The Atomic Bomb
More Odd Facts


Take it from One,
Who Knows the Score,
The 509th,
Is Winning the War.

On August 6th, 1945, Hiroshima Japan became the first Atomic Target. The Atomic Bomb was developed by the United States by the super secret "Manhatten Project".

The work was dangerous as well as time-consuming. One of the worst accidents involved Louis Slotin, a Canadian scientist in charge of monitoring plutonium chain reactions in a device known as the "guillotine." One day the Slotin's screwdriver got jammed in the guillotine, causing the plutonium to form a hypercritical mass capable of explosion. Immediately Slotin tore apart the two pieces of plutonium with his bare hands and in the process absorbed an enormous amount of radiation.

The event is accurately portrayed in the movie "Fat Man and Little Boy ".


Louis Slotin
The explosion was averted, but at the price of his life.

The code words for the bombs were:

Little Boy- Hiroshima

Fat Man- - Nagasaki

But the first bomb detonated as a test in New Mexico was named "Gadget".

"Born Inside Box 1663" - Box 1663, Santa Fe, NM was the "blind" address used for all correspondence to and from Los Alamos. The actual name Los Alamos was prohibited from showing up on any letters or parcels - coming or going! The address shown on the birth certificates of the children born at the Los Alamos Engineers Hospital during the war years indicated a simple "Box 1663".

Some weeks after Germany had surrendered, a German U-boat (#U-234) pulled into the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Virginia. The crew promptly surrendered themselves and their cargo - 10 cases of uranium ore being transported to Japan.

Edward Teller, whom history would later dub the Father of the Hydrogen Bomb made a bet that the Trinity Test (Gadget) might cause a chain reaction that would ignite the whole of the Earth's atmosphere, killing every living thing on the planet. While most viewed that outcome as all but impossible, there was sufficient "wiggle room" in the calculations used to predict the bomb's output that the Manhattan Project scientists actually started a small betting pool on the suspected force of the atomic blast. Physicist I. I. Rabi won the pool, having predicted an 18-kiloton blast, which most closely met the observed Trinity output of 18.6 kilotons.

The B-29's that participated in the first Atomic Mission (Hiroshima)were:
Enola Gay- Carrying the Bomb (Little Boy).

The Great Artiste- Carrying Instruments and Cameras.

Aircraft No. 91 (later named Necessary Evil)-Carrying Instruments and Cameras.

Straight Flush- Weather Plane (Hiroshima).

Full House- Weather Plane (Nagasaki, secondary target).

Jabbitt III- Weather Plane (Kokura, tertiary target).

Top Secret- Flying Spare Aircraft.

Original Crew Interview-1945

The Crew of the Enola Gay were:

Flight Crew:

Navy Capt. William "Deak" Parsons, Manhattan Project Scientist

Sgt. Joseph S. Stiborik, radar operator

S/Sgt. George R. Caron, tail gunner

Pfc. Richard H. Nelson, radio operator

Sgt. Robert H. Shumard, assistant engineer

S/Sgt. Wyatt E. Duzenbury, flight engineer

Capt. Theodore J. Van Kirk, navigator

Maj. Thomas W. Ferebee, bombardier

Col. Paul W. Tibbets, 509th Group CO and pilot

Capt. Robert A. Lewis, co-pilot

Lt. Jacob Beser, radar countermeasure officer

Lt. Morris R. Jeppson, bomb electronics test officer

Ground Crew:


Technical Sgt. Walter F. McCaleb, crew chief

Sgt. Leonard W. Markley

Sgt. Jean S. Cooper

Cpl. Frank D. Duffy

Cpl. John E. Jackson

Cpl. Harold R. Olson

Pfc. John J. Lesniewski

Lt. Col. John Porter, ground maintenance officer

Capt. Robert A. Lewis, co-pilot of The Enola Gay was keeping a diary of the mission. as they started the bomb run he wrote:

"There'll be a short intermission while we bomb the target."

After the explosion he wrote:

"MY GOD!"

Political correctness has revised his quote to read:

"OH MY GOD! What have we done? If I live 100 years I will never forget this moment."

In interviews, Lewis has said all he wrote was "OH MY GOD!". He says that was the only thing he could think of.