On this date 81 years ago, President Roosevelt made a momentous decision.  It was 1942 and only 43 days after the assault on Pearl Harbor that forced America to become engaged in World War II.  And in a measure to improve the United States’ offensive capabilities, following receipt of a report from the National Academy of Sciences that said it was possible, the President approved the development and production of atomic weapons.   Assigned to the Army, it became known as the Manhattan Project.  Some say that this opened a can of worms, however other countries at the time were also taking similar measures.  Development of the atomic bomb was essentially inevitable – it’s just that the U.S. was first.

As a teenage rock and roller, I never dreamed that I would become engaged in the nuclear program maintained by the United States, or that I would become one of America’s Cold War veterans – but I did.  During my time in the Navy, I ended up spending four years on the nuclear powered submarine Billfish that not only had a nuclear reactor to power the electrical systems and provide propulsion, but on many patrols she carried nuclear weapons.  These weapons weren’t the big megaton atomic bombs carried on the larger ballistic missile submarines called “boomers”, but they were still very powerful.  Following a major attack against the U.S., boomers were designed to retaliate and hit targets in the attacking country thousands of miles away from them with incredibly massive force.  Billfish on the other hand wasn’t a boomer but a fast attack “hunter killer” submarine, so her weapons were designed for face to face military warfare with surface ships or other submarines.  The weapons, like some of the torpedoes she carried, or missiles like a Subroc (an underwater to air guided missile), had nuclear warheads that could have a yield in several kilotons (not megatons like those on the boomers).  Although Billfish’s nukes were dialed back in size, the Subroc’s for example had a yield that was 20 times bigger than that of the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II.  So the devastation they could produce would not be trivial.  The training we went through to not only operate the submarine herself but to handle and understand the intricacies of the weapons she carried was intense.  Sailors have a reputation for having a good time, and there were times that we did, but we were quite different when operating the sub’s systems.  And to think that we worked, ate, slept and essentially lived in a metal shell for weeks on end alongside a nuclear reactor and multiple nuclear weapons is now to me somewhat remarkable.  Probably why it’s better to do your time in the service when you’re young and indestructible (as most of us thought we were at the time). Like all of America’s Presidents, I’m sure President Roosevelt had no idea of how his decision would change the future, but considering that IF he had vetoed the idea and the Germans or Japanese had developed the atomic bomb first (which they were trying to do even before America became part of WWII), our lives would most likely have changed dramatically . . . in fact America’s national language might now be German or Japanese!!   So come to think of it, especially as an American, I think it was a pretty important (and correct) decision that he made!