dmmi'sowigwmom Traces of the bonowed Zenmn sci- mtists combine with other scraps of infonmtion to thrmo light on tho early atmnic program ON THE SOVIET NUCLEAR SCENT Booty 8 Inwenhaupt As World War II in Humps ended the Gamma nuclear scientists handicapped by insuf cient coordination and paltry o cial backing wow nevertheless only just short of achieving a self sustaining chain reaction in a heavy water modemted pilo 1 hey had otaborated most aspects of reactor theory they knew the best arrangement for the lattice of fuel eiemonts they had gained experience in the production and casting of 11ch uranium They had prepared detailed designs for two pilot piants for the industrial production of heavy water They had also experimented with several methods of isotope separation for concentrating the fissile apema y the gas centrifuge method though none of these had by any means reached the production stage In short they had a body of lmow- how experimental machines and basic materiais unique outside the United States and Britain and UK tomes moved aggressively to prevent the proliferation of this nucleus of nudear caoah ity They promptiy seized the saw entists and maferiais in their own zones of occupation and snatched some from the agreed zones of France and the USSR ahead of their advancing amide They even destroyed by air attack the Auer Com- pany plant in the yrospoctive Soviet zone that had produced the uranium metal for the German program They interned near London the ten ranking scieufists led by Profemsors Otto Hahn and Worn-er Heisenberg most directiy concerned with the pmgram and only after Hirosi ma did they release them under such wnditions that they would not want to go to the USSR 1 Scientists Eastbound Yet the wee could not he clean In June 945 British mte igeoce reported that Dr Nimbus Riehl of the Amer Company had lei't Car The story of the German effort and its donouement is well told in David Irving's The Virus Home London 1967 reviewed on page 103 of this issue 33 1965-1969 53 19654969 54 m w Sovief Nucfear Sfom many fer the USSR aiong with six others who had worked with him on the manufacture of ura nium metal Then four days after Hiroshima word came from Low don that Professor Gustav Hertz had own to Moecow four weeks previously ami Professor Adolf Wessex was in a Soviet temp Witt eighteen awamngu anspo atio Both Hertz and Wessex theugh not immediately involved in the German atomic program were prominent and technically eom patent scientists who could com - mend the loyalty 0f other seienc Comm Hm_ sts Hertz a Nobel Prize win- ner in atomic physics had been chief of the famous Siemens-Hakka Laboratories since 1934 and had aiscevered the gaseous diffusion method of separating isotopes Thiessen had ciirected the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute fer Physical Cheap istry and had published an impressive string of important research papers I From this point us and UK intelligence had the task of trying to follow the incigieut Soviet atomic e ort and it was largely the early results of this pursuit as decxibed below that encouragea the Us Air Force to mount a watch for the rst Soviet test explosion two years before it was expected 2 0-2 038 and their British ecunteiyarts under the direction of the two na ons' atomic authorities began with a vigorous campaign to discover which Germans had been recruited for this e ert and which Russians were doing the recruiting The The inte igmee analysis and the general direction of the collection eifart in the nuclear eld were vested on the US side in General Groves Manhattan Engineering District until its dissolution in Ianuary 1947 when these functions tom nBritzin theywerepexfoxmed uwgh IQSEbyasec onofthe Ministxy of Suppiy and after its fomation the British Atomic Energy Authority The Supply section was staged in part by Secret Inteliigenoe Service o eexs under the ieadership of Lt Comdr Eric Welsh See The Virus House cited in footnote 1 abeve or thh s role in atomic intelligence to the end of 1945 14 Sovief Nuclear Sfcm 35W task was complicated by the fact that the Russians were recruiting German and Austrian scientists and techniciaas for ad sorts of pra- grams the numbers ran to many hundreds By the end 0f the year however it was clear that for atamic work well We a hundred tech- nicians were be ng grouped areund a few tadxer good scientists as leaders In addition to Biehl Hertz and Wessex the group leaders inciuded Baron Manfred van Ardezme Germany s foremost cyclotron construc ter Professor Max Vollmer an outstanding physical ew and Dr Hans qu eithe KaiserwW hehn Ingtityzte qg min Rama wha hadheen worla ganthe bid hysic i i admtanAsif x fh Ruggian recruiters at Igipzig there was a General Katehkatchian aidecl by a Major Krassin a Colonel Kikoin at Karlshozst had pemxaded Hertz to go and a Lt Colonel Kargin had handled negotiations with Vollmer A General Ivanov when had had to do with mes- tment in Wanna turnedsout to be pone other than General Mmhik Lawen y Beriya s ght-hand man Many of the German scientists were we encugh Imown that their specialities and ski could be assessed The intelligence reporting also tended to sert diam into groups under the