Leslie R. Groves

Leslie R. Groves

Leslie Richard Groves (born August 17, 1896 in Albany , New York, † July 13, 1970 ) was a Lieutenant General in the US Army and military director of the development of the first atomic bomb in the so-called Manhattan Project .

Military career

Groves studied at the University of Washington , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and he graduated from the US Military Academy in West Point , New York in 1918 .

During his tenure as deputy head of construction for the engineer forces, he was instrumental in the construction of the Pentagon under his superior Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell . In 1942, because of his organizational talent, he proposed to him on behalf of the politically responsible Vannevar Bush and James Bryant Conant to take over a secret new type of military nuclear weapons development project. He was the main responsible for one of the largest projects of US military history, to build the first atomic bomb , which later only referred to by Groves even with the innocuous name "Manhattan Engineering District (MED)" as the Manhattan Project provided was . A total of 150,000 people were involved in the project, including 14,000 scientists and engineers, at a total cost of two billion US dollars. So the cost was about 0.67% of the total U.S. war spending of World War II of about $ 296 billion.

As the top military decision-maker of the Manhattan Project, he recruited numerous leading scientists, physicists, chemists and engineers (including Leó Szilárd , Edward .) For the large research facility Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos near Santa Fé , New Mexico under the guidance of physicist Robert Oppenheimer Teller , Enrico Fermi , Eugene Wigner ) on the technical development of the first atomic bomb. At further large research facilities newly established by Groves in Oak Ridge , west of Knoxville Tennessee ( Oak Ridge National Laboratory ; ORNL), uranium processing with separation of the fissile isotope ²³⁵ U by means of gas diffusion was developed. At the large new large-scale research center Hanford Site near Pasco, Washington, fissile plutonium ²³⁹ Pu was "hatched" in specially developed reactors.

The entire program of the Manhattan Project included a total of 37 secret facilities in 19 US states; Partly in cooperation with institutions in England.

Places of important facilities of the Manhattan Project

In the desert near Alamogordo about 400 kilometers south of Los Alamos, the first “ Trinity ” nuclear weapons test with a plutonium bomb was carried out on July 16, 1945 . Three weeks later, on August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was used in Hiroshima (Japan).

The nomination of the extremely effective and assertive Leslie R. Groves, who was excellently suited for this immense task and thus achieved "world fame", subsequently turned out to be a decisive step in the unexpectedly quick achievement of the goal of using an atomic bomb.

Leslie R. Groves retired from the US Army in 1948. In 1962, almost 20 years after the end of the Manhattan Project, he published a monograph in which he reviewed and summarized the history of this historical project.

Awards

Selection of decorations, sorted based on the Order of Precedence of Military Awards :

• Army Distinguished Service Medal
• Legion of Merit
• Commander of the Belgian Leopold Order
• Companion of the Order of the Bath

literature

• Leslie R. Groves: Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. New York: Harper, 1962
  • Leslie R. Groves: Now may I speak: The story of the first atomic bomb . From d. Engl. Transl. by Hans Steinsdorff. Cologne, Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1965. Reprint 1983, ISBN 0-306-80189-2 )
• Robert S. Norris: Racing for the bomb. General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man. ISBN 978-1-58642-067-3 (1-58642-067-4) 752 pages
• Lansing Lamont: An Explosion Changed the World - The Story of the First Atomic Bomb. Original: Day of Trinity. 1965, R. Piper Verlag Munich.

Web links

Commons : Leslie R. Groves  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Literature by and about Leslie R. Groves in the catalog of the German National Library
• Manhattan Project (English)