Hitler's Terror Weapons by Brooks, Geoffrey (the best books of all time TXT) 📕

not opened can be handled like crude TNT. These containers should not be opened as substance will become sensitive and dangerous. Pfaff is available and willing to aid unloading if RNEDT desires. Advise. CTM.”

The third item is US Navy Secret Telephone Transcript 292045 between Commander Naval Operations, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Major Francis J. Smith, and Major Traynor at Portsmouth, NH Naval Yard. This recorded that on 30 May 1945, Lt-Cdr Karl B. Reese, Lt (j.g.) Edward P. McDermott (USNR) and Major John E. Vance, Corps of Engineers, US Army, arrived at Portsmouth Navy Yard in connection with the cargo of U-234. Large quantities were unloaded and taken by ship to Brooklyn. The following telephone conversation ensued on 14 June 1945 between Major Smith and Major Traynor:

Smith: “I have just got a shipment in of captured material and there were 39 drums and 70 wooden barrels, and all of that is liquid. What I need is a test to see what the concentration is and a set of recommendations as to disposal. I have just talked to Vance and they are taking it [i.e. the cargo] off the ship and putting it in the 73rd Street Warehouse. In addition to that I have about 80 cases of U powder in cases. Vance is handling all of that now. Can you do the testing and how quickly can it be done? All we know is that it ranges from 10% to 85% and we want to know which and what.”

Traynor: “Can you give me what was in those cases?”

Smith: “U powder. Vance will take care of the testing of that.”

Traynor: “The other stuff is something else?”

Smith: “The other is water.”

The use of the letter “U” as an abbreviation for uranium was widespread throughout the Manhattan Project. The Corps of Engineers to which Major Vance was attached was the parent organization of the Manhattan Project and Major Vance was part of the latter project.

The fourth document originates from the Manhattan Project Foreign Intelligence files and confirms that the remaining cargo was unloaded on 24 July 1945. This included the ten cases of uranium oxide assayed as 77% pure Yellow Cake. The document confirms that the bulk of the U-234 cargo was held in the custody of Major Francis Smith at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.135

Interpreting the Primary Documents

In the first manifest are listed ten bales of drums containing “confidential material” and fifty bales of barrels containing benzyl cellulose, which latter can be used for biological shielding purposes or as a coolant in a liquid reactor. The thirty-nine drums are said by Major Smith to contain “water” for which he needs a test done “to see what the concentration is”: he knows that it ranges from 10% to 85%. If this is heavy water, the percentage describes the degree to which a consignment of water had been depleted of its hydrogen molecules.

It will be observed from the primary documents that uranium oxide was unloaded from U-234 on 24 July 1945, while eighty cases of uranium powder had already been unloaded and shipped to Brooklyn by 14 June 1945. Therefore aboard U-234 were two different uranium consignments and one of them never appeared at any time in the manifests translated by the Americans.

We now observe that what seem to be discrepancies in the secondary, eyewitness evidence of Wolfgang Hirschfeld actually confirm the existence of two distinct shipments aboard U-234. The Unloading Manifest states “10 cases Uranium Oxide” but on the quayside at Kiel Hirschfeld said he saw “at least fifty of the little cases.”136 Obviously, what he saw the Japanese loading at Kiel was not the ten cases of uranium oxide, but the eighty little cases of uranium powder. The little cases he saw were cubic in shape about nine inches along the sides, whereas the uranium oxide described by Pfaff, and unloaded by him on 24 July 1945, was stowed in gold-lined cylinders, the dimensions of which are not known. Hirschfeld did not witness the actual unloading by Pfaff.

As to the eighty little cases of uranium powder, besides the fact that it was shipped in what seemed to be lead radioisotope shipping containers and that Major Vance of the Manhattan Project was going to test it, the American authorities have not been forthcoming.

The Ten Cases of Uranium Oxide

It will be recalled that the Magic decrypts for 1943 and 1944/45 show Japan requesting from Germany “a quantity of uranium oxide” in connection with their atomic research into the fissile isotopes including plutonium.

What is “uranium oxide”? Generally speaking, after the ore is mined, the crude concentrate know as Yellow Cake is recovered by leaching followed by solvent extraction and roasting. The material assays at between 60%-90% uranium oxide. It is poisonous, but not radioactive.

The German Army seized over 1000 tonnes of uranium oxide at Oolen in Belgium in May 1940. It was stored in wooden barrels each containing about 500 kilos. Where a barrel was damaged, the uranium oxide was repacked in a stout paper bag secured at the neck by a knotted wire. To consign this sort of material in gold-lined cylinders makes no sense unless it is radioactive in some way and handlers need biological shielding from the effects.

Experiments can be performed on uranium oxide in sub-critical reactors, and it had been Professor Harteck’s idea in 1940 to use about 30 tonnes of uranium oxide to build a rudimentary low temperature nuclear reactor, and in either case some level of biological shielding would be required if the spent material was being shipped.

Gold-lined containers would be used where it was necessary to absorb fission fragments, emissions of gamma radiation or neutron radiation, or a combination of all three. Alpha and beta radiation is easily stopped by a 7mm thickness of aluminium or perspex.

What sense can be made of the fact that the ten cases of uranium oxide were stowed in a secure steel tube upright through the hull casing of the submarine and yet still leaked so much radioactivity that the forward