Project Trinity: The Myth, The Legend, The Legacy [Slides]
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
The Manhattan Project was established in June 1942. Its mission: beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb. Los Alamos was selected as the site for the weapons design laboratory. J. Robert Oppenheimer served as the Laboratory’s director. In the spring of 1944, Los Alamos scientists discovered plutonium would not work in a gun assembly. That summer, the Laboratory was reorganized to build an implosion bomb. Scientists were confident Little Boy, the uranium gun weapon, would perform in combat. Initially, however, scientists were skeptical its imploding plutonium counterpart would function. Eventually, due to improvements in the high explosives (HE), most scientists were confident the implosion bomb would work …but not confident enough to use it in combat without testing it first! Oppenheimer persuaded General Leslie Groves, Commander of the Manhattan Engineer District, to test.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1196197
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR--15-25314
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Trinity 78th Anniversary: re-discovered and newly edited unclassified footage shows use of tanks to collect radioactive samples immediately after Trinity test (Rev. 1)
Critical assembly: A technical history of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer years, 1943--1945