109 East Palace

by Jennet Conant

  A New York Times reporter by the name of William L. Laurence caused a stir when he arrived with orders from Groves to be taken directly up to the site. At first, no one could believe it. As far as Dorothy knew, he was the first and only reporter ever invited up to the classified weapons installation. After a careful double-check of his credentials, he was cleared. But his brief tour of the laboratory was the talk of the Hill. A number of air force personnel started showing up, and the word was they were training at a secret air base in Wendover, Utah. It did not require much imagination to conclude they were part of the select crew who would be in charge of dropping the bomb on Japan and finally finishing the war. American troops in Europe were being redeployed, and several of Dorothy’s friends on the Hill had received letters informing them their loved one’s unit was on the move. She only hoped the super weapon the scientists were working on would be ready before they had to begin the assault on Japan. A few young soldiers, proudly sporting battle ribbons from Anzio, had arrived at Los Alamos, and she could only imagine what they had been through by how grateful they looked to be there.

  In late May, an earnest-looking young man rushed into her office at the start of the lunch hour, just as the offices on the Hill were closing for an hour. He explained he was a lieutenant colonel in the air force, and had the papers to prove it, and insisted he was late for an important meeting “up there.” Dorothy had not been notified of his arrival and explained that regulations dictated that she had to detain him until she could confirm his identity with the director’s office. But he appeared very presentable and honest, and there was something in the urgency of his pleas that made her reconsider. “I didn’t want to hold him up,” she said. “He looked like a person for whom time was very valuable.” She studied him carefully one more time and then decided, as she put it, “to shoot my whole future to the winds with one wild and unprecedented action.” In a firm, unshaking hand, she wrote out a pass for Colonel Paul W. Tibbets. It was the one and only time she ever issued a pass without previous authorization. She did not know then that he had been assigned to pilot the Enola Gay, which would drop the first atomic bomb. She only hoped the tardy flier with the lovely smile would not get her into too much trouble.

  Tibbets was on his way to a meeting of the Target Committee in Oppenheimer’s office to discuss combat employment of the bomb. A number of the top laboratory scientists were present, including Bethe, Penney, von Neumann, and Wilson. Deke Parsons was also there, of course, as Los Alamos’s only navy captain, and would be flying on the bombing mission. The main purpose of the meetings, first held on May 10 and 11 at Los Alamos, was to select the target cities and review the status of the conventional bombing of Japan. Of the initial seventeen targets selected by Stimson’s War Department staff, the number was winnowed down, partly because some of the cities had already been destroyed by fire bombing. Priority was to be given to cities that were still untouched, so as to provide incontrovertible proof of the bomb’s devastating power—and to provoke the maximum psychological effect—to induce Japan’s prompt surrender. By the meeting on May 28 that Tibbets attended, the list had been shortened to Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Niigata.

  The Target Committee members, including air corps officers and Manhattan Project consultants, went over the combat employment of the bomb, the physics of the explosion, and the proper burst height. Norman Ramsey explained that the bomb would probably explode with the force of 20,000 tons of TNT. “Even though it was still theory,” Tibbets recalled, “I wanted to ask Oppenheimer how to get away from the bomb after we dropped it. I told him that when we dropped bombs in Europe and North Africa, we’d flown straight ahead after dropping them—which is also the trajectory of the bomb.” Tibbets wanted to know exactly what he should do the moment Little Boy dropped out of the bomb bay. Oppenheimer’s reply made working out the flight maneuvers sound like a simple mathematical problem. “You can’t fly straight ahead because you’d be right over the top when it blows up and nobody would ever know you were there,” the slender, blue-eyed physicist told him. “Turn either way 159 degrees. You will then be tangent to it. That way you will get your greatest distance in the shortest length of time from the point at which the bomb explodes.”

