[Paleopsych] Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: With a Little Boy in the back

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With a Little Boy in the back
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=jf05auer

[How the Hiroshima bomb could get past security today!]

    By Catherine Auer
    January/February 2005  pp. 6-8 (vol. 61, no. 01) Bulletin of
    the Atomic Scientists

    I n today's security-obsessed, post-9/11 era, one might think that it
    would be difficult to haul a convincing replica of an atomic bomb
    across the country. Not so, as John Coster-Mullen inadvertently proved
    in October 2004.

    "We drove a full-scale WMD 800 miles across the United States and no
    one stopped or questioned us," Coster-Mullen told me. "In fact, it was
    quite easy!"

           The Little Boy look-alike in front of a partially restored B-29
         bomber at a Boeing hangar in Witchita. (Photo/John Coster-Mullen)
           The Little Boy look-alike in front of a partially restored B-29
         bomber at a Boeing hangar in Witchita. (Photo/John Coster-Mullen)


       October 8, 2004: Mike Kuryla, survivor of the Indianapolis sinking,
                                                                     signs
       October 8, 2004: Mike Kuryla, survivor of the Indianapolis sinking,
      signs "For the boys of the Indianapolis" on the replica. (Photo/John
                                                            Coster-Mullen)


        Jason Coster-Mullen grinds a steel section of the fake bomb in the
      family garage. The fiberglass nose rests on the 300-pound steel tail
                              section at right. (Photo/John Coster-Mullen)
        Jason Coster-Mullen grinds a steel section of the fake bomb in the
      family garage. The fiberglass nose rests on the 300-pound steel tail
                              section at right. (Photo/John Coster-Mullen)


    In this case, the "weapon of mass destruction" would more
    appropriately be called a "weapon of mass duplication"--a nearly
    600-pound, shiny steel replica of "Little Boy," the bomb dropped on
    Hiroshima, painstakingly recreated by Coster-Mullen with help from his
    son Jason.

    Last year, the president of the Historic Wendover Airfield Museum in
    Utah contacted Coster-Mullen and commissioned him to create a Little
    Boy look-alike for the airfield's modest museum. The 509th Composite
    Group, which was responsible for "delivering" the atomic bombs to
    Japan, trained during World War II with B-29 bombers at the isolated
    Wendover Field.

    Building the imitation Little Boy--naturally without the original's
    inner workings--was a tremendous amount of work, Coster-Mullen said,
    and it gave him a "whole new appreciation for what those scientists
    and technicians did almost 60 years ago." With the benefit of modern
    metal-working tools, it took Coster-Mullen and his son a full week at
    a metal fabrication shop in Milwaukee to cut all the sheet metal to
    cover a wooden skeleton. The final assembly took the father-son team
    another three weeks of 12-18 hour days at what they dubbed the "Los
    Alamos East-Waukesha Assembly Facility"--otherwise known as the
    Coster-Mullens' Wisconsin garage.

    Building a Little Boy replica is not Coster-Mullen's first "nuclear
    project"; the historian is also author of Atom Bombs: The Top Secret
    Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man (reviewed in the
    November/December 2004 Bulletin), a book that covers the design and
    construction of the weapons in exhaustive detail. It's not surprising,
    then, that he applied the same attention to detail to his museum-bound
    mock bomb.

    "We tried to duplicate everything we saw on the actual bomb,"
    Coster-Mullen said. He enlarged photos of the real Little Boy, taken
    at different angles, in order to reproduce the finer points--like the
    correct bolt position on the nose and the location of the pullout
    wires on top. "We wanted it to look as if it was just ready to be
    lifted into the Enola Gay," he said. Except for the bomb's antennas,
    which Coster-Mullen included on his replica; on the real bomb, the
    antennas weren't installed until after the bomb was lifted into the
    B-29. He wanted to match everything, right down to the shade of
    paint--which is harder than one might imagine, Coster-Mullen said,
    since there is no record of exactly what color the real Little Boy was
    painted. (He ended up choosing a very dark green.)

    When the replica was ready, Coster-Mullen loaded it into a bright
    yellow Penske moving truck with a forklift. As it rested on a
    specially made stand, he and Jason put on the finishing touches--lift
    lugs, safety wires, pullout wires, electrical plugs, and the antennas.

    The mock bomb's final destination was Wendover, but before giving his
    fake Little Boy to the museum, Coster-Mullen drove it to the Boeing
    plant in Wichita, Kansas, for a surprise appearance at a 509th
    Composite Group reunion.

    During World War II, Boeing's Wichita plant manufactured hundreds of
    B-29 Stratofortress bombers--the kind that dropped the atomic bombs.
    Since 2000, volunteers at Boeing, in conjunction with the U.S.
    Aviation Museum, have been restoring an original B-29 to flying
    condition. It was in front of this partly restored bomber, Doc, that
    many surviving members and widows of the 509th, including Enola Gay
    crew and one survivor of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis,
    signed the replica.

    But before that could happen, Coster-Mullen had to get his fake bomb
    past Boeing security. "They knew we were coming," Coster-Mullen said.
    "But here's this atomic bomb inside our truck, and we were like, gulp!
    Our contact drove up at the right moment and greased the skids for us
    to get in."

    When the reunion attendees saw the replica, "Jaws dropped,"
    Coster-Mullen said. "We were not quite prepared for the response we
    got."

    Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets signed the replica with a silver
    permanent marker--in the same place he signed the original.
    Coster-Mullen recounted that upon seeing the bomb, Tibbets said
    half-jokingly, "I've seen one of these before."

    After the signing and speeches in Wichita, Coster-Mullen handed the
    truck keys to James Petersen, president of the Wendover Airfield
    Museum. His son, Thomas Petersen, is the museum's historian, who told
    me that when he saw the replica he thought first about "how such a
    'small' thing so greatly changed the course of human history," and
    then chuckled at the possibility of his father being pulled over while
    driving the bomb replica to the museum.

    The Wendover Airfield Museum will exhibit the Little Boy replica in a
    limited-access room beginning in late 2004 as part of a special
    display on the 509th Composite Group. "The bomb represents an
    important piece of world, national, and Utah history, and we wanted to
    be able to help the visitors be able to make the connection from this
    quiet airfield to the rest of the world we live in," Petersen said.
    "[It's] kind of like being able to see the 'shot heard 'round the
    world.'"

    The Wendover replica is finished, but the "Waukesha Assembly Facility"
    may have more bomb-making days ahead--Coster-Mullen says two other
    sites have contacted him about building Little Boy or Fat Man
    replicas.

    Catherine Auer is the Bulletin's managing editor.