1 04 Dahlgren 



burn and not let the fire spread. He was told that nothing would blow up, but 

 that he was not to come inside the fence — -just let the building burn. 



The marines you mentioned were sent here from Guadalcanal. 



I think so, but that had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project or even the 

 Elsie Bomb aspect. Incidently, the MARK 8 and 91 were called Elsie Bombs. 

 This was a code name. The marines sent here during World War II, when we 

 had marines as our Security Patrol, were sent here for sort of a rest. As I recall 

 during our program, the marines had been out on Guadalcanal during the 

 fighting, and they'd been overexposed to gunfire and were battle-fatigued. In 

 those days, marines manned the sentry posts at various locations around the 

 Dahlgren Station 24 hours a day, and one of the sentry posts was across the 

 street from Building 111, which was then called the Proof Office. The Main 

 Battery was about 300 or 400 yards away, and we were doing lots of firing. 

 Every time they'd hear the gunfire, some of those poor guys would jump into 

 the ditch alongside the sentry box. They had been conditioned so that when 

 they heard a gun go off, they'd try to take shelter. This was just a natural 

 reaction. It was really cruel to put those poor people down here. I don't know 

 how they stood it. 



Were there any accidents involved? Did the marines ever snoot at anyone? 



They were armed, and as I mentioned before, some of them had battle 

 fatigue. When we went down there at night, as we did a lot in those days, we had 

 to first get a key from a marine to get into the Proof Office and then get a key out 

 of the safe that would let us into the Butler hut. The marines would hide in 

 various places in the dark, and the usual procedure for us was to go down and 

 honk the car horn and then get out and stand in the headlights. Pretty soon 

 some guy would come out of the darkness with a .45 in his hand. Of course, he 

 wasn't supposed to have his gun drawn, but that's what would happen. It would 

 make you nervous. 



There was one incident during a change of guards when one marine shot 

 another. They had to go through some sort of procedure where a marine being 

 relieved would hand over his gun — a .45 automatic — to the marine taking over. 

 The marine being relieved was supposed to pull back the ejector to show that 

 the gun wasn't loaded, but this guy had loaded the thing and inadvertently 

 pulled the trigger. It was pointed right at the fo-ehead of the marine relieving 

 him and killed the man. 



Were there any other significant incidents? 



There was one. After the MARK 91 design was firmed up, the Navy decided 

 that they had a lot of excess MARK 8 atomic bombs that they were going to get 



