THE 189th luncheon meeting took place at the Swan Hotel, Alcester, on March 26.

The president welcomed Mr Ray Hobart and gave news of members; Mac was coping well at home and John Sivyer was in hospital with a suspected heart condition.

Three members had celebrated birthdays; Horace Jobson, Geoff Turner and an 80th for Reg Harris, who read Grace.

After the meal, the Loyal Toast and a short break the speaker, member John Puzey, spoke about 'The Manhattan Project.'

This referred to the first atomic bomb. He first became interested during a visit to New Mexico in May 2001 and when visiting the Los Alamos museum which featured the project, he realised the vast scale and cost involved.

For example, they used 14,000 tons of silver for the electro-magnets used in the separation plants.

He then gave the history of radioactivity from its first discovery in 1896 up to the work on fission by British, French and German scientists in 1939.

America was slow to act however, even after Pearl Harbour until Roosevelt convinced his top officials and then progress was rapid.

The project was given top priority regardless of cost and two enormous projects ran in parallel in spite of many unknowns.

In September 1942 Colonel Groves was appointed to take complete charge of the project.

Within a few days he had purchased 1,250 tons of rich uranium ore, approved the purchase of 52,000 acres of land for various plants and instructed a technical committee to get a decision within five days, and if there were two alternatives, to build both.

John then described the process needed to produce pure U235 and the scale of operation.

The U235 type bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

The cost to America was astronomical, about $2 billion ($26 million in today's money).

At the meeting today, the meal will be beef and the speaker, member Ken Dudley, will talk about 'Humour'.