The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP) was a United States military agency responsible for those aspects of nuclear weapons remaining under military control after the Manhattan Project was succeeded by the Atomic Energy Commission on 1 January 1947. These responsibilities included the maintenance, storage, surveillance, security and handling of nuclear weapons, as well as supporting nuclear testing. The AFSWP was a joint organization, staffed by the United States Army, United States Navy and United States Air Force; its chief was supported by deputies from the other two services. Major General Leslie R. Groves, the former head of the Manhattan Project, was its first chief.
The early nuclear weapons were large, complex, and cumbersome. They were stored as components rather than complete devices and required expert knowledge to assemble. The short life of their lead-acid batteries and modulated neutron initiators, and the heat generated by the fissile cores, precluded storing them assembled. The large quantity of conventional explosive in each weapon demanded special care be taken in handling. Groves hand-picked a team of regular Army officers, who were trained in the assembly and handling of the weapons. They in turn trained the enlisted soldiers, and the Army teams then trained teams from the Navy and Air Force.
As nuclear weapons development proceeded, the weapons became mass-produced, smaller, lighter, and easier to store, handle, and maintain. They also required less effort to assemble. The AFSWP gradually shifted its emphasis away from training assembly teams, and became more involved in stockpile management and providing administrative, technical, and logistical support. It supported nuclear weapons testing, although after Operation Sandstone in 1948, this was increasingly in a planning and training capacity rather than a field role. In 1959, the AFSWP became the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA), a field agency of the Department of Defense.
Origins Nuclear weapons were developed during World War II by the Manhattan Project, a major research and development effort led by the United States, with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, it was under the direction of Major General Leslie R. Groves Jr., of the US Army Corps of Engineers. It created a network of production facilities, most notably for uranium enrichment at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, plutonium production at Hanford, Washington, and weapons research and design at the Los Alamos Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The nuclear weapons that were developed were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
After the war ended, the Manhattan Project supported the nuclear weapons testing at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads in 1946. One of Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal's aides, Lewis Strauss, proposed this series of tests to refute "loose talk to the effect that the fleet is obsolete in the face of this new weapon". The nuclear weapons were handmade devices, and a great deal of work remained to improve their ease of assembly, safety, reliability and storage before they were ready for production. There were also many improvements to their performance that had been suggested or recommended, but not possible under the pressure of wartime development.
Groves's biggest concern was about people. Soldiers and scientists wanted to return to their peacetime pursuits, and there was a danger that wartime knowledge would be lost, leaving no one who knew how to handle and maintain nuclear weapons, much less how to improve the weapons and processes. The military side of the Manhattan Project had relied heavily on reservists, as the policy of the Corps of Engineers was to assign regular officers to field commands. The reservists were now eligible for separation. To replace them, Groves asked for fifty West Point graduates from the top ten percent of their classes to man bomb-assembly teams at Sandia Base, where the assembly staff and facilities had been moved from Los Alamos and Wendover Field in September and October 1945. He felt that only such high-quality personnel would be able to work with the scientists who were currently doing the job. They were also urgently required for many other jobs in the postwar Army. When General Thomas T. Handy turned down his request, Groves raised the matter with the Chief of Staff of the Army, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, who similarly did not approve it. Groves then went over his head too, and took the issue to the Secretary of War, Robert P. Patterson, who agreed with Groves. The personnel manned the 2761st Engineer Battalion (Special), which became a field unit under the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP).
Groves hoped a new, permanent agency would be created to take over the responsibilities of the wartime Manhattan Project in 1945, but passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 through Congress took much longer than expected, and involved considerable debate about the proper role of the military with respect to the development, production and control of nuclear weapons. The act that was signed by President Harry S. Truman on 1 August 1946 created a civilian agency, the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), to take over the functions and assets of the Manhattan Project, but the commissioners were not appointed until October, and AEC did not assume its role until 1 January 1947. In the meantime, the Military Appropriation Act of 1946 gave the Manhattan Project $72.4million for research and development, and $19million for housing and utilities at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge.
The Atomic Energy Act provided for a Military Liaison Committee to advise the AEC on military matters, so Patterson appointed Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton, who became chairman, along with Major General Lunsford E. Oliver and Colonel John H. Hinds as Army members of the Military Liaison Committee; Forrestal appointed Rear Admirals Thorvald A. Solberg, Ralph A. Ofstie and William S. Parsons as its naval members.
