomb went off successfully Frank as well as other witnesses said the 2 brothers started hugging each other while jumping up and down repeatedly saying "IT WORKED! IT WORKED! IT WORKED!!!" This was the type of emotion that according to the history of the official Manhattan project that all of the witnesses of the first nuke emoted. And that makes complete sense. They didn't know at the time what the opinions of using nukes in the future would be and they thought they had just created the weapon that would end the most deadly war in human history (which they did do). They were also of course happy about completing one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. Oppenheimer didn't start saying the famous quote he has of “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” until the 50's. He started saying that then because many scientists took a negative attitude towards the scientists who worked on the creation of the first nuclear bomb. He didn't care about their opinions at first but he did start to care after he was kicked out of the US nuclear research projects for having a large number of communist links and hiring lots of communist scientists with many being or being highly suspected of being spies for the USSR. And then the last thing I want to add is how large the Manhattan project actually was. So many people today don't understand how large it was because they just look at the cost the US spent on it at the time and then upscale that cost with inflation to get a amount they think it cost. But looking at how large the Manhattan project was just by cost is not a good or accurate way of viewing it's scale. The amount of "scientists" working on the Manhattan project was insane. Depending on who you want to count as a scientist there were 10-20k scientists who worked on the Manhattan project. In addition to that there were 10s of thousands of other highly skilled people who brought unique skills to the project that greatly helped in the completing of the project in time for the bombs to be used on Japan. And then in addition to that there were more then 100k other people working on the Manhattan project in other roles. I've heard it said in a few sources that the US had more scientists working on the Manhattan project then all of the USSR had within the whole nation (again this comes down to who you count as a scientist). It truly shocked the other nations of the world that the US was able to complete the Manhattan project by 1945 with multiple bombs available. All other nations scientists (the UK included) concluded that there was not chance they would be able to complete their project for a nuclear weapon before the end of the war. Which is why all of the other nations stopped investing so much into their nuclear programs during the war. They concluded they would be better off having their scientists working on programs that would either help them win the war or win the war faster.

[@Duke_of_Lorraine]

"Fermi is convinced the reaction can be stopped, before it runs out of control" Comrade Dyatlov : press X to doubt

[@GeorgeSemel]

You beat me to the cheap shot at the Russians !!!! My thoughts exactly! Graphite Pile and some rods, what could go wrong?

[@davidwright7193]

Fermi’s pile didn’t have an AZ5 button but it did have a man with an axe to cut a rope holding control rods out of the core.

[@noahsmith7732]

Accidentally pressed AZ5 and blows up

[@Duke_of_Lorraine]

@@davidwright7193 simple, but reliable

[@isilder]

@@Duke_of_Lorraine and if the man burns,the rooe6 burns too. Failsafe !

[@folumb]

Pearl Harbor is December 1941 and the Manhattan Project launches 9 months after this. I'm astonished by the speed and foresight they had about how important this was

[@frankendragon5442]

My uncle was in the Navy during WWII. While he never spoke about it, he was assigned to "special materials handling" at the University of Chicago.

[@666Blaine]

The US Navy was actually shut out of the Manhattan Project. They were, however, running their own program to design a small reactor for submarines. (The US Army went out of their way to specify that the US Navy should have nothing to do with the bomb )

[@marshalleubanks2454]

Fermi hired the U. of Chicago football team and other UC jocks to carry and stack the graphite bricks, as they were heavy. Everyone working on building the pile would go home at the end of the day looking like coal miners, and they weren't allowed to tell their spouses why they were getting so dirty.

[@crazygame2724]

My Dad work for Dupont in 1942 through January 1945. He worked for the Manhatten District at Hanford Washington

[@c1ph3rpunk]

@@marshalleubanks2454 there are parts of that side of the campus, near the old squash court, that are still closed off due to radiation danger. Years back I trudged over there, using the old steam tunnels, with one of the network folks and we came across a heavy door marked “NO ENTRY” and had the radioactive symbol on it. Was told by the engineer that was the access door to the pile where they lugged all the materials in. There are also a series of steam tunnels that connect UC down Lake Shore drive, supposedly all the way to Soldier Field, where they stored the raw materials and waste. I never made it that far, the one I took ended around 57th Dr under the museum.

[@muhchung]

@@marshalleubanks2454 President Hutchinson had already abolished football team and fraternities then.

[@AtheistPirate]

The Manhattan Project quite literally built the Tri-Cities (Kennewick, Richland, and Pasco) and gave it a distinct regional identity that persists to this day. The Hanford Nuclear Site--a short drive away from my childhood home (around 20 minutes or so)--has been a huge regional employer even after its decommissioning (the ongoing cleanup is its own can of worms). My late grandfather worked at the Fast Flux Test Facility as a chemical engineer, and you can hardly take a step without meeting someone who either works at Hanford (or PNNL) or knows someone who does. All that said, thank you for covering this fascinating bit of history. I look forward to more of the same.

[@williamevans5782]

Good script, delicate subject, with a lot of "hear-say" in the historical record. Good job!

[@buckhorncortez]

Not if you read the correct books and then make up your own mind from what you've read.

[@nmm5214]

On a sidenote Albert Einstein said "I do not know with what kind of weapons WWIII would be led but the fourth WW would be led with sticks and stones"

[@jjeherrera]

Einstein gave too little credit to human ingenuity. There might also be bows and arrows.

[@philip8498]

which is really interesting to me. if our technology and resources are so limited that all we can use for warfare are sticks and stones, how will we have a society interconnected enough to have a real world war where nations all over the earth are participating. lets be honest, if pen and paper is the pinnacle of communication then how will we even be able to declare a war on a nation a couple thousand kilometers away. and if wooden sailingships are all we got then how will we ever be able to fight someone who isnt on the same continent as us?

[@sarahgreiner2694]

My Granddad (dad's side) worked on testing the uranium for this project.

[@mrgunn2726]

The speed and size of the infrastructure built to support the Manhattan Project was nothing short of a world wonder. The new sciences and engineering required be developed was mind boggling.

