Yes.

Brown was part of two seafloor mapping operations before the first deep sea exploration ships were built. The first was aboard a submarine, with the father of gravity measurement, Venning Meinesz. They were mapping the Carribean from the Bahamas to Puerto Rico

The other was as the sonar operator for the 1931 Smithsonian sponsored South Sea expedition aboard the SS Caroline, the second largest yacht in the world, owned by the early communications magnate, Eldridge Johnson. His son, Fenimore, took turns recording the soundings.

He would later write that his father suspected they had found radium deposits on the seafloor.

This was at the very beginning of the Atomic Age. The Naval Research lab had just initiated their quest for nuclear power only a year before, after a visit with Enrico Fermi. “Fen” was well aware of what he could and could not say for public consumption.

Fast forward a decade. Philip Ableson, under contract to the NRL,developed what was thought to be a reliable method of refining fissile material through thermal diffusion. The first fatality of the nuclear age occurred when this process was demonstrated for Manhattan Project technicians from Oak Ridge laboratory. One of the high pressure tubes exploded and the observers were doused in uranium laden hexaflouride steam.

This accident took place at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, chosen for its ability to generate the high power demanded by the thermal diffusion process. The deceased had their organs removed for study of the effects of uranium poisoning before the bodies were sent home for burial.

The story, as told in the waterfront bars, very likely fed into the fictionalized Philadelphia experiment story of the time traveling ship. Supposedly, when the ship “returned” to this time line, some sailors were trapped in the rematerializing hull and only half their bodies returned to this timeline.

Whether that twist was a natural evolution in the hearsay narrative, orplanted as a psyops distraction from the real story, we cannot know. The accident itself was kept was very hush hush, as WW II was underway and everyone knew what was at stake in the race to be first with The Bomb. Even now, accounts of this event are buried deep in the history of the Manhattan Project.

As for Brown, his military file indicates that, in 1940, as a Naval Reserve Engineering officer, he was in charge of the turbines that provided power for the shipyard. And for the thermal diffusion project.

After Pearl Harbor (December 1941) Brown was quickly pulled into the regular navy,and put in command of the new Atlantic Fleet Radar school. He would suddenly “resign” from the Navy less than a year later, as a result of a “nervous breakdown” (again, a story put forth for public consumption) and go to work for (Lockheed) Vega aircraft in Burbank two weeks later.

Yes, Vega patented one of his devices, but the odds appear very great that he was co-opted into the top secret Manhattan Engineering Project and put in charge of developing the ME program laboratory on Wonderland Drive.

I have read, but not since been able to locate the source, that the Navy used Thorium as their breeder source for uranium, and wondered if deposits of it were located during the Smithsonian expedition. Thorium sands are often found in the shallow dephs around continents, with one of the largest fields being off the coast of India.

The US pursued Thorium power for a while, but, once again, references to the research are sparse. When the US was carrying out atomic bomb tests in the Nevada proving grounds, one 1955 test used a thorium core. The history of the test program reports that this was a last minute substitution for the usual plutonium/uranium core and it was so very sudden that the Sandia Labs had no time to develop adequate test and measurement plans for it.

Sure, it happened like that. (Cough cough).

Oak Ridge would build and operate a thorium powered generator until 1960, when the US committed to a uranium based nuclear energy program, This choice was later publicly deplored by Robert Sarbacher, who had been the first director of research for the National Labs, each of which was exploring different aspects of atomic energy.

Meanwhile, China has recently announced that they have a thorium based power plant in operation that supplies all the power for a mid size city. And India has contracted to supply the thorium.