Bomb by Steve Sheinkin Read Free Book Online

Hyde Park, New York. He watched a small U.S. Army plane descend toward the runway. The plane hit the ground hard, bounced several times, and rattled to a stop.
    The plane door opened, and out hopped Winston Churchill, prime minister of Great Britain, a fat cigar in his hand. Roosevelt smiled and waved. Churchill walked over to the car and got into the passenger seat. The two leaders shook hands warmly. Then Roosevelt gunned his car engine and sped off.
    â€œHe took me to the majestic bluffs over the Hudson River on which Hyde Park, his family home, stands,” Churchill remembered. But as the car raced along the edge of the cliff, the prime minister had a tough time keeping his mind on the gorgeous view. He kept glancing over at the American, wondering how exactly the man was controlling the vehicle. Roosevelt had had polio as a young man and had lost the use of his legs.
    Roosevelt saw the worry on his friend’s face. He explained that he’d had this car specially rigged, allowing him to work the gas, clutch, and brakes with his hands—while also steering, of course. Churchill was impressed, but still terrified. Smiling, Roosevelt assured Churchill his arms were more than strong enough to do the job.
    â€œHe invited me to feel his biceps,” Churchill recalled, “saying that a famous prize-fighter had envied them. This was reassuring.”
    As Roosevelt drove, the two men began talking over the state of the war. “And though I was careful not to take his attention off the driving,” Churchill said, “we made more progress than we might have done in a formal conference.”
    *   *   *
    L ATER THAT DAY the conversation continued in a small office inside Roosevelt’s family mansion. They focused on the subject Churchill called “overwhelmingly the most important”—the race to build an atomic bomb. British and American scientists were both exploring the science. Both had come to the conclusion that a fission bomb was technically possible.
    â€œI strongly urged that we should at once pool all our information, work together on equal terms, and share the results, if any, equally between us,” Churchill said of the meeting.
    Roosevelt agreed. The project would be enormously expensive, they knew, and it would mean pulling top scientists off other high-priority weapons projects. It was worth the risk, they decided. With Britain still under attack from German bombers, they agreed the actual work of building a bomb would be done in America.
    There had been a lot of talk so far, and some research. Now it was time for action. “We both felt painfully the dangers of doing nothing,” Churchill recalled. “What if the enemy should get an atomic bomb before we did!”
    *   *   *
    T HREE MONTHS LATER, a six foot, two-hundred-fifty-pound army colonel named Leslie Groves was walking down the hallway of a congressional office building on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. Groves had one thing on his mind: getting out of Washington. “I was,” he later said, “like every other regular officer, extremely eager for service abroad as a commander of combat troops.”
    When he saw General Brehon Somervell walking toward him, Groves stopped. The men were alone in the hall.
    â€œThe secretary of war has selected you for a very important assignment,” Somervell told Groves. “The president has approved the selection.”
    â€œWhere?” asked Groves.
    â€œWashington.”
    â€œI don’t want to stay in Washington.”
    â€œIf you do the job right, it will win the war.”
    Groves felt his heart sink. He’d heard rumors about a project to build some kind of super-bomb. He was not impressed.
    â€œOh,” he sighed. “ That thing.”
    â€œYou can do it,” Somervell assured him. “If it can be done.”
    *   *   *
    F ORTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD L ESLIE G ROVES was an