Germany’s Surrender and Uncovered Secrets The Manhattan Project, knowing of Germany’s attempt to create this weapon of mass destruction, was also tasked with finding out how far advanced the German’s atom testing had been, and approximately how far the Japanese, who were still fighting the U.S., were to building their own weapon. It was determined that Japan was far from nuclear weapons as it had no clear source of uranium ore. But the U.S. still needed to remove any research Germany had on the subject matter. The Allied soldiers captured the German nuclear laboratories, documents, equipment, supplies, and materials that the Germans had accumulated in Hechingen, Bisingen, and Haigerloch. Heavy water and 1.5 tons of metallic uranium …show more content…
So it was with the Manhattan Project. The test site was the Alamogordo bombing range. But before the test, two important projects had to take place. First, there had to be a pre-test. The scientists set up one hundred tons of TNT and lit it off on the test site. This helped the scientists calibrate their instruments and prepare adequate safety measures for the real test. The successive explosion lit up the sky in a great orange ball of fire. Second, the test was completed using the first plutonium atom bomb; plutonium was extremely rare at the time, and scientists wanted to recover as much of the substance as possible to possibly be reused in the event that the bomb failed. The spherical bomb, the chosen implosion module, had to somehow be encased. Enter Jumbo. Jumbo is the name given to the giant metal bottle specially fabricated to encase the bomb and collect any plutonium. As it turned out scientists decided to proceed without Jumbo, but they kept it nearby, just in case. The test proceeded. The module, codenamed “The Gadget”, was slowly hoisted to the top of test tower in the middle of the desert. The detonators were carefully inserted, and The Gadget was left to sleep the night away under armed