The Failure of Operation Freshman

Abstract

While I was in Washington in July 1942, my friend and benefactor at MIT, Dean Moorland, looked me up and invited me to dinner in a place where security would be no problem.⁶⁴ Speaking for an unidentified group of physicists and engineers, he told me as much as he thought necessary about the American effort in atomic energy technology. There was good evidence that the Nazis were also active in this field, and no one could say who would win the race. Most disturbing was a rumor that the Germans were planning an enormous expansion of the Norske Hydro complex of hydroelectricity at Rjukan, about fifty miles west of Oslo. There was another story, rather more vague, about a similar expansion at certain falls near Lake Enare in northern Finland. If there were any truth in these rumors it could only mean that the Germans were preparing to produce large amounts of heavy water which, in turn, could be taken to indicate that their experimental work on the development of an atom bomb was nearing its end. What Moorland wanted to know was how we could find out, quickly and safely, whether these rumors represented plausible extrapolations. Had construction work actually begun, there would have been no difficulty in finding evidence, but at the present stage the problem seemed very much one of mind-reading.

Mistakes are always initial.

—Pavese⁶³