Lot 500

WWII A BOMB MANHATTAN PROJECT WORKERS LAPEL PIN

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WWII A BOMB MANHATTAN PROJECT WORKERS LAPEL PIN

Estimate: $300 - $400

Current Bid: $150

(1 Bid)

by Milestone Auctions
August 1, 2026 10:00 AM EDT
Live Auction
38198 Willoughby Parkway
Willoughby, OH, US 44094

Obverse bearing the inscription MANHATTAN PROJECT A BOMB, with a castle on the bottom, reverse pin and drop catch, 17.06 mm, evidence of slight wear on obverse, extremely fine condition. These pins were given to the workers who spent more than one year on the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was the common name for what was officially known as the Manhattan Engineer District, the WWII activities related to the development of the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. The Manhattan Project employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $28 billion in 2024). From 1942 to 1946, the project was directed by Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs. The Army program was designated the Manhattan District, as its first headquarters were in Manhattan; the name gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. The project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys. Over 80 percent of project cost was for building and operating the fissile material production plants. The project proposed both highly enriched uranium and plutonium as fuel for nuclear weapons. Enriched uranium was produced at the Clinton Engineer Works in Tennessee. Plutonium was produced in the world's first industrial-scale nuclear reactors at the Hanford Engineer Works in Washington. These sites were supported by dozens of other facilities across Canada, the US and the UK. The weapons designs were produced at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, and resulted in two weapon designs used during the war: Little Boy (enriched uranium gun-type) and Fat Man (plutonium implosion). The Fat Man design was initially a low priority fallback option, as it was complex and required explosive lenses, but in 1944 it was confirmed that plutonium from Hanford was not suitable for a gun-type bomb because of the high proportion of plutonium-240. The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb during the Trinity test, conducted at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. The project was responsible for developing the specific means of delivering the weapons onto military targets, and for the use of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The project was also charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear weapon project. Through Operation Alsos, Manhattan Project personnel served in Europe, sometimes behind enemy lines, where they gathered nuclear materials and documents and rounded up German scientists. Despite the Manhattan Project's own emphasis on security, Soviet atomic spies penetrated the program. In the immediate postwar years, the Manhattan Project conducted weapons testing at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads, developed new weapons, promoted the development of the network of national laboratories, supported medical research into radiology, and laid the foundations for the nuclear navy. It maintained control over American atomic weapons research and production until the formation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in January 1947.

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $99 $10
$100 $999 $25
$1,000 $1,999 $50
$2,000 $4,999 $100
$5,000 $9,999 $250
$10,000 $24,999 $500
$25,000 $49,999 $1,000
$50,000 $99,999 $2,500
$100,000 + $5,000