Leslie Richard Groves, Jr

In Girl in the Glass, we finally meet Leslie Groves.

Leslie Groves, Jr served as a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer. In 1941, he was in charge of building the War Department’s new headquarters, better known as the Pentagon. In 1942, Groves directed the Manhattan Project, the top-secret research project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II.

Before getting tasked to lead these massive projects, Groves was an engineer inspecting construction sites. Seems trivial for an engineer with such impressive credentials, but perhaps he knew the importance of building a vault door with a secret unlocking mechanism in the sub-basement of the State, War, and Navy Building.