[@richdobbs6595]

At the University of Minnesota in 1979 we had a chemical engineering unit operations lab session where we irradiate samples using a reactor that was of the same design as the Chicago pile, but a fraction of the size possible to achieve criticality. My undergraduate advisor, Herbert Isbin, shocked me one day when he just handed me a fuel can of the same kind as used in the pile. AFAIK, this was un-enriched natural uranium, so pretty tame stuff.

[@brianhum8765]

Love the video!! The whole race to nuclear power during the war involving commandos, fjords in Scandinavia, construction projects on a scale rarely ever seen, etc. is a great study.

[@QuizmasterLaw]

I'm just a pipefitter, looking for tube alloys

[@Bubbles47]

Did you guys change the camera? Or something during the rendering of the video? This video looks very much better than previous ones, well done anyway

[@shawnr771]

Vaneevar Bush was also later influential in 1945 when he wrote a speech called "As We May Think". In this speech he speaks about the level of scientific cooperation achieved during the war years and theoretically describes an information sharing system based. This system would use links to relevant information in other people's work. In 1962 Tim Berners Lee would use parts of this speech as inspiration to develop the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the language that makes links on the internet function.

[@cogman62]

It was an essay in The Atlantic in July 1945: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/

[@shawnr771]

@@cogman62 yes. I just knew about it.

[@bryanguzik]

"Fermi convinced he can stop, etc". Sounds alot more questionable/nerve-wracking than it is. Pretty straightforward & he was just fine in his certainty.

[@terryh1451]

We needed your patented “end of episode pause” to be a bit longer. Loved the episode.

[@_vallee_5190]

It's the chain reaction that causes a nuclear explosion, you need a fissile state and you need a self sustaining nuclear reaction to get an explosion, as in you no longer need to bombard any more atoms with neutrons and the reaction will explode, you need yellowcake for this. Splitting an individual atom will not cause a nuclear reaction in fact an immense amount of Uranium atoms are currently decaying into lighter atoms currently.

[@Ass_of_Amalek]

you need yellow cake in special CIA napkins don't drop that s***

[@alphamikeomega5728]

Uranium(-235) in pure enough form for a chain reaction does not occur naturally. As well as this, you need a moderator to slow the neutrons so they have the right amount of energy. (This is why Fermi used graphite.) These reasons are why chain reactions don't occur naturally in uranium deposits.

[@davidwright7193]

@@alphamikeomega5728 There have been self-sustaining naturally occurring nuclear reactions within Uranium deposits in the past. This doesn’t happen today because too much of the U235 has decayed so you no longer get the critical density in natural deposits even if moderators are present. For reactor fuel you only need a doubling of natural U235 levels. Enrichment to 4 or 5% is sufficient. Yellow cake is part of the chemical refining of uranium from its ores. If the reaction in the Fermi pile had been allowed to continue it wouldn’t have exploded, the uranium was too distributed for that, it would have become molten and eventually caused major Chernobyl like problems because there was no heat sink. To build a bomb is a much tougher problem as you need to keep the critical mass together long enough for the chain reaction to occur and don’t have the moderator present in the same amounts hence you need more fuel, much higher enrichment, neutron reflectors etc.

[@davidwright7193]

@@alphamikeomega5728 There have been self-sustaining naturally occurring nuclear reactions within Uranium deposits in the past. This doesn’t happen today because too much of the U235 has decayed so you no longer get the critical density in natural deposits even if moderators are present. For reactor fuel you only need a doubling of natural U235 levels. Enrichment to 4 or 5% is sufficient. Yellow cake is part of the chemical refining of uranium from its ores. If the reaction in the Fermi pile had been allowed to continue it wouldn’t have exploded, the uranium was too distributed for that, it would have become molten and eventually caused major Chernobyl like problems because there was no heat sink. To build a bomb is a much tougher problem as you need to keep the critical mass together long enough for the chain reaction to occur and don’t have the moderator present in the same amounts hence you need more fuel, much higher enrichment, neutron reflectors etc.

[@mgway4661]

Please join us in the parlor where we will be serving white cake

[@poetasintierra]

Excellent episode! Congrats! I have watched it twice... so far

[@Dave_Sisson]

No mention of *Tube Alloys* the code name for the British program which was merged into the Manhattan Project?

[@Ass_of_Amalek]

love that name

[@Southsideindy]

I've talked about the Tube Alloys program a few times in the regular weekly episodes, and Britain's progress, and how it was way way behind by 1942. I'll also cover the Quebec Agreement and the cooperation and also lack of cooperation between British and American Scientists, but that's really not until 1943; this is just the beginning of the project to the nuclear pile. But Tube Alloys was not really merged into the Manhattan Project, though, it was subsumed by it- again, after the Quebec Agreement.

[@Israel_aXNyYWVs]

@@Southsideindy TIL that your name is Indiana

[@davidwright7193]

He did mention the Maud report with its critical estimate of the neutron absorption cross-section. Prior to that the estimate was 3 or 4 orders of magnitude different (lower?) giving a critical mass of 1-10 tonnes of enriched uranium required. That wasn’t practical in the 40’s as the bomb would be too heavy to deliver by air and more importantly there was no way to get that much fissile material. However the kg or so suggested by the new estimate was doable with effort. Even with the development of centrifuge cascades the US couldn’t have built a bomb before about 53 or 54 on the original estimate. This was the main reason the Germans stopped work on the bomb they didn’t think they could enrich the required amount of uranium.

[@sirmeowthelibrarycat]

@@julianshepherd2038 😡 Are you a comedian to write such a nasty comment? I am English/British and my homeland was devastated by the Second World War, including my home city of London. My late mother, a munitions worker building aircraft narrowly escaped death by not returning to her lodgings one night but staying with other workers elsewhere. The house where she should have been was destroyed by a parachute bomb. Thus I would not be here. So think more carefully before posting such an offensive comment. Really!

[@snowinthepark1620]

9:32 also the invention of Kerplunk.

[@bingobongo1615]

Oh Fermi also died from cancer… seems to be a common theme among nuclear physicists

[@talatsonsurong3238]

This is the best episode yet.

[@brokenbridge6316]

Nicely done video.

