The Winds of War

  Oumansky sat back placidly. “Most certainly not. As you know, the working class all over the world is in its nature peace-loving. It has nothing to gain from war, and everything to lose. The war began as a struggle between imperialistic powers, so the workers—as, for instance, the American Communist Party, as you just mentioned—opposed the war. But the Soviet Union has no empire and no colonies. It is simply a country of peasants and workers who want peace. In attacking us, the German Fascists threw off their mask and revealed themselves as the brutish common enemy of mankind. Therefore all peoples will now unite in solidarity to crush the German Fascist beasts. The American people too are a peace-loving people. The Soviet people will count on their support of our righteous battle.”

  “Mr. Ambassador—”

  “In this connection,” said Oumansky, “the historic British pledge of full support, which Mr. Churchill has just given, will be of decisive influence, since Winston Churchill is so justly admired in the United States for his heroic stand against Hitlerism. Good morning, and thank you very much.”

  As Madeline escorted the Russians out of the studio, Cleveland was saying, looking after them with exasperation, “Who’s in Town has just brought you the exclusive first broadcast of the Russian ambassador to the United States, Mr. Constantine Oumansky, on the German invasion of the Soviet Union.” His voice shifted from dramatic resonance to oleaginous good cheer. “Well, folks, it’s sort of a big jump from invasions to the amazing new improved Fome-Brite, isn’t it? But life does go on. If dirt invades your kitchen, the new improved Fome-Brite is the modern way to fight back—”

  The sunrise, coming to Chicago, was invisible; a thunderstorm was blanketing the city. Through dark pelting rain, Palmer Kirby was riding in a taxicab to a secret meeting of the President’s Uranium Committee, which was interviewing engineers from all over the country. The purpose of the committee was to find out, from the practical men who had to do it, whether enough U-235 could be produced within the predictable time span of the war—which was set at four or five more years—to make atomic bombs or power plants. Dr. Lawrence’s letter had asked him to bring a feasibility report on manufacturing certain giant electromagnets. The men were old friends; over the years Kirby had supplied the Nobel Prize winner with much specially built equipment for his cyclotron work.

  Palmer Kirby worked on the borderline where commerce exploited science; he always referred to himself as a money-maker, but he had some scientific standing, because of his early work at the California Institute of Technology. Kirby knew what the giant electromagnets were for. His opinion on producing uranium for military purposes was definite. Not only could it be done; Kirby thought the Germans were well along to doing it. The invasion of Russia struck him as a scary corroboration of this.

  Ordinary uranium looks like nickel. Chemically it is lively, but nothing can make it blow up. Its strange radioactivity will fog photographic plates; it may feel warmish; and very long exposure to it may give a human being slight burns. For better or worse, in the matter scattered through the universe, there is also a tiny trace of the stuff, chemically the same, but different in atomic structure: the explosive isotope U-235. We know all about this now, but in 1941 scientists only guessed that a U-235 bomb might work. It was all theory. The problem was first, to find out whether a controlled chain reaction of uranium fission was possible, or whether some unknown fact of nature would stop it; second—if the first answer was yes—to get enough pure uranium 235 to try exploding it; and third, if that worked, to produce enough of the stuff to cow the world. When he heard the news of Hitler’s attack on Russia, Kirby decided that the Germans must have succeeded at least with the first step.

  From his narrow vantage point, he saw the entire war as a race between Germans and Americans to make uranium 235 explode. Everything else—submarine sinkings, land campaigns, air battles—more and more looked to him like vain blood-spillings, inconclusive obsolete gestures before this one big showdown. Hitler’s plunge into Russia, opening a second front and releasing England from near doom, struck him as a madman’s mistake—unless the Germans had successfully created a controlled chain reaction. If Hitler had uranium bombs or could count on having them within a year or two, the war was decided, and the Germans were simply making a gigantic slave raid in Russia, preparatory to assuming the rule of the earth.

