Calutron Girls

The Calutron Girls were a group of young women, mostly high school graduates, who joined the Manhattan Project, the World War II efforts to develop nuclear weapons at the Y-12 National Security Complex located at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, from 1943 to 1945. Although they were not allowed to know at the time, they were monitoring dials and watching meters for calutrons, mass spectrometers adapted for separation of uranium isotopes. The enriched uranium was used to make the "Little Boy" atomic bomb for the Hiroshima nuclear bombing on August 6, 1945.