Robert E. Hayes

Airplane MechanicMarshall Islands

Tinian Island

Military VeteranPacific Nuclear TestsPostwar Nuclear Program

Listen to Robert E. Hayes’s Oral History on Voices of the Manhattan Project

Robert “Bob” Hayes worked as an airplane mechanic on Kwajalein Island, maintaining Boeing B-29s. He talks about life in the Pacific during World War II, being trained to use a flamethrower on Iwo Jima, maintaining complicated airplane engines, and witnessing the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests.

Robert E. Hayes’s Timeline

1926 Oct 4th Born in Wimington, IL.

1945 Drafted into the US military.

19451946 Served as a B-29 airplane mechanic in Roswell, NM and Kwajalein, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and other islands in the Pacific.

1946 Witnessed the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests.

Operation Crossroads Yearbook cover

Robert Hayes's profile in the Operation Crossroads Yearbook

Interior of Operation Crossroads Yearbook, on Kwajalein

Related Profiles

Neil K. Dickinson

Oak Ridge, TN

Dickinson worked in the United States Engineer District Office.

James F. Nolan

Los Alamos, NM

James F. “Jim” Nolan was a Captain in the US Army Medical Corps, the Chief Medical Officer for the Los Alamos site of the Manhattan Project, and a Special Consultant to Project Alberta on Tinian Island.

L.W. Hamblin

Oak Ridge, TN

Hamblin worked in the United States Engineer District Office.

Billy J. Harman

Tinian Island

Billy J. Harman served in the 603rd Air Engineering Squadron.