Tuxedo Park

by Jennet Conant

  For the most part, the conference, which took place during the last week of October, proceeded in a routine manner, and only a very keen observer would have wondered about the hushed conversations in the corridor or the hastily called closed-door sessions on ultrahigh-frequency techniques. Within a very short time, Loomis had his core staff in place. Loomis and Compton hosted a kickoff luncheon at the exclusive Algonquin Club in Boston, which served as the “home away from home” for the British radar specialists and had been equipped with a secret entrance for their use. The two dozen new recruits were brought up to the second-floor dining hall, where they were asked to sign the NDRC’s secrecy agreement before being briefed on the new lab and the classified radar work. They would be starting immediately, and within a week many of them would be saying good-bye to their fellow teachers, students, laboratories, and families. Then Loomis formally introduced Bowen to his new American teammates. “It was a grand pep-talk and got the whole group keen to be in on it,” DuBridge wrote Lawrence, who had returned to Berkeley and would continue his energetic recruiting efforts from there.

  Even Lawrence was caught up in the excitement. On November 1, he dashed off a brief note to Loomis, including a “little sketch” of a design of a power amplifier. “I have been having a rather interesting time with myself thinking about methods of detecting microwaves,” he wrote, “and came to the conclusion that the most promising attack on the problem would be to concentrate on the development of radio-frequency power amplifiers along essentially conventional lines. . . .” The next day, he followed up with another letter explaining that he had been talking to Luis Alvarez, who was keen to go ahead with his own experimental design of a “really sensitive detector.” Lawrence explained that he was enthusiastic, and even if Alvarez’s idea did not ultimately work out, “he will gain valuable experience which would qualify him as an expert in micro wave electronics.” Lawrence added, “I am mindful of the fact that I am a novice in the micro wave field and that in all probability to one who has been working in the field for some time my present thoughts about it would be either very elementary or rather beside the point.” He was hankering to learn more, however, and had called up Hansen to see if he could talk to him. “I have no doubt that you had a very busy week at Cambridge,” he concluded, “and I am anxious to hear the latest developments.”

  In the end Bowles had to admit that Loomis’ recruitment strategy had worked like a charm. Roping Lawrence into the radar project had been a stroke of brilliance. “Loomis was smart as hell,” Bowles conceded later. “The Manhattan Project had not yet come into being. Here were all these unemployed nuclear physicists. Why not regiment them? Loomis figured the way to do that was to put Lawrence on the microwave committee and get Lawrence to pick a head of the lab.” Lawrence tapped DuBridge, and between them they were able to pull in top physicists like Columbia’s Isidor Isaac Rabi, who in turn brought along two of his brightest students, Jerrold Zacharias and Norman Ramsey. Rabi, who was at the Algonquin luncheon, joined on November 6. “I was dying to get into something,” he later recalled. “When I heard of this, I said, ‘I want to be in on it.’ ” Ramsey, who was just a few weeks into a new job at the University of Illinois, joined days later. It was an extraordinary group. Bowles reckoned Loomis and Lawrence must have gotten “the whole list—the cream of the crop.”

  Those who knew Lawrence well in those days, and were familiar with his ostrichlike ability to bury himself in his work, wondered how Loomis managed to light a fire under the detached, apolitical physicist. Alvarez, who had never known Lawrence to show any great interest in world affairs, was struck by the change in his attitude. “[Ernest] was suddenly converted to the seriousness of the business and saw that physicists could be useful and therefore should be used—that they could do things other people couldn’t do.”

  His only contact with the war was when John [his brother] was torpedoed, and I think that’s when he woke up and knew it was real; but again, he had the feeling that it was—John had just been caught in an alley fight and it was none of his business. . . . I never heard [Ernest] say anything that indicated that he was seriously concerned with the war until he got back from talking with Alfred, at which point he was just fascinated by what he had heard about what could be done scientifically if you had the motivation and the money and the resources.

