My Dad’s brother worked on the Manhattan project in the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Process Building at Oak Ridge, TN. After the war, he was at Los Alamos machining plutonium cores for bombs. My uncle just turned 90. I visited him about a year and a half ago and got talking with him about his experiences working on the early nuclear weapons projects. At one point, I asked about the machining tolerances he had to maintain on the plutonium components and he stopped for a few seconds, gave it some thought, and then replied “I can’t tell you that; it’s classified”!! I’ll never forget that.
He is a patriot, and remembers his security clearance!!
I still remember Nuke data from my Field Artillery service in the late 70's, was told when I got out to say nothing, I don't!
My dad also worked on the Manhattan project doing research on uranium refinement at Columbia University.
He told me an interesting story about a friend who lived in the same apartment building. He knew that my dad worked on a secret war project but of course, my dad would never tell him what it was. The guy was a science fiction buff, and one day he told my dad that he had noticed that all mention of atomic bombs had abruptly disappeared from the sci-fi literature and pulp magazines. So, he quite correctly concluded that was what my dad was working on!
My uncle, his brother, served somewhere in Europe.