The official public report on the atomic bomb, “Atomic Energy for Military Purposes,” also known as the “Smyth Report,” was authored by Princeton Physicist Henry DeWolf Smyth. Smyth contributed to the Manhattan Project and was a member of the National Defense Research Committee’s Uranium Section during World War II. This report was released to the public on August 12, 1945, just days after the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan during WWII. This report is an unclassified summary and report of the Manhattan project which created the United States’ first atomic weapons. The report served the purpose of informing American citizens and taxpayers about the Manhattan Project and to provide the scientists and engineers who worked on the project a guide for what they were allowed to discuss concerning the project. This report outlines the physics underlying the bomb - nuclear fission - and the administrative history and structure that defined the Manhattan project.

A PDF of the Smyth Report can be accessed here: 

https://www.orau.org/ptp/pdf/smythreport.pdf 

https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/publications/smyth_report.pdf