[@tommonk7651]

One of the best biographies you are likely ever to read is "American Prometheus", the biography of Robert Oppenheimer. It's a great read about a fascinating man.

[@Corialtavi]

I remember buying a book by Ernest Rutherford in a charity shop. I think it was dated 1902 or 3 maybe 07. It's a long time ago when I had it. It was the easiest book to read on nuclear power. I suppose because at this time they didn't know what they were looking at and had not made up technical names for processes. It was just we did this and this happened. Even with my rudimentary knowledge of nuclear fusion I could follow it. No idea where that book went, would love to read it again.

[@viliussmproductions]

Great episode. I hope to see more on the Mannhattan project.

[@bradhernlem1548]

Chicago Pile-1 did not use enriched uranium. It used natural uranium, just like the Hanford reactors that were built to produce plutonium.

[@somePYROMANIAC]

Me who has see Chernobyl "THERE WAS GRAPHITE ON THE GROUND?"

[@dtaylor10chuckufarle]

Beautiful explained, mates!

[@pnutz_2]

My favourite technology. Quick, before the UN bans them!

[@diarradunlap9337]

Civ4 reference?

[@Paerigos]

like anyone who has them care one zilch what UN says...

[@pnutz_2]

@@Paerigos 5 of them hold the permanent seats on the security council so they *are* what the UN says in some regard

[@robertoler3795]

superb

[@friendhui4320]

Awesome totally awesome 😎

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thank you!

[@skidmo]

Indy putting Journey's "Chain Reaction" in my head: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jqiXcomVd8p4aJY

[@stedyon]

There was RADAR before the war you mean microwave radar I think

[@hazardousmaterial5492]

Good thing those control rods aren't graphite tipped, if you know what i mean

[@SKINWALKER]

| Dr. Oppenheimer even wrote to POTUS to not include Einstein anywhere near the project.

[@matthewg.305]

Does anyone have any additional information on how scientists got to the selection of uranium?

[@buckhorncortez]

It has to do with the atomic weight of the element and only specific elements can fission. Uranium, plutonium, and thorium are the elements that can be found or created in great enough quantity to make supercritical mass.

[@jonmcgee6987]

Just imagine them trying that in Chicago today and if it got out of control.It might actually improve things there. Except for the mayor since it's already an undead obscenity.

[@ernestolombardo5811]

1. Could it be that nazis drained crucial volume from the intellectual pool they could draw from by making so many top physicists flee to the United States in the 1930s? 2. Indy: That tie is the bee's tits!

[@Explosivefox109]

Props for the super-scientific diagrams 😆😆😆😆😆😆🇦🇺

[@j.m.f5451]

Good job building tension with that story-telling, even though I was already pretty certain that nobody blew up Chicago in the 1940's.

[@bangscutter]

Those were the days when you could literally build a doomsday device in an university basement in the middle of a large city, without occupational health and safety breathing down your neck.

[@exeggcutertimur6091]

A real life Dr. Evil 'welcome to my underground lair' moment for sure. Minus the cartoonish incompetence of course.

[@sirmeowthelibrarycat]

🤔 Indeed - who needs those interfering busybodies trying to save workers from dangerous forms of employment . . . ? Just a passing thought . . . !

[@TheEvertw]

Some scientists did die due to radiation poisoning in the course of the Manhattan Project...

[@johnhasley8008]

After they got the controlled reaction started (and presumably stopped) they went next door (or close enough) and discussed the implications of what they had done. No guards on the door or any other security. There were only a few dozen people in the world who could understand what they were discussing.

[@mjbull5156]

China looks away and whistles nonchalantly.

[@danielnavarro537]

“I have become death, destroyers of worlds.”- Robert Oppenhiemer.

[@jjeherrera]

So melodramatic, wasn't he?

[@TheEvilmooseofdoom]

Do you use double quotes when quoting someone who was quoting someone?

[@lovablesnowman]

@@jjeherrera bit of a whiner all things considered

[@Conn30Mtenor]

"I know that you are, but what am I?" - Pee Wee Herman.

[@Sman7290]

"It's an ancient Hindu text, quoted by an American.

[@akshittripathi5403]

"WW2 gave a massive impulse to scientific military advances- " Well, if that isn't an understatement!

[@Rickinsf]

"If you want to gauge the advance of a civilization, look at their weapons...we put our all into killing each other," said my history prof a million years ago.

[@mikepette4422]

All wars do ww1 advanced ships and aircraft massively in 4 years

[@welshskies]

Yep, killed a lot of people too, most of them innocent civilians.

[@philip8498]

hopefully we are finally at a point where we dont need to slaughter each other in the millions just to speed up scientific advancement. that would be a great achievement.

[@GuyofRome]

The Axis powers gave the Allies the tools of their own destruction, in the form of their ex-scientists.

[@mikepette4422]

True they did and good thing. They had a lot of their own still in Germany, however, but those either never told the Nazis about the possibilities or if they did the Nazis just didn't grasp the importance and urgency which is a good thing. But when the best of them fled they lost a lot of the brainpower and those guys really understood it would take the US to and its endless resources do this right.

[@davidhimmelsbach557]

@@mikepette4422 Speer reported that the resources required totally amazed the Nazis -- as in he had no idea of where Nazi Germany could conjure up enough industrial support for a Nazi Bomb. Think about it, the Bomb took about 20% of the US war product. The B-29 took about 20%, Antibiotics took about 20%, the remaining 40% of the American out-put destroyed Germany and Japan. IT would've taken ~ 75% of Nazi Germany's war production to replicate the Manhattan Project. For starters, the Oak Ridge plant consumed about 20% of the US electrical grid -- all by itself. Germany simply could not dedicate such resources without shutting down its military engine.

[@michaeldowson6988]

The Manhattan Project also included researchers, uranium and heavy water from Canada, UK & France. Canada's first reactor attained critical mass a month after Japan surrendered, and declared the technology would not be used for weaponry a few month later.

[@merrygin]

To be fair, this topic would 100% deserve a whole miniseries by you guys. It ties in so much that happened before, during and after WW2 (up until today, certainly) and the story is positively riveting (and terrifying). I can recommend Richard Rhodes' "The making of the atom bomb" to anyone interested in this topic.

