Loading the atomic bombs on Tinian

An illustrated guide to the Atomic Bombs
By Ryan Crierie

NOTES: A large number of these photos were assembled from the RG-77-BT collection in the Still Photo collection of the National Archives II building in College Park, MD.

Early Bombs

“Thin Man” Plutonium Gun Type Bomb Casings in 1944. In the background you can see “Fat Man” casings. It is unknown whether they are the early Model 1222 “Fat Man” casings, which required 1,200 bolts to assemble, or the later Model 1561 casings which were substantially easier to assemble and which were used for the production versions.

Initial Bomb Assembly and Test

Photograph of personnel checking a casing. A significant number of extra casings were shipped to Tinian and used in various tests with “dummy” bombs which contained all the active components of a working atomic bomb, but no fissile material to test out and prove the assembly procedures for the actual devices themselves.

Implosion Sphere for Fat Man nearly assembled and about to be placed inside it's casing.

Photograph from LANL History website showing partially shrouded Little Boy unit designated L-1. This unit was assembled with non-nuclear components and dropped on 23 July 1945. Test was a complete success.

Little Boy unit checked up to a bank of equipment; possibly to test/charge components within the device. Unknown whether this is a test unit or L-11; the unit dropped on Hiroshima.

Project A (Alberta) member CDR A. Francis Birch (left) numbers Little Boy Unit L-11 while Norman Ramsey (right) watches. This is the actual unit which was dropped on Nagasaki.

Final Bomb Assembly

Fat Man devices after they were assembled, underwent a final procedure outside the Assembly Building, where their crevices were filled with putty, and then oversprayed with sealant to maintain the proper environment within the device during the time it would take to deliver it to the target.

In this photograph, you can see the putty being applied to the forward polar plate.

The sealant is now being applied via spray gun.

Workers have substantially completed application of the sealant. Note the writing on the tail fin assembly and the logo on the bomb's polar plate and on the worker's coveralls.

This is a frame taken from a color movie taken of the sealant application, showing the color of the device and sealant/putty.

Once the device was virtually complete, workers began to sign their names and various exhortations onto the device.

Close up of names on tail assembly of Fat Man.

“A Second Kiss for Hirohito!” signed by Rear Admiral W.R. Purnell, USN on the side of Fat Man.

The completed Fat Man device is being lowered/checked over on it's transport dolly for the trip to the airfield.

Bomb Loading

The completed bomb was then towed towards the airfield under cover with an escort.

It's destination? One of two bomb pits constructed on Tinian.

Pit Number One Today. This pit was used to load Little Boy onto the Enola Gay. Identification was accomplished by historians from studying photographs of the bomb loading sequences and comparing the bolt holes in the photographs to the pits today.

Pit Number Two today. It was used to load Fat Man onto Bocks' Car.

Preliminary pit alignment was proceeded with.

The Bomb and it's dolley were then manually pushed towards the pit.

The device's alignment was checked over by eye and hand.

The towing cable was then disconnected from the dolley as MPs kept watch.

The device was then raised up on a hydraulic lift and the metal gutters which guided it over the pit were removed.

Once it was aligned with the pit, the device was then lowered down.

Device almost lowered to the bottom of the pit.

Device now fully seated in the pit. Still covered with tarp for security reasons.

The aircraft that will carry the device is then backed up slowly over the pit.


Alignment of the device with the aircraft's bomb bay proceeded with a lot of 'hands on' from fairly high ranking personnel.

Once the device was aligned up, the security/protective shroud was removed in anticipation of loading.

This is Unit L-11; the actual “Little Boy” bomb being (or about to be) loaded into the Enola Gay.

Hydraulic lift has raised the device about halfway into the bomb bay.

The device is nearly there...

View from within the pit showing the dolley frame and the fully extended hydraulic lift.

The device is now in the bomb bay and is in the process of being attached to the sway brackets that will secure it to the aircraft.

A different view of the device in the bay.

