In August 1945, immediately following the atomic bombings of Japan, the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States issued their first official statements explaining how the atomic bomb had been conceived, researched and deployed. Those primary documents, seldom republished in their entirety since 1945, are brought together and restored in Charles E. MacKay's 192-page volume 1945 Statements on the Atomic Bomb, illustrated with 66 black-and-white photographs and three technical drawings including a three-view drawing of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress and a cover showing the cockpit view from a B-29 based at Tinian in 1945.
Winston Churchill, Tube Alloys and the MAUD Committee Report
As United States Ambassador W. Averell Harriman observed on 7 August 1945, British research was already far advanced when the project was turned over to the United States so that laboratories and manufacturing plants could be built out of range of bombing. The restored volume opens with Winston S. Churchill's 1945 Statements Relating to the Atomic Bomb, setting out the formation of the British 'Tube Alloys' project and its integration with the American Manhattan District.
Alongside Churchill's statement is the foundational report of the British M.A.U.D. Committee (Report on the Use of Uranium for a Bomb), complete with drawings, from which it can be deduced that the first uranium weapon dropped in August 1945 rested directly on British MAUD technology. The book also prints the text of the wartime Quebec Agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States.
Canadian and American statements: Howe, Truman, Stimson and Oppenheimer
The Allied atomic programme was tri-national from the outset. The volume restores the official statement by Canadian Minister C. D. Howe together with the statement issued by the Office of the Minister of Reconstruction in Ottawa, which lists all the Allied atomic scientists involved. On the American side, it includes the statements of President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson on the bombing of Japan, as well as J. Robert Oppenheimer's statement detailing the deployment and contributions of British scientists (including James Chadwick alongside General Leslie Groves) at Los Alamos, together with details of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs.
Silverplate, Peppermint and Chickenpox: delivering the weapon
Beyond nuclear physics, the book explains the operational codewords and aircraft engineering required to carry atomic weapons in service. It covers 'Silverplate' (the structural and systems modifications of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress to carry the atomic bomb, and the fate and deployment of those aircraft) as well as 'Peppermint' (Allied preparations against any German deployment of nuclear or radiological products during the invasion of Europe) and 'Chickenpox' (American preparations for the post-war deployment of atomic bombs in aircraft).
The ALSOS Mission and the myth of the German atomic bomb
A dedicated chapter examines the Allied ALSOS scientific intelligence mission into Europe, including rarely published details on Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Werner Heisenberg and the German nuclear researchers, accompanied by drawings of the proposed German atomic bomb. The official conclusion documented here is unambiguous: Nazi Germany could never have produced an atomic bomb during the war, providing an essential documentary check against post-war propaganda that German scientists either had a weapon ready for use or deliberately delayed its production.
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Originally compiled as the documentary foundation for Sonic to Standoff: The Evolution of the British Nuclear Deterrent, 1945 Statements on the Atomic Bomb coordinates all twelve restored 1945 Allied documentary sections in one 192-page volume. Pair it with Sonic to Standoff: The Evolution of the British Nuclear Deterrent for the post-war British V-bomber, WE177 and Blue Steel story, and The Fedden Mission to Germany Final Report for the parallel 1945 British inspection of Germany's aeronautical research.