National Museum of Nuclear Science & HistoryCharles Critchfield: Is that your book, by the way?
Richard Rhodes: Yes.
Critchfield: Making of the Atomic Bomb?
Rhodes: Yes.
Critchfield: I’ve always heard it, Making of the Bomb. No, I didn’t know it was your book. Rubby Sherr sent me that, and he also sent me excerpts from two or three other books on the bomb. Rubby was my main man in my group for making the Initiator.
[Thanks to Ronald K. Smeltzer for donating the record "To Fermi with Love" to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.]
Stephane Groueff: Start from the beginning and if you can give me in a few words the history of how it started, who actually came into contract, and how?
[We would like to thank Robert S. Norris, author of the definitive biography of General Leslie R. Groves, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man, for taking the time to read over these transcripts for misspellings and other errors.]
General Leslie R. Groves: All right now what else is there?
[Audio distortion occurs throughout the interview.]
Stephane Groueff: Recording interview with Mr. Leon Love at Oak Ridge July 15, 1963. Mr. Love works with Y-12.
Would you mind repeating sort of some of the characteristics of Y-12, some of the figures? For instance, how many buildings? How many magnets? How many Alpha [calutrons] and Beta [calutrons]? How many units in each?
Leon Love: There were five buildings containing the output separators, and there were nine tracks total in these five buildings.
Cindy Kelly: I'm Cindy Kelly. This is Wednesday, June 24th, 2015, and I'm in Cambridge Massachusetts with Peter Gailson. My first question for you is to tell me your name and spell it.
Peter Galison: My name is Peter Gailson, G-A-L-I-S-O-N. I'm a professor here at Harvard, Physics, a history of science.
Groueff: General Nichols, Part 2.
Nichols: But Dobie [Percival Keith] came back immediately, or shortly thereafter, with the suggestion we build more gaseous diffusion base plants, and that was why we built the K-27 plant.
Groueff: A base?
Hunt: I started working for DuPont in 1937 at Old Hickory [in Tennessee] in the power department. I was very anxious to do the best I could, so I made a special effort to learn everything.
Where were you when you were told to return to Wilmington?
Hunt: At that point I was a power superintendent at Childersburg Ordnance.
That was in Alabama?
Hunt: In Alabama.
When did you find out about Hanford?
Richard Foster: This is Dick Foster.
S. L. Sanger: Hi, this is Steve Sanger in Seattle. I wrote you a letter a few days ago after my conversation with Hanford. Did you get that?
Foster: Yeah I just got home yesterday evening.
John Healy: Hello.
S. L. Sanger: Hello this is Mr. Sanger from Seattle, is this a good time to talk about Hanford, or no.
Healy: Another one you may want to talk to is Carl Garmertsfelder in Knoxville.
Sanger: In Knoxville, now what was his position? Oregonian said he was a radiation control manager.
Healy: It has been so long. I do not really remember. I worked for Carl for a while, and he reported to Herb Parker.