respective lea ers But this did not tail us what each group was ta work on in the USSR and where they were to do the work and that was what we needed to know Russian security was initia y well below its subsequent standards By February 1946 the Strategic Services Unit successor to 033 was able to report from an agent in the East Zone of Germany that Baron von Ardenne s presumabiy cycloh'onmntered group went to the Crimea in the summer of 1945 and then in October was established in one of the small communities betwe n Analdia am Poti 012' the east shore of the Black Sea about 120 ldlometers north cf the Twidsh border Mamet agent regerted that Thiessen Hertz and Vo mer as well as Von Ardenne were on this stretch of the Black Sea coast between Sukhumi and Patiwin ancient Colchis where tha Argonauts Emmi the Golden Fleece They had reportedly not done any work up to the beginning of November 1945 as housing and laboratetiw were still under mummies The biophysicists uncier Born as well as Riehl s Auer Company group were left unaccounteci for Ya Meshik was exacute on 23 December 1953 As Minister of Intemzl Again of the Ukrainian SSR he was charged with being an active Pax dpmit in the coup attempted by Beriya 15 1965-1969 55 1965- 1 69 56 vatef Nuclear The Russians rounded out their atmm c early in 1946 by assembling a gmup of German scientists under Dr Heinz Pose who had worked an nuclear reactor physics at Romeburg under the German Bureau of Standards This particular nguir had been eonn sidcred infer-13m by their name renmmed feiiows but in fact thay had shown Heisenberg an em in his calculations and thus put the pm gram on the right track towards a wetting reactor We had no infer mation on where the Rus am stationed these reactor specialists W3 and Defectors T435611 this me US anti UK intemgeaoe stuntbleci onto the inter caption of ietters mm the expatriated scientist as a source of Merma- tiou about their locations and activities which in the em proved far more fruitful than the alternative of penetrating institutes in East Germany An intercepted letter dated 18 March 1948 53mm Hertz to his son digclosed the identity of the Russian gem-between in Jammy as Lt Colonel Cedenko 46 Wasserspozta ee Be imCmenau Then in August and September there was a change in Russian personnel and their address for Lt Colonel Yehn and Lt Petxochenka at Buntzektrasse All Cmanau waste handling the mail In October Rich wrote from small town about 610 Idlemetem east of Moscow Later his location than was con rmed by a March 1947 letter postmarked Macaw from Mrs Blobel his secre- tary which indicated that biophysicists Born and Karl Zimmer as well as the Anne Company people were living 60 kilometers from Moscow The implication was that the processing of umnimn ore and the study of biological effects were being organized in or near while theoretical and experixpental work was goingon down by the Black Sea The Russians had lways maintained a security wall between them- selvm and the East Germans but after four German atomic sden sts who had been to the USSR or job interviews remmed to East Ger- many and defected to the West in early 1947 the rules were tightened up From then on no East German was eves anything about German atomic seientists in Russia All letters from the scientists wexe strictly censored and bore without exception the return address Post Box 103 Main Post Of ce Magoow The Russian assessment was correct zese defactors did possess infannation of value to us For instance Err Aciolf Krebs had first had interviews in Germany with 30101131 Frofessor Alexandmw and a Professor Leipunski The former was clearly Professor Simon Peta 16 3m Soviof Noofoor Sio Alexandrov who roprooeoted the USSR at the Bikini Crossroads texts in 1Q46 and in UN discussions on atomic energy in 1947 the latter presumabiy was A I Leipunski a Russian nuclear physir oist When Krebs was then own to Moscow Moron his consent he foamed that the German groups worked as on indogondont orgam w zao'oo under the superviaon of Genera Sawiniald whose sta of several generals included a General Un garbled the boss most be Cohort coma Awam Palevich Zavon - yagin the builder of Magnum- gorsk in tho Utah and the Norilsk Nickel Combine in far northern Siberia ho was reportedly heat of the worst Ninth Chief Dime - torate of the MVD and had tr General Kravchenko as assistant Thus the MVD continued into 19418 Play a sigm cont role in the Soviet atomic energy pro- gram even though this had beet reorganized in late 1945 as the First Chief Directorate attached to the Council of Ministers under Colonel General Boris Lvovioh Van nikov who had managed Russia s munitions production during the War Krobs also reported that the Hertz group was working on isotope separation groblems at Sol-chumi that the Von Ardonne and Tho-risen groups were also there as we had thought that Dr Vollmor and sew oral assistants were working at Sukhom on heavy water production methods that Dr Reid and his group at Elelctrostal were turning out uranium metal on a production scale and that Dr a former director of the Joaohimsthal uranium mine in Czechoslovakia was head of a group pmsPec ng for uranium ore near Tashkent in Central Asia The