But it was the Tubealloy—in liquid hexafluoride form—and high-pressure steam coursing through the concentric pipes that posed the real danger.The thermal diffusion process was still being perfected at the Philadelphia Navy Yard as the H. K. Ferguson Company neared completion of the S-50 plant at CEW. On September 2, 1944, physicist Arnold Kramish, then an SED soldier on loan from Oak Ridge, was working with Peter Bragg Jr. and Douglas Meigs. Bragg and Meigs were unclogging the tube when an explosion reduced it to nothing, spewing Tubealloy, steam, and hydrofluoric acid all over the men, their lungs filling with Tubealloy compounds.Bragg and Meigs died shortly thereafter. Kramish was badly burned and not expected to survive. A Navy chaplain, Father McDonough, arrived to administer last rites. As he approached Kramish, the Jewish soldier was strong enough to refuse the blessing before losing consciousness.He hung on, and several days later got an unexpected and unauthorized visitor. The stranger made short work of the guards posted at his hospital room door, got inside, quietly lifted up Kramish’s oxygen tent, and poured something down his throat.Warm liquid soothed Kramish’s gullet.Chicken soup.His mother, Sarah, had carried her soup in a jar for three days on her long trip from Denver.
