Silverplate was the code reference for the United States Army Air Forces’ participation in the Manhattan Project during World War II. Originally the name for the aircraft modification project which enabled a B-29 Superfortress bomber to drop an atomic weapon, it later came to identify the training and operational aspects of the program as well. Testing began with scale models at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia, in August 1943. Seventeen production Silverplate aircraft were ordered in August 1944 to allow the 509th Composite Group to train with the type of aircraft they would have to fly in combat.
About Silverplate in brief
Silverplate was the code reference for the United States Army Air Forces’ participation in the Manhattan Project during World War II. Originally the name for the aircraft modification project which enabled a B-29 Superfortress bomber to drop an atomic weapon, \”Silverplate\” eventually came to identify the training and operational aspects of the program as well. Testing began with scale models at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia, in August 1943. Modifications began on a prototype Silverplate B- 29 known as the \”Pullman\” in November 1943, and it was used for bomb flight testing at Muroc Army Air Field in California commencing in March 1944. Seventeen production Silverplate aircraft were ordered in August 1944 to allow the 509th Composite Group to train with the type of aircraft they would have to fly in combat. This batch included the aircraft which were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The use of the Silverplate codename was discontinued after the war, but modifications continued under a new codename, Saddletree. Another 80 aircraft were modified under this program, but never saw further service. The airplane modification project fell under the purview of the Manhattan project’s Alberta Project. The Thin Man and Fat Man were adopted by the USAAF as the names for the weapons by the end of the war. Confusion then resulted when the War Department allocated another codename for another project’s weapons. A cover code was then used for the project, but it was not officially registered by the U.S.
War Department when the war ended in 1945. For security reasons, the codename ‘Silverplate’ was used instead of the original ‘Silver Plated’ The original codename of the project was the one word ‘Silver Plate’, but continued usage of the term shortened it to ‘Silver plates’ The first B-28 was delivered on 1 July 1943. The first Thin Man bomb was dropped on 1 September 1943. No aircraft was available that could carry the 17-foot long Thin Man, so a 9-foot scale model was used. The results were disappointing – the bomb fell in a flat spin – but the need for a thorough test program was demonstrated. A second bomb shape was under consideration, the Fat Man, and formally requested that further tests be carried out, and that not more than threeB-29s be modified to carry the weapons. Major General Leslie R. Groves Jr., the director of the. Manhattan Project, and General Henry H. Arnold, the Chief of United States Air Forces, wished to use an American plane, if this was at all possible. Arnold and the head of the Ordnance Division at Los Alamos, Captain William S. Parsons, arranged for tests to be carried. Parsons. The first Fat Man bomb to be dropped on 7 September 1943, but the result was disappointing. The last group of B-27s was modified in 1953. It would have required much less modification to deliver the weapon. The British Avro Lancaster with its cavernous 33-foot bomb bay was considered as a better choice.
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This page is based on the article Silverplate published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