Pose gm was presumably somewhere east of the Utals since in May and lune of 1945 this territory had been surveyed Krebs had heard as to its mitability for their reactor work The news that the Vo mrer group was working on heavy water mme as a Surprise by this time it was known that a group of Commas under Dr P Herold from the former LC Forben Leona plant at A P I 17 19654969 57 1965- 1969 58 jigs yogi 1947 biologic 44 4 4 4 4 4444 3 4444% 4 4 snagging had about minim are at iirani whine ox in 53555635 Sovioi Nudeor Shari Morseherg in East Germany were continuing their war 'me research on methods for the indu in al production of heavy water at the Karpov Institute in Monmw But the Leona group was ado nisterod quite separately from the Post Box 1037 grows presumably because the Kmpov Institute was a research anti design facility of the Ministry of Chemical Industry wh o the 163 scientists were adu nisiratively under the MVD Uranium Produciion Isotopes tho rst real oon xmation of the thin MOI 4 25 managed to loam in 1943 that one ten- 01$ freight cm- of uranium ore was being consigned from the jaohymov Ioachimsthal area of Czechoslovaida to every ten days The UK hazi aiso loomed that the Russians were roquixing the former Bitterfeid giant of G Father to sef up the Produc on of highiy 9m metallic calcium at 30 tons per month enough for the manufachtro by oxide reduction of 60 tons of uranium meta Penetration souroes had furnished the speci cations on the amounts of impurities allowable in tho these conclusively indicated that it was for atomic use somewhere It remained for the covert co ootion arm of to acquiro a bill of Iading for three freight car loads of calcium from Bitterfeld com signed to Post Box 3 Elektrostai Moscow Oblast This proved beyond question that at there was a uranium factory making the metal in quantity using methods worked out at least in part by the Auer group under Blob In oed it also foroeti the conclusion that the Russians were zit least attempting to build somewhere 4a iiargo reactor to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons Shadowing tho German scientists in Russia largely through mail intercept had thus produced information which coulci form the basis for detailed debrie ng when one of them came to the Wat whiie penetration attemyts hat run squarely into Russian security It was decided to make thorough preparations mainly by mail analysis for the day when the nuclear scientists might return to an area from which they could be defected even though that day might be years away Later in 1951 this concept was extended to all German scientists in the USSR under a program called Operation Dragon The work settled into a routine in which the 11 8 Anny Secmity Agency inter- 8 Soviet Nocteor Start mooted most of the letters while the dota ed collation of the data was performed by UK Meanwh e atomic collection proweded on a broad root In 1948 former prisoners of war began to return from the USSR to West Ger many and it was soon learned that a number of them had helped construct two institutes in the Sukhumi area one under Professor Hertz near the village of Agudzeri the other near that of Sioop name sake of the Turkish city The year 1949 if it sutprised us with the Soviets rst atomic test showing that their plutonium produdion was much farther along that Eve had We alsobmught the rst of defections wl dl helpodtheanaly calpioture The mt detector was a scientist nicknamed Cong who had worked in 1947 at the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry under a I mfessor Dmitriy A Petrov on a way to make porous metal meow branes for the separation of uranium isotopes by gaseousdiifusion NA prize of 100 000 moles had been promised for the oorred solution of this problem In the course of his work Gong had that summer visited Special Laboratory No 3 located in West MW Here he had spoken to I mfessor Isaac Konstan novich Kikoin Deputy Director of the Laboratory and a corresponding member of the Academy of Sci- ences Cong was positive that Special Laboratory No 3 worked on the separation of isotopes by the di usion method and on other physical chemical processes He had also heard of a Special Labora tory No 1 loca oo not known to him and of Special Laboratory No 2 under the direction of Academician Alikhanov in Moscow All three Special Laboratories were intimately tied to the First Chief Directorate with respect to work priorities supplies security etc Thus it became clear that the Colonel Kikoin who in 1945 bani recruited Hertz for work isotope separation methods was the person responSibIe in Moscow for gaseous diffusion research for the Soviet atomic energy prognm Research papa had been published by Gongs boss Professor Petrov in 1941 and 1948 on the sub oct of skeleton The method of preparing those was just that reperted by Gong for barrier membranes Interestingly enough moreover the pores in the were of a size reasonably oorreol for a membrane to sepa rate out 13-235 by gaseous di usioo vm ga on of the Structure of the Copper Skeleton Catalyst with L U Kefeii and S L M chuk 1303 An 57 No 6 1947 19 1985-1969 59 198531969 Sovlei Nuclear Siari Procuremtt Abroad In 1950 the Russian defecter Icarus