"Manhattan District History" - History of the Manhattan Project is becoming available online (and free)

NextGov - History of the Atom Bomb Goes Online

The Department of Energy has started to post online the internal history of the first atomic bombs.

It was commissioned by Lt. Gen Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, which managed the nationwide complex of labs and factories that developed and produced the raw material for the first atom bombs in a crash three-year project that eventually employed 130,000 people and cost $26 billion in current dollars.

The Manhattan District History consists of 36 volumes grouped in eight books, with a third of the volumes, or parts of volumes, still classified. DoE said the rest of the volumes have been declassified, with some made available to the public on microfilm.

One of the online documents offers fascinating insights into Operation Peppermint, which aimed to determine whether the Germans had developed a radiological weapon, using among other things film distributed to troops to detect radiation fogging.

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Classified volumes will be declassified with redactions, and the remaining unclassified parts made available to the public, posted incrementally as review and processing is completed.

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U.S. Department of Energy - Manhattan District History

General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Engineer District, in late 1944 commissioned a multi-volume history of the Manhattan Project called the Manhattan District History. Prepared by multiple authors under the general editorship of Gavin Hadden, a longtime civil employee of the Army Corps of Engineers, the classified history was "intended to describe, in simple terms, easily understood by the average reader, just what the Manhattan District did, and how, when, and where." The volumes record the Manhattan Project's activities and achievements in research, design, construction, operation, and administration, assembling a vast amount of information in a systematic, readily available form. The Manhattan District History contains extensive annotations, statistical tables, charts, engineering drawings, maps, photographs, and detailed indices. Only a handful of copies of the history were prepared. The Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage Resources is custodian of one of these copies.

The history is arranged in thirty-six volumes grouped in eight books. Some of the volumes were further divided into stand-alone chapters. Several of the volumes and stand-alone chapters were never security classified. Many of the volumes and chapters were declassified at various times and were available to the public on microfilm. Approximately a third of the volumes, or parts of volumes, remain classified.

The Office of Classification and the Office of History and Heritage Resources, in collaboration with the Department's Office of Science and Technical Information, have committed to making available full-text on this OpenNet website the entire thirty-six volume Manhattan District History. Unclassified and declassified volumes will be scanned and posted as available. Classified volumes will be declassified with redactions, i.e., still classified terms, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs will be removed and the remaining unclassified parts made available to the public. The volumes will be posted incrementally as review and processing is completed.

Following is a listing of the books, volumes, and stand-alone chapters of the Manhattan District History. Links to pdf copies are provided for those volumes and chapters that currently are available.

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Book 1 - Volume 8 - Personnel

Not something you might want to take on vacation for light reading, but I love this kind of stuff...