Langer's account of sleeping with the atomic bomb

“Chow time came. I decided I better not leave the plane to the care of the MPs who were guarding it outside because I never did trust the MPs. They were too damn curious. And so I decided to stay with the plane.

And by that time I was pretty tired. It was very hot in the South Pacific … The bomb was loaded. It was now just a matter of waiting for the proper time, which would be several hours later.

Up to that time, Captain Parsons had shown evidence of being quite worried about his responsibility for activating the bomb … He was worried, apparently, that he might be up in the aircraft and find that he didn’t have that special wrench that he needed in order to put that detonator into the gun. And he had been into the plane about, oh, I don’t know, a half a dozen times to check that the wrench was still there.

His behavior sort of wiped off on me, I guess. I began to worry that it was my responsibility to be sure that he didn’t encounter that situation. And so, when it came time to go and get some dinner, I sent my boys in to get their mess. I had decided I’d stay with the bomb and see that nothing happened to it and that Parsons wouldn’t have any problems.

So, I decided to stay with the bomb and everyone disappeared. It became very lonely. Here I was inside the bomb bay, in the dark, and there was an MP outside, but that’s all. There was no noise or no sound. It was dark, there was no light, and I had nothing to do.

So, I stretched out on top of the bomb. The bomb is big enough and it’s wide enough so that I didn’t roll off very easily. I just stretched out and, by gosh, I fell asleep. I mean, this isn’t proper conduct for a MP to fall asleep on the job … I would’ve been awake very rapidly, very quickly if anyone tried to get inside the bomb bay. But, the story is, the fact is, that I did fall asleep on the bomb.

I guess I’m the only person in whole world who ever fell asleep on top of an atomic bomb. And, I think it was perfectly safe. Well, only a slight amount of radiation from the uranium coming through all of that material around it. I never gave it a thought. I just fell asleep.”