MANHATTAN PROJECT, THE NUCLEAR AGE BEGINS

Trinity Test, the Manhattan Project

Today, The Grandma has visited Norah, an old friend from Venezuela who lives now in Barcelona. They have been talking about Mount Carmel, the coastal mountain range in northern Israel, and about the Apollo 11 which carried the first crewed lunar landing mission on a day like today in 1969.

The Saturn V SA-506 carrying Apollo 11, the first crewed lunar landing mission, on July 16, 1969, at 13:32 UTC. Launching from Launch Pad 39A at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, the five Rocketdyne F-1 engines of the rocket's S-IC first stage can be seen arrayed in a quincunx, with a fixed centre engine and four outer engines that gimballed for steering.

The USA wrote incredible stories in our world history. The Apollo 11 was one of them, but The Grandma has also wanted to remember another story that shows how science sometimes can play against the interests of the Humanity. It is the story of the Manhattan Project, a project also started in the USA twenty-seven years before the Apollo 11 arrived to the Moon, a project which is considered the beginning of the nuclear age.

The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. 

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 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs.

The Army component of the project was designated the Manhattan District; Manhattan gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. Along the way, the project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys.

The Gadget, the Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion, about $23 billion in 2018 dollars. Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and to produce fissile material, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons.

Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Two types of atomic bombs were developed concurrently during the war: a relatively simple gun-type fission weapon and a more complex implosion-type nuclear weapon. The Thin Man gun-type design proved impractical to use with plutonium, and therefore a simpler gun-type called Little Boy was developed that used uranium-235, an isotope that makes up only 0.7 percent of natural uranium. Chemically identical to the most common isotope, uranium-238, and with almost the same mass, it proved difficult to separate the two. Three methods were employed for uranium enrichment: electromagnetic, gaseous and thermal. Most of this work was performed at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

In parallel with the work on uranium was an effort to produce plutonium. After the feasibility of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor was demonstrated in Chicago at the Metallurgical Laboratory, it designed the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge and the production reactors in Hanford, Washington, in which uranium was irradiated and transmuted into plutonium. The plutonium was then chemically separated from the uranium, using the bismuth phosphate process. The Fat Man plutonium implosion-type weapon was developed in a concerted design and development effort by the Los Alamos Laboratory.

More information: US Departament of Energy

The project was also charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear weapon project.

Through Operation Alsos, Manhattan Project personnel served in Europe, sometimes behind enemy lines, where they gathered nuclear materials and documents, and rounded up German scientists. Despite the Manhattan Project's tight security, Soviet atomic spies successfully penetrated the program.

The Manhattan Project Sites

The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb at the Trinity test, conducted at New Mexico's Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range on 16 July 1945.

Little Boy and Fat Man bombs were used a month later in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. In the immediate postwar years, the Manhattan Project conducted weapons testing at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads, developed new weapons, promoted the development of the network of national laboratories, supported medical research into radiology and laid the foundations for the nuclear navy. It maintained control over American atomic weapons research and production until the formation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947.

More information: Atomic Heritage Foundation

The discovery of nuclear fission by German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1938, and its theoretical explanation by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, made the development of an atomic bomb a theoretical possibility. There were fears that a German atomic bomb project would develop one first, especially among scientists who were refugees from Nazi Germany and other fascist countries.

 

In August 1939, Hungarian-born physicists Leó Szilárd and Eugene Wigner drafted the Einstein–Szilárd letter, which warned of the potential development of extremely powerful bombs of a new type. It urged the United States to take steps to acquire stockpiles of uranium ore and accelerate the research of Enrico Fermi and others into nuclear chain reactions. They had it signed by Albert Einstein and delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt called on Lyman Briggs of the National Bureau of Standards to head the Advisory Committee on Uranium to investigate the issues raised by the letter. Briggs held a meeting on 21 October 1939, which was attended by Szilárd, Wigner and Edward Teller. The committee reported back to Roosevelt in November that uranium would provide a possible source of bombs with a destructiveness vastly greater than anything now known.

