At Ground Zero
As the White Sands Missile Range coordinator for the semiannual open houses at Trinity Site, I was pleased to see the article on Jumbo in your Fall 1991 issue (“A Few Words About This Picture,” by Stanley Goldberg). We had our fall open house on October 5, and Jumbo again attracted crowds of curious visitors. It sits in the Trinity Site parking lot, about three hundred yards from Ground Zero.
Visitors were not always able to see what is left of Jumbo. It used to sit in a ditch outside the fenced area where visitors are allowed. In 1979 the missile range moved the cylinder up to the parking lot. Since it probably weighs more than a hundred tons, we had no way to lift it onto a trailer. Instead our engineers dug a ramp below it and backed a large flatbed under it. A bulldozer then pushed Jumbo onto the trailer. The process was reversed in the parking lot using a ramp bladed into the sandy soil.
At the time, one of our safety people visited the site and worried some small child might roll Jumbo over onto himself. He had timbers placed on either side of the cylinder to prevent it from moving. I thought some of the crew might hurt themselves laughing after the official left.
In the article Goldberg states, “Today Jumbo rests at Alamogordo a few yards from the Ground Zero monument.” Actually Trinity and Jumbo are about an eighty-five-mile drive from Alamogordo. This is a common error that has its beginnings in 1942, when the Army needed a cover story for the bright flash of light and shock wave from the test. Groves put out a news release saying there had been an accident at the Alamogordo Bombing Range involving high explosives. Socorro is actually the closest city to the site.
Trinity Site is a National Historic Landmark in the middle of the White Sands Missile Range’s active firing areas. We open it to the public on the first Saturdays in April and October.
Jim Eckles
Public Affairs Specialist
U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range
White Sands Missile Range, N.Mex.
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