Information to VA about June, 2007

File No. 10858386 VA Form 21-4138

When the war was over in August 1945 I had been working at S-Site at Los Alamos where we cast the high explosive lenses that caused the implosion and super criticality of Plutonium in the Nagasaki type of bomb -- referred to as "Fat Man" or "Implosion Device".   

We stopped making that type of bomb immediately after Japan  surrendered and I was in effect temporarily out of a job and waiting for a new Army assignment.

Work was continued, however, at DP-Site in the processing of Plutonium.

A civilian by the name of Hightower was in charge of personnel for at least S-Site and perhaps other areas.  He arranged for me to interview personnel management at DP-Site -- civilians named Frank Pittman and a Mr. Hassen.

My transfer (still in the Army Special Engineering Detachment)  was affirmed and I went to work at DP-Site in the final stage of operation (designed by Myron Kratzer) in which I separated some of the Plutonium residue  from a liquid mix via filtering in a dry box operation.  The final radioactive effluent was then piped outside into 55 gallon drums -- where it resided at least until I left for discharge from the Army in July 1946.  These drums were quite radioactively hot.

On the occasion of a visit to Los Alamos with my wife in 1995, I wanted to show her where I had worked at DP-Site but discovered it was completely off limits and fenced off from anyone because of radiation.

It was at DP-Site where I experience involvement with radioactivity that  might have been significant in the identification of cancer quite a few years later.  The "lipo-sarcoma" is apparently very slow growing and perhaps it is not too much of a stretch to connect it to my Los Alamos involvement.  The prostate cancer which was discovered in the Spring of 2006 and apparently successfully treated in July of 2006 with radiation seed implants could surely have been unrelated as it is commonly an old man's disease.  However no one in my immediate family (three brothers and my Mother) have had any cancer, nor do I recall it in any ancestors.  My Father had been in the trenches in France in 1918 and was gassed twice.  He died in 1942 or a heart attack.  My Mother lived until she was 94.  My three brothers  (ages 75 to 86) are still alive -- no cancer.

While working at DP-Site we wore dosimeters and daily had urine checks as I  recall, and perhaps throat swabs.  Every six weeks I was sent off the Hill for a three day pass, reporting immediately back in to the hospital for a 24 hour check of everything going in and out of me -- to check for residual radiation, I assume.  I was never informed of anything amiss at the time so assumed all was within any approved limits.  I have no idea as to how you might recover any such records, if still available.

Please re-read the attached statement submitted on 9/22/06 -- particularly the last paragraph in which I indicated I am not looking for any disability payments.  I am 82 now with a fairly active life style but I want my record in the VA loop in case something more catastrophic should occur that could be related to my honorable and proud service in the Army of the United States from September 1944 to July 1946 -- including time at Los Alamos working on the Atom Bomb.

Please also note the attached copy of a letter dated 10/11/06 indicating the 4 different forms from the doctors who attended me, that you have previously 

received.

Sincerely,  Ralph P. Gates, Jr.

(dog tag: 44 020 574)

Fantastic young ladies(and Marie Curie and Lise Meitner)

From: Ralph Gates <frkenn@comcast.net>

Subject: Fantastic Young Ladies

Date: May 15, 2014 11:11:21 PM MDT

To: lpeek@kpcw.org, Ethel Preston <epreston@kpcw.org>

Cc: Dan Schweikert <danschweik@email.com>, Emily Norton <emsy246poo@earthlink.net>, ed kneller <knellerew@gmail.com>

HI Lynn!

Ethel suggested I tell you about this.  It refers to your interview this morning involving the two remarkable young ladies who are in the running for honors at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.  I wanted to call the station during the interview but was driving up to Elk Meadows to pick up a couple of other fantastic elder ladies to take them to the Senior Center for lunch and socializing.

If I had had the chance to comment on the air I would have done my best to let other young girls know more about the great contributions that women have made in science and engineering.   In particular I would have talked about two ladies who made two of perhaps  the three most important discoveries  leading to the development of the atom bomb first, and then nuclear power.  

