THAT is a fabulous story FRiend, and I’m not trying to play “can you top this”, but my Uncle Tommy was also a welder in the Kaiser shipyards out in California during the war, and as the story goes (handed down of course), one day they put out a call for welders to work on a classified project, paid triple wages in cash, had to pass an FBI background investigation.
My Uncle Tommy passed the background check, said they put him and a bunch of welders on a bus with blacked out windows, drove what seemed like forever, and dumped them all in the middle of an arid prairie like area, with tents to live in, steel girders, and blueprints to build a radio tower in the middle of nowhere.
They built the tower, got paid, sworn to secrecy and shipped back to California.
It was sometime in 1946 (?) that my Uncle was looking at a Life Magazine and yelled to my Aunt “they blew up my damn tower, the sons o’ bitches!” and that was when he learned that he had helped assist in the construction of the tower used for the Trinity test in July 1945.
His was only a peripheral role, but YOUR Grandfather?
Holy smokes, he helped build history, and I tip my hat to him, and to you.
I’m thinking a collection of stories like the two of you have would make an interesting documentary on the History channel.
My mom also worked those Kaiser shipyards as a secretary.
She met my dad at a cafe in Oakland.
Nope, that’s it...no secret squirrel crap, just sayin’... that’s how I came to be...WWII ship building.