  In June, the tempo of activity at 109 East Palace jumped markedly. Rumor had it that the army was finally going to cut a new road to Los Alamos. Apparently, some generals were treated to a particularly bumpy ride down the switchbacks—rumor had it a disgruntled soldier stuck wood in the jeep’s springs—and demanded something be done about it. But Dorothy could tell that wherever the convoys were going, the roads had to be even worse than the deeply rutted washboard connecting Santa Fe to the Hill. She might as well have been in the repair business, judging by the number of urgent requests for automotive parts that came across her desk. Drivers came in swearing under their breath, demanding special replacement parts that needed to be installed immediately in dust-caked jeeps outside. Or she would get a call telling her to get a new battery or tire to a broken-down truck outside of town. The warm weather was making the going rougher than usual. Spring had arrived with an unexpected vengeance that year, and the sun had baked the arroyos dry, the hardened creek beds cratered and barely passable in places.

  Complicating matters, the stringent new security measures forbade all recreational trips to town. The truck drivers and Trinity staff were barred from making any pit stops in the little junctions, and Dana Mitchell, assistant director of the laboratory, had issued a stern travel advisory: “Under no condition, when you are south of Albuquerque, are you to disclose that you are in any way connected with Santa Fe. If you are stopped for any reason and you have to give out information, state that you are employed by the Engineers in Albuquerque. Under no circumstances are telephone calls or stops for gasoline to be made between Albuquerque and your destination.” The confidential memo further instructed them to “stop for meals at Roys in Belen,” though more than one parched driver ignored the regulations and pulled into Meira’s bar and service station in the one-horse town of San Antonio to refuel.

  The atmosphere on the Hill tightened with each passing week to the point where it was almost unbearable. Dry electric storms swept across the mesa and lit up the sky, but still no rain came. Rumors swirled. The test date, once scheduled for Independence Day, was postponed, and there was talk the deadline was now mid-July. Some of the scientists and medical staff were being inoculated for tropical diseases and would be leaving soon for the Pacific. This was supposed to be a secret, but some of their wives were wild with worry and could not help confiding in one another. People shook their heads over the fact that Jim Nolan and Henry Barnett, the post’s obstetrician and pediatrician, were both being sent overseas, while Louis Hempelmann, their trained radiologist, was not. Apparently, Hempelmann was the only member of the medical staff who was not in the army, and he was fit to be tied at being excluded. Everyone’s nerves were on edge. Sam Allison’s wife, Helen, took to pestering Dorothy daily to check the local jewelers to see if they had completed the repair job on her husband’s watch. The woman seemed positively frantic on the phone, and Dorothy, with all she had to do, could not imagine what could be so important about the old timepiece. She later heard Allison had just been ordered to Trinity to conduct the official countdown of the test and had hoped to have his own watch for good luck.

  A meteorologist named Jack Hubbard had joined the staff and was heading a team that was closely monitoring the weather conditions for the days surrounding the test. Clear weather was vital to the experiment and to their ability to get accurate measurements from their instruments. Rain, either before or during the test, could damage the electrical circuits and operating equipment, interfering with the firing of the bomb and wrecking havoc on their instruments. There was also the potential problem of fallout. One of the main reasons they had decided to explode the bomb from the top of a one-hundred-foot tower was that a ground detonation, in addition to not really revealing what it could do as a weapon, woul
d create a tremendous amount of fallout at a low elevation. There was a possibility that strong winds in the wrong direction could carry the poisonous radioactive cloud over inhabited areas, most notable Amarillo, which was about three hundred miles away. Very little was known about fallout, but they could not ignore the potential danger, and evacuation teams were being organized. Drawing on information from myriad sources, including the Army Air Forces weather stations at Alamogordo and Albuquerque, Hubbard finally pinpointed the middle of July as the best time to test the gadget.

