Did the engineers and scientists working on the Manhattan Project know they were creating an atomic bomb?

Question

A friend recently told me that most engineers and scientists working on the Manhattan Project did not know that they were helping to create an atomic bomb. This makes sense, since there were 120,000 people working on the project--for security reasons, I'm sure the government wouldn't want everyone to know what they were creating. But can anyone send me some specific information about this? My friend said he saw this in a documentary (possibly on the History Channel). Is there other information on the secrecy of this project available? Where can I find it? Thanks...

Answer 1

Most, yes.
Scientist are not stupid people.
It was a new technology back then So most scientist knew.
Alot were "isolated" but had an idea.
The power and the outcome were in question, except for the most brilliant minds.
Oppenheimer, (i have become the destroyer of worlds) and Einstein, who really had no hand in designing "The bomb" but knew the ramifications,

Answer 2

Good question and NO... most did not know. Robert Oppenheimer, the lead on the project, did know but apparently didn't think we would ever use it. He actually became chief advisor to the US Atomic Energy Commission and used his position to lobby for international control of atomic energy after the bombs were dropped in WWII. Some people think more along the lines of "I wonder IF I can make this rather than thinking SHOULD I make this!!!

BTW... all of those 120K people did n't work directly with the project... most of those were contractors making certain parts for the bomb that had NO idea what it was for. Then you have security personnel, cooks, janitors, delivery, drivers...

Answer 3

I agree that the junior engineers probably would not have known that they were producing an atomic bomb. Some of the senior scientists that were involved include.....

1)Brigadier General Leslie Groves
2)Robert Oppenheimer (USA)
3)David Bohm (USA)
4)Leo Szilard (Hungary)
5)Eugene Wigner (Hungary)
6)Rudolf Peierls (Germany)
7)Otto Frisch (Germany)
8)Niels Bohr (Denmark)
9)Felix Bloch (Switzerland)
10)James Franck (Germany)
11)James Chadwick (Britain)
12)Emilio Segre (Italy)
13)Enrico Fermi (Italy)
14)Klaus Fuchs (Germany)
15)Edward Teller (Hungary)

I would be willing to bet that these men knew exactly what they were doing and were kept under a lock and key!

Answer 4

Yes, they did. At least the nuclear physicists did, according to my father, Hubert P. Yockey, who was a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, after studying with Oppenheimer and Lawrence.

Answer 5

I saw something on that and it was supose to be to make energy. A power plant or something. When it occurred they were shocked that it was so destructive no one realized what it would do when dropped. Not to the that extent.
People were told to go out and watch the light like a fireworks thing and it blinded them. But it took several years.
Nor did they know what it would do to the ground.

Answer 6

Most of the junior engineers and scientists probably did not.

Being as highly classified as it was, only those with an absolute need to know would have been told.