Interesting Statistics from World War II

 The other day, I discovered a connection between Los Alamos, New Mexico and Oak Ridge Tennessee.  Most people know that Los Alamos is where they build the first plutonium based atomic bomb, the one later dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but did you know that Oak Ridge produced the plutonium for the bombs?

Both places during World War II did not appear on maps, nor did they really "exist".  Los Alamos began by taking over a huge school complete with over 50 buildings and encompassing close to 50,000 acres of land but Oak Ridge had to start from scratch.

The government had to get 60,000 acres of land, move about 3,000 people from the area so they could erect the facility in as short a period of time. Over a period of about 2.5 to 3 years, they built enough housing for 75,000 people.  So they went from a population of 0 to one of 75,000 in say three years. 

Furthermore, to build the houses, they contracted a company to build single family houses in such a way that trucks would move them, half a house at a time.  At the peak of growth, a new house was assembled every 30 minutes.  That is impressive, especially at that time. 

This site has some great graphs on Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford sites from World War II.  These sites were all part of The Manhattan Project.  The cost for the whole project was just over $2 billion in 1945 dollars but the government spent about $300 billion for the whole war. 

Furthermore, most places went from zero to full running within 22 months.  This meant they built the facilities and housing, hired and trained people and were producing and making the bombs.  At its peak, it is estimated around 125,000 were employed as part of The Manhattan Project but over the course of the project, it is estimated over 600,000 people worked on it.  The reason for so many people working on the Manhattan Project is due to turn over.

The Hanford facility had a 26% turnover rate with a 3 to 1 ratio of resignations to discharges.  Many of the resignations were due to illness, working conditions, being drafted, moving, or getting a job elsewhere.  At Oak Ridge the turnover rate was 17% split in a 2 to 1 ration for resignations to discharges.

There is also a graph showing the total hires and terminations, hires and terminations for operations and research  and for design and construction.  There is enough information included in this article for students to create a variety of graphs to display the information.

I love finding information like this because it is real world and its fun to see how it all looks in a variety of graphs.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.