[@Bareego]

Wrote a similar comment. It's one of my favorite books. IIrc there was a tv series made by Canadian television but I recall it was very boring to me back then (compared to the book)

[@merrygin]

@@Bareego Yes, right?! Mine too. I didn't manage to read his other books yet, unfortunately. I imagine its hard to make a tv series out of it!

[@martingautreau5583]

definetly deservers a mini series

[@fractalmadness9253]

The movie already came out.

[@gianniverschueren870]

This tie is psychedelic. 4/5

[@Steeyuv]

And I have never seen Indy fiddle with it before!

[@saschat.6607]

I dare to say, it even radiates. I'll see myself out.

[@mirycreek]

Brings new meaning to bold paisley

[@stevecsghost372]

Most fans: Comes for neat military history. Me and this guy: "Indy's tie shall be judged yet again."

[@quietkiwi7572]

I look forward to more reviews in the future.

[@theemissary1313]

"They didn't know how far along German scientists were" That's why Operation Telemark was undertaken, because why take the chance?

[@Duke_of_Lorraine]

indeed. The V2 with a conventional warhead was an expensive joke, but putting a nuclear bomb on it would have been a nightmare.

[@kenobi90000]

@@Duke_of_Lorraine Yup, even a "near miss" on a city would still wipe out a good section of it, though as I understand it, the V2's inaccuracy still would've been too inaccurate to be usable as any kind of tactical battlefield weapon, even with a nuke.

[@Duke_of_Lorraine]

@@kenobi90000 electronics were too limited to make it tactical indeed, and Germany was not the leader in that anyway. But given its main redeeming quality that was ignoring the enemy air superiority, it could strike while it would have been a pointless suicide for a bomber.

[@sirmeowthelibrarycat]

@@Duke_of_Lorraine 🤔 You describe the V2 as an ‘expensive joke’? Tell that to those who lost their lives when a V2 struck Antwerp or London. None of them laughed at the ‘joke’ weapon which was capable of destroying entire streets of terraced houses in one explosion. Unlike the earlier V1 that could be shot down the V2 was impossible to challenge once launched. Travelling at supersonic speed there was no warning of its arrival until after the explosion. Truly a terror weapon even without a nuclear warhead.

[@Duke_of_Lorraine]

@@sirmeowthelibrarycat when you consider the price to build this rocket, yes, it's nearly pointless. Regular bombers could do much more damage, and with more accuracy. Explosive balloons also caused some civilian deaths, this doesn't mean it was a good weapon.

[@markmierzejewski9534]

It still boggles the mind that the development of the B-29 bomber cost more Then the Manhattan project

[@t5ruxlee210]

Crash programs are never cheap. The B-29 also had to be built in massive numbers to safeguard the atom bomb secret and possibly compensate for a failed atomic program. If a program involving a few dozen aircraft had been started as a top priority with huge spending any expert would have realized something did not add up. Even then, the postwar B-50 program was started to correct many B-29 "no time to fix, get it out the door", issues.

[@ivoivanov7407]

"Tens of millions dollars" is understatement... by a lot. Final cost is near $2B

[@lynnwood7205]

The two projects together cost more than one years Gross Domestic Product, this cost undertaken while fighting for the very survival of the Republic in what is becoming an ever expanding war across the world!!!

[@CarrotConsumer]

@@lynnwood7205 America wasn't fighting for survival.

[@lynnwood7205]

@@CarrotConsumer At the time they thought so.

[@ludvigmartinelle4780]

Good video, small note: The Chicago pile wouldn’t have blown up, just melted and become extremely radioactive.

[@shaider1982]

Yup, (spoiler alert)you'd have to compress the fissile material using a conventional explosion to create a nuke explosion.

[@markmierzejewski9534]

@@shaider1982 That was for " Fat Man " .. " Little boy " went with The "gun" assembly method. When the hollow uranium projectile was driven onto the target cylinder, a nuclear explosion resulted.

[@ab-lymphocite5464]

@@markmierzejewski9534 it was still highly compressed the gun was giving a little more than a love tap

[@georgf9279]

It wouldn't have blown up in the same way Chernobyl didn't blow up. Still not the kind of situation you would want in the middle of Chicago. Edit: Yes the pile was smaller then Chernobyl. Just in case someone starts to nitpick.

[@isilder]

But there may have been a way for all that to happen.. the graphite can burn, letting the fuel drop and condense... At Fukushima, there was an explosion where water and some metal generated hydrogen and then the hydrogen gas mixed into air and exploded. I know,fermi didnt use such reactive metals, but naybe if the carbon was burning... Un a rush they might have done something ill-considered, with unforeseen consequences...

[@hscollier]

The same technical information about the science of the atomic bomb that put me to sleep in high school has become very interesting through the TimeGhost way of presenting it. You bring history to life and make it relevant! Thank you!

[@dtaylor10chuckufarle]

Very well said.

[@jamescormack4669]

And here opens Pandora's box

[@Otokichi786]

Unlike the Maxim gun, this is a weapon that can't be used in wartime, once both sides have The Bomb.

[@moleratical1232]

@@Otokichi786 Oh it can be used in war time even if both sides have it. Let's hope it never is though.

[@mgway4661]

@@Otokichi786 it’s really only a matter of time

[@CzarOfMars]

Minor technical correction for those interested: at 8:30 indy mentions that graphite "moderates nuclear reactors". There's aconfusion here: graphite is indeed a moderator, but that makes the nuclear reaction *more* intense. What it moderates is the speed of the neutrons flying through the reactor: when neutrons are emitted by uranium splitting apart, they move too quickly and "miss" the other uranium atoms, thus preventing a chain reaction (obvs this is a simplification, the exact reason is wonky quantum mechanics I don't understand). By bumping into the graphite, neutrons slow down and therefore have a greater chance of triggering further fission events. The cadmium control rods mentioned later in the video are what is used to slow the reaction down, by absorbing neutrons and therefore removing them from play.

[@pelleas2681]

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer

[@kevinramsey417]

It haunted him for the rest of his life.

