Other Places

The University of Chicago bustled with activity during the Manhattan Project. Dozens of scientists gathered here at the university’s Metallurgical Laboratory to research enrichment methods for the top-secret project, culminating in the creation of the Chicago Pile, the world’s first experimental nuclear reactor. Learn more about Chicago’s role in the project by following the link.

During the Manhattan Project, Washington, DC was home to the offices of project leader General Leslie Groves. Operating out of a small two-room office in the New War Building, Groves and a handful of staff directed the far-reaching top-secret project and the thousands of personnel it employed.

The Ames Project, located in Ames, Iowa produced purified uranium metal for the Manhattan Project, first on an experimental and then on a mass scale. Learn more about the role Ames played during and after the project.

In early September 1944, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets of the Army Air Forces, who probably knew more about the new B-29 bombers than any other pilot, was called to a closed military meeting. There he was put in charge of a secret project to prepare modified B-29s and their crews to be used delivering the atomic bomb to Japan. He was given his choice of three airfields: Wendover, Utah; Great Bend, Kansas; or Mountain Home, Idaho.

Tinian Island, after being taken from the Japanese in fierce combat, was used as an airfield for United States’ B-29 Superfortresses in their bombing runs on the main islands of Japan. Early on August 6, 1945, pilot Paul Tibbets and his crew in the B-29 Enola Gay left Tinian for Hiroshima, Japan, to drop the uranium bomb Little Boy. Then on August 9, Charles Sweeny in the B-29 Bockscar carried the plutonium bomb Fat Man to Nagasaki.

On July 16, 1945, Manhattan Project scientists detonated the world’s first atomic device, known as “the Gadget,” at 5:29 am Mountain War Time. The US Army conducted the test at the Trinity Site in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 210 miles (337 km) south of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Today the Trinity Site is part of the White Sands Missile Range and can only be visited during a Trinity Site Open House, typically hosted twice a year.

The Manhattan Engineer District needed uranium for the Manhattan Project to succeed. They relied heavily on Canada and Africa for raw uranium but recognized the risk in getting uranium from these places and sought a domestic source. Land in Western Colorado and Eastern Utah had the highest known uranium-ore concentrations in the country. The federal government chose Grand Junction, CO to become a uranium processing site, making it very important to the Manhattan Project.

During World War II, the Marshall Islands were seen as a strategic location for Japan to base attacks elsewhere in the Pacific. The US gained control of the Islands in 1944. Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear tests on, in, and above the atolls and islands, contaminating the environment with radioactive fallout and displacing Indigenous Marshallese Islanders. Bikini Atoll, now a World Heritage Site, is still not environmentally safe for permanent residence.

Dayton, Ohio is known for cash registers, Cheez-It crackers, pop top cans, and being the Birthplace of Aviation. However, the city has another important but widely unknown accolade on its long list of innovations and inventions: the scientific work done during the top-secret Dayton Project. The work done throughout the city in the 1940s culminated in the polonium initiators used in the atomic bombs developed by the Manhattan Project during WWII.

On March 26, 1943, Dorothy McKibbin reported to work at 109 East Palace in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and learned that their employer was the secret Los Alamos Laboratory in the nearby mountains, part of the covert Manhattan Project. From her modest office, Dorothy became “gatekeeper” to Los Alamos since all civilian employees and many of the military personnel checked in through her office.