The mech engineer who invented mother of all bombs

The New York Times December 25, 2005 Sunday SECTION: Section 1; Column 3; National Desk; Pg. 41

HEADLINE: Albert L. Weimorts, Designer of Big Bombs, Dies at 67

Albert L. Weimorts, a civilian engineer for the Air Force who conceived and designed some of the biggest, most powerful nonnuclear bombs ever made, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. He was

1. The cause was brain cancer, his son Todd said. In 2003, in honoring him at his retirement, the Air Force Research Laboratory cited Mr. Weimorts's role in developing two extremely powerful bombs. One was the GBU-28 ''Bunker Buster'' used in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The other was the Massive Ordnance Air Blast, nicknamed the ''mother of all bombs.'' It was made for the second Iraq war as a dramatic manifestation of ''shock and awe,'' but never used.''Time after time, Weimorts has put weapons in the warfighter's hands and has made a difference in the national defense of our country,'' the laboratory said in a statement issued in 2004. Mr. Weimorts (pronounced WEE-morts), as chief engineer for the laboratory's Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso, Fla., had begun work as early as October 1990 on a bomb capable of piercing hardened concrete and exploding only when it had penetrated to a certain depth. The need for this new bomb came after 2,000-pound bombs failed to break through a hardened bunker used by Iraqi leaders, possibly including Saddam Hussein himself. A book prepared by U.S. News & World Report, ''Triumph Without Victory: The Unreported History of the Persian Gulf War'' (Times Books, 1992), said ''numerous officials'' claimed the bomb was built explicitly to kill Mr. Hussein, although the first President Bush publicly said the Iraqi leader was not a target. ''We understand quite well what it takes to penetrate targets -- what it takes in terms of fusing, survivability, explosives and all,'' Mr. Weimorts said in an interview with the authors. Ideally, such a bomb would have to be dropped from a high altitude, meaning the United States and its allies needed to establish total air superiority in order to use the weapon. ''Just three days into the war, it looked to me like that was possible,'' Mr. Weimorts said. ''So I sketched out something that we could carry high, and it would be heavy.'' The need was to make a much bigger, more destructive version of the 2,000-pound GBU-27 that had been dropped on targets in downtown Baghdad. Yet it could not have a bigger diameter than the earlier bomb or else it could not be mounted on a fighter's bomb rack. So it had to be longer. Mr. Weimorts was project manager of the technical effort to develop the GBU-28, and then chief engineer for the balance of its development. Lockheed and Texas Instruments, among others, worked on the bomb. As is true with almost all weapons projects, others joined Mr. Weimorts in integral leadership and staff roles. Speed was so important that work began without signing of formal contracts. There was no time to develop and manufacture parts, so Mr. Weimorts decreed that only off-the-shelf materials could be used. Then he and his team were at first stymied in finding a steel tube long and strong enough to hold the explosives. A retired Army veteran who worked for Lockheed recalled that the Army stockpiled old gun barrels, which happened to be made of the same hardened steel needed for the bomb's body. The barrels were traced to an arsenal in Pennsylvania. Without waiting for Pentagon approval, Mr. Weimorts requested that the arsenal ship the barrels to another arsenal, this one in upstate New York, where the bombs were assembled. Within five weeks of the Air Force's request for the weapons, two GBU-28s, each weighing 5,000 pounds, were dropped on a highly fortified bunker 15 miles northwest of Baghdad, destroying it. It took several hours to determine that Mr. Hussein was not inside. But the technology worked. Mr. Weimorts was awarded the Air Force Award for Meritorious Civilian Service. In 2002 and 2003, he conceived and guided development of the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, which weighs 21,000 pounds and is the largest guided air-delivered weapon in history. It was meant as a replacement for a 15,000-pound bomb used in Vietnam popularly known as the Daisy Cutter. The Air Force made 14, but none were used against Iraq. Mr. Weimorts was also project engineer for a cluster bomb that had a production rate of eight million bomblets a month during the Vietnam War. Another success was reducing the weight of a 2,000-pound bomb by half without sacrificing any destructive power in the mid-1990's. Albert Lee Weimorts was born March 6, 1938, in DeFuniak Springs, Fla. He grew up in Mobile, Ala., and graduated from Mississippi State University with a degree in mechanical engineering. His first job was designing piping systems at Newport News Ship Building. He next worked for the Air Force as a project engineer on the shipment of dangerous liquids. He joined the munitions directorate in

1966 and in 1970 returned to Mississippi State to earn a master's degree in mechanical engineering. In the 1990's, he served two tours as a weapons inspector for the United Nations in Iraq. Mr. Weimorts is survived by his wife of 45 years, the former Nancy Williamson;