"An Arkansas Hero's Time Finally Comes"

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by: David Mabury

"A half-century later, recognition for WWII chemist, who died in an atomic accident"

     When he and his late wife would load a van for one of their moves, Braxton Bragg of Camden (Ark.) never forgot to pack his grief box.  For nearly 50 years, the box was never quiet.  Its contents spoke about an untimely, unrecognized death.

     The box was a trunk Bragg inherited from his mother, the late Gladys Bragg of Fayetteville.  It held memories of her oldest son, Peter Bragg Jr.: personal effects, papers, newspaper clippings, all the residue of his 24-year life.

     Peter Bragg Jr. was a bright young chemical engineer fresh from the master's degree program at the University of Arkansas.  In June 1944 he went to work for the Naval Research Laboratory.  Just three months later, he was killed in a mysterious explosion at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.  His father, Peter Bragg Sr. and his mother never learned how their son died, or why.

     "What they knew about it was basically nothing," said Braxton Bragg.  "...All they ever heard from the Navy Department was a belated telegram.  I think it was a week later.  They were told of the death by a reporter from the Arkansas Democrat.  He had picked it up from the AP wire and called them so they wouldn't hear about it on the radio.

     They learned later from a Philadelphia Inquirer story that the explosion took place in a restricted area used by the Manhattan Project, the top-secret effort to build the first atomic bomb.

     Braxton Bragg, a Navy Seabee, was on the Pacific Island of Tinian when he got word of his brother's death weeks later.  He was there to help build the airstrip from which the B-29 "Enola Gay" took off in August 1945 to drop an atomic bomb on Japan.  The middle Bragg brother, John, was in combat in the Philippines under Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

     Since Peter Bragg was a civilian, the Navy refused to help the family bring his body back to Fayetteville.  They never received a pension, an apology or any other communication from the Navy.  "It was pretty dirty, but it was wartime and they did what they wanted," Bragg said.

     Bragg lived with the mystery of his brother's death until 1988, when he got a telephone call from Arnold Kramish, a retired nuclear physicist living in Virginia.  Kramish was in the transfer room when Peter Bragg died.

     At 1:20 PM on September 2, 1944, Peter Bragg and another Manhattan Project chemist, Douglas Paul Meigs of Owings Mills, Md., were trying to unclog a tube in the complicated works of a uranium enrichment device.  A cylinder of radioactive uranium hexafluoride gas exploded, rupturing nearby steam pipes.  The gas and steam combined to form hydrofluoric acid.  The two chemists and Kramish were bathed in a scalding, radioactive, acidic cloud of gas.

     Kramish's corneas were etched by the acid (his vision returned a week later).  Bragg and Meigs, closest to the explosion, received third-degree burns over their entire bodies.  Two soldiers just outside the room, Pvt. John E. Tompkins and Pvt. John Hoffman (both SED's) - who dragged the victims outside - were critically injured.

     For his heroism, Hoffman was awarded the Soldiers Medal, the Army's highest non-combat award.  Because the Manhattan Project was top-secret, he could not tell anyone about his citation until 1946.  The three men he dragged out of the deadly gas cloud received no awards.  Kramish did not even get a pension.

     It was high time the Navy recognized Peter Bragg and Douglas Meigs for their sacrifice, Kramish and Bragg agreed!