ymverl of even more value As a Colonel of the WI mneemed with supplies lm in the MOSCOW e ce 0f the first Chief Directorate and later at Wismut AG in Saxony he knew personally many of the Russians invelved in the atomic energy progmm in Moscow and in Berlin He was aware that General Meshik was in charge of personnel and security for the whale program He knew that Lt Colonel Inn Sidenke the Cedenko whe handled the letters mteroepted in early 1946 had been the representative of the Ninth Direetqrate of the MW in Berlin $an in 1945 and thit he hid been replete h ugust i946 our 111%ng hacl shown by Lt Colonel Elyan not Yelan as we had it who eventually had returned to Moscow to work for the First Chief Direc- torate under one Dorofeyev chief of its Supply Directorate Icarus also reported that a man named Fania ran a warehoese under Dbrofeyev known 3 5 Post Box 200 Moscow Now that we had the correct Russian sp lling of the names of the atomic representatives in Berlin as well as their addresses it seemed useful te investigate their aeti ties in depth It soon developed that the Berlin atomic of ce was always in two sections at separate intentions one handled mail packages etc for the German scientists the other was concerned with special procurement for the Soviet 9170ng Both sections changed personnel and location approximately eVery year and a half Through some rather clever intelligence work against these ees CIA covert collection was to show in 1959-1953 that they expedited the procurement of several million square feet of very ne nickel wire mesh per year and that at least one sl pment of this mesh was Elem mm to Panin warehouse at Post Box 200 Moscow This clearly established by admix strative procedures that the ultimate user was the Soviet atomic program The techniml speci cations and meme at the mesh suggested porous barrier for 5-235 separation as the only possible use in an atomic program An attempt to learn whether the Bitterfeld giant shipped other atomic materials than the wlcium revealed that all shipments now here only the Moscow address of the main 05065 of cum the Chie Directorate of Soviet Property Ahreacl of the ministry of Foreign W ismut AG Bismuth Ina was the carver name for the vast Seviet mn uranium mining operation in East Germany 20 60 a 3 Soviet Nuclear Slorf Trade All carried nine and twelvedigit order numbers and ve- digit transport numbers Surely numbcm as complicated as these should have character in the sense For background purposes we studied documentation on equipment ordered by the Soviet commercial mission Amtorg in New York Unfortunately by about the time we understood the ordering system the Russians decided to tighten it up so that this work was nulli ed However the reporting on by the CIA domestic collection organization showed that a P M Sidenlco had had a tour of duty with the mission between December 1946 and June 1943 This man the some Lt Colonel Sidenko who at the Berlin atomic o oe in 1945 and through July 1946 arrived 11 the United States during the same month that brought the departure of Aaatoli Yakovlev head of the atomic espionage chain involving Harry Gold and Klaus Fuchs Others working with Sideulco on procurement were soon identi ed Nikolai L Artemiev who visited a plant making geiger counters in November 1946 and who tied in June 1947 to purchase helium lealo detectors used in US L235 plants Nikolai S coauthor of an article on spedmsoopy Artemiev's molacement and N N Izvelcov who was interested in all sorts of manufactures from heavy construction machinery to ne-woven wire mesh electronic equip- ment Some three million dollars worth of goods purchased by the Sidenlco group was identi ed as apparently for the Soviet atomic program it included the machinery for a complete plant for extract- ing radium from uranium ore wastes Sventitsky joined Artemiev in London In January 1948 when Sidenlco returned to Russia Into the if es With respect to the German atomic scientists in Russia the early 1950's was a period of continued infomation collection and analytical consolidation Letter intercepts by the hundreds were collected and results collated Not only the main groupings but interrelationships within groups were studied with a View to the eventual reomionent of adequate representatives of each group when they were allowed to return to Germany In trying to determine who was in the Von Ardenne group at Sukhumi for instance it was noted that letters all severely censored and postmarked Post Box Moscow mention- ing the accidental death of a small child from playing with matches came from Becker Felicitas John I Lehmann Gerhard Mueller 21 1965-1969 61 1 1 969 62 Sov ei Nuclegr'Sfmi Liseiott'e Steenbeck Frau Wittstadt and Dr Froelich that an out- break if scarlet fever was referred to by Felicitas 331m Liselotte Steenheck and Frau Schrotdze that on Saturday the Bernhardts visited the and on Sunday the visited the Bernhardts that the bull in 3 china shop oompiained about by Bergengmeu was identi ed by Felicitas Iahn as Helmut Hepp Such stu ies had resulted in the icienti cation of the seven distinct groups The Hertz group was still located in the Sukhumi area by the fawn 0f Agudzeri The Van Mdenne