Marie (Sklodowska) Curie  -- 

Born  1867 in Warsaw Poland, she was an outstanding student in college there but was a bit of a young revolutionary against Tsarist Russia who controlled Poland at the time.  She wanted to pursue her technical studies but could not get financial help there.   So she applied for a job and studies at the famous Sorbonne University in Paris.  She was accepted in about 1890 and was mentored (?) by Henri Becquerel who was recognized for his work with X-Rays (originally called "Becquerel Rays", I think).  You have probably enjoyed having your teeth x-rayed on occasion.   You may have noticed that after the assistant has placed the machine agains your jaw, she goes into  another room and flips a switch which momentarily causes development of the x-rays.  it's important at this moment to remember that she had to "flip the switch" to develop the x-rays  that made it work.

I am now going to bore you (I hope not!) with somewhat of an anecdotal story about Marie Sklodowski as part of my talk about my personal experience with the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos during WWll.

Marie S. was working in1891 with Uranium (which as an element had been discovered some years earlier) learning how it reacted with other chemicals.  She had made uranyl sulphate, a solid material, that was totally inert as far as she knew at the time, when late in the afternoon, she closed up the lab for the day.  She put the little sample in a cabinet for the night, turned out the lights and went home.  This is probably apocryphal but I like to speculate she went home to fix dinner for her new boy friend, Pierre Curie, who also worked in that lab.  Perhaps she was also an excellent cook!  At any rate she became Marie Curie a couple of years later. 

      Now the plot thickens!   In that cabinet there was nothing other than the supposedly inert uranium compound and several unexposed photographic plates,  carefully wrapped up in a protective covering to prevent any exposure to light.  The next morning Marie wanted to do something with the unexposed photograph plates and found them all glossed over and exposed!  She expected the culprit must have been the uranium compound and, without any switch to turn on, she quickly realized this inert stuff had given off,  on its own, enough energy in the form of rays to expose the plates through all their protective sheath. 

She gave this phenomenon the name "RADIOACTIVITY".  And for this, in 1902, she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics (and a few years later, with Pierre, she became the only women, so far, ever to receive two Nobel Prizes!) 

Now for Lise Meitner -- 

a Jewish lady physicist born in Vienna in 1878, called the Mother of the Atom Bomb in some circles, while Oppenheimer is called the Father of the AtomBomb.  She reportedly regretted that moniker  later on.  Like Marie she was stigmatized at the time as a woman who had no legitimate place in the world of science.  

 After graduating from the University of Vienna in 1906, Meitner went to Berlin to attend lectures by Max Planck, later winner of the Nobel Prize for his work in quantum mechanics. This existence of the the atom had only recently been discovered and the study of radiation was new and exciting --and Berlin was where these sciences were being advanced most vigorously. She decided to stay.

"A WOMAN'S PLACE

At the University of Berlin, Meitner had to ask permission to attend classes. Planck was reluctant to allow a woman in, but begrudgingly gave his permission, saying, "It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that Nature itself has designated for woman her vocation as mother and housewife, and that under no circumstances can natural laws be ignored without grave damage." Planck later recognized that Meitner had great talent, and she became his assistant."

Lise stayed in Germany for 31 years until near the end of 1938 when Hitler's purge of Jews became so intense that she had to escape to Denmark and finally to Sweden where she became a citizen and stayed the rest of her life.  About the time she left Germany she published a paper describing her work in bombarding uranium with neutrons, resulting in splitting the nucleus into new elements with a total of less mass and with release of energy, according to Einstein's famous postulate  (E=MCsquared) that matter and energy are the same thing, just in different form.  She called this "FISSION" and raised fear among physicists around the world that Hitler might be ahead of everyone in developing a powerful bomb.  This lead rather quickly to the start of the Manhattan Project by the US and eventually to the end of WWll with the atomic bombing of Japan.

