| Description | ' Many thanks for your letter. I know that you discussed your plan with Thomson - I was present also - but I do not believe that he is the right man to promote this proposition and to put the right push behind it. I think it would be worth the while to write to Lindemann. I saw him last Sunday and I asked him where to address another kind of propsitionl he asked me to send it on to him, he would see that it gets to the right place. He seems, therefore, to have time enough for such things. His present address is : 10 Downing Street. - I believe your plan could be practicable, especially the magnetic mine one.
it will interest you to hear - if you have not heard already - that the Uranium bomb seems to become a practical proposition. It has been proved experimentally in America that U235 is responsible for the fission phenomena. Frisch and Peierls have calculated that a mass of a few kilogramms of U235 would blow up and that the times would be quick enough to ensure a real "detonation". Of course one cannot predict this with absolute certainty, but they believe that the probablility is about 50%. Oliphant is interested in it and lends his support. The chief point is to separate the isotopes (U235 is only present in normal U to about 1%). This is possible with very much money, the order of 1 million £ ! But it would be worth while as it could decide the war. Of course one has to spend only this amount after preliminary experiments have shown, that the whole thing works.
The point now is to separate as quickly as possible a few milligrams and to develop the methods for separating kilogramms. I have tried hard since the beginning of war to persuade Lindemann to let me go on with this mtter on a biggish scale in the Clarendon, as I always believed that something should be prepared for the U bomb in case it should work and as moreover the separation of isotopes will prove valuable for many other purposes also. I had no success, however, as L. concentrated all efforts on the Admirality work now carried out in our Lab. I shall now try again after the U bomb seeems so much nearer realisation and afdter having the suppor t of the Birmingham people.
I am afraid, however, that even if a man with vision like L. would suppor the scheme that it will be possible to get the necessary suppor t from the industrialists and all the other slow thinking people. And that in Germany people will not be so handicapped and that they will realise the scheme before us. There is of course the hope that the Americans will get on quickly and that they will put it at our disposal.
The whole thing looks rather fantaastic to the layman, of course, and the lack of vision of which you also speak, is the greatest ......'
Letter ends at this point - other half of this letter was listed at FS/7/1/7/65, but has now been moved back to FS/7/1/7/51 |