and Wm groups ware togethalg 559% in 31 mew -Yallw sdsroup no longimith used in the dac cnim program con rmed that it was working on heavy water production processes The Biehl uranium specialists continued at Elelctrostal and Rich hat been awarded a Stalin Prize and made a Hero of the Soviet Union after the sum of the explosien he had helped make possible it August 1949 The 106% an of 390565 reactar group pesed a problem likewise that of the under I31 Born for they had left Elekbastal in 1948 Some mike clever analysis by the Directorate of Scimti c Intel ligence in the UK in 1951 succeeded in narrowing down the location of the Barn group t0 within 250 miles of the town of in the southern Urals The area was the site'of the nuclear re- actor which had made the plutonium for the first Soviet atomic device and the placing of a biophysics group near a reactor site made good sense The British detection was done as follows Born Found The letters from the Barn group dmcrihed to ography amnesty weather and tempemtures strongly suggesting the hilly coming of the Urals In fact the heavily censored lettm spent so much time on the wmther that it was decided to see what could be done with this information So the weather as 3de by members of the group on a given day was compared with weather charts of the USSR for that day and the irregular Portions of the USSR having such weather were highlighted Once some 3026 of these weaghet overlays had been mpiled it was clear that only one area was 00qu men to them all This was a stretch of the Urals some 100 to 200 narth and math of Sverdlovsk with a very slight balance cf probability toward the north 22 Sex of Nuclear Start Now an analysis was made of a train trip from Sukhumi to the Born gmup which a man named Rinteleu reported in an intercepted letter After the rst long train journey we had an oppommity on the 10th of December from morning till evening to buy warm clothes travel by underground and bus and to sit in good cafes In the evening we tmveled on again and arrived on the 12th of Dc oember in the next large town from here Le from the location of the Born group The following evening we traveled a further ve hours by train and on the 14th of December we arrived here after a two hour bus puree Bintelen's pleasant stay on the 10th of 13mm must have been in Moscow for it alone of Soviet cilia possessed an underground raihoad at that time There were three main leaving Moscow on the evening of the 10th for Perm then Molotov a likely large town on the Moscow sine of the Urals Two were 'sche ulod to arrive ea yin the morning and one in the evening of the 12th Why would Bintelen lay over a day in Perm An evening train heading for the north Urals left there at 1620 on the 12th arriving at Kizel the ve prescribed hows later so if Kim had been his destination he should have taken it Similarly he would not have had to lay over had he been going to the eastern side of the Urals north of Sverdlovslc say to the Nizhm y Tagil area for he would have taken from Moscow one of the two txains that get to Penn the mowing so as to catch the 1150 for Nizhniy Tagil and arrive there near mid- night on the same day the 12th Thus the north Urals did not apPear a likely clec nau'on and the large town of the layover must therefore be Svetdlovslc Chelyabinsk lying outside the area de ned by the weather infonnation The three mint leaving Moscow on the evening of the 10th were scheduled to reach Sverdlovslc on the evening of the 12th at 1520 1609 and 1702 respectively Five trains left Sverdlovsk for various destinations after 1800 so all these aypeared unlikely to have been Rintelen's The two trains per day to ve hours away left Sverdlovslc at 1300 and 3 525 and so would probably have re- tyxired a layover but well east of even the foothills of the Urals was quite unlikely on geographic grounds One last midafter noon main however left Sverdlovslc southbound at 1420 and ve hours later arrived at Rintelen would have had to stay in Svetdlovsk overnight to catch this and in midwinter at latitude the ride from 2 30 to 7 30 pm might well have seemed to be 23 1965-1969 63 3965 1969 64 cf Soviet Nuchmr Sfarf an evening 0136 Thus by eliminatiau his destination and the 9051- than of the Born gmup lay same 2060 miles the two-bear bus ride mm ix the southwcentrai Urals The Radar Specialists The Page gran was iocate in a similar manner Evidence mm intercepted letters had put it a three-hour bus ride from Moscow 11mg it was met new in the Utals as Krebs had guessed in 1947 Sew era Us studying the intercepted mail gleaneci the adgl tion al infamatiog watitlwas two andaha hoursilytrain J - rs w a t cn' from Memow 11361119 membem had gag A that there was a great #1331 of building adivity in new submbs m mmd them After a study of maps and railmad timetables the Malayan - slavets area sou nwest of the cagital was suggested as a pom y UK spurred by this hypothesis sm veyed their much Large - volume of interacpt and were able to adti'that the return trains from Moseow did not well there was a local market-town a half-hour bus ride away and the nearat big hospital was 15 km away 7 Ra mad timetable skewed that Obnino station 15 km northeast of