pdf - WHALE

another such facility, located elsewhere, since the Auschwitz facility
did not really begin production until sometime in 1942.
Finally, it also seems clear that the Germans possessed an
enormous stock of metallic uranium. But what was the isotope
Was it U 238 for further enrichment and separation into U 235 , was it
intended perhaps as feedstock for a reactor to be transmuted into
plutonium, or was it already U 235 , the necessary material for a
uranium atom bomb Given the statements of the Japanese military
attache in Stockholm cited at the end of the previous chapter - that
the Germans may have used an atomic or some other weapon of
mass destruction on the Eastern Front ca. 1942-43, and given
Zinsser's affidavit cited in the first chapter of an atom bomb test in
October of 1944, it cannot be conclusively denied that some of this
enormous stockpile may also have been U 235 , the essential
component for a bomb.
In any case, these figures strongly suggest that the Germans, ca.
1940-1942 were significantly ahead of the Allies in one very
important aspect of atom bomb production: the enrichment of
uranium, and therefore, this suggests also that they were
demonstrably ahead in the race for an actual functioning atom bomb
during this period. But the figures also raise another disturbing
question: where did this uranium go
One answer lies in the mysterious case of a U-boat, the U-234,
captured by the Americans in 1945.
***
The case of the U-234 is well-known in literature about the
Nazi atom bomb, and of course the Allied Legend is that none of
the material on board the U-boat found its way into the American
atom bomb project.
None of this could be further from the truth.
The U-234 was a very large mine-laying U-boat that had been
adapted as an undersea freighter to carry large cargoes. Consider
then the following "cargo manifest" of the U-234's very odd cargo:
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