ATOM BOMB QUESTION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 71, 10 January 1947, Page 3

ATOM BOMB QUESTION

COMMENTS BY WEAPONS EXPERT ARTICLE IN AMERICAN NEWSPAPER

The Daily Express weapons expert, Chapman Pincher, says the United States has probably 96 atom bombs in its munitions stockpile, each 25 feet long, torpedo-shaped, powered with 100 pounds of plutonium in two lumps, and weighing about 9000 pounds, states the Christian Science Monitor. The article, which appeared under a banner head “Atom Bomb Secret Out,” gave no source for its information. Mr Pincher based his figure of 96 bombs on an assumed output of six bombs per month since the time of the Nagasaki bombing. Estimating that there were eight bombs in stock at the time Nagasaki was hit, minus two used in the Bikini experiments and assuming that the rate of production of six per month had not changed, Mr Pincher arrived at his figure of 96. Accompanying Mr Pincher’s article was an artist’s conception of the bomb with a cut away portion showing the working parts. The sketch showed a conventional casing with four small fins and two “drogues”— parachutes open at each end—which Mr Pincher said, operated to slow the descent for better control of a time fuse mechanism operating a detonator. The writer said the missile was detonated by an apparatus which fires one lump of plutonium at one end of the gun tube to the other lump at the opposite end. .This', he said, necessitated the unusual length of the bomb—2s feet. The article said the massive casing and protective lead covering for the gun tube comprised a large percentage of the bomb’s 9000 pound weight.

In Washington, Major General Leslie R. Groves, head of the Manhattan Projects which manufactured atom bombs during the war, said that under U.S. War Department policy, he could neither “confirm or deny” any of the details of Mr Pincher’s article, but commented that it was a “very interesting story.”