Maloyarosiavefs was 2 hours and 30 minutes by train from Moscow That was 9 150 where the road and the railroad crossed the Prom river on the way to Maloyaroslavets The twin took 16 minutes to get from Obtains station to this good-sized town a bus would probably take half an hour The only morning train mm Obm'no to Moscow left at 0750 possible ream twins left Moscow at 1300 1449 and 1630 giving 5% me more time there than the round tn p eon 'sumed and 53 net tting well Some ten other locali m were two and a half hours by train from Moscow but few'were near' rivers which might have good swimming Of those that were several like Mozhaysk were large tam in themselvmt others had excellent evening min serving 3me station thus remained the only likely 91am In August 1953 attach photographs from the ra road looldng north west from the bridge over the 3 me river showed several large build ings tinder construction and a completed large stack with blower house such as is usually required for a nuclear reactor I hotointerpretive measurement done by comparison_ of these with wartime German aerial phutography showed that the stack was almost 210 feet high Obm no was thus the' Imation of a probable nuclear mtablishment containing a reactor The Pose group moved to Suldmmi in 1952 24 Sax of Nuclear Sled Now an analysis was made of a min Mp from Solchumi to the Born group which a man awed Rinialou reported in an interoepted letfor After the rst long train jomey we had an opgommity on the 10th of Demmber from morning till evening to buy warm clothes travel by undergrowd and bus and to sit in good cafes In the evening we traveled on again and arrived on the 12th of Do camber in the next large town from here 2165 from the location of the Born grouP The following evening we traveled a father ve hours by train and on the 14th of Dcoembor we arrived here after a two-hour bus goumey Rintelon s pleasant stop on the 10th of Deoemli 'r must have bow in Momw for it alone of Soviet cities possessed an milmad at that time Thom wow three trains leaving Mosesw on the evening of the 10th for Perm then Molo ov a likely large town on the Moscow side of the Utah Two were scheduled to arrive earlyin the morning and one in the evening of the 12th Why would Rintelen lay over a day in Perm An evening train heating for the north Urals left there at 1620 on the 12th arriving at Kizel the ve prescribed hours later so if Kizel had been his destination he should have taken it Similarly he would not have had to lay over had he been going to the eastem side of the Urals noxth of Svercllovslc say to the Nizlmiy Tagil area for he would have taken from Moscow one of the two trains that get to Form in the morning so as to catch the 1150 for Nizlmiy Tagil and arrive there near micl night on the same day the 1281 Thus the north Urals did not appear a likely destination anti the large town of the layover must therefore be Sverdlovsk Chelyabinsk lying outside the area de ned by the weather information The three trains leaving Moscow on the evening of the 10th were scheduled to reach Sverdlovslc on the evening of the 12th at 1520 1609 and 1702 respectively Five trains left Sverdlovsk for va ms da na ons after 1800 so all those appeared unlikely to have been Rintelen's The two halos per day to 5116 hours many left Sverdlovslc at 1300 and 1525 and so would probably have re quired a layover but well east of even the foothills of the Urals was quite unlikely on goographic grounds One last midafter noon train however left Sverdlovsk southbound at 1420 and ve hours later arrived at Bintelen woulcl have had to stay in Sverdlovsk overnight to catch this and in midwinter at latitude the ride from 2 30 to 7 30 pm might well have seemed to be 23 1 965- 1969 63 19654969 64 QEERW Soviet Nuclear Sz om an evening mo Thus by olih natioo his dostioatiom and the 905i- blot of the Born group lay some 2830 miles the two-hour bus ride from in the SGuthwcentral Urals The Reader Specialists The Pose group was located in a similar manner Evidence mm iotercegtod letters had put it a three-hour bus ride from Moscow it was not now in the Urals as Krebs had passed in 1947 Several 1 5 studying the interceptod mail gleanoti the adsiitioml mfamm that it om fro' members that them was a great deal of building activity in new suburbs around them After a study of maps and railroad timetables the Malayan - slavets area southwest of the capital was suggested as a possibility UK spurred by this hypothesis surveyor their much large - volumeof intercept and were able to add'that 116 return trains from Momew did not well 13 there was a local markebtown a hal hour bus ride away and the nearest big hospital was 15 km away Railroad timetables showed that Ohnino station 15 km northeast of Maloyaxoslavets was 2 hours and 30 minutos by train from Moscow That was also where the mad and the railroad crossed the Pram river on the way to Maloyaroslavets The train took 16 minutes to get from Obm no station to this good-sized town a bus would probably take half an hour The only morning train from Obnino to Moscow left at 0750 The possible return trains left Moscow at 1300 1440 and 1630 giving scarcely more time there than the round trip com 'sumodi