Secretary of War Henry Stimson told General Groves that the Manhattan Engineer District should be overseen by a committee of nine or possibly seven men, as Groves explains in Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project:
I objected quite vigorously on the grounds that such a large committee would be unwieldy; it would cause delays in taking action; and some, if not the majority, of its members would tend to treat it as a secondary responsibility, to the detriment of our progress. I felt that a committee of three was ideal and that any more members would be a hindrance rather than a benefit. I pointed out that I could keep three people reasonably well informed on our major problems, and, furthermore, that I would be able to obtain advice from them much more readily than I could from a larger group. In the end, my views were accepted.
[…]
There followed some general conversation, in the midst of which, and with no small amount of embarrassment on my part, for I was by far the most junior person present, I asked to be excused if I were no longer needed, for I wanted to catch the train to Tennessee and inspect the proposed production plant site, so that the land acquisition could proceed. With this, the meeting broke up. I was a bit relieved when Somervell told me several days later that my request could not have been better timed, because it convinced everyone that he had not overemphasized my urgent desire to get a job moving.
Somewhere in one of his books, Peter Drucker writes that the maximum number of people a manager could effectively supervise is six.
‘I remembered the opinion of a very wise and successful Chief of Engineers, General Jadwin. When some of his subordinates intimated to him that there was no need to appoint a board of consultants on the Mississippi River, since its members would have neither the knowledge nor the background in this field possessed by many officers of the Corps of Engineers, Jadwin replied: “I have no objection to committees as long as I appoint them.” With this guidance, I had no qualms about setting up a review committee. Its primary purpose was to reassure Conant and me, as well as the members of the Military Policy Committee, that the program and the organization at Los Alamos were sound.5 As with every committee that I appointed, its members were very carefully selected, and at least one of them, in this case the secretary, was a man who was thoroughly familiar with the project and with my views on the subject under study. Although such an approach to committees may appear cynical, in my experience it produced excellent results.’
Groves, Leslie M.. Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Era of the New Deal) (pp. 210-211). Da Capo Press. Kindle Edition.
Heinlein’s ‘Solution Unsatisfactory’ was based on a real threat assessment!:
‘What I thought more likely was that the Germans would use an ordinary explosive bomb containing radioactive material. If we were unable to neutralize the effects of such a weapon promptly, a major panic could easily sweep through the Allied countries. However, as the plans for the invasion of Europe began to take form, we considered very seriously indeed the possibility that the Germans might lay down some kind of radioactive barrier along the invasion routes. We could not calculate with any certainty the likelihood of their doing this, for we were truly in the dark then about their progress in atomic development.’
Groves, Leslie M.. Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Era of the New Deal) (pp. 256-257). Da Capo Press. Kindle Edition.
It looks like I need to pick up Robert Heinlein’s Expanded Universe: Volume One, which includes “Solution Unsatisfactory.”
The Wikipedia entry shares this description:
Isegoria, I don’t think radioactive dust is easy to make in that amount. Think, hope. I need to reread Expanded Universe myself.
I just listened to the audiobook edition of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, which features a world dying from cobalt bombs:
Heinlein and Grove were talking about, say, 40,000 pounds of radioactive dust per B-29 dropped from a giant fleet of B-29s. I don’t know if that’s economically possible.
Sure, big fusion bombs could leave everything radioactive.