The Hanford Atom Factory, ghost planes, and disappearing balloons – 1945

I’ve shifted my nightly reading to crawling DOE archives in the Manhattan project era. There are tons of documents that are digitized the 40’s and 50’s that are not OCI’d and thus the contents cannot be searched by a search engine. Most of the documents are mundane, talking about enrichment criteria and delivery needs of Uranium and Plutonium.

Last night I stumbled upon a diary of Colonel FT Matthias, heading up the operations of the worlds first large scale plutonium production plant, the Hanford Atom Factory. The diary has almost daily entries and as expected from a diary – written in retrospect from 01JAN45 to 31DEC45. In this period he recounts disappearing planes and balloons (his words he calls the ghost planes and potential jap balloons).

The factory at this time was operational but still under construction and there was no real defense ramparts to the facility in place shockingly. The ghost plane incidents rattled him enough to call in an order for a 200 man air-force light unit, equipped with 9-12 air search lights each with mounted .50 caliber AA guns, which arrived in about a weeks time. After the squad is set up he delegates air security to another officer and his entries about the subject dwindle until his disappearing balloon reports.

His diary can be found and downloaded here – https://www.osti.gov/opennet/detail?osti-id=16408017

Now, more interestingly than brief diary entries, there is also an official Monthly Operations Report for the same time period that was released under FOIA, but NOT digitized, and so not viewable online. It is reported to be at the DOE Public Reading Room, Richland WA.

Here is the site listing for the Monthly Operations Report January 1945-December 1945 https://www.osti.gov/opennet/detail?osti-id=16416406

It is a bit of a drive, but I am in WA, and I am planning to go out there next week. I am still compiling documents I want to browse. If I find anything interesting, I will follow up.