  On the last day of June, all the division leaders reported to Oppenheimer, and it was decided that July 16 was the earliest possible date they could be ready Groves, however, was determined that Truman would be armed with knowledge of the test’s outcome when he met with Stalin and Churchill at the Potsdam conference, which Stimson, dragging his feet all the way, had managed to delay until July 15. The first week in July, with the Potsdam deadline looming, Groves fixed the final test date for July 16. He was pushing up hard against Hubbard’s long-range prediction for that weekend, which did not look promising, but that was a chance they would have to take. Oppenheimer instructed the Trinity team that orders from Washington were that as soon as the plutonium for the bomb was ready, the test would go forward. There must be no delays. As Bainbridge noted, “A successful test was a card which Truman had to have in his hand.” Because of all the uncertainty, Groves took off for the Hanford site, taking Bush with him. They would meet up with Conant on the Pacific Coast. “This would enable us,” Groves wrote, “to get to Alamogordo promptly if the date of the test was advanced.”

  In the days immediately preceding the test, dozens of high-ranking project consultants and Nobel laureates returned to Los Alamos: Richard Tolman, Ernest Lawrence, Isidor Rabi, Sir James Chadwick, and, making another appearance the day before the test, Bill Laurence, the sole member of the press assigned to document the event. Groves, warned not to invite too many observers, well exceeded his ration, and at the last minute Dorothy had to scramble to find sleeping quarters for an extra general. He had requested a room at La Fonda, but the hotel was overbooked. “Not only did he have to settle for a second choice billet at the De Vargas hotel,” she recalled, “he had to share a double room with a sergeant.” She told him what she told everybody, “You know, there’s a war on!” Memos came down from the Hill daily with eight or nine new names to expect, and calls came from Washington saying, “We have the following coming in….” There were so many people coming and going that a number of G-2 agents worked in the office helping her check papers and issue security passes.

  One afternoon, Dana Mitchell, who had worked at 109 with Dorothy in the early days of the project, stopped by to make an important call. Dorothy politely stepped into the other room to give him some privacy, but he did not seem to notice. She overheard him tell someone in a voice that was louder and more strident than usual that they had “ambulances ready in Albuquerque” in case they were needed. Dorothy knew then that things were moving very fast. “Time, time, time. Speed, rush. Care, care, and worry,” she wrote. “Anxiety and work. All hours of the day and night, not sleeping, not eating regularly, losing weight. Always tension, excitement, pride, rising in the great crescendo of the test at Trinity.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Everything Was Different

  IN JULY, THE RAINS CAME. At midday, bright blue skies would suddenly darken as black clouds amassed overhead, lightning streaked across the sky, and thunder cracked with frightening violence. Brief, soaking downpours followed. Everyone on the Hill had become obsessed with the unpredictable midsummer weather patterns. Physicists with no particular expertise in meteorology would scan the cloudless horizon with furrowed brows as if they could divine signs of trouble. Even men who were usually careful not to talk about their work told their wives to pray for a good forecast.

  Doubt and pessimism blew into town with the thunderheads. There was a prevailing skepticism in the air, as if the scientists could not believe the witching hour had arrived and that the bomb’s fearful power would prove all their experiments and calculations correct and finally put an end to their long endeavor. Instead, they distrusted their own handiwork and took refuge in the idea that the Trinity test’s many uncertainties would probably result in a fizzle. Their lack of faith was never clearer than when some of the physicists organized an informal betting pool to see who could most accurately predict the explosive yield of the bomb. Their own blackboard estimate put the gadget’s potential at roughly 20,000 tons, or 20 kilotons, of TNT, but the pool ran from zero to 45,000 tons. Rabi bet 18,000 tons. Bethe guessed 8,000 tons. Kistiakowsky thought the figure would be closer to 1,400. Oppenheimer conservatively settled on 300. But his was not the lowest bet: Johnny Williams figured on 200 pounds, and more than a few pessimists thought it would be zero. It was Teller, who had done the least direct work on the bomb and had the least at stake, who unhesitatingly went for the biggest bang—45,000 tons.

  They were all so consumed with their own worries that the news that Feynman’s young wife, Arline, had passed away put them all to shame. Richard had borrowed Fuchs’ car and managed to get to Albuquerque in time to be at her side and say good-bye. Dorothy heard that he was in such a rush to get to the hospital that he got not one but two flat tires and ended up hitchhiking the last thirty miles. Distraught as he was, Feynman returned to his Tech Area office the next day and told people he intended to bury his sorrow in work.