[@ashelyrudd2194]

First We Take Manhattan by Leonard Cohen, Look up what that song is about on wiki it's a supremacist song about Leonard Cohen's ethnic/religious group taking over other people's societies. "But our terrorists, Jesus, Freud, Marx, Einstein. The whole world is still quaking." "Our terrorists", who is "Our"? Who is the "We" in the title? It's Leonard's religious/ethnic group, " Jesus, Freud, Marx, Einstein" etc "First WE take Manhattan, then WE take Berlin"

[@Ass_of_Amalek]

Ashely Rudd what the duck 😳

[@ashelyrudd2194]

​@@Ass_of_Amalek yup

[@SlideRulePirate]

"My buddies and I got to home instead of bleeding out or getting blown to bits in the surf." - A whole bunch of Marines [probably]

[@Ashfielder]

“By 1942, several actors have nuclear weapons programs.” Jimmy Stewart and Fred Astaire will soon rule the world!

[@johnrettig1880]

@@timmyp34 OH HELL NO

[@vksasdgaming9472]

Jimmy Stewart was cunning enough to join US Air Force to get military support for his planned coup as evil dictator with mad scientist making nukes to him.

[@andrewwmacfadyen6958]

Nuclear Kerplunk !🤔

[@eedwardgrey2]

@@johnrettig1880 "Ladies and gentlemen we start bombing in five minutes"

[@TheJojoaruba52]

Good thing Fermi didn’t have a stroke as the critical mass was being achieved…”Should we shove in the rods now, Enrico? …Enrico…

[@F_Tim1961]

FYI Enrico was in the US mainly because his wife Laura was Jewish and there was a serious risk that the family would be persecuted for worse....TEF

[@eedwardgrey2]

@@F_Tim1961 Just imagine if that wasn;t the case.........and he would have stayed in Axis territory......

[@F_Tim1961]

@@eedwardgrey2 It is a worry as he was very pushy effective type of operator who got things done , without making people hate his guts - like Gen Groves for example. OTOH with science and engineering if you try to motivate people and their hearts aren't in it , you get very little progress and might even get sabotage. I wonder if EF would have done the experiment where he did it had he known just how risky the outcome was (he was probably concerned about the radiation aspect but only slightly) - I doubt of the thoughts of the pile glowing, heating up the graphite, it all catching fire and then the pile burning had occurred to him - bear in mind had that happened in the first few hrs, there would not have been many transuranics generated in the pile and basically burned U oxide and soot would have gone everywhere - a massive security issue but not the sort of health issue (except long term) that you'd imagine. TEF NzL

[@F_Tim1961]

@@eedwardgrey2 practically nothing would have happened on the Italian side as they were under resourced and I don't thing the German Nazis would have trusted them sufficiently to integrate them into the German program. The German thrust was in fact to get a reactor that could keep a submarine at see for six months or more at a time. Much easier said than done. If the Germans had say twenty such subs , competently crewed i could have turned the tide of the war as many submarines were spotted outward to the Atlantic (Bay of Biscay) and returning - and were knocked out. Subs that basically did not have to come and go , apart from crew and food and water issues would have made a massive difference to the German side.

[@MrWazzup96]

This special actually made me sit on the edge of my seat. Amazing how Indy can make physics so exciting!

[@matdrat]

(Oh what might have been) ...and so Fermi and his team blew up Chicago and humanity enters the nuclear age. They say his last words were, "Hey, it worked."

[@jjeherrera]

It wouldn't have blown up Chicago, but the neutron spike would have killed everyone present eventually, since they had no shielding, and the graphite would have caught fire, spreading radioactivity. It wouldn't have been nice anyway.

[@JustSomeCanuck]

If memory serves, as a backup there were 3 men standing on top (!!!!!) of Chicago Pile 1, ready to flood it with liquid cadmium in case the control rods failed to stop the chain reaction. Candidate for worst job in history?

[@Philip271828]

The Safety Control Rod AxeMen

[@buckhorncortez]

@@Philip271828 Yes - SCRAM.

[@thexalon]

Given that a couple of scientists died and several others got radiation poisoning "tickling the dragon's tail" in 1945 and 1946, there were perhaps more dangerous jobs.

[@kirbyculp3449]

Thomas Edison's x-ray headshot test subject. IIRC, he died of cancer. Yow. There is also a russian guy that was zapped in a super-collider.

[@isilder]

@@thexalon .. its the same job , they were tickling this baby dragon. Frische irradiated himself slightly with his own teenager dragon ( lady Godiva apparatus ) ... when his own body acted as a neutron mirror just enough to change 0.99999999999999999 ( equilibrium easily reached at not much power increase) to 1.00000000000000000 ... Critical..equilibrum power is on the dragon scale.

[@freetolook3727]

When they were developing the atomic bomb, one of the concerns was what if the chain reaction doesn't stop and ignites the atmosphere.

[@CK-nh7sv]

They also calculated that even atomic bombs don't even remotely have the power to do so.

[@Ass_of_Amalek]

that would have been one way to end the war...

[@f-35enjoyer59]

@@Ass_of_Amalek Can’t have a world war if you don’t have a world.

[@buckhorncortez]

Edward Teller brought up the idea, in 1942, that a nuclear bomb might cause enough heat to initiate a runaway fusion reaction in the atmosphere. It took Hans Bethe a couple of hours of calculations to prove that wouldn't happen. Teller then got Emil Konopinski to calculate whether it would be possible to cause fusion with the hydrogen in the atmosphere. Again, the answer was no, it was not possible.

[@ivoivanov7407]

Well, at the end Teller got it working... on a smaller scale.

[@gunman47]

Ah, the Manhattan Project. I'm sure a certain Gandhi will be interested in this project for his trigger happy Civilization games once he obtains the uranium..... When that happens: "OUR WORDS ARE BACKED WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"

[@ashelyrudd2194]

"“Xxxxxxx are as a rule uncivilised - the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals." - Gandhi

[@gunman47]

@@Rahulrao2576 It is a reference to the Nuclear Gandhi meme from the Civilization video game series, where due to a bug in the first Civilization game, the normally pacifist and peaceful Gandhi suddenly becomes extremely aggressive and use nuclear weapons heavily. Since then, this Nuclear Gandhi meme has carried on into Civilization V and VI as well. Wiki for you if you want to know more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi

[@vonskyme9133]

@@Rahulrao2576 it is a joke based on a game, nothing more. No insult to India (edit: or Ghandi, for that matter) is intended or in any way implied, although if one is not already familiar with the history of the joke it may appear that way.

