The Smyth Report was the common name given to an administrative history written by physicist

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 Henry DeWolf Smyth

Henry DeWolf Smyth

Henry DeWolf "Harry" Smyth was an American physicist, diplomat, and bureaucrat who played a number of key roles in the early development of nuclear energy. Educated at Princeton University and the University of Cambridge, he was a faculty member in Princeton's Department of Physics from 1924 to...

 about the Allied

Allies

In everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them...

 World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 effort to develop the atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project

Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...

. The full title of the report was "A General Account of the Development of Methods of Using Atomic Energy for Military Purposes." It was released to the public on August 12, 1945, after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...

 on August 6 and 9.

General Leslie Groves

Leslie Groves

Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves, Jr. was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. As the son of a United States Army chaplain, Groves lived at a...

 commissioned Smyth to write the Report at Los Alamos

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...

 during the Manhattan Project. The Report was to serve two functions. First, it was to be the official U.S. government history and statement about the development of the atomic bombs, outlining the development of the then-secret laboratories and production sites at Los Alamos, New Mexico

Los Alamos, New Mexico

Los Alamos is a townsite and census-designated place in Los Alamos County, New Mexico, United States, built upon four mesas of the Pajarito Plateau and the adjoining White Rock Canyon. The population of the CDP was 12,019 at the 2010 Census. The townsite or "the hill" is one part of town while...

, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Oak Ridge is a city in Anderson and Roane counties in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, about west of Knoxville. Oak Ridge's population was 27,387 at the 2000 census...

, and Hanford, Washington

Hanford Site

The Hanford Site is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, operated by the United States federal government. The site has been known by many names, including Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works or HEW, Hanford Nuclear Reservation...

, and the basic physical processes responsible for the functioning of nuclear weapons, in particular nuclear fission

Nuclear fission

In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts , often producing free neutrons and photons , and releasing a tremendous amount of energy...

 and the nuclear chain reaction

Nuclear chain reaction

A nuclear chain reaction occurs when one nuclear reaction causes an average of one or more nuclear reactions, thus leading to a self-propagating number of these reactions. The specific nuclear reaction may be the fission of heavy isotopes or the fusion of light isotopes...

. Secondly, it serves as a barometer for other scientists as to what information was declassified

Declassified

Declassified is an American television series produced by Ten Worlds Productions on The History Channel that originally aired on November 9, 2004. The series takes viewers inside vaults and archives around the world to reveal the untold stories of modern history...

—anything said in the Smyth Report could be said freely in open literature. For this reason, the Smyth Report focused heavily on information already available in declassified literature, such as much of the basic nuclear physics

Nuclear physics

Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of atomic nuclei. The most commonly known applications of nuclear physics are nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons technology, but the research has provided application in many fields, including those...

 used in weapons, which was either already widely known in the scientific community or could have been easily deduced by a competent scientist.

The stated purpose of the Smyth Report was to give enough information to citizens so that they could understand enough about the new atomic weapons to make sensible policy decisions regarding them. From the Preface (emphasis added):

The ultimate responsibility for our nation's policy rests on its citizens and they can discharge such responsibilities wisely only if they are informed. The average citizen cannot be expected to understand clearly how an atomic bomb is constructed or how it works but there is in this country a substantial group of engineers and scientists who can understand such things and who can explain the potentialities of atomic bombs to their fellow citizens. The present report is written for this professional group and is a matter-of-fact, general account of work in the USA since 1939 aimed at the production of such bombs. It is neither a documented official history nor a technical treatise for experts. Secrecy requirements have affected both the detailed content and general emphasis so that many interesting developments have been omitted.

Despite undergoing extensive security review before release, the Smyth Report was criticized by politicians as having "given away the secret of the A-bomb." It was indeed used extensively in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 to tailor their own bomb project

Soviet atomic bomb project

The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb , was a clandestine research and development program began during and post-World War II, in the wake of the Soviet Union's discovery of the United States' nuclear project...

, though only in terms of what sorts of factories to produce and to compare their progress with the scale of the American project. However, most politicians themselves knew nothing about atomic weapons, and because they did not know which "secrets" were not released by the Smyth Report, they had no idea how many "secrets" actually were released.

The Smyth Report did not contain any details on creating a functional weapon, nor any illustrations (except for a graph indicating the layers of the Fermi

Enrico Fermi

Enrico Fermi was an Italian-born, naturalized American physicist particularly known for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics...

 "pile") in its initial release. A later release included pictures of the test explosion at Trinity site, the facilities at Oak Ridge and Hanford (but not Los Alamos), and basic diagrams of nuclear fission and a few other basic concepts. It did not outline how one would actually construct an atomic bomb, gesturing only vaguely towards the Little Boy

Little Boy

"Little Boy" was the codename of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets of the 393rd Bombardment Squadron, Heavy, of the United States Army Air Forces. It was the first atomic bomb to be used as a weapon...

 uranium

Uranium

Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...

 bomb design, and does not hint at all towards the manner in which the plutonium

Plutonium

Plutonium is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with the chemical symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, forming a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation...

 bomb, like Fat Man

Fat Man

"Fat Man" is the codename for the atomic bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, by the United States on August 9, 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons to be used in warfare to date , and its detonation caused the third man-made nuclear explosion. The name also refers more...

, was designed (see nuclear weapons design for the differences in design types).

The original title of the report, before it was published in book form, was A general account of the development of methods of using atomic energy for military purposes under the auspices of the United States government, 1940-1945. There was a small difference between the original text and the version published by Princeton. Groves decided a one sentence allusion to a "poisoning" effect in the production reactors due to fission byproducts, which stopped the reaction, was sensitive, and he had it removed. This deletion was soon noticed in Russia, and acted to highlight its importance to them (for more on this incident see Rhodes, 215-217). Also, in the Princeton publication, first and middle names were added instead of the previous use of abbreviations. (For example, on the original cover it gives authorship to "H. D. Smyth")

Despite the technical nature of the work, it sold almost 127,000 copies in its first eight printings and was on the New York Times best-seller list from mid-October 1945 until late-January 1946. It has been translated into over 40 different languages. The report was also published by the British government (H.M.S.O., London, 1945).

External links

• The Smyth Report fully transcribed and available online
• The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History - some background and sources on the Smyth report
• Smyth Report fully scanned, from Internet Archive
  Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...