  “That last week in many ways dragged,” recalled Elsie McMillan, and “in many ways it flew on wings. It was hard to behave normally; it was hard not to think; it was hard not to let off steam. We also found it hard not to overindulge in all natural activities of life.” She had long ago guessed that the Trinity test was for an atomic bomb and now asked her husband, “in all innocence,” what would happen. She needed to know. Not knowing was worse, and she was afraid she was transferring her mounting fears to her newborn son, as she rocked him to sleep in her arms.

  Slowly, and with some difficulty, Ed McMillan told her what he thought she could expect. “There will be about fifty of us present, the key workers,” he explained.

  We ourselves are not absolutely certain what will happen. In spite of calculations we are going into the unknown. We know that there are three possibilities: One, that we will be blown to bits if it is more powerful than we expect. If this happens you and the world will be immediately told. Two, it may be a complete dud. If this happens, when I return home I will tell you. Third, it may as we hope, be a success, we pray without loss of any lives. In this case, there will be a broadcast to the world with a plausible explanation for the noise and the tremendous flash of light which will appear in the sky. Next week we will quietly and separately leave the mesa starting around 3:00 A.M., the cars to reconvene at the test site. In all probability the zero hour will be about 5:00 A.M. on the morning of the next day. If all goes well, I will be home sometime in the early evening of that day.

  At the end of the day on Wednesday, July 11, Oppenheimer gave some final instructions to his secretary, Anne Wilson, tucked an extra carton of cigarettes under his arm, and took off for Trinity. “I thought I was queen for a day because he left me in charge of the whole place,” she said. “I thought he was mad because I was all of 21. Everyone who was anyone was going to the test. They piled into buses and left in droves, and I would go out into the street in front of the Tech Area and wave goodbye to them.”

  On Thursday, July 12, the explosive casing for the test bomb was finished. For safety reasons, the nuclear and non-nuclear parts of the bomb would be moved separately and then assembled at the Trinity site. Just “to be whimsical,” Kistiakowsky decided to transport the finished bomb assembly from Los Alamos to Trinity on Friday the thirteenth, hoping such bravado would reverse the date’s traditional bad luck. They took off at ten minutes past midnight, a whole convoy of trucks, including the one carrying the gadget, a big spherical aluminum ball, carefully tethered in place and covered by a co
ncealing tarp. Because of the number of scientists and soldiers in their party who were somewhat anxious all the shaking might cause the gadget to explode en route, Kistiakowsky jumped into the cab of the truck alone and took it for a quick spin over the rough roads. For security reasons, the bomb was escorted by an entire entourage of guards, with military police cars in front and back. Every time they came to a town, they blared their sirens and flashed their lights, reportedly in an effort to fend off any drunk drivers, but this defeated the whole point of their secret nighttime expedition by virtually announcing their presence to the sleepy inhabitants as they barreled through.

  By contrast, Bob Bacher had arranged for the plutonium core of the bomb to have an extremely quiet trip to Trinity. His contingent left Los Alamos at 3 P.M. that Thursday, winding their way down the mountain and through Española and Santa Fe and then on to Albuquerque unnoticed in an ordinary government sedan, a carload of MPs leading the way. Phil Morrison, who accompanied him, was also bringing the initiator. He recalled that they drove no more than thirty miles an hour and for the whole trip down were “apprehensive about an automobile crash or some catastrophe of the sort that might make it very difficult to run the test.” They knew that only when the two hemispheres of plutonium were united could they achieve critical mass. Still, they took every conceivable precaution, packing the two halves of the nuclear core in specially designed cases, protecting them from the shock of impact, corrosion, over-heating, overcooling—anything they could think of that might affect their precious cargo as it made its way across the desert and, when the time came, across the ocean to the Pacific.