Nazi Uranium for the Manhattan Project: 1945 WWII: U-Boat U-234 with U-235 cargo

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• published: 07 Jul 2013
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Check out also BBC Horizon's 1992 documentary Hitler's Bomb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2373189/ Critical Mass The Real Story Of The Birth Of The Atomic Bomb And The Nuclear Age by Carter P. Hydrick, 1998 ISBN: 0975985310 Crates being loaded onto the submarine were marked U-235 Wolfgang Hirschfeld reportedly watched the loading into the boat's cylindrical mine shafts of about 50 lead cubes with nine inch (230 mm) sides, with "U-235" painted on each. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-234#Cargo 09:20 - mentions some of the cargo - military blueprints and crated ME-262 jet fighter 16:50 Plutonium gets a mention 42:00 - Later in the documentary the cargo is on the manifest as 560kg (half a ton) of Uranium Oxide So which was it? Uranium Oxide (mixed U-238 & U-235) or U-235? The traditional history of the atomic bomb accepts as an unimportant footnote the arrival of U-234 on United States shores, and admits the U-boat carried uranium oxide. The traditional history denies, however, that the uranium on board U-234 was enriched and therefore easily usable in an atomic bomb. The accepted history asserts there is no evidence that the uranium stocks of U-234 were transferred into the Manhattan Project, although recent suggestions have hinted that this may have occurred. And the traditional history asserts that the bomb components on board U-234 arrived too late to be included in the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. The documentation indicates quite differently on all accounts. Before U-234 had landed at Portsmouth - before it even left Europe - United States and British intelligence knew U-234 was on a mission to Japan and that it carried important passengers and cargo.iv A portion of the cargo, especially, was of a singular nature. According to U-234's chief radio operator, Wolfgang Hirschfeld, who witnessed the loading of the U-boat: 'At the time I didn't see how many containers there were, but the Loading Manifest showed ten. Each case was a cube, possibly steel and lead, nine inches along each side and enormously heavy. Once the inscription U235 had been painted on the wrapping of a package, it would then be carried over to the knot of crewmen under the supervision of Sub-Lt Pfaff and the boatswain, Peter Scholch, and stowed in one of the six vertical mineshafts.' Hirschfeld's straightforward account of the uranium being "highly radioactive" - he later witnessed the storage tubes being tested with Geiger counters,vi - and labeled "U235" provides profoundly important information about this cargo. U235 is the scientific designation of enriched uranium - the type of uranium required to fuel an atomic bomb. On the second page of U-234's cargo manifest, halfway down the page, was the entry "10 cases, 560 kilograms, uranium oxide." Whoever first read the entry and understood the frightening capabilities and potential purpose of uranium must have been stunned by the entry. The identification that the uranium was stowed in gold-lined cylinders and that it would become "sensitive and dangerous" when unpacked provides clear substantiation of radio officer Hirschfeld's assertion that the uranium was labeled with the title U235. Uranium that has had its proportion of the isotope U235 increased compared to the more common isotope of uranium, U238, is known as enriched uranium. When that enrichment becomes 70 percent or above, it is bomb-grade uranium. The process of enriching uranium during the war was highly technical and very expensive - it still is. Upon first reading that the uranium on board U-234 was stored in gold-lined cylinders, this author tracked down Clarence Larsen, former director of the leading uranium enrichment process at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the Manhattan Project's uranium enrichment facilities were housed. In a telephone conversation, I asked Mr. Larsen what, if anything, would be the purpose of shipping uranium in gold-lined containers. Mr. Larsen remembered that the Oak Ridge program used gold trays when working with enriched uranium. He explained that, because uranium enrichment was a very costly process, enriched uranium needed to be protected jealously, but because it is very corrosive, it is easily invaded by any but the most stable materials, and would then become contaminated. To prevent the loss to contamination of the invaluable enriched uranium, gold was used. Gold is one of the most stable substances on earth. While expensive, Mr. Larsen explained, the cost of gold was a drop in the bucket compared to the value of enriched uranium. Would raw uranium, rather than enriched uranium, be stored in gold containers, I asked? Not likely, Mr. Larsen responded. The value of raw uranium is, and was at the time, inconsequential compared to the cost of gold. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/atomicbomb/chap01.htm