  From the information Kirby had, this appeared likely. It was the Germans who had discovered uranium fission. In 1939 they had set aside the whole Kaiser Wilhelm Institut to work on military use of the discovery. In conquered Norway, intelligence reported, they were making large amounts of heavy water. There was only one possible military use for heavy water, the queer substance with the doubled hydrogen nucleus—as a neutron slower in uranium fission.

  The United States had no nuclear reactors, no technique for building one, no scientist who was sure a chain reaction could be created. In the whole country there were not forty pounds of uranium suitable for experiments; there was no setup for producing ordinary uranium in quantity, let alone the very rare isotope 235 that might blow up; and for all the meetings of the Uranium Committee and the whisperings among scientists, the government had not yet spent on this project one hundred thousand dollars in cash. Kirby estimated that by now the Germans, in their massive try for world empire, might have already spent, in the same effort, something like a billion dollars.

  The Uranium Committee sat in a drab seminar room, warm and smoky despite the open windows and the continuing thunderstorm outside. Elementary equations from an undergraduate course were chalked on the small dusty blackboard. Kirby knew everybody who sat around the table except for two uniformed military visitors: an Army colonel and a Navy captain. The scientists were in shirt-sleeves, some with ties off and sleeves rolled up. Lyman Briggs, director of the National Bureau of Standards, was still chairman, and this further depressed Kirby. Briggs was a pleasant gray-haired bureau head to whom a thousand dollars was a spectacular Federal expenditure. He wore his coat and tie.

  Dr. Lawrence gave Kirby a friendly wave and turned to the military men sitting beside him. “This is Dr. Kirby, president of Denver Electric Works—Colonel Thomas and Captain Kelleher.”

  Kirby passed out copies of a mimeographed document and read the paper aloud, sometimes pausing for thunder crashes. The committee listened with narrow-eyed attention—all but Captain Kelleher, a bald chain smoker with a big double chin, who stared straight ahead in a slump, now and then scratching through his blue and gold uniform at one place on his chest. The Army colonel, a studious-looking small man with a bad cough, kept eating lozenges from a paper box, while he made shorthand notes on the margins of Kirby’s paper.

  Kirby was replying to questions posed to him by Lawrence in the letter: could he manufacture these giant electric magnets, and if so, what would be the probable costs and production time? Lawrence’s idea—which he was pushing with the peculiar force and single-mind-edness that made him loved or hated by other scientists—was to produce uranium 235 by separating a stream of ionized molecules of uranium in a magnetic field; a method Kirby had once described to Victor Henry. There already existed a laboratory tool, the mass spectrograph, that worked this way. Lawrence wanted to make giant mass spectrographs to get uranium 235 in sufficient quantities for war use. Nothing like it had ever been done. The whole notion required—among other things—monster electromagnets which would keep an unwavering field. The slightest voltage change would wash out the infinitesimal difference in the molecule paths of U-238 and U-235, on which the whole idea hung.

  When Kirby named a feasible date for delivering the first magnets, and the range of prices he would charge, the committeemen started glancing at each other. He finished with a warning about supply problems requiring high priorities, and sat down. Lawrence was beaming at him through his round glasses.

  “Well, that’s encouraging,” Lyman Briggs said mildly, fingering his tie. “Of course, the price figures are still in the realm of pure fantasy.”
br />   The Navy captain put in, “Dr. Kirby, we’ve had fellows from General Electric and Westinghouse report on this. They project twice as much time, more than twice as much money, and they shade those performance characteristics considerably.”

  Palmer Kirby shrugged. “Could well be.”

  “Why should we take your word on feasibility against theirs?” Colonel Thomas said hoarsely, shaking a lozenge out of his box.

  Kirby said, “Colonel, I once worked at Westinghouse. They make everything that uses an electric current. I make custom-designed equipment, and I specialize in electromagnets. It’s a narrow specialty, but it’s mine. The Germans were way ahead of us at one point. I went to Germany. I studied their components and imported their nickel alloy cores. Westinghouse and General Electric don’t know that area of technology as I do. They don’t have to. For special jobs in electromagnetics I can outperform them. At least I’m claiming that I can, and I’m prepared to bid in these terms.”

