The WWII Machine That Forced America to Melt 14,700 Tons of Silver

August 1942. A young Army officer enters the U.S. Treasury and makes the most unusual request in American history: 6,000 tons of silver. Minutes later, the number becomes 14,700 tons — all taken from the nation’s reserves, melted down, reshaped, and turned into the coils of a machine almost no one was allowed to know existed.

That machine was the Calutron — the massive electromagnetic separator that created the uranium used in Little Boy, the first atomic bomb ever used in war.

This documentary uncovers the full story:
– why separating U-235 from U-238 was nearly impossible
– how Ernest Lawrence’s wild idea became the only working method
– why the U.S. ran out of copper and turned to Treasury silver
– the secret industrial pipeline that moved 258 railcars of silver strips across America
– constant breakdowns, drifting magnets, overheating, and contamination
– and how the Calutron Girls — young women trained to watch dials — outperformed the PhD scientists who built the machines

By 1945, Oak Ridge had produced enough enriched uranium for a single weapon. That uranium — around 64 kg at ~80% purity — became the core of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, releasing the force of 15,000 tons of TNT.

After the war, every ounce of silver had to be returned. Workers unwound coils, burned floorboards, sifted ashes, and tracked the metal to the last fraction of a troy ounce. Out of 430 million troy ounces, only 0.036% was lost.

The Calutrons were eventually dismantled, but their legacy continues. The same principle — bending ionized atoms through magnetic fields — is now used in every modern mass spectrometer.

This is the story of the impossible wartime machine built from treasure, powered by urgency, and operated by people who didn’t even know they were shaping history.

#WW2 #WW2History #ManhattanProject #EngineeringHistory #NuclearHistory