Farm Hall

The Farm Hall transcripts were made during and after the second world war in Britain over the possibility of Germans producing an atomic bomb during the war.

Related Topics:
Second world war - Britain - Atomic bomb

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Almost at the end of the second world war, Werner Heisenberg was captured at his family in Bayern (a part of Germany) and transferred to the UK together with other physicists including Walther Gerlach, Otto Hahn, and Carl von Weizsacker. They were housed in a farm near Cambridge that was equipped with small microphones placed by the British to find out what exactly Heisenberg and his team knew about constructing an atomic bomb. They did not speak a lot about it, so the British obtained little useful information. This changed on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was bombed. Heisenberg and his team wondered how the Americans succeeded in building an atomic bomb.

Related Topics:
Werner Heisenberg - Bayern - Germany - Walther Gerlach - Otto Hahn - Carl von Weizsacker - Hiroshima

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From these conversations it became clear that Heisenberg and his team were far from being able to construct an atomic bomb (or even a working reactor). They made several critical mistakes, including gross overestimation of the required critical mass.

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Soon after this Heisenberg was released, as he was considerd no longer a risk.

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(For reference see Thomas Powers' book Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb, published in 1993.)

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