Heritage Lecture at Los Alamos
History buffs, this lecture is for you. Leon Smith, one of a group of seven graduates from the Harvard and MIT Electronics and Radar schools selected to participate in the development, testing and combat delivery of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs, will discuss his experience in an unclassified Heritage Series lecture at 1:10 p.m., Dec. 7, in the Physics Building Auditorium at Technical Area 3.
His talk, “A Historical Perspective,” will emphasize Smith’s ties to the nuclear weapons program from 1944-1946 and showcase about 70 photographs from Wendover Field, Utah, Tinian Island and Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
“Leon Smith played an important role in preparing the nuclear weapons that would help end World War II. A year later, he participated in the nation’s first test series,” said Lab historian/archivist Alan Carr of Information, Records and Media Services (IM-9). “ ‘A Historical Perspective’ looks back at these important events through the eyes of a young insider.”
The journey for Smith began when Robert Brode, head of the former Fuse Development Group at Los Alamos, chose him, along with six others, to form the “fuzing group.” Brode’s group played an important part in preparing Little Boy and Fat Man for combat delivery. The members were assigned to the Army's 509th Composite Bombing Group at Wendover Field, but received technical direction from Los Alamos.
The fuzing group moved to Tinian in late June 1945, set up laboratories, continued a flight test program and readied the bombs to be dropped during the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions on Aug. 6 and 9.
Smith is director emeritus of Sandia National Laboratories.
During the lecture, Smith also will discuss his role as the weaponeer for the Navy's Operation CROSSROADS-Able test, the country's second nuclear weapons test, held at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the summer of 1946.
Smith’s lecture will conclude with his answer to the question: How did you feel when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima?
The talk will be available for later broadcast through the Lab’s Media Theater.