Organization
Patterson asked Groves to create a new agency to take over responsibility for the aspects of nuclear weapons that still remained under the military. It was to be jointly staffed by the Army and Navy, and on 29 January 1947, Patterson and Forrestal issued a memorandum that formally established the AFSWP. Its chief would be appointed jointly by the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Chief of Naval Operations, along with a deputy from the opposite service. Both would be members of the Military Liaison Committee, because the Atomic Energy Act stipulated that the Military Liaison Committee was the sole military body that dealt with the AEC. In February 1947, Eisenhower and Chief of Naval Operations Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz appointed Groves as head of the AFSWP, with Parsons as his deputy. Accordingly, Groves was appointed to the Military Liaison Committee, although the newly appointed AEC chairman, David E. Lilienthal, told Patterson he did not think it was a good idea, because Groves had run the Manhattan Project by himself for four years, and was not used to having to compromise.
Groves and Parsons drafted a proposed organization and charter for the AFSWP, which they sent to Eisenhower and Nimitz for approval in July 1947. Groves did not get everything he asked for; he wanted a status equal to that of a deputy to the Chief of Staff and Chief of Naval Operations, but the most Eisenhower and Nimitz would allow was a status equal to that of the heads of a technical service, although Groves still reported directly to them. They also characterized his role as a staff post rather than a command, although Groves was already exercising the functions of a commander at Sandia. After the National Security Act of 1947 created an independent Air Force, Groves reported to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force as well, and was given a second deputy chief from the Air Force, Major General Roscoe C. Wilson, who had worked on the Silverplate project during the war.
Groves initially established the headquarters of the AFSWP in the old offices of the Manhattan Project on the fifth floor of the New War Department Building in Washington, DC, but on 15 April 1947 it moved to the Pentagon. As AFSWP headquarters expanded, it filled up its original accommodation, and began using office space in other parts of the building, which was not satisfactory from a security point of view. In August 1949, it moved to of new offices inside the Pentagon. This included space for a soundproof conference room, a darkroom, and vaults where its records and films were stored.
The 2761st Engineer Battalion (Special) at Sandia was commanded by Colonel Gilbert M. Dorland, and consisted of a headquarters company, a security company (Company A), a bomb assembly company (Company B) and a radiological monitoring company (Company C), although Company C was never fully formed. For training purposes, Company B was initially divided into command, electrical, mechanical and nuclear groups, but the intention was to create three integrated 36-man bomb assembly teams.
To free the bomb assembly teams from having to train newcomers, a Technical Training Group (TTG) was created under Lieutenant Colonel John A. Ord, a Signal Corps officer with a Doctor of Science degree from Carnegie Institute of Technology who had directed the training of thousands of radar technicians at the Southern Signal Corps School during the war. The battalion was redesignated the 38th Engineer Battalion (Special) in April 1947, and in July it became part of the newly created AFSWP Field Command, under the command of Brigadier General Robert M. Montague. The TTG was soon reporting directly to Montague as well.
The first bomb assembly team was formed in August 1947, followed by a second in December and a third in March 1948. Experience with assembling the bombs convincingly demonstrated the requirement, in Sandia if not in Washington, for a much larger unit. Groves reluctantly approved a 109-man special weapons unit, and Montague converted the three lettered companies of the 38th Engineer Battalion into special weapons units. In 1948, they began training a Navy special weapons unit, as the Navy foresaw delivery of nuclear weapons with its new North American AJ Savage bombers from its s. This unit became the 471st Naval Special Weapons Unit on its certification in August 1948. Two Air Force units were created in September and December 1948, which became the 502d and 508th Aviation Squadrons. An additional Army special weapons unit was created in May 1948, and in December, the 38th Engineer Battalion (Special) became the 8460th Special Weapons Group, with all seven special weapons units under its command. The four Army units were then renamed the 111th, 122d, 133d and 144th Special Weapons Units. During the late 1940s the Air Force gradually became the major user of nuclear weapons, and by the end of 1949 it had twelve assembly units and another three in training. The Army had only four and the Navy three, one for each of the s.