More information: SBS 

The Advisory Committee on Uranium became the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) on Uranium when that organization was formed on 27 June 1940. Briggs proposed spending $167,000 on research into uranium, particularly the uranium-235 isotope, and the recently discovered plutonium.

On 28 June 1941, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8807, which created the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), with Vannevar Bush as its director. The office was empowered to engage in large engineering projects in addition to research. The NDRC Committee on Uranium became the S-1 Section of the OSRD; the word uranium was dropped for security reasons.

At 05:30 on 16 July 1945 a gadget exploded with an energy equivalent of around 20 kilotons of TNT, leaving a crater of Trinitite -radioactive glass- in the desert 76 m wide. The shock wave was felt over 160 km away, and the mushroom cloud reached 12.1 km in height. It was heard as far away as El Paso, Texas, so Groves issued a cover story about an ammunition magazine explosion at Alamogordo Field.

More information: Rare Historical Photos

The Atomic Age was born in secrecy, 

and for two decades after Hiroshima, 

he high priests of the cult of the atom 

concealed vital information 

about the risks to human health posed by radiation.

Stuart Udall

MOUNT CARMEL: CARMELITES FROM THE 12TH CENTURY

The Grandma at Mount Carmel, Haifa

Today, July, 16, The Grandma wants to congratulate all the 'Carmens' in her families: M. Carmen Collins, Carmen & M. Carmen Holmes, Carmen Poppins and Carme Bean. 

She wants to dedicate this post to them, where it explains which is the origin of their name, one of the most popular in the Mediterranean cultures and patron of sailors. Before writing this new post, The Grandma has revised some English with her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Chapter 19).

More info: Modals I & II

Mount Carmel means God's vineyard and it is a coastal mountain range in northern Israel stretching from the Mediterranean Sea towards the southeast. The range is a UNESCO biosphere reserve. A number of towns are situated there, most notably the city of Haifa, Israel's third largest city, located on the northern slope.

The name is presumed to be directly from the Hebrew language word Carmel, which means fresh, or vineyard.

The Carmel range is approximately 6.5 to 8 kilometres wide, sloping gradually towards the southwest, but forming a steep ridge on the northeastern face, 546 metres high. The Jezreel Valley lies to the immediate northeast. 

The Grandma at the Carmelite Monastery

The range forms a natural barrier in the landscape, just as the Jezreel Valley forms a natural passageway, and consequently the mountain range and the valley have had a large impact on migration and invasions through the Levant over time. The mountain formation is an admixture of limestone and flint, containing many caves, and covered in several volcanic rocks. The sloped side of the mountain is covered with luxuriant vegetation, including oak, pine, olive, and laurel trees.

Several modern towns are located on the range, including Yokneam on the eastern ridge, Zikhron Ya'akov on the southern slope, the Druze communities of Daliyat al-Karmel and Isfiya on the more central part of the ridge, and the towns of Nesher, Tirat Hakarmel, and the city of Haifa, on the far northwestern promontory and its base. There is also a small kibbutz called Beit Oren, which is located on one of the highest points in the range to the southeast of Haifa.

More information: Tourist Israel

As part of a 1929–1934 campaign, between 1930 and 1932, Dorothy Garrod excavated four caves, and a number of rock shelters, in the Carmel mountain range at el-Wad, el-Tabun, and Es Skhul. Garrod discovered Neanderthal and early modern human remains, including the skeleton of a Neanderthal female, named Tabun I, which is regarded as one of the most important human fossils ever found.

Elijah, Carmel National Park

The excavation at el-Tabun produced the longest stratigraphic record in the region, spanning 600,000 or more years of human activity.

The four caves and rock-shelters, Tabun, Jamal, el-Wad, and Skhul, together yield results from the Lower Paleolithic to the present day, representing roughly a million years of human evolution. 

There are also several well-preserved burials of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens and passage from nomadic hunter-gatherer groups to complex, sedentary agricultural societies is extensively documented at the site. Taken together, these emphasize the paramount significance of the Mount Carmel caves for the study of human cultural and biological evolution within the framework of palaeo-ecological changes.

