The Devil's Weapon: The British Tube Alloy Project 1939-1945

by Chris Paige

The wartime construction of nuclear weapons is widely attributed to the United States of America in the form of the Manhattan Project supervised by General Groves. But the story of how Britain had become the first country in the world which had set about conceiving and making an actual nuclear weapon has been overlooked. Details of the British researches, the design of a plant for isotope separation, the variety of techniques explored, production of membranes for separation, and much brilliant theoretical work are all absent. All this work was freely shared with the American teams throughout the war. This book attempts to make the missing work publicly available.

858 pages, Hardcover

Published September 15, 2023