Bomb Flashcards
What did the FBI agents find in Harry Gold’s home that was so incriminating?
A map of New Mexico with in X at a certain location in Santa Fe
How many years of evidence did Harry Gold need to destroy before the FBI came to his door?
17 years
Why did Gold come clean to the FBI instead of continuing to proclaim his innocence?
He thought of the letdown and disappointment his friends and family would have when he was finally revealed to be a spy
Who is Harry Gold?
A courier and a spy for the Soviets
Who are Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner?
Physicists who helped initiate the Manhattan Project
Who discovered fission?
Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner
From where did Oppenheimer receive his college degree?
Harvard University in 1925
Why did Oppenheimer’s classmates sign a petition about him?
To let others in class speak
Where did Oppenheimer teach physics?
University of California in Berkeley
Why did Oppenheimer begin getting more involved in politics?
The country’s ongoing economic problems and he was greatly disturbed by and concerned about Hitler’s rise to power and Nazi violence against Jews in Germany
What kind of physics did Oppenheimer study?
Theoretical physics
What alarming discovery did Otto Hahn make?
That if you speed up neutrons enough and they hit uranium atoms hard enough, the atom would split in two
What did Hahn’s former partner, Lise Meitner, and her nephew, Otto Frisch, compare this new phenomenon to?
They compared the atom nucleus to a liquid droplet, like Niels Bohr did, that could stretch until it split into 2 “droplets”, if hit hard enough by a speeding neutron
What happens when atoms split?
They release energy, and if you split many atoms at once, it would create enough energy to make the most powerful bomb ever
What did physicists call the splitting of an atom?
Fission
What were physicists so afraid of with the discovery of fission?
It had been discovered in Germany and scientists in other countries were afraid that Hitler would develop an atomic bomb before anyone else
Why were Szilard and Wigner trying trying find and talk to Einstein?
To tell them about fission and get him to tell President Roosevelt
What important and frightening piece of information was at the end of Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt that spurred him into action about fission?
Germany had stopped the sale of uranium from Czechoslovakian mines
What was the Uranium Committee?
A group of military leaders and scientists whose goal was to figure out the basics of building an atomic bomb
How did Harry Gold get into spying for the Soviets?
He wanted to repay his friend, Tom Black, for getting him a job during the Depression. So when Tom, a communist, asked him to give him the cutting-edge process his plant used for the Soviet people to use, Gold agreed
What made Gold want to stop spying for the Soviets?
He found out that the Soviet Union was a ruthless police state that was run by a man just as bad as Hitler, Joseph Stalin
Why didn’t Gold stop spying for the Soviets?
His communist contact threatened to tell Gold’s boss about his illegal activities, thereby preventing Gold from ever getting a job
Who taught Gold the art and science of spying?
His new contact, “Sam”
What did the Soviets want Gold to do after they forced him back into working for them?
Act as a courier picking up files and other things, like a new kind of explosive in Tennessee, and bring everything to “Sam” in NYC
Who was “Sam”
Semyon Semyonov, a 30-year-old engineer who was really a secret agent for the KGB
How would Semyon Semyonov and Alexander Feklisov test to see if they were being followed by FBI agents?
They would go into a bar/store or hop on a bus
Before the development of the atomic bomb, what was the largest man-made explosion in history at that point and how much more powerful was the uranium bomb?
In 1917 in Halifax Harbor, Canada, a ship packed with millions of pounds of bombs and ammunition blew up, killing at least 2000 people and flattening every building within a mile. A uranium bomb had at least 10x that power
What brought the U.S. into WWII?
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
What was Oppenheimer’a official title when he was placed in charge of fast-neutron reasearch?
Coordinator of Rapid Rupture
How were the Soviet leaders going to get an atomic bomb anytime soon when they were constantly having to fight off the Nazis?
They were gonna have to steal it
What was the code name for the Russian project of stealing the atomic bomb?
Enormoz- The Russian word for enormous
Who was at the top of the Soviet list of scientists involved with developing the atomic bomb that were known to be sympathetic to the Communist Party in the past?
Robert Oppenheimer
Why was Colonel Groves put in charge of the atomic bomb project?
He managed the construction of the Pentagon, the biggest office building in the world, on time and budget
Why was the atomic bomb project given the codename the Manhattan Project?
Because it’s offices were located in Manhattan
Who did Groves want to be the lead scientist in charge of the Manhattan project and what big problem between counter in trying to get this person to be in charge?
He wanted Robert Oppenheimer in charge because as an American scientist, his background was easier to check, but Oppenheimer couldn’t get security clearance from the army because of his past associations with the Communist Party
What was the name of the facility where Haukelid trained in England and what did the Germans call it?
Special Training School No.3 and the Germans called it the International Gangster School
What is heavy water and how is it important?
It’s water that is made up of hydrogen molecules that have a neutron in addition to the regular proton, making it 10% heavier than regular water. It was a key ingredient in the German atomic bomb program.
Where was heavy water produced in large quantities?
Vemork in Rjukan, Norway
Describe the Allied attempt to take down the heavy water plant and what went wrong
?
Who is Klaus Fuchs?
A German–born British physicist who was a double agent for the KGB and was working for the British government on their atomic bomb project
What decision haunted Oppenheimer for the rest of his life?
That he didn’t tell General Groves that he’d been approached by the Soviets to tell the Soviets about what work was being done on the American atomic bomb project.
What are the requirements for a site to build an atomic bomb lab?
It had to be remote, close to railroad lines, and have some buildings already in place.
Where was the American atomic lab?
Los Alamos Ranch school in Los Alamos, New Mexico
What was Enrico Fermi and his team working on it with nuclear fission at the university of Chicago?
Producing a chain reaction of nuclear fission
What Fermi and his team demonstrate for the first time in history?
The controlled release of atomic power.
What were Knut Haukelid and his crew given when they went to parachute in Norway?
The death pill – cyanide enclosed in a rubber cover that causes death in three seconds once bitten through
How many of the Norwegians that blew up Vermok were caught by the Germans?
0
What were some of the rumors circulating in Santa Fe about all of the activity that they were witnessing in Los Almos?
A secret military project, making some breeds, making death race, home for pregnant military personnel, or nudist colony.
What were the scientists arriving in Los Alamos told not to do so as to avoid drawing attention?
Don’t call each other Dr. or Prof. so people wouldn’t wonder why so many scientists were in town.
What rumor did General Groves want to plant so people wouldn’t stumble onto the truth?
That the army was building electric rockets in Los Almos
What did everyone at Los Almos call the bomb they were building?
The gadget
What was the gun assembly method?
A bomb design of the specially adapted artillery gun that could create a fast enough uranium chain reaction to release enough energy in a massive explosion.
What did General Groves request Oppenheimer do while working at Los Alamos and what was his reason for these requests?
He asked that Oppenheimer not fly, refrain from driving for a long time without protection, and to always have a guard with him when driving about town. Groves made these requests because intelligence officers still believed Oppenheimer was secretly a communist
Who was Douglas MacAuthur?
A top American general
What was Laboratory Number 2?
A secret lab in the pine woods outside of Moscow and where the Soviets worked on their atomic bomb project.
