Original nuclear accelerator utilized in WWII effort

By Susan Williams

When World War II began in 1939, the original cyclotron structure was under construction. By early 1941, the same year that the government began to call up professors and students to assist in war-related efforts, the first beam was achieved.

Scientists who were working on the development of a nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago came to the cyclotron to be near a source of neutrons. Their work later became the Manhattan Project, said the late Lawrence M. Langer, one of the founders of IU’s nuclear physics program, in a 1989 interview.

Langer went to Los Alamos, N.M., in 1942, and spent the remainder of the war on the Manhattan Project, where he was involved in the development, testing and delivery of the Hiroshima bomb.

For safety reasons, the bomb would not be fully assembled until after the plane carrying it took off for Japan from the island of Tinian. An officer put the tool needed to finish the job in a special tool box in the plane’s bomb bay but was so worried about it that he checked its placement several times throughout the day, Langer recalled.

After the bomb was loaded, everyone with the exception of Langer, went off to dinner. But because the officer was so worried about the tool staying in its proper place, Langer decided to remain behind with the plane.

“It was being guarded by MPs, but my experience with MPs was that they were very curious, and I wanted to be sure that tool was in that box,” he said. “So, I stayed in the bomb bay. I stretched out on top of the bomb, fell asleep and spent the night...the tool was in the box when they took off in the morning, and it worked.”