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U.S. Department of Energy

06/13/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/13/2025 17:18

The Army and the Origins of the Nuclear Security Enterprise

Groves wasted little time getting to work. On September 18, he acquired 1,250 tons of uranium mined from Africa's Belgian Congo. To be closer to where decisions on manpower, priorities, and supplies were made, Groves moved the Manhattan Engineer District headquarters from New York to Washington, D.C and kept the moniker "the Manhattan Project." The next day, Groves approved Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as the location of Site X, a secret uranium-processing facility that would separate U235 from U238 in sufficient quantity to make an atomic bomb.

On the recommendation of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer - who would go on to become the first director of the Los Alamos Laboratory - Groves selected Los Alamos, New Mexico, as the site of a central facility that would absorb the bomb's design role and provide largescale dynamic testing, fabrication, field testing, and preparation of the bomb for combat delivery. Additionally, Groves selected the area surrounding Hanford, Washington, to house a pilot plutonium plant.

Starting in 1943, the Army regularly requisitioned military personnel to carry out functions that could not be performed by civilians due to reasons of security or manpower shortages. In January, General Groves requested the Services of Supply to allot military police, medical, and veterinary personnel for a special military police company to protect and service the top-secret operations at Los Alamos. A similar request for additional military personnel to form provisional military police, medical, and engineer detachments at the other major project sites was made in March 1943.

The lack of available skilled workers in the civilian workforce could have doomed the project to failure. There were, however, many soldiers with appropriate experience in Army units stationed across the United States. When a shortage of some 2,500 electricians seriously jeopardized construction schedules at both Hanford and Oak Ridge, Army service commands were directed to furnish whatever assistance possible and supply the electricians needed to meet the aggressive construction deadlines.

Supply problems and personnel shortages complicated Oppenheimer's task of building a functioning bomb. By 1943, junior scientists were about the only available scientifically-educated manpower, and many of these were subject to the draft. In May 1943 General Somervell created a Special Engineer Detachment, a military organization within the Project allowing qualified enlisted men to work on the Manhattan Project rather than be sent into combat. By 1945, the SED grew to include over 3,000 soldiers scattered across multiple Manhattan Project sites - with 1,800 serving at Los Alamos - working on everything from bomb design to inventory control, often collaborating with their civilian counterparts. Unlike their more celebrated academic counterparts, the SED soldiers were still subject to Army discipline and were forced to undergo drills and physical training in the morning before spending a full day working in the labs. As one veteran recalled, "They wanted us to become a marching group. This was not what we liked to do, and we goofed off a lot."

Various other types of soldiers contributed to the atomic project. The Military Police were responsible for the complex's security and the protection of its workforce. Secrecy was so intense, recalled one former MP at Los Alamos : "They never really told us the goal of the Manhattan Project, they just said it would help end the war. But then we did later find out, when they detonated one of the bombs at Trinity." When rapid expansion of the project created an urgent need for additional personnel to handle classified mail and records, a detachment from the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was authorized, with an initial deployment of three WAAC officers and 75 enlisted women. From 1943 through 1945, WAAC members also worked in a variety of other jobs, some of which were highly technical and scientific.

U.S. Department of Energy published this content on June 13, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on June 13, 2025 at 23:18 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at support@pubt.io