  While it was true Lawrence never worried aloud about the European war, or abandoned his work on the cyclotron the way so many of his colleagues quit promising careers to devote themselves to defense work, Loomis always defended his friend’s deep commitment to helping the British fight the scientific war. “He proved it one hundred percent,” Loomis would insist years later, “by his reaction—doing everything in the world to get Luis Alvarez, Ed McMillan, and Lee DuBridge to come to this new laboratory a year and a month before Pearl Harbor shows how important he felt it was.”

  WHEN it came to selecting the final site for the new laboratory, Loomis and Bush would team up to outmaneuver the industrialists. At the outset, however, they did not see eye to eye on the subject. Loomis felt strongly that twelve-hour days and intimate cooperation made having one central laboratory the only feasible arrangement, and that it should be based in Washington. This was a radical departure from the military R&D ventures of the first war, however, and already the army was introducing obstacles at every turn. After he received word that Bolling Field would not be available as promised, Loomis tried once again to persuade Bush to base the lab at Carnegie in Washington. Bush refused to budge: “I protested, and we had a hell of an argument that took half the night and a bottle of Scotch.”

  After mulling over the problem at dinner one night, Loomis and Bowles came to the conclusion that MIT was the only possible site. It was an obvious place to gather academic scientists without attracting attention, and they would be able to get to work much faster because the university would be able to advance the money for the new laboratory until the funds from the NDRC became available. Other war-related projects had been held up for months waiting for the paperwork to be processed and funds allocated. Moreover, MIT already had an independent radar project funded “by an individual”—Loomis himself—who had offered to expedite things by paying the traveling expenses of all the new staff members until such time as the laboratory could do it itself.

  Bowles, a die-hard MIT booster, was all for the plan. He wanted all the glory of the radar project to reflect on the school and, by association, on himself. But Loomis knew they would have to tread cautiously. People were bound to raise questions about how MIT had swung such a sweet deal for itself, landing what amounted to the richest research contract of the war. He was a member of the MIT Corporation and a close friend of Compton’s. Bush was the ex-dean of engineering. It would seem like blatant favoritism. The real problem, Loomis and Bush agreed, would be Frank Jewett, the head of Bell Telephone Laboratories. He had made no secret of the fact that he thought the lab should go to Bell, which had been asked to run a similar research project for the navy during World War I and could bring far more experience to bear in coordinating such a large and complex industry effort.

  As luck would have it, all the principal players happened to be in Washington on October 16, and when Bush learned they were all in town, he called a last minute meeting at his office to settle the question of where to put the laboratory. When the subject arose, Jewett immediately launched into an enthusiastic speech about the virtue of Bell’s management expertise as compared to MIT’s. “So Jewett made the proper mistake,” recalled Bowles, and Bush, “with his usual astuteness, and with Loomis an arch pirate at heart,” set the trap.

  Bush put the question to Jewett: “What about MIT?”

  Sensing he may have gone too far, Jewett tried backpedaling: “Well, it’s a wonderful school, it’s a wonderful institution . . . but as an educational institution it doesn’t know anything about management.” Bush and Bowles took umbrage at this, and Jewett, suddenly realizing he had made a blunder by insulting th
e two MIT men, said, “I didn’t mean to criticize the institution, it’s a wonderful place. . . .”

  At this point Loomis jumped in and cut him off: “Oh, Dr. Jewett, I’m so glad you approve of having the lab at MIT.”

  Now that this obstacle had been removed, the trick was to present it to the NDRC as a fait accompli. On October 17, the day before the next meeting of the NDRC, Loomis met Compton at the railroad station in Washington and took him back to his suite at the Wardman Park Hotel. There they met with Bush, who told Compton that they had all agreed on MIT and they needed to fix the arrangements at once. After making an emergency call to MIT, Compton reported that he could make available approximately ten thousand square feet of laboratory space and could probably arrange access to a large airplane hangar at the East Boston Airport, which belonged to the National Guard and had a modern machine shop attached. On the strength of this evidence, the contract for the laboratory was voted the following day. One week later, Loomis, Bowles, Wilson, DuBridge, and a handful of others met again at Compton’s office at MIT and afterward made an inspection tour of the space set aside for the new laboratory. Loomis then sent an official letter to Bush and the NDRC recommending they take the space at MIT and requesting $138,425 for five development contracts for the equipment they needed. The NDRC approved Loomis’ program and allocated the sum of $445,000 to cover the first year of the laboratory’s existence.

