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CSI

Chasing Bitterfeld Calcium

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 CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM
 RELEASE AS SANITIZED
 2 JULY 96
         
         

  SECRET  

  No Foreign Dissem   

         
Tracing an ingredient for the Soviet atomic bomb       
         

CHASING BITTERFELD CALCIUM

 

 Henry S. Lowenhaupt

 
     In December 1946 a chemical engineer from the former 1. G. Farben plant at Bitterfeld in East Germany volunteered in Berlin that this plant "had started in the past few weeks producing 500 kilograms per day of metallic calcium. Boxes of the chemical are sent by truck every afternoon to Berlin, labeled to Zaporozhe on the Dnieper. Calcium is believed to be used as a slowing agent in processes connected with the production of atomic explosive."
 
     This was the lead we in the Foreign Intelligence Section of the Manhattan District Headquarters had been waiting for. We had read the technical investigation reports from FIAT (Field Information Agency /Technical) on the production of uranium at the Auergesellschaft Plant in Berlin/Oranienburg. We also knew that Dr. Nikolaus Riehl-with his whole research team from Auergesellschaft had met the Russians, volunteering to help them make uranium for their atomic bomb project. We knew from intercepted letters that the group was still together, writing from the cover address PO Box 1037P, Moscow.* We knew Auergesellschaft during World War II had made the uranium metal for the German Uranverein**-the unsuccessful German atomic bomb project-by using metallic calcium to reduce uranium oxide to uranium metal (not as "slowing agent"). We had analyzed the two-inch cubes of uranium metal from the incomplete German nuclear reactor which the Alsos Mission*** had found in the minuscule village of Stadtilm in Thuringia. We knew German uranium was terrible-full of oxides and voids, though it was fairly pure otherwise by non-atomic standards. The files also disgorged that in 1945 the Russians had started to dismantle and take to Russia the small calcium plant at the enormous Bitterfeld Combine, in addition to the big magnesium facility.
 
     Cables went out immediately to the European Command in Germany via G-2 and directly to Col. Edgar P. Dean, Manhattan District representative in London, to locate and interrogate all engineers who had fled Bitterfeld to the West or were currently willing to sell information on their unloved masters. We wanted to know how much calcium was to be produced, what its specifications were, and where it was to be shipped. We wanted to know what non-atomic normal German industries used calcium, and in what quantities. We wished Col. Dean to keep our British colleagues in the Division of Atomic Energy, Ministry of Supply, informed.
 
     At home, the Scientific Division of the Office of Special Operations in the newly-formed Central Intelligence Group was also apprised of our needs. Col. Frank A. Valente of our section was asked to take time out from his task of organizing an atomic detection system**** to talk to the U.S. Atomic Energy
         
 ________________________       
 *See "On the Soviet Nuclear Scent," Studies XI/4.     
 **See David Irving's The Virus House, William Kimber, London, 1967.    
***Code name for teams interrogating Italian, French and German scientists in the final months           of  World War II.
 ****See "The Detection of Joe-I," Studies X/I.      
         
   SECRET         

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Posted: May 08, 2007 08:35 AM
Last Updated: May 08, 2007 08:35 AM
Last Reviewed: May 08, 2007 08:35 AM