and so not tting well Some ten other localities were two and a half hours by train from Moscow but fow'wero near rivers which might have good swimming Of those that were several like Mozhayslc were large towns in themselves others had excellent evening tmin service Obnino station thus remained the only likely place In August 1953 attach yhotographs from the railroad looking north- Wt t from the bridge over the Provta river showe several large build- iazigs un or and a completed large stock with blower house such as is usually required for a nuclear reactor Photointetpretive measurement done by comparison of these with wartime Gannon aerial ghotography showed that the stock was almost 210 foot high Obnino was thus the looation of a probable nuclear establishment containing a reactor The Pose group moved to Sukhumi in 1952 24 o 2 'l Sovief Nocfeor Sim First Western Picture of Obtains Finn In 1954313 Russians Poblicized the initital operation of the fast atomic power station in the world at Obninsk the variant name used for the town served by Obm no station The Special Labs Moanwh o a 1952 reocrt from the UK settled the dw na on of' a high-voltage moderator for nuclear march built by Koch and Ste-1281 of Dresden in the East Zone By checlo ng the interrogation of a bordercrosser who bod taken the acoelerator to Laboratory N033 in Moscow against reports from several rerouted POWs the British had oonoluded that Laboratory No 3 was in Choremushld a suburb of south Moscow Evidently Cong had been mixed up about the 1mm bers of Special Laboratories 2 and 3 when be identi ed Kikoin and his work in west Mosoow on isotope separation with laboratory No 3 That one must be No 2 and the laboratory of the famous oodear physicist A I Alikanyan in south Moscow No 3 The question of Special Laboratory No 2 was solved oomPIetely through the efforts of the Biographic Register when it undertook the monumental task of rearranging the 1951 Moscow teiephono book by teiephone number and by street address For a west Moscow address given in a 1944 newspaper cligping as that of Laboratory No of 25 19554569 65 1965 1969 66 Savief Nuclear Sta 1 the Academy 9f Sciences them were three teleghone numbers and against these were listed several hundred persons many of them renowned nuciear physicists such as I V Kurchafov and G N Flemv known to have been invelved in the uranium ambient as eariy as 1941 I Kikoin was there too 50 Laboratory No 2 of the Acada any of Sciences was the same as Special Laboratory No 2 not 3 of the First Chief Directsrate attached to the Council 0f Ministers and it must conduct research on reactors as wail as that on 1-235 separa 6011 under Deputy Director Kikoiu The Pow's Return At this time Operation Dragon was girding itself for the expeditious prowement of POWs who had worked with German scientists in the USSR on many praises inclucling the atomic cum By 1951 these WW3 had been redeployed to cooling 0E camps is European Rmsia where they worke ci at unclassi ed tasks in industrial plants There Were many hundreds 0f them Some used POW camp addresses other Moscow E mt Boxes Some idea of the complexity of keeping track of them can be giesned Rom the following redeployment chart tradng the movement inward only ona of the new Moscow addresses stands for POW camp Oshasch kov i - 913903 mam- m gaze 2mg 113 Most of the civilian members of Moscow Post Box 3037 the sci- entists had by 195243 also started their cooling OE period and were using Sukhumi Pest Box 3122 For a time there was a question whe xer they were actually at Sukhumi for we had only the fetter postmark to vouch far it This question Was settied neatly when a Miss Verena Weber wrote her aunt that on 30 June 1954 they had seen an eclipse of the sun reaching 9 per ent totality which started at half past four and enticed at half past six A check with the Naval Observatory established that in the 105319 of Sukhumi the eclipse reached more than 97 percent totality and that it started at approximaely 1623 local time and ended at approximately 1835 This agreement along 26 Ml 9 I Sevie Nuclear Sfarf SW with information in the intercepts on climate Ema and physical sur- roundings con rmed the location as in the general area of Sukhnmi The POWs from 3 0371 who had cooled off since 1951 began tn rem in 1x13614954 practically the last of those who had helped Ger man scientists in the USSR Though many knew little except their own particular tasks their Mormation tended to mund out the dedw ions which had previously been made about the work If each of le main groups of atomic scientists The Barn group really had been located at Singul near and had worked on the biophysics of maimtive huhshnees The Pwimughea yhadhwnatobmmk ham 0f most interact at the time was the report of one Von Maydell which established clearly that the Thiessea group was the one which had developed the niclcel wim-mwhabacked barrier of sintared nicks powder used after 1950 in the Snviet gaseous diffusion process for separating U-235 He Imew technical details The plant that put it into practice must have operated under considerably di erent com diticns from those of its 3 8 counterpart We wgre still ignorant of the location at