WW2: The Army Borrowed 13,000 Tons of Silver to Build the A-Bomb

In 1942, a U.S. Army colonel asked the Treasury for six thousand tons of silver to build the atomic bomb for the Manhattan Project. The answer he remembered: "Young man, you may think of silver in tons, but the Treasury will always think of silver in troy ounces." There was not enough copper for the giant magnets of the uranium plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, so the Manhattan Project borrowed silver from the West Point vault, had it secretly cast and rolled in New Jersey and wound into magnet coils in Milwaukee, and built it into the calutrons that made the uranium for Little Boy. The first machines shorted out on rust. The last of the silver went back to the vault on June 1, 1970. 0:00 Six Thousand Tons 1:44 No Copper Left 4:52 The Vault at West Point 7:09 Across New Jersey 10:35 Inside the Racetrack 13:22 Rust 16:13 The Uranium 18:22 The Receipt ▶ Watch next Grand Coulee Dam: The "White Elephant" That Helped Win World War II    • Grand Coulee Dam: The "White Elephant" Tha...   Hudson River Tunnel, 1927: They Breathed the Poison First    • Hudson River Tunnel, 1927: They Breathed t...   Sources: • Manhattan District History, Book V, Vol. 4, "Silver Program" (1947), declassified — U.S. Department of Energy, OpenNet: https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhatta... • U.S. Department of Energy, "The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History": https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhatta... • Y-12 National Security Complex, "14,700 tons of silver at Y-12" (D. Ray Smith, quoting Kenneth D. Nichols, "The Road to Trinity," 1987): https://www.y12.doe.gov/sites/default... • National Park Service, "Beta-3 at Y-12," Manhattan Project National Historical Park: https://www.nps.gov/places/000/beta-3... Further reading: The Road to Trinity by Kenneth D. Nichols (1987) Now It Can Be Told by Leslie R. Groves (1962) Archival photographs are labeled ARCHIVAL on screen with their source. Everything labeled VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION is AI-generated for illustration and is not a historical record. Narration is AI-generated. #ManhattanProject #WW2 #OakRidge #History #Engineering