Page 1 of 21 (STORY-WMOR-01) In Their Own Words Walter Calvin Moore Civilian Engineer Oak Ridge (K-25)
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My Oak Ridge Experience by Walter Calvin Moore The first time I saw the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant ( then and sometimes now called K-25 ) it was the steel framework for a gigantic building, 400 feet wide, four stories high, and constructed as a U shaped building one-half mile long on each leg of the “U”, a building of what appeared to me then to be of awesome proportions. At that time I had no idea of what the project was all about, but speculated that it was probably to become a plant for the manufacture of some kind of chemical warfare agent, because everyone was talking about “process gas”. Imagine, if you can, a gigantic construction site, piles of building material everywhere, hundreds of workmen swarming about, huge cranes, and hundreds of trucks crawling through acres of sticky Tennessee mud, interspersed with graveled roads and wooden sidewalks . It was in late April, 1944, and that spring it was very rainy, even for Tennessee. I did not see the sun for about six weeks. At that time I certainly did not feel that this was where I belonged. But it was better than being in the army, where I might otherwise be. There was no housing available for my family, and so I was living in a dormitory in “West Village”, and which was a modified version of a standard army BOQ (Bachelor Officers Quarters). I was assigned to the “graveyard shift”, from midnight until eight A.M., and I got little sleep because as soon as I “hit the sack” a Caterpillar tractor would start up just outside my window with an almost deafening racket and proceed to contour the ground around the building, which had just been completed. There was a good cafeteria about a block away, which was open 24 hours a day and which served excellent meals, and there was free transportation to the plant site, about ten miles away. The transportation consisted of a tractor and semi-trailer with no windows except one in the entrance door at the back, and it had only two seats, a long one on each side. If one was among the first to board, he could get a seat, otherwise he had to stand for the thirty minute trip over bumpy graveled roads. My first job was with Ford, Bacon, and Davis, a construction contracting firm, and it was in the Inspection Department of their Operations Division. One of the permanent buildings had been completed, the “Conditioning Building”. What was being done in there I did not know at the time, but later found out that it contained a factory for cleaning nickel plated process pipe, for leak testing pipe and process equipment, and for conditioning the surfaces of a device called a “converter” with a secret gas.. Although dwarfed by the partially completed process building not far away, the
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