  When Palmer Kirby mentioned Germany, the glances went again around the table. The Navy captain spoke up in a peevish voice. “Are the Germans still ahead of us?”

  “On what, sir?”

  “On anything. On making these bombs, to get down to the short hairs.”

  Kirby puffed at his pipe. “Well, the self-confidence they’ve just showed isn’t encouraging.”

  “I agree. Well, why don’t we get going, then? All this committee seems to do is palaver.” Kelleher sat up straight, glowering. “I’m not a scientist, and I can’t say I’ve taken much stock in these futuristic weapons, but by Christ if there’s anything in them let’s get cracking. Let’s go straight to the President and howl for money and action. I can assure you the Navy will back the committee.”

  Holding up a thin hand in dismay, Briggs said, “The President has more immediate things, Captain, requiring money and action.”

  “I don’t agree,” Thomas said. “More immediate than these bombs?”

  Briggs retorted, “It’s all pure theory, Colonel, years away from any possible practical result.”

  Captain Kelleher slapped his hand on the table. “Look, let me ask a real dumb question. What’s Kirby talking about here? Is it the diffusion business, or the spectrograph business? Maybe I ought to know, but I don’t.”

  “The spectrograph business,” Lawrence said in a fatherly tone.

  “All right. Then, why don’t you just shoot the works on that? You’ve got a Nobel Prize. Why don’t you send the President a red-hot plain-language memo that he can grasp? Why do you keep fudging around on these other approaches?”

  “Because if we guess wrong on the basic approach,” another scientist mildly observed, “we may lose several years.”

  Kirby could not resist saying, “Or lose the whole race to the Germans.”

  The discussion halted. The heavy drumming of the rain for a moment or two was the only sound. Briggs said, “Well! These things are still very iffy, as the President likes to say. We can’t be going off half-cocked in this business, that much is certain. In any case”—he turned to Kirby with an agreeable smile—“I don’t think we need detain you. Your report has been very useful. Many thanks.”

  Gathering up his papers, Kirby said, “Will you need me again, or do I go back to Denver?”

  “Don’t rush off, Fred,” Lawrence said.

  “Right. I’ll be at the Stevens.”

  Kirby passed the morning in his hotel suite, listening to the radio bulletins and special reports on the invasion of Russia, and growing gloomier and gloomier. The incessant rain, with the sporadic lightning and thunder, reinforced his dark mood. He had not drunk before lunch in a long time, but he sent for a bottle of Scotch, and had it almost a third emptied when Lawrence called in high spirits. “Fred, you shone this morning. I thought we might manage lunch, but the committee’s sending out for coffee and sandwiches, and working straight on through. Meantime something has come up. Do you have a minute?”

  “I’m just sitting here, listening to CBS broadcast the end of the world.”

  Lawrence laughed. “It won’t end. We’ll beat the Germans to U-235, and that’s the key to this war. Their industrial base is far inferior to ours. But the committee will certainly have to change its ways. The procedure is incredibly cumbersome. This business right now, for instance. Intolerable! One interview at a time, for secrecy, tying all of us up for days on end! We need one knowledgeable man in constant liaison with business and industry, and we need him right away.” Lawrence paused, and added, “We’ve just been talking about you.”

  “Me? No thanks.”

  “Fred, you’re an engineer, you know business, and your grasp of theory is adequate. That’s the desired combination, and it’s rare. Unfortunately, no job in the world is more important right now, and you know that.”

  “But ye gods, who would I work for? And report to? Not the National Bureau of Standards, for God’s sake!”

  “That point is wide open. For secrecy, you might just get a consultant post in the Navy. Captain Kelleher is full of fire to get going, which rather amuses me. Years ago, Fermi came to the Navy with this entire project outlined. They turned him away as a crackpot. The Navy turned away Enrico Fermi! Well, Fred? Will you serve?”

  After a pause Kirby said, “Where would I be posted?”

  “It would have to be in Washington.” Kirby was silent so long that Lawrence added, “Something wrong with going to Washington?”

