It was a self-contained unit, with personnel strength of about 1,770 soldiers, mechanics, specialists and aviators. The 509th deployed to Tinian in the Marianas in May 1945. The pumpkins were useful for training, having been designed to have the same aerodynamic qualities of the Fat Man atomic bomb. The crews trained with practice bombs called 'pumpkins' because of their size and shape. The unit that dropped the atomic bombs, 509th Composite Group, was activated at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, December 17, 1944. Brode, Norman Ramsey, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Edward Doll, and General Leslie Groves. There, he met or worked with various luminaries in the Manhattan Project, such as Robert B. Because of his training and educational background Beser was sent to Los Alamos and worked on the Manhattan Project in the area of weapons firing and fusing. He was Jewish and extremely restless to get into the fight against Hitler. Beser then studied mechanical engineering at The Johns Hopkins University, also in Baltimore, but dropped out the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor to enlist in the Army Air Forces. Jacob Beser grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where he attended the Baltimore City College (high school) graduating in June 1938.