[@axelpatrickb.pingol3228]

@@Rahulrao2576 It's called " Today I Learn". Rather than reject new facts, acknowledge it...

[@HellsCowBoy666]

@@Rahulrao2576 I’m pretty sure they are talking about the game Civilization. It had a bug where Gandhi had a low aggression level but if you lower it like you normally would with other world leader characters he becomes MEGA aggressive. At least I hope they are.

[@podemosurss8316]

A book that covers the Manhattan proyect from the viewpoint of one of the lead figures (later Nobel prize Richart P. Feynmann, at the time Richard P. Feynmann PhD) and which I recommend is the book "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynmann", which are his memoirs. He has a few chapters dedicated to the Manhattan proyect and the anecdotes he lived there, including how he accidentally invented programing while his team was thinking on how to use a bunch of mechanical computing machines they had received from IBM (basically they were machines that came on different classes, and could perform one and only one mathematical calculation, for instance they had a machine that made sums, another that made multiplications and another that reordenated data), on how he pranked the censors whenever writing letters back to his first wife (before her death during the war). He gives a lot of insight on how things are done from the viewpoint of a physics researcher.

[@jjeherrera]

Feynman's tale was funny and interesting, but I recommend "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Phillip Rhodes. That's a must for anyone interested in the development of the weapon. Then he wrote other books on the hydrogen bomb and what came next.

[@buckhorncortez]

@@jjeherrera The author's name is RICHARD Rhodes.

[@_Braised]

Is it just me or did the significance of Tube Alloys kinda get thrown under the bus in this one? Great analysis all the same though.

[@welshskies]

Yep, it's not just you.

[@Rihnoswirl]

Any chance that we’ll get an episode about Werner Heisenberg and the German atomic program one day?

[@jjeherrera]

There was already one in the "Ties and Spies" section.

[@Isometrix116]

It’s… uncertain :)

[@danielafreedman]

From what I have been able to gather Heisenberg was working on an atomic reactor to power submarines, and they had a bad accident with it. The bomb program was headed by Kurt Deibner and Hans Kammler. Deibner was the head scientist and Kammler was the SS commandant in charge of slave labor for project Reise or giant to create an atomic weapon. They successfully tested it on Oct. 11th 1944 on Roegen Island in the Baltic. Yes, they beat us by six months!

[@xmaniac99]

One can only wonder how history would have looked like if the Italian science council would not have denied Fermi's requested cyclotron funding (there are a lot of what-if moments here).

[@r.ladaria135]

I actually had a nightmare about that.

[@BigBoss-sm9xj]

@@r.ladaria135 wow it must have been a very interesting nightmare

[@r.ladaria135]

@@BigBoss-sm9xj Just like a press release, just scaring. I guess I need profesional help. :-)

[@mgway4661]

@@BigBoss-sm9xj so much olive oil and balsamic vinegar

[@marshalleubanks2454]

Probably no change, as Fermi left Italy in 1938 to escape new Italian racial laws that affected his Jewish wife, Laura Capon.

[@thanos_6.0]

Came back here after watching Oppenheimer

[@billythedog-309]

At the start of the war Britain was the most advanced nation in the development of nuclear power and, on the basis of an understanding between Churchill and Roosevelt that any bomb that was developed would be shared between the UK and the USA, all the British based nuclear scientists moved to North America to take part in the Manhattan Project. When Roosevelt died President Truman refused to honour this and atomic secrets were kept for the USA leaving Britain to have to develop it's own bomb.

[@nickdanger3802]

Operation Unthinkable: Churchill’s plan for World War Three media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/operation-unthinkable-churchills-plan-world-war-three/

[@DraigBlackCat]

Aye, the Tube Alloys project was 'hidden' amongst the Top Secret Chemical Weapons factory site at Rhydymwyn (near Mold) in N Wales.

[@nickdanger3802]

@@strongbrew9116 FDR authorized research in October 1939. Tube Alloys was authorized by Churchill so after 10 May 1940. What did Britain "give" to the USA in 1940 that it did not already have?

[@nickdanger3802]

@@strongbrew9116 So they had theory's. When was it determined Britain did not have the resources to build the bomb?

[@billythedog-309]

@@nickdanger3802 Yes, now l think about it, you're right and the fact that the President authorised research is much the same as saying the work was done. The USA did everything and the UK provided nothing, therefore any agreement to share atomic secrets was automatically null and void.

[@Psychonaut316]

A great deal of the uranium used leading up to this was mined in Canada, and refined in Port Hope, Ontario.

[@drjerry5389]

The truth about how the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings came to be has never been fully explained? Researchers have found that when the infamous Alan Dulles flew to the US embassy in Switzerland to negotiate with Germany in the end of the war (The Dulles family were supporters of Nazi Germany together with many well known Bankster and Industrialist) The lack of Uranium forced Alan Dulles who lived in the US embassy in Switzerland, to make a deal for letting many prominent Nazis escape to South-America in exchange for German Uranium! Some believe even Hitler escaped and that, this was part of the deal (But that is not proven). Operation Paperclip was one part of the deal.

[@matthewmcneany]

Enrico Fermi blowing up Chicago with a nuclear bomb in the middle of WW2 feels like an interesting alt history avenue of exploration.

[@joshy7759]

Oh, a few years and maybe a special about the Demon Core!

[@Ass_of_Amalek]

funny how there was a time when you could write the US president a letter about nuclear physics and he would understand and take appropriate action! :O

[@CrasusC]

Only if the author of the letter is a famous scientist.

[@axelpatrickb.pingol3228]

Because the one endorsing it is Albert Einstein. Also, the ones penning the letters are giants in the scientific community in their own right...

