Penney’s visit was short and afterwards he went to see his two young sons, who had been evacuated. Les Hogan who had married Penney’s younger sister Muriel, recalled the change in his normally placid brother-in-law: “He was always a very secretive person, I suppose he had to be, but always very pleasant and approachable. I remember him before Adele’s illness, his sense of humour and fun. I had a little dog and I used to hold this dog and rub a ruler across his tummy and he used to immediately burst into incredible sounds. Bill used to laugh like mad at that, he thought that was so funny. He was a very human person. But he changed after what happened to his wife. He didn’t talk a lot about it, but we all knew he was hurting very much. But there was also anger; there was a lot of that.”
Penney stayed only long enough to make the arrangements for the welfare of his children. Then he was off in the waiting car, back to what remained of his Croydon home which was still guarded by armed soldiers. He spent several hours inside, eventually emerging with a leather valise stuffed with papers. He handed his keys to an official and received a receipt.
A light blue RAF Hillman Minx staff car took him to an airfield where a two-seater Mosquito fighter-bomber waited, engines revving. Two hours later it deposited Penney at Shannon airport where a cumbersome, but reliable, converted Wellington bomber was ready for take-off. The old ‘bone shaker’ was the regular shuttle plane across the Atlantic for scientists taking part in secret work. On board already was a colleague from Liverpool, Professor Michael Moore, who was going to America for the first time. He was the personal assistant of the Nobel laureate Sir James Chadwick, ‘discoverer of the neutron’ and head of the British mission in America.
Both men sat huddled in the wind-whistling fuselage of the Wellington, swathed in scarves and blankets. The plane rattled and creaked like an old cattle wagon. There were two security guards with them and there was little talk. Penney sat in his own world staring white-faced out of the window. Fifteen hours later, the plane touched down at an isolated, windswept airfield in the vast, featureless terrain of Newfoundland.
The weather closed in almost as soon as the aircraft bumped to a halt, and the two scientists were shown to a wooden transit room reeking of paraffin and damp. They spent a restless night wrapped in blankets and dozing fitfully as they waited for the sleet and rain to subside. They talked little, but Moore learned enough to understand the depth of his colleague’s sadness.
A military transport plane of the US Air Force eventually flew Moore to Berkerley in California where his skills in precision engineering were needed. Penney, whose job was more important, went to Washington. General Groves, the man in overall charge of the project was waiting. He told Penney his expertise was urgently required as “the gadget” was almost ready for testing.
This time Penney didn’t take the Santa Fe Chief, the famous Pullman train linking Chicago with Los Angeles, a distance of more than 2,200 miles, because of pressure of time. Instead a military plane took Penney across the continental United States to the scorched New Mexico desert. It landed at the Alburqueque air base where some unusual activity was taking place far out in the desert at a place called Alomorgordo. Dust clouds drifted across the horizon as heavy vehicles moved equipment to and fro. Penney knew what it was all about but, as always, he was close-mouthed.
An open-topped Ford sedan, a female chauffeur at the wheel, was waiting. They headed for Santa Fe, a large, bustling, dusty town sweltering 20 miles away in the middle of the desert. The car drew up outside an anonymous building at 109, East Palace Avenue. The clapboard property with peeling paintwork was in fact the business address for the most secret place on earth. Penney was welcomed back by Dorothy McKibbin, a young widow who was one of the first recruits to the top secret project. She presented him with his new white security pass. Penney and his chauffeur then set off up the treacherous, twisting roads towards the towering Jemez mountain range.
Early explorers examining the Jemez Mountains observed the huge circular shape in the centre of the 11,000-foot range and thought of it as merely a curious set of connected valleys. It was not until the 1930s that it was identified as the rim of an ancient and extinct volcano. Some thought it was the actual crater, but the favoured theory was that it was a caldera, the huge saucer left when the volcano collapses.
Lush, green alpine passes between the peaks give way to a vast sea of grass interrupted only by forested hills. In winter a blanket of snow fills the valleys and the stark peaks form a magnificent panorama. Next to all this glory is a long, narrow plateau extending along the eastern slope of the Jemez range overlooking the Rio Grande. This narrow bench is known as the Pajarito (Little Bird) Plateau. Lying at an altitude of 7,000 feet, it is covered with ponderosa pine, fir, aspen and oak. Where they can get a foothold, juniper and many varieties of scrub proliferate. Early hunters wandered into the narrow defile for deer, bear and elk that still abound there to this day. Beaver traps were set in the lower regions.
It was a landscape shaped for the American dream, and it was here in 1917 that a Michigan businessman called Ashley Pond opened the Los Alamos Ranch School for boys on a hill surrounded by a dense forest of pines. The school flourished and it was soon catering for more than 50 boys sent there for experience of the open air life. By the 1930s a 23-acre lake had been excavated with places for boating, swimming and ice skating in the winter. Vigorous outdoor life was the order of the day while entertainment was provided by local Indians who performed dances and sold their craftwork on blankets.
The idyllic lifestyle at the ranch ended in 1942 during the annual summer program when school officials noticed an increase in low-flying aircraft over the area. Cars, and all kinds of strange military vehicles began to appear on the approach roads to the ranch.
On December 7, 1942, the first anniversary of Pearl Harbour, Secretary of War Stimson gave an order requisitioning the school. School officials and parents were told the building was being closed, but they were not told why. But the owners were happy enough with the $450,000 cheque they received.
It was only after the destruction of Hiroshima that they and the world learned of the true purpose: Los Alamos ranch school, renamed Site Y, had been chosen as the top secret headquarters of the Manhattan Project, the billion dollar program to develop the atomic bomb.
At first, however, locals could only scratch their heads and wonder as teams of construction workers fell on the campsite and grounds like a huge army of worker ants frantically rebuilding a damaged nest. Laboratory buildings were thrown up and living quarters for at least 300 people prepared. Chalet-style wooden huts were erected overnight and a network of crude roads cut into the red soil. The old school buildings, which used to contain 27 rooms, were modified so there was room for 70 people. A protective cordon of barbed wire fencing was thrown around the whole site; the only way in and out was through two well-guarded frontier posts.
By early 1943 some of the most famous scientific brains in the world had arrived at the ranch which everyone now referred to as The Hill. First to arrive were scientists from the University of California under the scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer. Others came from all over Europe and America. Academic giants like Enrico Fermi, Neils Bohr, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Otto Frisch and George Kistiakowski were in the vanguard. Toward the end of the year, the second wave arrived. Penny was included in the 20-strong contingent from England.