Submarines and their Weapons - Aircraft of World War II

CHAPTER TWELVE
Nuclear, Biological
and Chemical
Weapons
When war broke out in 1939, it was feared that poison gas would be used even more
widely than it had been in World War I. To that fear was added the threat of
biological agents, while physicists were struggling with the possibility of harnessing
nuclear fission to produce a bomb the likes of which had never been seen.
In December 1938, German physicists Otto Hahn
and Frit/ Strassman demonstrated the fission (splitting)
of the uranium atom. This caused a stir in the
scientific community, and ripples spread outside it,
even as far as the HWA, to which several scientists
wrote, suggesting that the phenomenon might conceivably
be used in a bomb. The notion made slow
progress, but by late 1939 a steering committee had
Above: The Heinkel He 177A-5; an He 177 was modified to
carry the never-completed German atom bomb.
Left: A US serviceman is confronted by massed ranks of
German mustard gas shells afterthe war.
been formed. It had just one item on its agenda: could
a nuclear reactor to produce fissionable material be
built? As a rider, subsidiary questions were posed
about costs and timescale. A research programme was
drawn up, and six university-based projects were
established. By 1941, it had become clear that the
notion was feasible, and the steering committee
reported to HWA that a reactor could and should be
built, and that it should use as its moderator, deutrium,
also known as 'heavy water'. The entire project
went downhill from there, but it would be a long
while before that was to become obvious. By 1942,
five different laboratories were experimenting with
atomic piles, each one with a different theory of how
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