  At the end of October, the pace of events accelerated. Meetings of the microwave committee were now being held at almost weekly intervals, at either Loomis’ penthouse in New York, the Carnegie Institute in Washington, or MIT, where space was rapidly being cleared and the new laboratory would be ready in weeks. Loomis took the wise step of acquainting his new recruits with the leading officers who were in charge of radar development in the army and the navy and hosted a series of luncheons and dinners at the Ritz-Carlton and Wardman Park. On November 1, Frank Lewis, Garret Hobart, and the rest of Loomis’ staff packed up all their experimental equipment and took it up to MIT. Two weeks later, after a meeting in Washington, Loomis and Bowen flew back to New York, where a car was waiting at the airport to whisk them to Tuxedo Park. There they met with Tizard, who had returned to Washington for another round of radar talks and had come out to see Loomis one more time before leaving the country. He was deeply gratified to learn of Loomis’ progress and, as he wrote, the American firms had “pushed ahead at surprising speed and delivery of a large amount of gear for the first five experimental ten cm airborne sets is expected by 23 November.” In a subsequent letter home, he added: “This side of the Atlantic is going to be all-important in a year’s time and we shall need to keep in the closest touch.”

  Also waiting for Loomis at Tuxedo Park was Lawrence, who was winding up his recruiting efforts on the East Coast and would soon be embarking on a cross-country train tour of major American universities, stopping at the University of Chicago and Purdue among others, as he continued searching out sharp minds for the new lab. Roosevelt’s reelection in November had helped increase sympathy for Britain, as had the relentless night bombings of London. Most of the scientists Lawrence approached had a burning desire to get involved: many of them were Jews and had close ties to family and friends in Europe. They were shocked by the way the Luftwaffe had laid waste to Coventry and the stories they heard of the Nazi tyranny of Jews, and they wanted to be part of any effort that would bring an end to all that. When the nuclear physicist Ernest Pollard got a telegram requesting his services, he left in such a hurry that five years later, after the war was over, he found the cable still stuffed in the pocket of the lab coat he had abandoned as he dashed out the door. That none of them knew a damn thing about radar did not seem to matter. “They were light on their feet,” said Alvarez. “They knew something about electronics because of their work with accelerators, but the real reason was that they were the best people and they were adaptable to anything.”

  Loomis shuttered his Tuxedo Park laboratory for the winter, though he probably guessed he would be away considerably longer than that. He bade good-bye to his wife, who had been quite unwell again that summer and was planning to move back to her parents’ home in Dedham, Massachusetts. She would be well taken care of there, and as it was not far from Boston, Loomis would be able to look in on her now and then. All three of his young sons had enlisted: Lee and Henry were in the navy, and Farney, who had graduated from Harvard Medical School, had joined the army’s 9th Mountain Division. According to Loomis’ grim calculations, which he ill advisedly shared with a family member, “the odds were one of them would not return.” Only Manette, with two little boys to look after, would remain on in Tuxedo Park. Loomis would arrange to make frequent visits to New York to be with her, always meeting her at the Glass House, and would continue the affair in secret throughout the war years.

  After making arrangements for the last of his valuable equipment to be shipped to MIT, Loomis, with Bowen and Lawrence in tow, hurried up to Cambridge. For the next four years, he would drive himself and his band of physicists almost without break to develop the all-important radar warning systems based on the magnetron. Looking back on that tense autumn in 1940, Bowen boasted, “It was a gift from the gods we disclosed to Alfred Loomis and Karl Compton.”