  “I didn’t say that, but if you want those electromagnets built—”

  “That’s a year away, even assuming the approach is approved and the money appropriated. This must be done now. What do you say?”

  This was Lawrence in his urgent and imperious vein, which Kirby knew well. He considered Lawrence possibly the most brilliant man alive. Kirby was several years older than the Nobel Prize winner. He had given up a straight scientific career and gone into industry after getting his Ph.D., largely because of his encounters with Lawrence and a few other men much younger than himself and unreachably more brilliant. They had made him feel outclassed and deflated. To be urged now by this man to take on a task of this importance was irresistible.

  “I hope to hell I’m not offered the job,” he said. “If I am, I’ll accept.”

  By the time the sun rose over San Francisco, the line between night and day had travelled halfway around the earth, and the invasion of the Soviet Union was half a day old. Masses of men had been killed, most of them Russians, and the Soviet air force had lost hundreds of airplanes—or perhaps more than a thousand; the disaster was already beyond precise documenting.

  In the officers’ club at the Mare Island Navy Yard, at a window table in the sunshine, several submarine skippers were chatting about the invasion over ham and eggs. There was little dispute over the outcome. All agreed that the Soviet Union would be crushed; some gave the Red Army as long as six weeks, others foresaw the end in three weeks or ten days. These young professional officers were not a narrow-minded or prejudiced handful; their view was held in the armed forces of the United States right to the top. The wretched showing of the Red Army against Finland had confirmed the judgment that Communism, and Stalin’s bloody purges, had reduced Russia to a nation of no military account. American war plans, in June 1941, ignored the Soviet Union in estimating the world strategic picture. The submariners at Mare Island, peacefully gossipping at breakfast about the spread of the holocaust on the other side of the world, were expressing only what the service as a whole believed.

  The main topic of discussion was whether or not the Japanese would now strike; and if so, where. These few lieutenant commanders inclined to agree that so long as the President kept up his suicidal policy of letting them buy more and more oil and scrap iron, the Japs would probably hold off. But the consensus lasted only until Branch Hoban of the Devilfish challenged it.

  No skipper in the squadron had more prestige. Hoban’s high standing in his class, his chilling air of competence, his sharp bridge game, his golf
shooting in the seventies, his ability to hold liquor, his beautiful wife, his own magazine-cover good looks, all added up to an almost suspiciously glamorous façade. But the façade was backed by performance. Under his command the Devilfish had earned three E’s in engineering and gunnery, and in fleet maneuvers in May he had sneaked the Devilfish inside a destroyer screen and hypothetically sunk a battleship. He was clearly a comer headed for flag rank. When Lieutenant Commander Hoban talked, others listened.

  Hoban argued that the world situation was like a football game, and that in Asia, the Russian Siberian army was the player facing Japan. With this latest move, Hitler had sucked the Russian man back toward the other wing, to be held as Stalin’s last reserve. This was Japan’s big chance. The Nips now had a clear field to run the ball from China south to Singapore, the Celebes, and Java, cleaning up all the rich European possessions. If only they moved fast enough, they could go over the line before the United States could pull itself together and interfere. He broke off elaborating this favorite metaphor of servicemen and left the breakfast table when he saw his new executive officer motioning to him from the doorway.

  Lieutenant Aster handed him a dispatch from Commander, Submarines Pacific: DEVILFISH OVERHAUL CANCELLED EXCEPTION REPAIRS VITAL OPERATIONAL READINESS X REPORT EARLIEST POSSIBLE DATE UNDERWAY MANILA.

  “Well, well, back to base!” Hoban grinned, with a trace of high-strung’ eagerness. “Very well! So ComSubPac expects the kickoff too. Let’s see, today’s the twenty-second, eh? There’s that compressor and number four torpedo tube that have to be buttoned up. Obviously we don’t get the new motor generator, and all the job orders will have to wait till we get alongside in Manila. But that’s okay.” Holding the dispatch against the wall, he pencilled in neat print, Underway twenty-fourth 0700, and handed it to Aster. “Send that off operational priority.”