GERMANS YEARS BEHIND

Southland Times, Issue 25746, 9 August 1945, Page 5

GERMANS YEARS BEHIND

Work On Atomic Bomb (Rec. 9.55 p.m) , „ WASHINGTON, Aug. 8. Brigadier-General Thomas Farrell, the aide to Major-General Groves, who was in charge of the atomic bomb development, . disclosed that the date for the dropping of the first bomb was set well over a year ago. British and American scientists thought for a while that they were racing against time with the Germans, who were known to have begun work on a similar bomb. Allied bombs last March destroyed a laboratory _ at Oranienburg in which German scientists were working on an atomic bomb. When he heard about the laboratory. General George C. Marshal, Chief of the United States General Staff, and General H. H. Arnold, Chief of the United States Army Air Forces, sent a courier from Washington with oral orders 'to Lieutenant-General Carl Spaatz, then commander of the Strategic Air Force, to destroy the building. Brigadier-General Farrell added that the Allies after entering Germany learned that the Nazis were years behind British and American scientists.

Captain William Parsons; who designed the atomic bomb, said that he began work in June 1943 to perfect, an explosive that could be carried in comparative safety in a plane for the length of time required to fly from the Marianas to Japan. He explained: “The bomb cannot be controlled like other bombs. It must be checked to the last minute by the weaponeer. This will be true until it is more fully developed. However, we could not delay its use for further development because it was worth too much to end the war.”

Captain Parsons added that although he was close to the project, he was in the dark about some phases. He said: “I learned a lot from a hand-out given to correspondents.” The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in a statement said that an atomic engine for an aircraft was a distant possibility. Many years of research and development lay ahead because the degree of control achieved in the use of atomic fission as a destruction bomb nowhere near approached the measure of control necessary to convert atomic energy into engine horsepower. NO REDUCTION IN ARMY Despite the use of the atomic bomb against Japan, the War Department insists that it cannot reduce the army below the 7,000,000 total set for the end of June 1946. Army officials are not inclined to discuss the new bomb, says the Washington correspondent of The New York Times, but it is evident from the tone of guarded comments that the bomb is not regarded by those responsible for winning the war as a weapon which itself will end the war. On the contrary, high Army circles are concerned lest the impression that the bomb will obviate the necessity of maintaining the Army at the number already fixed becomes too widely accepted by the public. The New York Herald Tribune asked why Hiroshima rather than Tokyo was chosen as the first target. An Army spokesman replied: “Maybe we did not want to risk hitting the Tokyo Government buildings, destroying the very people who may make the decision to surrender.”

Military circles in Washington are resigned to the fact that the atomic bomb will be developed in future by other nations, but they point out that the original discoverers will always have certain advantages. It is, stated emphatically that Japan has not worked on such a bomb.

SECRET WILL NOT BE SHARED CONTROL OVER BOMB’S MANUFACTURE LONDON, August 7. It appears that the secret of the atomic bomb will not be shared with any power other than those directly concerned in its production, says Reuter’s military correspondent. As soon as the Big Three’s experts have had the opportunity of studying all the strategic implications it is likely that consultations will begin to consider methods for agreed control over the bomb’s manufacture and use. Its offensive uses at the moment are in the limelight, but its use for defence may equally outmode present forms of aerial warfare. Experts so far are unable to do anything more than grasp the sheer magnitude of the revolution facing them, but the Big Three Governments are expected to act speedily to regulate this unforeseen .situation. The correspondent says that the strategic decisions taken at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, according to military experts, are already outdated. Security is no longer definable—for in-

stance, by control of the Dardanelles, the Suez Canal, by possession of this or that port, river or mountain. Possession of the Rhine and Cologne with radiating roads might be an economic advantage to France, but is no longer claimable as a measure of strategic necessity. The same applies for many other claims to strategic frontiers in eastern and south-eastern Europe. Nothing under international peace can give security. Professor Gilbert Murray, Joint President of the League of Nations Union, states: “How far is it possible, or wise, to diffuse generally over the world knowledge of how to make atomic bombs? There are very great dangers now and there are enormous difficulties in keeping it a secret of one or two nations.” Professor Murray recalled that the League Committee of Intellectual Cooperation once considered a proposal that militarily-important scientific investigations should immediately be published by a scientific military committee. He said that such a law was impossible to lay down because no nation would give up a secret whereon it believed its security depended. Professor Murray added that the problem was “very interesting and very alarming.”