Philadelphia Navy Yard - Article 2 - Minton

"A Routine Repair Job; An Explosion; Death Goes Without Official Honor"

Kneeling on the floor with a Bunsen burner, two young engineers were repairing a clogged tube on a top-secret military device, burning away the obstruction. Though the tube fed into a cylinder of lethal gas, the repair job was routine - until a second cylinder in the device suddenly exploded, ripping a hole in the wall and spewing poison.

"The thing just gave way in one hell of a blast", recalls John E. Tompkins, an Army private (SED) who survived the explosion. "I must have been looking in its direction because I saw a terrific flash." It was so brilliant it burnt off his corneas. "I couldn't see at all," says Tompkins, whose sight later returned. "I was stumbling over everything until somebody grabbed my hand and got me out of there."

The gas from the cylinder (uranium hexafluoride) mixed with steam from ruptured pipes to create hydrofluoric acid, a chemical so corrosive jewelers use it to etch glass. As the acid spread in a thick cloud, frosting Tompkin's spectacles to opaque, another soldier (John D. Hoffman - SED) rushed in to carry the civilian engineer to safety. But he was too late. Both were dying.

"An Unknown Arkansas Hero"

Peter Newport Bragg Jr. of Fayetteville was one of the two killed in the horrific explosion that rocked the Philadelphia Navy Yard at 1:20 PM on that day: September 2, 1944.

Bragg, who was 24, had only recently earned his master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Arkansas. He was teaching in the chemistry department in 1944 when he took a job in June with the Naval Research Laboratory at Anacostia Station. The Navy was hiring bright young chemical engineers because it was a frantic rush to produce weapons-grade uranium for the Manhattan Project. The United States was building the atomic bomb.

The Navy assigned Bragg to Philadelphia, where it had built a pilot plant to test a process (Liquid Thermal Diffusion) for producing enriched uranium.

The pilot project was held in deep secrecy. When the cylinder exploded, the white cloud drifted over much of the Navy Yard and south Philadelphia, but the Navy revealed few details to the press, according to contemporary news accounts. It also told little to the coroner, whose sketchy report wrongly attributes the cause of Bragg's death to third-degree burns "due to steam".

Bragg's parents, Peter Sr. and Gladys Bragg of Fayetteville, did not learn until a year later that their son had died helping to make the atomic bomb, says Braxton Bragg of Camden, a brother of Peter Jr. His parents discovered the truth, Bragg recalls, only after the war, when the under-informed Philadelphia coroner mailed them a newspaper story revealing the existence, and the purpose, of the pilot-plant. "However," Bragg says, "they did not know the actual cause of his death - EVER."

His parents died without hearing an official explanation. And even after it had revealed the details of the Manhattan Project to the press, the Navy never officially recognized Bragg's sacrifice.

Now, almost 50 years later, Braxton Bragg still pushes for that recognition after several years of trying. Bragg is getting help from Arnold Kramish (SED), who was the third man in the room when the cylinder burst. Bragg and Kramish, now a noted scientist who lives in Virginia, wrote to then-President Bush as well as to various congressmen, but to no end. Peter Newport Bragg Jr. remains an unknown Arkansas hero. (This article combined with the work of Braxton Bragg and Arnold Kramish, finally achieved recognition for Peter Bragg on June 12, 1993).

NEXT