[@ashelyrudd2194]

They “, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as (displaced persons) as long as They get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog,” - Truman wrote on July 21, 1947 in his journal.

[@OnionChoppingNinja]

I don't think you need to be a genius for this. They basically told FDR "you can make a big ass bomb with this Uranium stuff"

[@AHappyCub]

@@OnionChoppingNinja "Hey, we can made a bomb out of this"

[@pietervonck3264]

Are you guys doing an episode about how uranium from, then Belgian Congo, winds up in the USA, after a left-wing union leader at union minière managed to keep it out of German hands?

[@lycaonpictus9662]

Never heard that story but it sounds interesting!

[@pietervonck3264]

@@lycaonpictus9662 yeah, in the end, that Congolese uranium ended up in fat man

[@pietervonck3264]

@@timmyp34 well, what I know is that he was trostikst, so don't think he would've really cared if Stalins and Hitlers pact had continued. For trostikst fascism is the real enemy(second to capitalism and imperialism) but I did read in an article about him(forgot his name) that while he was in Kinshasa, he knew he was being followed by SD members who had infiltrated in the colonial goverment. A Nice spies and ties story, no?

[@ethangorham17]

Small Tidbit to add: the first usage of the term "atomic bomb", came in 1913, in HG Wells' book 'The World Set Free'. In it, Humanity had mastered energy to such a degree that the weapons of war used could destroy the species and radiate the Earth. The book was later cited by numerous notable scientists researching nuclear fission as having been a direct inspiration to their work in the 30s/40s, including Leó Szilárd, who read the book in 1932, the same year the neutron was discovered, and from there would conceive of the idea neutron chain reaction. Future Spoiler Alert, after the atomic detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Wells, still alive, was reported to have been asked if he could write a new foreword to 'The World Set Free', in which he committed 4 words: "I told you so."

[@SuperLusername]

8:19 I can't see the graphite because IT ISN'T THERE!!!

[@YourTypicalMental]

I would love to know what the German reaction to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was? Was Georing in his cell thinking "well at least the Japanese will fight to the very end", only to be told two American bombs wiped out two cities.

[@buckhorncortez]

If you want the German physicists' reaction it is contained in the Farm Hall transcripts. When first given the information about Hiroshima, the physicists, especially Heisenberg, rejected the idea and thought the massive explosion was probably from "an enhanced chemical reaction."

[@Wustenfuchs109]

A physicist here. A few notes - it was not Otto Han's crew that figured out nuclear fission (even though they got a reward for it later), it was actually the French, team around Irene Joliot-Curie. They published their work and Otto Han wrote to her to retract the work or "he will be forced to disprove it and embarrass the French". Irene did not retract and in the process of trying to disprove the French, he actually could do nothing but confirm it. Also, you missed a large influence that information from Niels Bohr played in American program. He stayed in Denmark throughout the war and was visited by Heisenberg (Niels Bohr was almost a daddy figure to all scientist in the field during those times, but that's a different topic) where he discovered what the Germans were working on and how far have they come. It was instrumental in the establishment of Manhattan Project. They've met on September 15th 1941 (lasted until 21st) and Bohr relayed the information to the Allies, and on October 9th 1941, Roosevelt approved the creation of a nuclear program. During the meeting, Heisenberg handed Bohr the drawing of a reactor they were building in Germany, and that is what actually lit the flame under the American asses once the news were received. It is a strange thing not to mention when talking about the birth of Manhattan Project.

[@buckhorncortez]

That's all open to interpretation as Bohr thought the drawing given to him showed a bomb. When he showed the drawing to Szilard, he interpreted it as a reactor. The drawing and Heisenberg's attitude at the meeting with Bohr broke up their friendship as Bohr and Heisenberg's description of the meeting were totally different descriptions of the same meeting with Bohr insisting Heisenberg was changing the story to simply make himself look better after the War. Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Jolier-Curie, Strassman, and Otto Robert Frisch? Everybody's story is different and it comes down to who published the data first. But, there is no doubt that if Hahn and Strassman got Nobel prizes, Lise Meitner should have too since she's the one that accurately interpreted the results of Hahn and Strassman.

[@Wustenfuchs109]

@@buckhorncortez Nothing you wrote here contradicts what I've said. Yes, Bohr was not sure what was on the drawing (news flash - bomb and the reactor are almost the same on a sketch, the only difference on a crude level like that is that the reactor has a moderator), but it did not matter, it was proof that Germans were deep in the project while USA did not even start it yet. Which was the point - after the Bohr reported the meeting, USA expressly initiated the project. Who gives a damn about individual recollections of the meeting - it plays no role what so ever in what I've said. And about the discovery of fission, you are dead wrong. Because again, it is not about individual's recollection or who got a prize, but about who did what first. French got the data first, Germans were just repeating it in order to disprove it - but ended proving it. There is a clear chronology of events and actual written correspondence between the parties before the war. That's how we know who did what and when.

[@Protorit]

Why does the animation keep on splitting the Japanese flag?

[@Oxtocoatl13]

It's called foreshadowing.

[@nigelhughes5700]

Amazing story but shouldn't it be with the war against humanity

[@sirmeowthelibrarycat]

😢 Yes.

[@l8tbraker]

“The bomb may have ended the war but radar won it. ' This was the comment of many radar workers in August 1945, when the news of the atomic bomb upstaged the release of public knowledge of the MIT Radiation Laboratory, planned as a cover story for Time.” - ― Louis Brown, A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives

[@henrykissinger3151]

11:12 It seems you missed the meeting between the leader of the german nuclear energy project Werner Heisenberg and Danish Nobel Prize winnder Niels Bohr in Bohr home in Copenhagen in September 1941. Where Heisenberg explained that Germant was in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons, perhaps so far as to even give Bohr a sketch of a nuclear reactor, turned nuclear bomb. Its quite important in the context of German-American nuclear arms race, especially since Bohr later fled Denmark in 1943, to contribute a major part to the Manhatten Project.

[@krato890]

I've been looking forward to this

[@thethirdjegs]

Chicago experiment is like whaaaaat. I'll panic if i knew there is an experiment on atomic weopons underneath my city.

[@Ycjedi]

Could have been worse, like St. Louis got. Look up Coldwater Creek and West Lake Landfill

[@shawnr771]

You realize that many large universities where physics is studied have their own reactors?

[@thethirdjegs]

I mean back in 1940's

[@shawnr771]

@@thethirdjegs You mean you would not panic if there were atomic tests in your city today? There is so much dangerous research going on all around us it is crazy.

[@thethirdjegs]

@@shawnr771 well this annoying. With how Indell described the procedure, it seemed chicago's fate rested upon the cadmium rods being placed inside the graphite box before the chain reaction becomes uncontrollable. So my stupid comment is merely saying that what Fermi and his team did was scary!

[@steveschulte8696]

Point of clarification, Uranium is not split 50-50, more like 60-40. The fission reaction can produce any thing from Hydrogen to Thorium, just maximally at 40-60. A small number of neutrons in a critical pile come from daughter products of the initial chain reaction, and they appear some time later. For the reaction to go boom, you need to get more neutrons, which have a habit of leaking or joining with the Uranium without a fission. Criticality is defined where you just get enough neutrons to the next step as you had in the first place.

[@scumballer6656]

This was a spectacular special. Please, do another special on the progress of the Manhattan project! The story is fascinating and your team tells the story so well.

[@kevinramsey417]

You won't catch anything good on this fission trip.

[@buckhorncortez]

Yeah, the old physicist joke...and Oppenheimer always fell for the "pull my finger" gag...

[@ReLmScrewup]

The best book I've read, was 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' by Richard Rhodes. It goes fairly in-depth from the beginning of nuclear physics, up to the nuclear tests on the Bikini Atoll. I highly recommend it for anyone that is interested in the topic. The audio book format is also great (recorded for cassette, though you can find it digitally). In that way I have listened to it three times over the last couple of years, mostly while driving. Every time I revisit it, I learn something new. The whole journey Nuclear Arms development takes is a rollercoaster from start to finish. So many of the most important discoveries they make are complete accidents, and especially Fermi's work in Italy, very haphazard, with a mentality of 'if it works, its good enough'. The espionage at play through the whole war is also very exciting. One of the best parts about the whole affair is the interpersonal rivalries between the greatest minds the world has known, and their own reasoning for working on such a project.

[@seanlander9321]

No country other than America could make the first atomic weapon.

[@portalman4665]

Way back when this series started, I posted a few annoying comments haranguing the channel to talk about Szilard and the Manhattan project. I quickly realized how annoying I was being and stopped, but the part of me that wished to see the early Manhattan Project featured is very happy right now. As always, fantastic work and a huge thank you for all the wonderful information you share.

[@exeggcutertimur6091]

Fun fact: people are 100x more likely to forget you exist than think you are annoying. Never stop asking questions. You will remember the answer long after others have forgotten the question.

[@shaider1982]

Nothing like going from a video on how quantum mechanics is the prime mover in entropy in the SpaceTime channel and them going into the wonderful world of the manhattan project here👍

[@SNOUPS4]

Funfact: over 2 billion years ago, an area of Africa was naturally so rich in uranium that a chain reaction occurred, effectively making it the first known (natural actually!) nuclear reactor on Earth. The chain reaction lasted for a while and cooked/metamorphized all nearby rocks: this is in Oklo, Gabon (next to the city of Franceville). This was discovered when the area used to be mined for its uranium.

[@WorldWarTwo]

Fascinating, thank you

[@belbrighton6479]

For people who get BBC sounds their podcast ‘the bomb’ is excellent and covers the espionage, links to Weimar Germany and the moral debates of the participants. Well worth a listen.

[@WorldWarTwo]

Thanks for the recommendation

[@jaegerbomb269]

I have become death, destroyer of worlds.

[@buckhorncortez]

Yes, it wouldn't be a Manhattan Project video without numerous people attempting to make an "important" comment by paraphrasing Oppenheimer's quote (which he manufactured YEARS after the Trinity test) from the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita.

[@Takudza]

Mad respect. Very well explained. But why was heavy water so important?

[@atheistyoda8915]

A moderator. It slows down the travelling neutrons so that it doesn't collide with the fissile material at a high speed, which would be bad in a reactor as that would go boom.

[@jjeherrera]

Nice account as a 10 min. summary! It's also worth to mention that along with the British team came Hans Füchs, a communist German, who sent the full secrets of the Manhattan project to the Soviets. Definitely a good subject for your "Ties and Spies" episodes. Something else you omitted is that the letter was delivered to Roosevelt by Alexander Sachs, who had direct access to the president. Still, it took more than two years until the issue was taken seriously by Roosevelt. The British and Canadians had already achieved significant advancement, but lacked the resources and necessary environment to bring the project for fruition, so it was only natural for them to join the Manhattan project as an allied enterprise; something that was forgotten after the war.

[@buckhorncortez]

KLAUS Fuchs, not "Hans."

[@tomscerbo1588]

Enrico Fermi= Italian genius!

[@mjbull5156]

The British chime in: "And then there's Maude..."

[@buckhorncortez]

You mean Maude Ray, Kent...?

[@stevenguild2707]

She was a bit radioactive.

[@ScienceChap]

Its a shame more mention is not made of Tube Alloys.

[@buckhorncortez]

Tube Alloys...there you go...I mentioned it...

[@ScienceChap]

@@buckhorncortez thanks dude...! I feel better now!

[@mikaelcrews7232]

Wow that tie! Retro 50's it's a little loud, but I like it! I have a little history for you guys! What cost more, the Manhattan project or the development and production of the B-29!!!!? I hope Indy and you guys get it right first!?

[@daviddgm5527]

The US piggy-backed on the discoveries made by the British Tube Alloys program. The British didn't have the resources (they were fighting WWII in the fight of their lives) and were in bombing range of the Luftwaffe and so their research and development were moved to the US. Many (most?) scientists working on the Tube Alloys program/Manhattan project were from Europe (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy). The Allies (UK, Canada, US) cld NOT have succeeded in making the atomic bomb without input from these non-US scientists. This is not to detract from the XLent input from UK and US scientists.