In 2012, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee added sites of human evolution at Mount Carmel to the List of World Heritage Sites. The World Heritage Site includes four caves, Tabun, Jamal, el-Wad, and Skhul, on the southern side of the Nahal Me’arot/Wadi El-Mughara Valley. The site fulfils criteria in two separate categories, natural and cultural.

More information: Time Out

During World War I, Mount Carmel played a significant strategic role. The Battle of Megiddo took place at the head of a pass through the Carmel Ridge, which overlooks the Valley of Jezreel from the south. General Allenby led the British in the battle, which was the turning point in the war against the Ottoman Empire.

The Jezreel Valley had played host to many battles before, including the very historically significant Battle of Megiddo between the Egyptians and Canaanites, but it was only in the 20th century battle that the Carmel Ridge itself played a significant part, due to the developments in munitions.

The Grandma at the Carmelite Monastery

Archaeologists have discovered ancient wine and oil presses at various locations on Mt. Carmel. In ancient Canaanite culture, high places were frequently considered to be sacred, and Mount Carmel appears to have been no exception; Thutmose III lists a holy headland among his Canaanite territories, and if this equates to Carmel. According to the Books of Kings, there was an altar to Yahweh on the mountain, which had fallen into ruin by the time of Ahab, but Elijah built a new one. Iamblichus describes Pythagoras visiting the mountain on account of its reputation for sacredness, stating that it was the most holy of all mountains, and access was forbidden to many, while Tacitus states that there was an oracle situated there, which Vespasian visited for a consultation; Tacitus states that there was an altar there, but without any image upon it, and without a temple around it.

A Catholic religious order was founded on Mount Carmel in the 12th century, named the Carmelites, in reference to the mountain range; the founder of the Carmelites is unknown; in the original Rule or Letter of Life given by Albert, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem who was resident in Acre, around the year 1210 this hermit is referred to simply as Brother B; he probably died around the date 1210 and could have been either a pilgrim, someone serving out a penance or a crusader who had stayed in the Holy Land.  

More information: La Beaute du Carmel

The Order was founded at the site that it claimed had been the location of Elijah's cave, 520 m above sea level at the northwestern end of the mountain range; this, perhaps not coincidentally, is also the highest natural point of the mountain range.

Discalced Carmelite, Mount Carmel, Haifa

Though there is no documentary evidence to support it, Carmelite tradition suggests that a community of Jewish hermits had lived at the site from the time of Elijah until the Carmelites were founded there; prefixed to the Carmelite Constitution of 1281 was the claim that from the time when Elijah and Elisha had dwelt devoutly on Mount Carmel, priests and prophets, Jewish and Christian, had lived praiseworthy lives in holy penitence adjacent to the site of the fountain of Elisha in an uninterrupted succession.

A Carmelite monastery was founded at the site shortly after the Order itself was created, and was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of Star of the Sea, Stella Maris in Latin, a common medieval presentation of her. Although Louis IX of France is sometimes named as the founder, he was not, and had merely visited it in 1252. 

The Carmelite Order grew to be one of the major Catholic religious orders worldwide, although the monastery at Carmel has had a less successful history.  

More information: See The Holy Land

During the Crusades the monastery often changed hands, frequently being converted into a mosque; under Islamic control the location came to be known as El-Maharrakah, meaning place of burning, in reference to the account of Elijah's challenge to the priests of Hadad. In 1799 the building was finally converted into a hospital, by Napoleon, but in 1821 the surviving structure was destroyed by the pasha of Damascus. A new monastery was later constructed directly over a nearby cave, after funds were collected by the Carmelite Order for restoration of the monastery. The cave, which now forms the crypt of the monastic church, is termed Elijah's grotto by the Discalced Carmelite friars who have custody of the monastery.

One of the oldest scapulars is associated with Mount Carmel and the Carmelites. According to Carmelite tradition, the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was first given to St. Simon Stock, an English Carmelite, by the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Carmelites refer to her under the title Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and celebrate 16 July as her feast day. 

More information: Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael Jewish National Fund

That profound night freedom was agreeable and exciting. 

Carmen Laforet