Description:

Groves Leslie

Leslie Groves FF, PSA/DNA Certified & Encapsulated, 6 Months to the Day before Trinity Test!

 

A "War Department / Office of the Chief of Engineers / Washington, D.C." envelope free franked by then Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr. (1896-1970) as "LRGroves Maj Gen USA" above the pre-printed return address. Groves has also inscribed the word "Free" in the postage section of the envelope postmarked from Washington, D.C. on January 16, 1945. Overall toning and letter-opened verso. Graded as NM-MT 8. The envelope measures 5.375" x 4.5" while the slab measures 10" x 6.625".

 

Groves wrote to an unknown recipient, possibly a member of his mother's family (nee Griffith), during the most important period of his military career. Just a short half year later, to the very day, Groves would be in southern New Mexico, witnessing the detonation of the Trinity Test bomb.

 

Groves was a career U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officer. After graduating from West Point in 1918, he worked on both foreign and domestic projects requiring his skill set, among them, directing the construction of the Pentagon Building after 1941, and a year later, undertaking the directorship of the Manhattan Project. These two monumental achievements earned Groves his retroactive promotion to Lieutenant General upon his retirement in 1948.

 

As the project manager of Manhattan Project, Groves facilitated the groundbreaking atomic research of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and others. The Trinity Test conducted on the morning of July 16, 1945 near Almagado, New Mexico, witnessed by Oppenheimer, Groves, and about 450 other people, marked the first detonation of a human-made nuclear bomb.

 

In his capacity as Director of the Manhattan Project between 1942-1947, Groves was responsible for overseeing construction and maintenance of dozens of research and production sites; obtaining raw metallurgical materials; selecting personnel; and incorporating military intelligence into project initiatives. Groves had initially been disappointed by the presidential directive to head the crash atomic program. Yet his efficiency, single-mindedness, and brusqueness made him uniquely qualified to lead it. Groves's memoir Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harper, 1962) has been issued in several reprints.

 

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