that plant althaugh it had graduoed'as 3211 as 1951 the far the Soviet Union s third atomic test By now our guesses were largely limited to what were lmown ta be atomic facilitiec at Nizhnyaya Tux-a aud Verkh Neyvinsk in the north Urals Nizhnyaya Tum seemed most likely for a large 2ch power plant had been built there in the pasture pedal But then the function of Verkh Neyvinsk lay in question Were the Soviets pmsuing more than one kind of 5-235 separation process Several POWs knew that German scientists from Sukhumi had visited the 13-235 plant using the barrier and we looked to them to help locate it Imaging our consternation when it developed that they had hearci the place spoken of only as Ke rstadt so dubbed because the favorite soft drink them was ke r the merited milk of the Caucasus Scientists Tell All Finally in April 1955 the German scientists rammed from Sukhmni to the East Zone of Germany the last of them except for some groups engaged in missile much The defection plans What imam action Hertz Von Ardenne Vollmar Steenheck Pose and several others would not twpond but many of thhse working for them lid Despite the three year cooling off period skillful and exh ustive interrogation 27 1965-1969 67 195$ 1969 68 MW Saviof Nucfocir Sior in 169112 revealed technical details individual names etc in a richness wbo evabio to one who has never witnessed this procedure Nikolaos Rich defected as soon as he learned that he cook not koog the promods from his Stalin Prize He and others detailed the uranium prowsor at Eloktrostal exhaustively Pamchko s uranium Prospecting effort near Tashkent was reportedly a failure His fate was not and stiil is not knowm Members of the Born group discussed their radiobiological research at Siogul Without knowledge of the reactor site near they mogoosi erhad garter @533 ra is octivo sogp rfm l whe Twin woo Estertho vi a o3 a siti'v'of which had disappeared in the 1956 Deleniya the biennial listing of acin nistmtive in the itvwas within tho area of tho reactor site as delineated by earlier POW interrogations Members of the Pose group discusgod their abortive attempts at 3ka to oesign and construct a reactor Because graphitomoderatod reactor research at Laboratory 2 and heaw water moderated reactor research at Laboratory 3 bar both been quite success il the ciooision hat been taken in 1950 to built 119 around the German nucleus at the 3ka site and under the direction of Academician A I Leipunski a third Russian center for reactor research working on Power reactors and other advanced types The research of the Volkner group on heavy water production turner out to be in connection with a heavy water facility built at Noriisk where Zavenyagin s Nickel Combine was already located in the far north of Siberia The war mo work of the krona group had been used by the Karpov Institute in connection with two other heavy water production procoosos according to a member of that group Pro $111113ny he was reigning to those used by the heavy water piants at Aleksin Chirchik Kirovakao Dneprodzerzhinsk Corlovka and Borer niki which had been uncovered by returned POW interrogations and attach photography The work at Sukhumi prior to 1952 had been mostly devoted to isoter soparatiou as we had supposed The Von Ardonno group worked on the electromagnetic method and tho Stoenbock gum on the gas centrifugal method Several Germans had been concerned with the thermal di usion method Hertz himself had worked on a variation of gaseous diEusion termed mass diffusion in the United States None of those were actually out into practice for separation 28 Soviet Nucieor Sforf Thiessen s group with calculational help from the Hertz group worked on mesh backed gaseous diffusion barrier as Von May o had reported and on giant design Some of the Comm had even helged set up a bam'or factory at Elektrosfal and knew the cutting and loss factors required to tum square footage of niche wire mesh into mmpletod hamlet The Canaan mathematical theory on gaseous di usion was strangely easy to understand with minor exceptions the symbofs and fonnulao somehow seemed familiar Then someone had the bright idea of looking up several of Klaus Fuchs wartime Papers on gaseous di usion that was where the Germans got it Ke mtadt turned out to he Verkh Noyvinsk in the Utals leaving the function of Nizimyaya Tara and its associated large power plant an enigma Presumably power was sent by Minission line to Verkh Neyvinsk there being mention in the technical press of transmission hoe construction from Nizhnyaya ma southward In retrospect follomng the trail of Gustav Hertz and his associates proved to have been a wise course of action Despite Russian 630113 at security oompartmentatioo the Germans had valuable information which complemented that from other sources Indeed it would not have been Possible to achieve an understanding of the later U42 photog- raphy of Soviet facilities and uranium metal plants without the information obtained from the Comans For the subsequent solution of this mystery and further wc ption of the Utah atomic complex see the auihor's The of a E ictum in Studies XI 3 p 41 E 1965-4939 69 This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu