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White Sands Missile Range Museum
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Birthplace of American Ages.
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- Special Mission 16: Fat Man and the Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki
After the first plutonium bomb was tested at Trinity Site on 16 July 1945, the next available weapon was the Little Boy, a uranium gun-type atomic bomb. Little Boy was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 by the Enola Gay, piloted by Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Tibbets. Fat Man was the only other atomic weapon used in history. It was dropped from Bockscar (also spelled Bock’s Car), a modified B-29 Superfortress bomber commanded by Major Charles W. Sweeney, on Nagasaki, Japan, 9 August 1945. - Misty Castle: High-Explosive Nuclear Effects Simulations at White Sands Missile Range
Once military officials began to understand the many hazards and variables that accompany a nuclear blast, such as intense heat, radiation and fallout, and the explosion itself, they initiated programs designed to protect their own forces and citizens. Protective personal equipment, hardened shelters, and radiation-resistant armored vehicles became a standard part of a military unit’s table of equipment. However, in order to ensure that this equipment is actually able to do what it is designed for, rigorous testing is required. - The Corporal Family of Rockets and Missiles
On the surface, the Corporal family was a collection of early American-developed ballistic missiles that initially weren’t very militarily significant. However, it was the vehicle on which various management and subcontracting philosophies could be tried and training of personnel from procurement through field operations could be conducted. - The Path to Hembrillo
“The Apache did not recognize the new borders which came into being when the US acquired the southwest after the war with Mexico… These new borders between the US and Mexico, as well as New Mexico and Arizona, caused some difficulty for the US Army.” - Sleeping Beauty Awakens
LASL’s Sleeping Beauty was an experiment on the design of an alpha-n initiator – the first in a series of such tests. Equipment was located in an underground bunker at Trinity Site in the New Mexico desert, some 250 miles south of Los Alamos – and only 1,600 feet from ground zero of a spectacular success, the world’s first nuclear explosion. But Sleeping Beauty did not involve the use of fissionable material – and she was an embarrassing failure.