  Few understood better than Bush the critical role this unprecedented partnership would play in determining the course of the war. The British and American physicists had joined together to beat the Germans, and their collaboration immediately resulted in a more effective war effort and contributed significantly to both nations’ ability to gain an edge on German science. The cooperation among scientists would later extend to military men and would have striking results in the development of new radar devices and their performance in the field of battle. It was not always easy. The two sides had quarrels that were, like the disagreements between Churchill and Roosevelt, “the quarrels of brothers.” But as Bush later observed of the Tizard Mission: “Much has been written about the disagreements between allies during a great war. Little has been written about the deep friendships which appear between comrades in arms of different nations, even among comrades whose efforts, behind the lines, are devoted to placing advanced weapons in the hands of fighting men.”

  Chapter 10

  THE BLITZ

  He was also trying to run things his own way: was there anything queer about that? Maybe. Maybe, though, it was only the behavior of a man who was used to giving orders.

  —WR, from Brain Waves and Death

  ON November 11, 1940, Armistice Day, Loomis held the first meeting of the radar lab in its new headquarters on the ground floor of Building 4, a squat concrete structure on the edge of MIT’s campus. About twenty people gathered into one of the small classrooms, all of them having received an invitation from Loomis that was so worded “as to sound like a courteous order.” Security was tight. The windows of the laboratory were painted black, and a guard was posted at the door. Only a few of the physicists who had been recruited thus far managed to make it for opening day, but everybody found they knew everybody else. As Rabi later remarked, “We all came from the same bar.” It felt like a family reunion of sorts, and people were already walking around squabbling good-naturedly about where their benches should go and what they needed to buy. It made for an easy informality, as well as a sense of high spirits and fun.

  Karl Compton opened the meeting by providing the early arrivals with a general overview of the situation and then turned the meeting over to Loomis, whom he introduced as “the man who knows more about radiolocation than anyone else in America.” Loomis filled them in on the fundamentals of microwave radar and outlined the first problem to be tackled by the group: an “airborne interception,” or AI, radar to defeat the night bomber. Everyone present knew that Göring had changed his strategy and that since the beginning of November the Luftwaffe’s daily assaults on England had been replaced by night attacks.

  The British had long anticipated the change in strategy, and it
had been the primary concern of the Tizard Mission. The first German air raids, which had begun on August 8 and had rapidly increased in intensity, had been directed at RAF bases. Since September 7, mass raids had been ravaging London and other major cities in England. Thanks to the Chain Home system, the British had been able to spot the incoming planes and had exacted a toll. During August, the Luftwaffe’s losses in raids over England was 15 percent—in all that month, they lost 957 aircraft. In the great air battles of September, the Germans had lost 185 aircraft out of an attack force of 500.

  According to Bill Tuller, one of the young MIT researchers who had been at Tuxedo Park, Loomis, in his usual straightforward manner, outlined the challenge before them: “At that time, day bombing had just become too costly, and night bombing was beginning to be used by the Germans with striking results. The problem then was the detection of the night bomber by an operator in the night fighter, who was then to guide the fighter pilot to a position from which the bomber could be seen by the dark-adapted pilot.”

  These night attacks were forcing the British pilots to rely increasingly on the still crude airborne interception radar that had been developed by Bowen and his compatriots in the preceding two years. Because of the limitations of AI, the British had developed a whole different technique called “ground-controlled interception” (GCI). In this system, a controller on the ground, watching the air situation on a special radar set, used the low-frequency Chain Home stations to pick up invading aircraft. The high-frequency GCI radars, which were more accurate but shorter range, would then target a German bomber and give detailed vectors to the fighter plane under his control, maneuvering the plane into position one to three miles behind and just below the target. The radar operator in the plane was then instructed to “flash his weapon,” and the airborne radar system took over, guiding the fighter to within visual range.