With Einstein's postulate (announced around 1909) being the third of the three important most important discoveries, I would like to say in common vernacular that these two gals who spent there whole lives working with radiation were really "Hot".

I hope I may be excused for "political incorrectness" if it be judged that way but I come from the generation right after WWll that worked in a corporate world that typically required women employees to wear dresses and long stockings.  As I recall it was at least 1965 before pants suits were acceptable and the so-called "glass ceiling" began to crack.  Back in Curie's and Meitner's time it was more like a "glass enclosure"! 

So I hope many girls will be intrigued and enthused by the excitement that technology offers and will find just reward and personal satisfaction for their contributions.  

We are surely proud of our young scientists, Elizabeth Prucka and Maddie Reed, and whether-or-not they win first place this time, their future is bright and exciting!

  

 

Inequality for All

Hi Frances!

I saw this film at the Santy auditorium shortly before Christmas, as I remember.  It was a great film with a great message and Robert Reich is brilliant.  There is no doubt that growing inequality is dangerous as, historically, it has eventually led to the downfall of democracies.  Given below is a treatise on the subject that is frightening, if we follow historic precedence.   So far our unique capitalistic system (with all its imperfections) and our form as a Republic Representative Democracy has weathered storm after storm.  

I think it is well to remember that the explosive growth of the middle class after WWll was due to the fact that we were the only substantial engine of manufacturing of the goods that the world wanted.  We had no competition and anyone who was able to work and wanted to, shared in the productivity.  Through our largess such as the Marshall Plan, we helped the world get back on its feet.  While doing this we created the strong competition that we now face and with which we must live. 

As much as I respect Reich and Obama's good intentions, I believe redistribution of wealth by well-meaning fiat could result in the repeat of history.  I hope we can elect a new leader  (and representatives) who is charismatic enough to respond appropriately to the danger.

Fond Regards, Ralph

On Feb 17, 2014, at 3:02 PM, <remillar@allwest.net> <remillar@allwest.net> wrote:

Some say the growing inequality is the biggest threat to our democracy.

Frances

 

 

film: INEQUALITY FOR ALL

Event:

INEQUALITY FOR ALL

Date:

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Time:

7:00 PM

Cost:

Free

---------------------------------

In 1887  Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of  Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some  2,000 years prior:  "A democracy  is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of  government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters  discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public  treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates  who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that  every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is)  always followed by a dictatorship."   "The average  age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has  been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed  through the following sequence:   From bondage  to spiritual faith;  >From  spiritual faith to great courage;  From courage  to liberty;  From liberty  to abundance;  From  abundance to complacency;  From  complacency to apathy;  From apathy  to dependence;  From  dependence back into bondage."  The Obituary  follows:   Born 1776,  Died 2012  It doesn't  hurt to read this several times.   Professor  Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in  St. Paul , Minnesota  , points out some interesting facts concerning the last Presidential election:   Number of  States won by:          Obama:  19          McCain: 29   Square miles  of land won by:      Obama: 580,000  McCain: 2,427,000  Population  of counties won by:    Obama: 127 million  McCain: 143  million  Murder rate  per 100,000 residents in counties won by:  Obama: 13.2  McCain:  2.1   Professor  Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was   mostly the  land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.   Obama  territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income  tenements  and living off various forms of government welfare..."   Olson  believes the  United States  is now somewhere between the   "complacency  and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy,  with some  forty percent of the nation's population already having reached  the  "governmental dependency" phase.   If Congress  grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal  invaders  called illegal's - and they vote - then we can say goodbye to the   USA  in  fewer than five years.   If you are  in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message.   If you are  not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake,  knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.   This is  truly scary! Of course we are not a democracy, we are a Constitutional  Republic . Someone should point this out to Obama. Of course we know he and  too many others pay little attention to The Constitution. There couldn't be  more at stake than on Nov 2012.   If you are  as concerned as I  am please pass this along.