WE BEAT THE NAZIS BY A FEW MONTHS

‘By God’s mercy, British and American science out-paced all German efforts.’

THE words are Mr Winston Churchill’s in his statement issued last night. The story is a dramatic piece of scientific history.

It began more than ten years ago. Britain was already on the track of the atomic bomb. America’s scientists were working on parallel lines of investigation.

Leading in the research here was Professor Peter Kapitza, a Russianborn physicist. He was following the line of trying to attack the atom by enormous magnetic forces.

After some experiments, a new laboratory was built for him at Cambridge, with £15,000 from the Royal Society.

In 1935 he went to Russia to attend a convention — and is still there. Moscow thought him too valuable to be allowed to leave. But in Britain, the work that he had begun went on.

GERMAN

brains were busy too. And some of them were lost to Hitler.

Two of the team who helped develop our atomic bomb were Jews born in Berlin — Professor Rudolf Peiris and Dr Franz Eugen Simon. The Nazi regime drove them to Britain, where they could use their skill in freedom.

But Hitler set all available physicists to work on atomic bombs and power at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

From 1940 the Germans were busy on their experiments in the little Norwegian town of Rjukan — experiments that were to have given Hitler his V3 weapon, the atomic bomb.

One of the chief ingredients used was heavy water — said to cost nearly £2,000 a lb.

Work was going on fast: German hopes were high. But in February 1943 a little band of British and Norwegian saboteurs dropped by parachute.

Twenty minutes later the laboratory, with its radium, uranium, and heavy water, had been wiped out.

One year later the Germans had another plant in Norway. The RAF finished that with orthodox bombs.

THERE

was in Denmark a great scientist named Niels Bohr, who had been a l eader in i solating Uranium-235.

He had stopped his research on atomic theories in 1940, in protest against the German occupation. But as the race for a devastating weapon became more intense, the Nazis wanted to force Bohr to help them.

Hitler ordered every measure possible to get him into their hands.

But t he Danish Underground spirited him away. In September 1943 Bohr stepped ashore i n neutral Sweden from a fishing boat.

Twelve days later the Danish scientist was on his way to Britain — flying through the German air blockade in a British Mosquito bomber.

And with him came the knowledge that had won him the Nobel Prize for atomic research.

A year before Germany collapsed her scientists were on the track of the weapon they wanted.

We knew that in some spheres of the investigation they were ahead.

‘Give us a few more months,’ said Hitler’s scientists.

But it was a few months history — and British and American scientists — were to deny them.