Cold War Nuclear Weapons Tests: The ‘Atomic Age’ Matures

Join us and Scott Willey, former docent at the National Air and Space Museum, for a presentation on Cold War nuclear weapons testing. 

This presentation will explore the dawn of the Atomic Age during World War II and then explore the maturation of nuclear-weapons technology during the Cold War. Primary coverage will be given to the US weapons program, but the story of nuclear weapons cannot be told without interweaving the activities of other countries as well, most notably the USSR.

Scott Willey is a retired USAF colonel who spent part of his 27-year career in the Strategic Air Command. For 45 years, he was a volunteer docent at the National Air and Space Museum. During over 20 years of his NASM service, he was also a volunteer in the Collections Division. He worked on a large number of artifacts including restoration and assembly of Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the Little Boy bomb on Hiroshima.