![]() Found among the Sarah Clark Collection (“Central Decimal Correspondence Files, 1919 – 1950.” Record Group 342: Records of U.S. The safety plugs that our researcher found also don’t have as colorful a history as the ones Jeppson had. Pictured below, the Mark VI was 127 inches long and 60 inches in diameter, weighing 8,500 pounds. The Mark VI bomb was developed in 1949 and was derived from the “Fat Man” bomb design that was dropped on Nagasaki. These plugs were part of a different type of bomb than Jeppson’s. Justice Department filed suit to block the sale, claiming the plugs’ design was classified, but courts sided with Jeppson and allowed the sale to go through. That year, Morris Jeppson, the man who removed the plugs from the “Little Boy” bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, offered the plugs he kept from the bomb for sale at auction. Safety plugs like these caught the public’s attention back in 2002 when a set of them became the source of controversy and a legal battle. When the time came to use the bomb, a member of the flight crew would remove these green plugs and insert red plugs that reestablished the connection between the battery and firing mechanism. By doing so, the plugs prevented the detonation of a nuclear weapon before it was ready to be dropped. Plugs like these were inserted into nuclear bombs to interrupt the connections between the bombs’ batteries and firing mechanisms. Obviously, this only increased the fascination with these items. As is often the case, the researcher was very knowledgeable about the records he was looking at and identified these objects as the safety plugs for a Mark VI nuclear weapon. Yet, these objects did turn up among a researcher’s requested records. You certainly don’t expect to find an envelope containing wires and objects with a shape and size similar to a car’s cigarette lighter like the ones pictured below. Sure, you’ll sometimes encounter log books, photos, and maps, but these are still paper-based records. Opening a box of records in the Textual Research Room at the National Archives at College Park, you expect to find folders stuffed with typed or handwritten documents. Today’s post is written by Adam Minakowski, an archives technician who works with researchers in College Park.
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