Tag Archives: Manhattan Project

Last voyage of USS Indianapolis

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USS Indianapolis (CA-35) off Mare Island, July 10, 1945

The USS Indianapolis left Hunters Point Naval Shipyard on July 16, 1945, setting a speed record of 74-1/2 hours from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor, arriving on July 19. She was on a top-secret mission carrying the enriched uranium from Oak Ridge and other assembly parts for the “Little Boy” atomic bomb.

Indianapolis continued on to Tinian, arriving on July 26, and delivered the atomic bomb components. Continuing on to Guam for crew changes, she left on July 28 to begin sailing toward Leyte to join Task Force 95.

USS Indianapolis intended route from Guam to Philippines showing location of sinking.

On July 30, 1945, Indianapolis was truck by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, causing massive damage. Twelve minutes later, she sunk, taking 300 crew down with her and setting adrift over 900 crewmen.

On August 2, the survivors were spotted by Navy airplanes on a routine patrol flight. Only 316 of the remaining men survived.

USS Indianapolis memorial in Indianapolis, IN

You can visit the memorial for the USS Indianapolis located at the north end of the Canal Walk between Senate Avenue and Walnut Street. The gray and black granite memorial is outdoors and open to the public.

Leslie Richard Groves

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General Groves oversaw the construction of the Pentagon, but more notably, directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II.

Groves died on July 13, 1970, at 73 years of age. He is interred in Arlington National Cemetery, next to his brother, Allen, who died of pneumonia in 1916. Grace, his wife, was interred next to Groves in 1986.

The tombstone marks his participation in the Manhattan Project along with the insignia. The grave faces the Pentagon, which can be seen in the distance.

Plutonium Scale

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Seederer-Kohlbush scale @ Hanford B Reactor

This Seederer-Kohlbusch scale, circa 1944, is found in a side room of the B Reactor at Hanford along with displays of other artifacts and mementos of the Manhattan Project. This is the original scale used to weigh the first milligrams of plutonium (Pu) produced at the facility.

Hanford B Reactor

In October 1943, construction began on the B Reactor at the Hanford Site in Washington, with the purpose of producing plutonium. Fuel slugs — uranium billets extruded into slugs and sealed in aluminum jackets — were then placed in the reactor for several weeks to a year. The reactor went critical on September 26, 1944. The first irradiated slugs were discharged from the reactor on December 25, 1944.

T Plant located in 200 West Area of Hanford. (T Plant @ Hanford.gov)

Fuel slugs were then removed from the reactor and placed in a 90-day underwater cooling off period before being transported by train to the Hanford T Plant, which began operations on December 26, 1944. Next, the bismuth phosphate process was used on the fuel slugs to separate the plutonium from uranium and other fission products. The final processed product was plutonium nitrate, which made for safer shipping to Los Alamos.

In late January, 1945, the first milligrams of plutonium produced at Hanford were weighed on this scale then sent by courier to Los Alamos for testing. Los Alamos received its first plutonium from Hanford on February 2, 1945.

Building D, Tech Area, Los Alamos (Tech Area Gallery @ OSTI.gov)

Subsequently, Building D in the Tech Area at Los Alamos would purify and fabricate the plutonium nitrate received from Hanford into the highly purified metallic hemispheres used in the Trinity and Nagasaki devices.

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