The delivery program, codenamed Project Alberta, got underway under Ramsey's direction in October 1943. Starting in November, the Army Air Forces Materiel Command at Wright Field, Ohio, began Silverplate, the codename for the modification of B-29s to carry the bombs. Parsons arranged for a test program at Dahlgren using scale models of Thin Man and Fat Man. Test drops were carried out at Muroc Army Air Field, California and the Naval Ordnance Test Station at Inyokern, California using full-size replicas of Fat Man known as pumpkin bombs. The ungainly and non-aerodynamic shape of Fat Man proved to be the main difficulty, but many other problems were encountered and overcome. Parsons, wrote Oppenheimer, "has been almost alone in this project to appreciate the actual military and engineering problems which we would encounter. He has been almost alone in insisting on facing these problems at a date early enough so that we might arrive at their solution."
