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Jack Case — Building Y-12 for the Cold War (04/05/2006)

By D. Ray Smith — This is the story of how Jack Case prepared Y 12 to become the world’s leading and most precise machine shop — one capable of leading the way in eventually winning the Cold War.
Who would have thought that one manufacturing facility in the Bear Creek Valley of Oak Ridge, Tenn., would ultimately have such a significant and worldwide impact — Little Boy to help end World War II, then production of nuclear weapons secondaries to result in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the defeat of Communism in the Soviet Union?

The following is an excerpt from a letter from Jay Wechsler, WX Division Leader, Los Alamos National Laboratory, sent to be read at Case’s retirement:

Those of us who have spent a substantial period of time in the nuclear business think of the Y 12 Plant as the real image of “getting the job done.” In a large measure, this feeling comes from the kind of direction and leadership that Jack Case provides and inspires. Regardless of the complexity and long-term schedule vagaries of our business, Jack gets to the heart of the difficulty and when convinced the problem warrants direct attention, no one in the entire complex has any doubts but that it gets the best of our resources and effort.

Jack, we at Los Alamos feel that we go back a long way together with memories of tough, almost impossible tasks developed and executed on even more impossible time scales. For those of us who have already (or are about to) perform the “step aside” maneuver, we thank you for what you have meant to our way of life for the past 37 years. Max Roy sends his special regards.

In many ways, Case recognized the vital nature of what was needed at Y 12 to sustain the country’s need for nuclear weapons after World War II and as Russia began to build and explode their own nuclear weapons. It was apparent that Russia was intent upon taking the lead in this new, virtually unknown field when they exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949. That was not acceptable to the United States government.

It was also becoming evident, as Case and others were sent to Los Alamos in 1947 to bring back the information necessary to produce additional uranium and plutonium bombs, that Russia was not limiting itself to those type of weapons. President Truman announced in January 1950 that both atomic and thermonuclear bombs would be built.
Once that decision was made, intense pressure was put on all parts of the Nuclear Weapons Complex. The nuclear weapons program was called upon to take giant steps and was expected to perform flawlessly in creating, testing and deploying thermonuclear weapons as quickly as possible.

The U.S. exploded “Mike,” our first thermonuclear test in October 1952. In 1953, the Russians exploded their first thermonuclear bomb.

Larger and larger yields were created in each new bomb tested. The race was on almost as quickly as Y 12 determined how to mass produce nuclear weapons components. Case saw it coming. He began preparing Y 12 for the future demands of the Cold War through strong leadership in whatever position he held.

All U.S. nuclear weapons have components from Y 12. Each new concept designed by the weapons laboratories required Y 12 to achieve greater accuracies using more exotic and never-before-machined materials.

Case encouraged others and helped lead the changes necessary to keep Y 12 in the forefront of the weapons program, thus helping maintain the lead in the Cold War even as China exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1964 and India, eventually, exploded a nuclear device (they did not call it a bomb).

All of these incidents caused the “doomsday clock” to be set closer to midnight and Y 12 to increase production time and again. Case's “Can Do” attitude kept the technological demands on Y 12 high and often caused the people working in the trenches to draw upon every resource available to meet the required deadlines. Y 12 never missed a shipment date during the entire race to win the Cold War.

When Case retired in 1982 the demands on Y 12 were already increasing beyond anything since the Manhattan Project days of 1944 and 1945.

More than 8,000 people worked three shifts to produce the secondaries required to keep the nuclear weapons stockpile growing at the rate needed to exceed the capacity of the Soviet Union. Y 12 was able to sustain that monumental effort for years because of the foresight of people such as Case, who bought machine tools and measuring tools, put computers on them, and created the single most capable machine shop in the world.
To say that Y 12 was state-of-the-art is misleading. Y 12 was continually establishing and then moving the state-of-the-art in machining and manufacturing. Case, known as “Mr. Y 12” to many at that time, played a huge role.
 

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