It was not German scientists or laboratory equipment, however, but German uranium that was the most important find for the Soviet mission. Khariton and Kikoin managed, after much detective work, to track down over 100 metric tons of uranium oxide that had been hidden away. Kurchatov later told Khariton that this had saved a year in building the first experimental pile.108 United States intelligence later estimated that the Soviet Union had obtained between 240 and 340 tons of uranium oxide in Germany and Czechoslovakia at the end of the war.
